Good morning, my dear brothers and sisters. I pray all is going well for you this first week of January in the year of our Lord 2013. As you know, I have been working on renewing and now new beginnings for this new year. Today I am requesting prayers for our veterans, our military, our police, and all others who work so hard to keep us safe and free. Please keep praying for our President, and please pray for his soul. I must say I do not understand him at all. He flew that big jet all the way back to Washington, DC, from Hawaii, made a few nasty statements at the White House, and then flew back to Hawaii to finish out his vacation without even signing the new bill. An automatic signing machine did it for him.
Anyway, I pray all of you are doing okay and are enjoying this colder weather. I would like to just say this, "COME ON SPRING." I would think some of you would add amen to that statement. Let me get to the message ...
New Beginnings: 1/3-4/2013.
Romans 12:1 - Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the RENEWING of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is -- His good pleasing and perfect will. 3 For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. (NIV)
Brothers and sisters, even though these letters of the Apostle Paul were written many, many, many years ago, they still, like the rest of the word of God hold true for us today. Here we are being told that we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God. This does not men we are to sacrifice ourselves to God, as in laying your life on the altar. God is opening this up to me telling me that we are to confess our sins over to Him and then we make sacrifices to Him by trying our best to live without sin. Brothers and sisters, some days this requires us to sacrifice a lot. Think of it, and I am sure you will agree that there are many things you might want to do or others might want you to do with them that as a Christian you just cannot do. You might have made some of those kinds of sacrifices just this past week as often there are parties between Christmas and New Year's Day that we just needed to turn down. When I take a look at my tired old body and see the way it looks, I am glad I can cover it up with clothes and know that God is not looking at the way my body looks from the outside, but from the inside. He wants us, folks, to be holy and pleasing to Him, in other words, I think He wants us to live without sin. I think if we show respect for our Lord Jesus and put Him above all else, that is what He wants us to do. Live holy and pleasing to Him. I think if we live so that others "see Jesus in us" that would be what He wants most of all. This would be our spiritual way to worship Him.
One of the commandments is to "Honor our Father and Mother." My dear late Mamma would tell me that the best way to honor her is to live by the commandments of God and live to please Him and that would please her and honor her the most, for that is the way she taught me to live. One of the great commandments is to "Love the Lord your God." We need to get out of the way the world lives and read more in our Bibles and live the best we can by the rules and commandments that are good today. We need to live according to His will for us. Now how do each of us know His will for us? They would be different, you know. We do not all have the same God-given gifts and/or God-given talents. But trust me when I tell you that God has given to us different gifts. One gift that He has given all of us is the gift to love others, but so many people do not use that gift at all or they think the word love means sex. We also need to know, and it is in this scripture, that God's will for us is Good, Pleasing, and Perfect.
So how about it, brothers and sisters, will you pray with me today, asking God to point out to each of us what His will for us is, and listen to His answer and then come clean to God and accept that will and work with it so that we will become holy and pleasing to Him?
Dear Father in Heaven, please forgive us of our sins as we start this day and this year out new. Please, Lord, show us, tell us Your will for us, help us to know and understand it so we might live holy and pleasing to You. So that we can walk in Your footsteps and in Your light, so that we can be pleasing and holy to You and so that others might see this in us. Help us to not become part of this world, but to tell others in this world about You. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Now go forth loving each other and living to be holy and pleasing to God, and I am sure that sharing your blessings is part of being pleasing to God, so please share those blessings and love others even if they do not love you. And know that I love ya.
Pastor Dan.
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