I’ve begun writing my 22ND sermon – the 19TH of which will be preached to my church family sometime soon. (I’ve actually written 3 sermons that I’ve determined aren’t ready to be preached – for various reasons.)
My new sermon that I started writing yesterday is titled “War & Peace”, and it’ll likely be based on James 4:1-10. It continues my message series on the Book of James which I started in February. (This will be my 9TH sermon in this series.)
Here are 3 working paragraphs that I’ve written thus far based on James 4:1:
… Fast forward not quite 2,000 years into the future. It’s 2018. What do we have in the world today ? We have Christians inside God’s Kingdom who look and act no different than non-Christians of the world. We have churches squabbling internally about silly things. We have megachurches looking down on small churches as irrelevant. We have small churches chastising megachurches as secular or worldly. We have churches competing with each other instead of uniting with one another. We have religions and denominations – and their respective rules – working against each other. We have church leaders preaching on how much we sin – and how much the world sins – as they get caught in years of sin.
No wonder non-believers and non-followers of Christ walk away from us instead of towards us. The hard truth is that many of our neighbors out there love God, but they don’t care too much for His followers – because of what they hear and see from us. I speak from personal experience here. I felt that way up until 12 years ago. I’ve always believed in God’s existence. Even when I didn’t follow Him – I’ve always believed that He existed. But I didn’t care so much for His people and for His churches. That is – until I became His follower – and then 5 months later – became part of His church family.
In my first year on this fantastic journey I fell in love with God – first – before family – before friends – before the workplace. Once I joined a church family I discovered that God commanded me to love everyone – genuinely – believers and non-believers alike. I don’t think that a lot of our neighbors out there know that we love them – and that God loves them – unconditionally – eternally …
CountUp 