March 29, 2011 Are You A Good Guy?

He Answered: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself." "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." Good Morning, my dear brothers and sisters and I bid you a fine Tuesday in the name of Jesus, the one who died for you and me. Today, Tuesday, we pray for cures for diseases, and let's really pray for a cure for cancer. So pray for Ron and Kathleen and please, you remember Addison, the young lady who got cancer when in high school, recovered, and now she has some serious infections. This in from my dear pastor friend, Pastor Larry Hale, Glenvale Church of God, Marysville Pa. Urgent Prayer Request... Addison's body rejected the antibiotic so they had to operate again today. She survived the operation which drained large amounts of pus from her vaginal area. She now has 2 drains with constant flows of pus. The Dr. said he had never had a patient with both kinds of serious infection--MRSA and STAPH. She has been asleep most of the day, but did wake up a little and talked to her mom and dad. There is a new drug just released--Addison would be the first patient to take it--that they are going to try on her. Right now she is stable and holding her own, but if they can't get an antibiotic that her body will accept, then the infections will continue to spread throughout her body. So, tonight--thank God--there is a little hope, but she is far from being okay. She will be in the hospital at least 14 days--and that is a minimum. If the infection continues to spread, they are not sure if there is any more they can do. Please keep the family in your prayers. Addison has a sister who is 6 years old and just had ear surgery a few weeks ago so she is still in the recovery period, also. Please continue to pour the prayers into heaven for little Addison. Thanks. So dear prayer warriors, lets get in some serious talks with God, WHO STILL HEALS TODAY, and let's also remember to give thanks... The Big Trip 15-2 Are You A Good Guy (Girl)? 2: Luke 10:27 - He Answered: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself." 28 "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." (NIV) The above scripture, quoted above by a teacher of the law and told by Jesus that he answered his question correctly. The above are the TWO GREAT COMMANDMENTS. If you really obey these two, you will be in line with all the others. Here these words of Jesus as record in Matthew 23. Matthew 23:34 - Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question. 36 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?" 37 Jesus replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." 38 "This is the first and greatest commandment." 39 "And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself." 40 "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (NIV) I want all of you to think about this. Last week when I wrote on Salvation, I talked about John 14:6 and Romans 10:9/10 and other scriptures, and here we find it very, very simple. What must we do, and we find just this. We need to love our Lord Jesus, our Lord God, with all of our heart and with all of our soul and with all of our mind. Now that does not sound all that hard, and if we do love our Lord just like that, then we will follow Him and we will not break any of the "Ten Commandments." I say that because if we really and truly love God, really love Him, then we will ACT LIKE IT!! Now the second great commandment is we must love our neighbors as ourselves. Wow, did you ever meet a person who you felt not just hated others but did not like himself or herself? Gosh, folks, if you cannot respect yourself and love yourself how in the world can you love others and if you don't love yourself how can you say you are loving Jesus? God made us in His image and for myself I am happy the way I look, yes, God did a good job on me as far as looks go, except maybe he got just a tad too much hair on my face. And after all these years I have also learned and I must confess that I struggled with this for a while... I would look at some people and not see the beauty that I saw in others. But when you really, really look into the fact we are all made in the image of God and GOD DOES NOT MAKE JUNK, then I learned to appreciate beauty in a different way. But we ask as the teacher of the law asked, who is our neighbor? Is it the one next door above us and below us, is it the ones across the street or who live behind us? Tomorrow we are going to take a deep look at just who our neighbor is, and it might surprise some of you... Today as I close I am going to ask you to do this. The next time you are in your bathroom, take a good look in your face, and then tell yourself, this is the image of God looking back at me, and I really love God so I must love myself. It is ok to love yourself, just don't get stuck there, for the Bible goes past that and teaches us to love others. When I look at my computer screen and look deep into it, I find that you all are pretty good looking, and just wonderful people, God did a good job on all of you, but make no mistake about this... HE IS STILL WORKING ON US, yes, He's still working on me, to make me what I ought to be... He built everything else in six days, but I just ain't done yet. Dear Father in Heaven, please cure cancer in everyone... Thank You for hearing that prayer today. I love You, Lord. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Now go forth loving who you think your neighbors are and let me know who you think they are. And share your blessings also, and maybe some of them with your neighbors. Love ya, Pastor Dan.