During his sermon, our pastor
quoted Matthew 19:19, "Love your neighbor as yourself." To emphasize
the point, he asked three times, with increasing intensity: "Who is my
neighbor? Who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor?!"
Each time he asked, a young boy
behind us answered (mimicking the pastor's intensity, but not quite as loud):
"Mister Rogers! Mister Rogers! Mister Rogers!"
-- Ed Arida, Stow, OH, Christian Reader, "Lite Fare."
Psychologist James Dobson reports seeing a sign on a convent in
southern California reading: Absolutely No Trespassing--Violators Will Be
Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law. Signed, "The Sisters of
Mercy." --James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale
House Publishers, Inc, 1988) p. 107.
Scripture
Text:
1The 4:1 (NIV) Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in
order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in
the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. 2 For you know what instructions we
gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. 3 It is God's will that you
should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of
you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable,
5 not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 6 and that in
this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord
will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.
7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore,
he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his
Holy Spirit. 9 Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for
you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you
do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to
do so more and more.
“Our business is people and
Our reason is Jesus Christ.
Our purpose is to personally live Jesus
Christ.
Because of His love for us,
We can love Him and one another.
We believe in the absolute necessity of
conversion to Jesus,
The absolute reality of eternal life now
in Jesus,
And the absolute need of each other in
the fellowship of believers.
Our desire is to present Jesus Christ In
compassion and understanding
To every individual who does not know
Him,
And to encourage and develop every
individual who does know Him. “
By Gerry Hickman
Caring – Sharing -
Bearing (to show the
fellowship of believers)
I.
Caring—(We Care) Caring about
the Lord leads to caring about others.
We care that we want to please the Lord.
We care about what the Lord wants.
We care that we are pleasing to the Lord.
We care that God wants us and commands us to love one another.
We care for others, not just ourselves.
We’ve been nstructed how to live in order to please God. Do
so more and more. We’ve been
taught by God To love each other. You
do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
Brothers do so more and more.
“People don’t care how much you
know until they know how much you care.”
Don’t ask if you don’t have the
time or if you don’t care to hear the answer.
Lee Iacocca once asked
legendary football coach Vince Lombardi what it took to make a winning team.
The book Iacocca records Lombardi's answer:
"There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the
fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but still don't win the
game. Then you come to the third ingredient: if you're going to play together
as a team, you've got to care for one another. You've got to love each
other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to
himself: 'If I don't block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I
have to do my job well in order that he can do his.'
"The difference between
mediocrity and greatness," Lombardi said that night, "is the feeling
these guys have for each other." In
the healthy church, each Christian learns to care for others. As we take
seriously Jesus' command to "love one another," we contribute to a
winning team. -- Christopher Stinnett, Wailed Lake, Michigan.
Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 3.
II. Sharing—(We
share) Sharing is putting our care into action.
Words without deeds are like faith without actions, and it is like
caring without sharing. It is
dead. Sharing is saying we do
care and we will show you that we care by giving you what we have.
We care enough to share and to give.
It is the fellowship spoken of in Acts 2:42
Acts
2:41 (NIV) Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three
thousand were added to their number that day. 42 They devoted themselves to
the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread
and to prayer.
koinonia {koy-nohn-ee'-ah} AV - fellowship 12,
communion 4, communication 1, distribution 1,contribution 1, to communicate 1)
fellowship, association, community, communion, joint participation,
intercourse 1a) the share which
one has in anything, participation 1b)
intercourse, fellowship, intimacy 1b1)
the right hand as a sign and pledge of fellowship
1c) a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution, as
exhibiting an embodiment and proof of fellowship
I would rather be cheated a hundred times than develop a heart of
stone. -- --Tim Stafford. Leadership, Vol. 16, no. 3.
III.
Bearing—(We bear) Bearing is
taking upon ourselves another. We take their burdens, their joys, their pain, their love,
their care, their pain of sin, and their lives on us.
Because of His love for us,
We can love Him and one another.
And the absolute need of each other in
the fellowship of believers.
Even the Lone Ranger had
Tonto. Why do we need each other? Why should we love each other?
Love is agape. Love is a choice.
We choose to bear or carry one another.
The test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but
to rascals.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel in A
Passion for Truth. Christianity Today, Vol. 41, no. 9.
My friend's four boys were young and bursting with energy, especially
in church. But the sermon her minister preached on "turning the other
cheek" got their undivided attention. The minister stressed that no
matter what others do to us, we should never try to "get even." That
afternoon the youngest boy came into the house crying. Between sobs he told
his mother he had kicked one of his brothers, who had kicked him in return.
"I'm sorry you're hurt," his mother said. "But you shouldn't go
around kicking people." To which the tearful child replied, "But the
preacher said he isn't supposed to kick me back."
-- Jane Vajnar, Tampa, Kansas. "Lite Fare," Christian Reader.
Christians state glibly that
they love the whole world, while they permit themselves animosities within
their immediate world. World love is a philosophical credo. But loving the
world at large can only be done by loving face to face the world that is not
so distant. It is foolish to say we love humanity; its people we can't stand.
n
Calvin Miller in The Taste of Joy.
Christianity Today, Vol. 38, no. 11.
In One Church from the Fence,
Wes Seelinger writes: "I have spent long hours in the intensive care
waiting room ... watching with anguished people ... listening to urgent
questions: Will my husband make it? Will my child walk again? How do you live
without your companion of thirty years?
"The intensive care waiting
room is different from any other place in the world. And the people who wait
are different. They can't do enough for each other. No one is rude. The
distinctions of race and class melt away. A person is a father first, a black
man second. The garbage man loves his wife as much as the university professor
loves his, and everyone understands this. Each person pulls for everyone else.
"In the intensive care waiting
room, the world changes. Vanity and pretense vanish. The universe is focused
on the doctor's next report. If only it will show improvement. Everyone knows
that loving someone else is what life is all about."
Long before we're in the intensive care waiting room maybe we can learn
to live like that. -- Hugh Duncan
Boise, Idaho. Leadership, Vol.
16, no. 1.
First the Ten Commandments, then Jesus, make it very clear that there
are two kinds of important relationships for human beings. One is a
relationship between human beings and God, and the other is a relationship
between human beings. The way we treat each other is a reflection of what we
think of him. -- Curtis Lundgren,
Marriage Partnership, Vol. 9, no. 4.