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Sermon Notes “Live in Love”

8/14/2024

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Text: Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Sermon:

“Love is that condition in the healing spirit so profound that it allows us to forgive," Dr. Maya Angelou.
This quote is a powerful quote. I believe that it perfectly encapsulates who Jesus is and what Jesus taught. Everything that Jesus taught about revolved around the action of love. A love that is so powerful, that it brought change for all.
As we see in the passage for today, we are taught to be compassionate and forgiving to others. This is because we are members of one body: humanity. We are all growing and evolving into the people that we are supposed to be.
The Bible doesn’t tell us that we shouldn’t be angry, but it tells us to handle our anger properly, so it doesn’t control us. This is opposite to how some interpret scripture, saying that you could never feel these emotions or feeling. Many have been taught that they should always be joyful and happy. We need to feel these emotions and face them in a healthy way.
If we investigate verse 29, our words should not be used to tear people down and destroy our relationships. Our words should be used to build up others and strengthen our relationships.
We should deal with our anger in a way that builds relationships rather than destroy them.
Lying disrupts unity by creating conflicts and destroying trust. It tears down relationships and leads to open warfare in the church. This is important in our personal lives as well as in our church life and our culture.
If vented thoughtlessly, anger can hurt others and destroy relationships. If bottled up inside, it can cause us to become bitter and destroy us from within. So, we must find a way to deal with this emotion in a way that is constructive.
I believe that one of the best ways to bring healing is communication. We need to be able to communicate our thoughts and emotions with the people that hurt us and vise versa. When we have ears to hear everyone’s point of view, we can understand each other. This allows forgiveness and healing.
I believe that if we do not practice communicating our thoughts and feelings, even the negative emotions that make us uncomfortable, we tend bottle up our emotions and when we hit a boiling point and we vent out our emotions thoughtlessly. This often destroys relationships and keeps us from loving and forgiving our family and friends.
Because Jesus forgave us, our forgiving attitude towards others should stand out in striking contrast to the unforgiving spirit shown by most of the world.
Forgiving means freely given. It is further explained, “To grant as a favor. To give gratuitously, generously, graciously and in kindness. It means to bestow as a gift of grace or out of grace. To give out of grace. To give help to those who don't deserve it. To show grace by providing undeserved help to someone unworthy.”
We should imitate God. We do this by modeling our lives after Jesus. Our love for others should be of the same kind-a love that goes beyond affections to self-sacrificing services.

Conclusion: Let us be people who live a life that represents God’s love.

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Sermon notes “Jesus the Bread of Life”

8/14/2024

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Text: John 6:25-35
Sermon:

Over the last month, we have discussed our reconciliation with God and with each other. We have discussed the unity that we have through Jesus, and we have discussed being people that heal church members through love. All these subjects discuss our connection with God and the community around us. This week, our primary focus is our connection with God and our own health.

In our scripture today, there is a repeated theme. This is the theme of “Bread.” “Bread” symbolizes more than food—it is existence itself. To deprive people of bread is to rob them of their existence (2 Thessalonians 3:8).

People eat bread to satisfy physical hunger and to sustain physical life. We can satisfy spiritual hunger and sustain spiritual life with an active participation in our religious traditions and building our relationship with Jesus and our community.

The very nature of the word as an image for existence allows it to be easily adopted into a theological vocabulary. This, coupled with antecedent images associated with bread, allows bread to be a major metaphor for Jesus’ relationship to humanity.

I believe that this is the difference between religion and belief/faith.

To believe means “To consider something to be true and therefore worthy of one’s trust.” I love the fact that, we get to “consider” the truth that we find in Jesus. We can ask questions and grow in our faith and our beliefs.

Religions of the world stem from people’s attempt to answer questions. Jesus made it clear: we believe in him whom God has sent. Since we can ask questions, I am convinced that when we believe in Jesus, we study Jesus. We study his words and his actions, and we apply those lessons into our live and our faith.

Now, let’s briefly study one of these moments of Jesus’ ministry that we can study and learn from: The feeding of the 5,000 (John 6:1-15). Even at a brief study, we see Jesus Stating, “Have the people sit down” (6:10). It seems that Jesus was not concerned with who sat down. He was not concerned with poor or rich, genders and sexes, or any of the other barriers that are too often used. It seemed that Jesus was simply concerned with providing people what they needed.

We see Jesus doing this throughout his ministry. Jesus looked to love people and He taught us to love people as well. Jesus looked to provide for the needs of people, regardless of who they were or were not and Jesus taught us to do the same.

What we see here at the beginning of chapter 6, we see Jesus providing a physical need for the people by giving them food. Later, in chapter 6, we see Jesus identifying himself as the bread of life, where he is feeding spiritual lives of his followers.

I love this connection of “Bread.” I believe that Jesus is making this connection between our physical need for bread and the spiritual needs that people have as well. We, as people, need both our physical needs met as well as our spiritual needs met. We see that Jesus is aware when they needs need to be met.

As Christ-followers, we need to ensure that we are taking care of our own physical health, our mental health and our spiritual health. In this sense of the use “Bread” we are seeing a correlation and the connection between our physical health and our mental and spiritual help. When are physical needs are met, we can focus on our spiritual and mental health.

As Christ-followers, it is our duty to work for the provision of others. We put the needs of others above our own. We can study our environment and determine what needs need to be met in that time; both our needs and the needs of those that are around us.

When we can identify our spiritual needs and we engage in building our faith, we find peace in our spirit. This peace that we find strengthens our spirit and we build in the community.

What do you do to take care of your physical, mental and spiritual needs? How does that improve your life overall? Does this help you encourage those around you?

Conclusion: Let us be people who feed our spiritual life and find peace in our faith.

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