Good Morning Christlike Burden-Bearers! Jesus' command to love others as He loved us is coming to life in and through each of us and us as His Good News Delivery Co. This year I can see and feel the growth in many of you and through our Fellowship as we continue to work on growing into the people we were created to be, operate better out of our true identity and going and loving like Jesus! Thank you all for your parts and participation. We are God's Family and we are better together and making a difference as God loves and helps through us! PTL! And keep praying and serving and celebrating with much thanksgiving! God is good and His Goodness is alive in and through us!
Yesterday we heard a great word of God brought to us through Mike Laise! Thanks Mike! He was talking about putting on our Sunday best everyday by being who we were created to be and loving others as Christ daily. Some of that entails dying to self and being God's love as you travel through the moments of each day just doing random acts of kindness and allowing God to use these offerings. We may never know for sure if we planted seeds, watered, fertilized and had some small part in another's faith journey, BUT GOD knows! Life in Christ today is all about love and not about strict rule following like the Old Testament days. (Funny, the Leviticus chapters he shared are part of the Chosen episode this week) All the legalistic, forced adherence, guilt and fear is not part of God's plan for us today. Like a dog running to its master with excited-glad-your-home-let me kiss-you attitude is what should be motivating us today to live and love like Jesus. (NOTE: as the church janitor, I am glad I don't have to clean up after all those sacrifices!
) Are you a cat or a dog? Are you happy to be with the master, even after messing up or are you showing up to be served when you feel like it? May we all have Mike's passion to serve and love and lead others to Christ!
How's that song go that describes us??? They will know we are Christians by what??? Our grumbling? Pride? Finger-pointing? Apathy? Begrudgingly doing some things? Laziness? Unmeetable standards? Legalism? You know the answer! What are others seeing in your daily lives? God is Love. Love lives in us and longs to come alive through us. They will know and are beginning to experience God's love through our actions and love! PTL and Thank you all too! Many churches unfoundedly tell of how loving they are. We have THE Foundation-Love coming alive and meeting needs through us! Keep up the loving acts of kindness God is spurring you to do. They are custom made for you by our loving Father who leads you to go love like Him and empowers and equips you to do so. Check out our devotionals for today (below) that thread together loving others well, as we are, with what we got, and where we are in our faith journey. All God expects of us is to love. Love Him, others, ourselves and life in Christ. It's His easy yoke and joy-to-do love that blesses Him and others and ourselves too. Ask God to show you who needs some love today and how He has planned for you to respond. Pray for God to continue to open your eyes and heart and to continue to use you and us well. Thank Him for love, loving us and loving through us. Yes, God is love and others will come to know it as we love like Jesus. Pronounce God's Love over you, our church, your day, and in prayer over those you will encounter this week. Tell others how much God loves them and use words if you have to.
Who are we that You are mindful of us, O Lord? Yet You are and You love us so well! Thank You for Your love. Thank You for filling us to overflowing with Your love! Thank You for loving through us and blessing us as we bless and love others. We are truly blessed to go love like Jesus. Thank You! Love through us well today and everyday. Open our eyes, hearts and hands to love like You. May many see and experience You and Your love through us this week. Draw many to Your Love and bring new life. Thank You! We pronounce Your Love over this week and our church. May Your fame and love spread throughout the area as we love well. Our tails are wagging Lord because of Your love and care for us. May others come to find that joy in Your love this year through us. Here we are Lord. You know us, love us and have prepared us to go love. Thank You! Lead the way! May we live and love like Jesus more fully every day and go lovingly expand Your territory. May Jesus' love come to life as we lovingly ask in His name. Amen
Check out the link in ODB to discovery your God-given calling. Very helpful as we continue on growing into our created purposes! God custom made you with love to go love for such a time as this! Dwell in His love today--all day! Love you all! Shalom! I am pronouncing God's love over you right now in prayer. Do you feel it? Receive it!
Charles Stanley:
Upper Room: Burden-Bearers
Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. - Galatians 6:2 (NRSVUE)
I had no idea when we bought our home that there were so many large rocks submerged under the soil. Trying to regrade and landscape the yard to create a rock garden proved quite formidable. I had only a shovel and a wheelbarrow — both inadequate for the heavy rocks I tried to lift by myself.
It was not until I called on my landscaper and his assistant that the biggest rocks could be unearthed and relocated. I was grateful for those who helped me build my rock garden, which is now filled with rocks of assorted shapes and hues.
How often we struggle alone to bear grief, pain, loneliness, anger, or regret. But our Christian faith is not meant to be lived in isolation; we are called to lift one another’s burdens. Only when others have reached out to me or I have sought help have my burdens been made lighter. Today someone may need our help — we may not even be aware of it. But when we choose to make a phone call or send an e-mail, a text, or a handwritten note, we may become a burden-sharer. No matter the method we choose in bearing another’s burdens, we are fulfilling Christ’s command.
TODAY'S PRAYER
O God, help us to follow the example of Christ by helping to bear the burdens of others. Amen.Our Daily Bread:
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Kizombo sat watching the campfire, pondering the great questions of his life. What have I accomplished? he thought. Too quickly the answer came back: Not much, really. He was back in the land of his birth, serving at the school his father had started deep in the rainforest. He was also trying to write his father’s powerful story of surviving two civil wars. Who am I to try to do all this?
Kizombo’s misgivings sound like those of Moses. God had just given Moses a mission: “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). Moses replied, “Who am I?” (v. 11).
After some weak excuses from Moses, God asked him, “What is that in your hand?” It was a staff (4:2). At God’s direction, Moses threw it on the ground. The staff turned into a snake. Against his instincts, Moses picked it up. Again, it became a staff (v. 4). In God’s power, Moses could face Pharaoh. He literally had one of the “gods” of Egypt—a snake—in his hand. Egypt’s gods were no threat to the one true God.
Kizombo thought of Moses, and he sensed God’s answer: You have Me and My Word. He thought too of friends who encouraged him to write his father’s story so others would learn of God’s power in his life. He wasn’t alone.
On our own, our best efforts are inadequate. But we serve the God who says, “I will be with you” (3:12).
By Tim Gustafson
REFLECT & PRAY
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What do you have that God can use? How might it encourage you to consider what He might do with you?
Father, with You I lack nothing, no matter the situation.
Discover your God-given calling.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Exodus 3:1–4:17 tells how God called Moses to deliver His people from Egyptian bondage. Moses protested, giving various excuses for why he was unfit for the job. He doubted his own identity and ability (3:11) and his lack of authority (v. 13). In chapter 4, Moses gave his third excuse: the lack of legitimacy and credibility (v. 1). Having been rejected by the Israelites forty years earlier (2:11–14), Moses argued that they wouldn’t believe that he was now divinely commissioned (4:1). To authenticate his commission, Moses was to offer three signs: a rod becoming a snake (vv. 2–5), his hands turning leprous (vv. 6–7), and water turning to blood (v. 9). These signs prefigured the realms of the plagues—blood (7:19), animals and insects (8:2–4, 16, 21; 9:3), and diseases (9:9)—that God would bring upon the Egyptians so that they too would know that He was the true God (7:5).
K. T. Sim |
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