Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" "Love your neighbor as yourself."
Good Tuesday Morning, my dear brothers and sisters. I must start this day by telling you a little bit about our annual picnic in the park that was held this Saturday past. First of all, our singer, Timothy Beitzel, left no one disappointed, he did a bang up job singing for the Lord and singing for those at the picnic. I told you this young man in my opinion is the best baritone singer in the world, and I believe all at the picnic agreed with me. A great time was had by all... I want to thank Tim for coming and singing for us, but I really want to give the glory to God for giving this man a great voice and keeping him on track to use it to sing for the Lord... Tim all glory and honor to God. Amen.
It was also great to meet new friends, like the Wissler's who showed up with 300 hand-made wooden toys for Santa and Mrs. Claus to give out at Christmas. And to Helen Thomas who showed up with boxes of food collected in her office. And thanks to others who handed me checks of support for the food bank. I want to thank Wanda and Grant Crockett for coming to our house often and early on picnic day and helping me set up. And for the clean up crew, including the Crocketts and their daughter and son-in-law. Also Karen, Helen, Harold, Mazy, and others of the Witmer family who helped to serve and clean up... Also to our kids who came and helped set up, serve, and/or clean up. And it was so good to see Pastor Tony and Ruby at the Picnic. Pastor Tony has not been in good health, but was there and enjoying his day out with the Lord and with friends old and new. The Orner family came and had "Baby Allie" with them, and she just blew everyone kisses. What a beautiful child. Dolores was having a bad day health-wise and had to leave early, but I want to report that she is over what she had that day, and feeling better. And I really need to give God all the glory for this, for the day was perfect, the event was perfect, The Holy Spirit was alive and well and spent the day with us... and, AND no one got sick on my cooking. I also want to thank the employees of The Bridges who really worked hard to bring over three bus loads of their folks, and special thanks to Margie Mitchell who works at the Bridges, came on her day off with her beautiful children and worked all day helping serve. Because of our age and health I was thinking this might be the last year of one of these big picnics, but let me tell you, we are going in to reserve the place for next year. So look for it and if the good Lord does not return, and the creek is not over the eating area, we will do it again...
Now it is time to get to work for the Lord. I need to get the message out, get animals fed and watered, and get food packed for families coming in today.
Back To The Basics!: Mark 12:28 - One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked Him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" 29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this. Hear O Israel, The Lord our God, The Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" 31 "The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself." (NIV)
Back in the day when I was heading up the transportation department for the Central Dauphin School District, my most important job was the safety of the kids. This required good equipment, good mechanics to keep them in good shape and also good drivers and good riders. So today let me talk about those school bus drivers a tad... First we set some rules on who to hire. Of course the state laws called for the criminal background checks and we checked driving records... Now there seems always to be a shortage of school bus drivers, even in this time of a lot of people out of work, most school districts or their bus contractors would love to hire a few GOOD drivers for their fleet.
At Central Dauphin, I wanted a clean driving record for the last five years, and no DUI's in their file at all, none, zip. Or I just canned the application. When we started a driver in training we went back to the basics. I would ask questions like this. How many colors are there on a traffic signal, and if I asked all of you that today, only a few on this line would get it right and those would be the ones who drove at Central Dauphin and went through our training program. So how many are there? How many colors on that traffic signal? Most of you will say three, green, yellow, and red. But in my mind there are four. You have green, stale green, yellow and red. You see it is back to the basics. And if I were to ask a person what the colors mean, most would say, green is go, yellow means caution and red means stop and what the heck is "stale green"?
Well, let me just take time to tell you that green does mean go, but only after you have looked to see if others knew that red means stop. Yellow does mean caution, and it is designed to clear the intersection; however, most people use it to speed up and run some of the red. Red means stop...
Ok, stale green, that is a light that is green the first time you see it. You are coming down the road, you look ahead and you see a green light, and it is stale, meaning it has been green for a while. What do you do when seeing a stale green light, BE READY FOR IT TO CHANGE COLORS. So as we taught new drivers they learned these basics. And when we had safety meetings what did we talk about? Basics!
So this week, God has planted on my little mind that we need to go back to the basics, and talk about them some. There is really nothing hard about understanding our Lord and nothing hard about Salvation when you go back to the basics and look it over. If I had to describe in one word what our religion is about, or what salvation is about, it would be easy... It is about LOVE.
If we look at the scripture today, what is pointed out most, it is Love... You can sum it up like this... Love God and Love your neighbor. One word is used twice, Love... Let's look at the scripture again and I will shorten it so as to just have the commandments, these two great commandments... Now I want to add the word love where it fits...
Mark 12:30 - Love the Lord your God with all your heart and (Love Him) with all your soul and (Love Him) with all your mind and (Love Him) with all your strength" 31 Love your neighbor as yourself." (NIV) See where I am coming from? Love is such a beautiful word, and some folks have so much trouble dealing with it or saying it. Love is not sex, sex is not making love. You don't make love, you feel it, it comes from God. Yes, love comes from God... and I can support that in the Bible with
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son.
God loved us, so much He gave us Jesus and Jesus, what did Jesus give us, among other things He gave us HIS LIFE... Yes, we are going back to the basics this week, but listen to this as we start, if you really follow these commandments, Love God and Love your neighbors, and do it with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, you will find you will cover it about all. I find a lot of times in men, they are so insecure in their own skin that they cannot put their arms around another man and say I love you to them. A man loving another man does not mean you are gay, hey guys, I want to tell you this... I LOVE JESUS AND HE IS A MAN!! In fact He is THE MAN...
Here is your homework assignment for tomorrow, please tell me what the first commandment is according to the Bible... No trick question here, what is the very first commandment?
Dear Father in Heaven, help me, oh Lord, as we look back on the basics from the Bible, when we look back and learn more about the teachings of Jesus when He walked the earth... Help us lock it in our brain and share it with others through our hearts, minds and tongue. Thanks for a great day on Saturday, it was all in Your honor and for Your glory, dear Lord, thanks for the perfect weather, a shady building, a nice stream, and great fellowship and good food... It was all indeed through Your hands... I love You, Jesus... Amen.
Folks, please share your blessings, and start planning now, for that Saturday during Independence Day weekend... Love ya, Pastor Dan.
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