Dear Father in Heaven: Thank You for waking me this morning, and thanks for watching over our families and friends overnight. Please, dear Father, forgive me of my sins so I may start fresh today. Help me walk each step of the day in line with Jesus and do my very best to follow in His footsteps. Thanks for sending forth Grant and Wanda yesterday to spend time in the food pantry. Lord, thanks for hearing my prayers and acting on them according to Your will for me. Lord, as You already know, Wednesdays on this line we call Salvation Wednesday, so please help all of us keep that on our minds this day as we work hard for You trying to lead people to the feet of Jesus to be saved. Thanks for yesterday. Praises to You, dear Lord, for bringing "Mike" in for food and for his coming to You asking to be Born Again. Please help us follow up on His following of You, so if he slips we can be near to help him back on track. Now, dear Lord, if You would be so kind to help me with the message and then please dispatch it for me. In the name of Jesus, I give praise, thanks, and ask for help. Amen.
Good Morning, my dear brothers and sisters. I love you!! Welcome to Salvation Wednesday on this line. Wow!! What a great day yesterday, it really was. Praise report, and this is the best kind of praise report as far as I am concerned. Yesterday in our food pantry a gentleman came in for food for his family. "Mike," who has been very sick and had to stop working for awhile, confessed his sins over to Jesus and asked Jesus into his heart. As you may or may not know, we pray with everyone who comes in for food. On Monday, Dolores and I anointed a mother and her two very young children with oil in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and prayed for them. Then yesterday to have a man, a construction worker, come to Jesus as we prayed for and with him. Wanda, Grant, Dolores, and I were praying for "Mike" after we loaded a food cart for him. He was very excited. We have been talking to him about salvation for awhile now. Wanda then anointed him with oil in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Of course all honor and glory to our Lord Jesus for these events.
An update on Sarah! Praise God she is stable and showing a few signs of improvement. Please keep praying for her. Sarah was involved in a very serious auto accident when her vehicle was T-Boned by an SUV. Please keep praying for Eleanor, Patsy, Vicki, Burt, Pastor Carol, Curtis, Beth and Craig and their family. For the construction at the Crocketts. Let's take time to pray for Pastors, Missionaries, and all others who work in the fields of harvest for our Lord Jesus. Please also keep Dolores and me in your prayers. Lots of pain, folks, and something seems to be going wrong in my body very fast, to the point I struggle to walk. Now let me get to the message on Love.
Salvation Wednesday, September 25, 2013, Love (Day Three)
1 John 4:7 - Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. 10 This is love; not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. (NIV)
John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. (NIV)
Brothers and sisters, our scripture for today gets right into what I have been saying all week, we must love and we should love one another. The scripture tells us that all love comes from God. And brothers and sisters, I want to point out to all of you that we cannot pick and choose. You either love everyone or you don't really love anyone in the real sense of Love. God loves all of us, each and every one. God loves you if you are black, if you are white, if you are red, or yellow. Remember this from Vacation Bible School years ago.
"Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world."
If we do not love others, then how can we love our Lord Jesus? Think about that, folks. Again, I tell you that you don't want to love the sins of others, just the person. The same goes for us, we for sure do not love even our own sins, we in fact should hate our sins, but we should love ourselves. Yes, we should ourselves and hate our own sins. We also need to love Jesus, and if we are struggling with loving all others, we need to really be talking to Jesus about that. As we look deeper into our scripture, we see this.
1 John 4:8 - Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
That to me is pretty clear. We cannot pick and choose, we must love everyone. Think about this. God the Father sent Jesus down to save us, to save the world. A bonus on this deal was if we follow the teachings of Jesus and we try and do what He did while He was here we have a fine example to follow. We need to walk in His light, we need to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. We need to follow His commands, and tomorrow we will look at several of the commands of Jesus. Can you think about a few of the commandments that Jesus told us about? I do want you to think about this. God did not send Jesus down to save everyone but you, or everyone but me. God did not tell Jesus to go and save the world except for Danny Lehman, because little Danny was a brat. And I want so much to follow in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus, I want to do my very, very best to love everyone. Of all the blessings God gave to us, love is the greatest. We will look deeper into that tomorrow. Brothers and sisters, if you struggle to love someone because of a past problem, work hard at it, talk to Jesus about it, and do all you can to get the hate out of your system. Remember that real love comes from God. And how much does He love you on this day, on this Salvation Wednesday? He loves you, He loves me so much that He took a beating for us, He was spat on because of us, He was nailed to the cross because of us and for us. Now that is love.
1 John 4:8 - Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Think about this as we close today. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. If we do not love everyone, then the Bible tells us that we do not know God!! So let me see, I stand up before people and tell them how much I love God and I confess myself to God while at the same time I have this hate or dislike in my mind and body for someone, someone who might be a family member or a person of a different religion or a person of a different race. The person might be your neighbor and you are fighting over a property line. Maybe you don't like the president or the governor of your state. When God tells us that we must love everyone, that means everyone. We need to go to prayer now and really talk to God about this, and we need to put it on our prayer list. I will encourage pastors where they have prayer lines to place on those lines prayers for all of us so we learn to love everyone. How about we get started on this, on this Salvation Wednesday? Remember what we have talked about this morning, and it is worth repeating. We might say we are "Born Again." We might say that we are ready for heaven. But if we harbor hate in our body, then according to the Bible we do not know God. Brothers and sisters, I know this is hard, but we must love everyone. Let's get working on it.
Dear Father in Heaven. We need to talk, we need to have a heart-to-heart with You through Your Son Jesus. We really do want to be Born Again, and we really do want to love everyone, so if in the back of our minds, in the deepest part of our heart and brain there is some hate sticking in us, help us to clear it out. Help us to indeed love everyone. Lord Jesus, You love all of us, regardless of how we at, but I know if we come to You asking that You help us to clear this hate, You will help us. So we ask in the name of Jesus that You wash us of sins and help us to get the hate out of our lives, all of it. Help us to patch up differences and to love others and also to hate sin, starting with our own sins and then the sins of others. In the Holy Name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.
Now go forth loving others, loving Jesus, and sharing your blessings. I love ya. I really do, and you can pass that on. Pastor Dan
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