Welcome to the Islands Christian Church podcast.
Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.
Thanks for joining us. So last week we talked about who
is our neighbor? This whole command to love the
Lord, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and
mind, and love your neighbor as yourself, the second greatest
commandment. And we said, well, who is your
neighbor exactly? And we said Jesus.
That was a common question that was asked of Jesus.
And Jesus answered that question in a story He told a famous
story of the Good Samaritan. And what we said last weekend is
that most of us cast ourselves as the what the Good Samaritan
like. In other words, we we tell the
story like we're the good guy. We read the story like we're the
good guy. And what I think Jesus was doing
in that story was trying to get us to see that we were not the
Good Samaritan, but that we were the beat up left for dead Jew on
the side of the road. And that how you determine who
your neighbor is, how you determine who your neighbor is
that you're called to love is a simple question.
If you were dying on the side of the road, from whom would you
accept mercy? In other words, who would you
let rescue you? Who would you let save your
life, which is draw any lines and say no, no, no, not you.
I don't want you coming to my aid.
I don't want you rescuing me. Or would you accept aid from
pretty much anybody if that would meant you get to live?
The answer to that question is obvious.
We would all accept aid from anyone.
So therefore, who is our neighbor?
Anyone. So who are we called to love?
Anyone. And everyone, that's our
neighbor. OK, so that was our question
last week. This week we're asking this
follow up question. How do we actually love our
neighbors? That's the question.
How do we actually love our neighbors?
Because here's the thing, when we talk about love in the church
world, it's so it's so very, you know, like undefined and it's
sentimental. And we do love everybody and,
and, and just just love people. And love oftentimes kind of gets
interpreted as telling everybody, you know, you're OK.
It doesn't matter what you do. As long as you know, you feel
good about yourself, we'll love you.
Like, that's not love, that's sentimentality, right?
So love without truth is sentimentality.
And so how do you actually have biblical love for your neighbor?
What does that actually look like?
That's what we're going to wrestle with today.
So here's the first premise that we have to start with.
You have inside of you, if you're a Christian, the love of
Christ. You have the love of Christ.
Paul talks about the love of Christ compelling us in his
letters. So you have inside of you the
love of Christ. Now, the love of Christ includes
things like kindness and gentleness, for sure.
But the love of Christ certainly is more than just being nice.
Like this can't be the welcome to Christianity where we're the
nicest, right? That's that doesn't sound all
that world changing. So what does real Christ like
neighborly love look like in everyday life?
And how do we do it practically? So to answer this question,
we're going to look at a well known story from the Gospel of
Mark. It's a miracle story, a miracle
story that happens in all four gospels.
And in the moment, in this moment, Jesus performs an
incredible, incredible miracle. But what I want you to notice as
we read this is that a lot of Jesus's miracles he did himself.
He was the agent of the miracle. You'd spit on some dirt and rub
a guy's eyes, which had to be a cool day, right?
And it's like, boom, that guy could see.
And then other times he would be like, hey, get up and take your
mat and walk. And that guy would get up and
walk. But this is a miracle.
Jesus actually did and executed through his followers.
And that's an important detail. He did a miracle, but he
executed it through his disciples, through his
followers. The disciples became the ones
through whom his compassion reached others.
His disciples became the conduit through whom his compassion
reached others. And that's a powerful reminder
for all of us if we're going to love our neighbors the way
Christ calls us to love him, love them.
This is this is key. Don't don't miss this if you're
going to, if you're going to love your neighbors the way
Christ has called you to love your neighbors, we're going to
get the biblical understanding of this.
It absolutely must be founded first and foremost in your
relationship with Jesus Christ. To try to love others without
you yourself. Being loved by and loving Jesus
is a fool's errand and is going nowhere.
You will end up loving your neighbors in what in Christian
terms we say the flesh, meaning you will do it in your own
power, in your own wisdom, in your own understanding.
In other words, you will be trying to love your neighbors
without knowing intimately the author of Love.
Does that make sense? In other words, Jesus is the
author and originator of love. He's the one that that came up
with the whole idea of love. You know, if you're a skeptical
and don't believe in this whole God stuff, don't believe in
Jesus. Here's what you here's what you
need to know is that that the idea of love doesn't exist
unless there's a God. It doesn't exist.
It's made-up. It's a made-up thing in the the
in Christianity is a is a, as a faith says in its founding
documents in the Scriptures. It says that our God is a is is
love. It doesn't say it's just a God
of love. It says God is love, that his
very nature is love. And so and so the idea that we
could somehow love people and love our neighbors without also
first and foremost being engaged with the author and originator
of love is crazy. So you got to get this, you say,
well, first command is the love of the Lord your God with all
your heart, soul and mind. And the second command is to
love my neighbor as myself. The reason why they're one and
two is because if you aren't not engaged in a loving relationship
with your Heavenly Father, it is impossible to be engaged in a
loving relationship with your neighbors.
You may be sentimental towards your neighbors, you may be
affirming towards your neighbors, you may be kind, you
may be nice, you may be all of those things.
It may feel good to you and your neighbors, but if it is not,
start with you, the believer Christian right now engaged with
Jesus Christ in a loving relationship that won't be love.
Is this clear? All right, so let's read Matthew
chapter 6, verses 30 through 44, and then we'll unpack this a
little bit. All right, the apostles, verse
30, the apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to Him all
they had done and taught. Then because so many people were
coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat,
He said to them, come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and
get some rest. So what you have is the, the
apostles have been out doing some ministry, doing some cool
stuff. They come back to Jesus.
They're all excited. Like, you know, like the little
kids are like, guess what? I did, Dad, you won't believe
this happened and that happened. They're coming back super
excited and they people have been coming up to them and
taking from them. But you know, and because
they're doing ministry and Jesus says to his apostles, Hey, check
this out guys, we need to get away.
You need some rest. You need to relax a little bit,
which is very interesting for those of you who do ministry.
If you serve in ministry here, every now and then you got to
hit the pause button and you got to go rest.
You got to rest. All right, Verse 32 So they, so
Jesus and the apostles, so they went away by themselves in a
boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leaving
recognize them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there
ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a
large crowd, He had compassion on them because they were like
sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many
things. By this time it was late in the
day and so his disciples came to him.
This is a remote place. They said it's already very
late. Send the people away so they can
go through the go to the surrounding countryside and
villages to buy themselves something to eat.
Now to me, verse 36 is the most like that's the most pastoral
verse that you that I've read a long time in the Bible.
And you say, well, how's that pastoral?
Because most pastors I know would tell Jesus, can you make
these people leave, right? Can you just make these people
go away for a little while? Can you just give us a break?
Like they're, they're, they're coming to Jesus going.
There's a lot of people and they're needy.
And I also know what to do here. Can you get rid of them?
Can you make them go and like go away?
They, they don't know what to do.
They're not sure what to do. They know something should be
done, but they don't know what to do.
So they come to Jesus and say send them away and in verse 37
Jesus says, but he answered, you give them something to eat, you
give them something to eat. And then they said to him, well
that would take more than 1/2 a years away.
Just are we to go spend that much on bread and give it to
them to eat. How many loaves do you have?
He asked. Go and see.
Or when they found out they said five and two fish and five
loaves and two fish. Then Jesus directed them to have
all the people sit down in groups on the green grass.
I love the I love the Bible, by the way, that Mark includes the
word green. Isn't that great?
He's like, you're like, bro, we figured grass and he's like, no,
I just want to make sure, you know, this was a pretty day.
This was a pretty day. The green grass verse 40.
So they sat down in groups of hundreds and 50s, taking the
five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven.
He gave thanks and He broke the loaves.
Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the
people. He also divided the 2 fish among
them all. They all ate and were satisfied.
And the disciples picked up 12 basketballs of broken pieces of
bread and fish. The number of men who had eaten
was 5000. So here's a miracle.
And these are the three ideas we're going to take from this
text today. You ready #1?
Love starts when we notice people's needs.
When you see it, when you see it, that's when love starts #2
love brings those needs to Jesus, love brings those needs
to Jesus, and #3 Love's power comes from obeying Jesus.
Love's power comes from obeying Jesus.
So love starts when we notice people's needs.
Love brings those needs to Jesus.
Love's power comes from obeying Jesus.
Now let's say that much more simply.
For those of you who take notes, here's a much more simple way to
say it. Loving our neighbors means we
notice, we pray, we obey, we notice, we pray, we obey.
Very simply, we notice, We pray, we obey.
So let's jump into that first idea.
We notice. Look at what Mark tells us.
Jesus noticed the needs of the people.
Mark tells us that he saw the crowd of people there had come
on foot and he had compassion on them because they were like
sheep without a shepherd. Now, there's a lot of
commentary. You know the Bible.
I don't know if you guys know this or not, if you're new to
the Bible. So the Bible is this book.
It's actually 66 books and there are every in the Bible.
You know, like the book, the Mark is a gospel.
It's like a biography and then they're on the Gospel of Mark.
There are many, many, many, many, many, many commentaries
written by scholars. Do you got is this new
information for people like so like there are commentaries and
there are there are, I don't know, hundreds of commentaries.
And so people write these books about the gospel of Mark, about
the, you know, the Gospel of Luke, about the book of Acts.
And so you the amount of information you have access to
is limitless. OK.
And the this whole issue around the feeding of the 5000, the
Gospel of Mark in this language that Jesus uses, that Mark uses
to describe Jesus's thoughts that they were sheep without a
shepherd. There's a good chance that this
crowd of people is literally 5000 men and that this is
literally 5000 men who are coming to try to convince Jesus
to be their military king, to be their military leader.
Like some of the language in here suggests that, especially
in John's as well. And that that what's happening
in this moment is the people have come to Jesus.
These men have come to Jesus and say, hey, listen, we've had
enough of the Romans. You've done some miraculous
stuff. You seem pretty awesome, and we
think you could destroy the Romans.
In other words, there's a good chance that what's happening
here are 5000 men. Imagine that five.
I want you to just imagine for a second if 5000 men of military
age showed up to say, you will be our king.
We want to make you king. That'd be tough to turn that
down with it. That's a pretty good army.
I'd be like, well, let's give this a shot, bro.
If I win, I'm the king, even if I only get this little small
part. But Jesus doesn't do that,
right? He he doesn't, he doesn't accept
the type of king they want him to be.
Now he becomes their king, but not the type of king they want
to be. They want him to be.
And what's interesting about this language, this sheep
without a shepherd language is that that language is actually
in the Old Testament to refer to an army without a leader.
That is one in the in the Old Testament scriptures, that
literally is how it's used in one occasion is an army without
a leader, an army without a general.
And it's used in the Old Testament to describe people who
don't have a guide to care for them, An army without a leader
or just the people without protection, a sheep without a
shepherd. Now when Mark uses it here, I
think he's trying to make something very clear is that
Jesus is ultimately for God's people.
From the very beginning of the Bible to now, to now, and Mark,
for all of history, Jesus is the one who cares.
In other words, he is and has always been the shepherd for
God's people. He's he is the one who truly
cares. And that's what we learned from
Jesus in this story is that he notices and that he cares and he
takes responsibility for people who are in need.
He notices and he cares and he takes responsibility for people
who are in need. And that's how neighbor love
begins. It begins when we notice and
when we care, when we notice and when we care.
When we start seeing people the way Jesus sees them.
When you start putting on, you know, glasses in the lenses let
you see people the way Jesus sees them, your hearts grow
softer, your compassion grows deeper, and your love becomes
more than a feeling it. It becomes attention.
Attention to them. Now, what keeps us from noticing
people's needs most of the time? Is it because we're just
self-centered and selfish and just like super narcissistic?
Is that the reason we don't notice people's needs around us?
Is that really what's happening? Or is it that we're just very
busy? Do you ever think maybe you
might sometimes miss people's needs around you because you
are? Hold on a SEC.
I got to I got to check my face. Oh, look, we're live and see
what's going on. I need to like this push real
quick. Do you think it's do you think
that ever happens that maybe we're buried in a device?
We're busy going from 1:00 appointment to another.
We're busy. We not necessarily something
we're going to, but does your brain run 90 miles a minute all
the time? We rush past the very people
that God has called us to notice.
So if we can't notice, we can't. Love, a few years ago I was
walking to a parking lot in a grocery store and I was with a
friend. It was pouring down rain and we
didn't have an umbrella. And we kind of took off running
in the rain to try to get inside the grocery store.
And as we're running, I noticed a little little old lady with
with a like a raincoat kind of over her head or something.
And she was pushing her groceries to the back of her car
and she had popped her trunk and she was trying to hold this
thing over her head and trying to unload the groceries.
You see, had a big basket buggy full of groceries.
And I ran over there and I said, get in the car, get in the car.
I got it. So she went and got in the car
and I unloaded her groceries in her trunk and I shut the trunk
and I pushed her buggy off and she thank you.
You're welcome. And I got inside and my buddy
goes, what happened to you? I said, I was helping a lady put
groceries in her car out there. He was there was a lady who
needed help putting groceries in her car.
I didn't even see a lady. I didn't see anybody.
He goes, you're you're kidding me.
Like you saw somebody putting groceries in the car in the rain
and you stopped to help them. I said, yeah.
He said, how is it? I just didn't even see them.
I said, I don't know. Try to get saved, bro.
I don't know what to tell you. You know what I mean?
So now I don't tell you that story to be like, oh, our pastor
is so great, although he is, that's not why.
That's that's not why, that's not why I tell you that story.
It is, it's, it's just a reminder that love begins when
we notice, we notice like we see things and we don't miss it.
We, we just kind of go, oh, I see that and and it's in my path
and I can help immediately. I can help immediately.
But let's be honest, not every act of love is that simple.
In other words, if everything was just as simple as helping
little old ladies load their groceries or hold the door for
somebody, then loving people would be easy.
Sometimes what we notice is way too difficult for us to handle.
It's way bigger than stopping and helping someone put
groceries in the back of a car. And that's exactly how the
disciples felt that day. They felt overwhelmed.
They looked at the situation. They saw the problem and they
said, man, this is a big deal. But notice what what they did.
They did bring the problem to Jesus and that's that's the
second point They prayed. Love begins when you bring the
problem to Jesus. They prayed literally.
They didn't pray, but we pray in applying this passage.
So that's our second idea this morning.
When we notice someone's need, we pray, we bring it to Jesus.
Listen to verses 35 through 36 again.
It says by this time it was late in the day and so his disciples
came to him. This is a remote place, they
said, and it's already very late.
Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding
countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.
Now, you could argue that their advice to Jesus isn't exactly
loving and and but it is exactly human.
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by somebody's problems and said,
man, there's really nothing we can do with this, this
situation, This is beyond, they need to go out and figure this
out on their own. But notice the principle here.
While they didn't know what to do and while their first
instinct was to, you know, get rid of them, actually their
first instinct was not to get rid of them.
Their first instinct was what? To bring the problem to Jesus,
to bring the problem to Jesus. They recognize there's a real
problem that needs solving and then they bring it to Jesus.
They come to Jesus and they say, look, Lord, this thing is too
big. We don't know what should be
done. We know something must be done.
And so our suggestion to you, Lord, is send these people away
so they can get some bread and then get some food.
That's what prayer looks like when we notice a need that we
can't meet. Broken families, hurting
friends, some people in just deep financial need, people who
are far from God, that no matter how much we talk to them, we
can't convince them there's a God who loves them.
This is our first move to pray. Now, if you don't pray, if you
don't pray, you will do one of two things.
You will attempt to fix it and it'll be too big for you to fix,
and you will burn out and you will get cynical.
Anybody ever been cynical trying to help people?
Amen. Yeah, I've been in ministry a
long time, bro. Cynicism is like a cousin of
mine, always coming to my door. If you don't pray, then you end
up trying to fix it yourself. It's too big for you to fix.
And then you invite cynicism and burnout into your life.
Why? Because you didn't go to the one
who can solve it. You try to solve it on your own,
but the other option is if you, if you don't pray, you either
you're in cynical or burnout. But also if you don't pray, you
end up fleeing, you flee. So either you become cynical and
burnout or you flee, meaning you run away from that person.
Like this person's in need, they got something going on.
It's too big for you to solve. You don't know how to solve it.
You're not praying, you're not talking to Jesus about it.
You're getting cynical, you're getting burnout.
And then you're like, I'm not, I'm not talking to them anymore.
Who's that calling me? Oh no, ignore that call.
And you think I would never get to that?
No. Well, you do get to that because
there's this point where you're like, I'm just burned out on it.
I don't want to deal with it. I can't help them.
And it's all because we didn't stop and pray.
So the disciples didn't ignore the problem.
They didn't flee. They didn't get burned out.
They didn't get cynical. But they also didn't pretend
that the problem was theirs. They didn't go, well, I got to
solve this. And you know, Matthew and James
and John, they didn't get circled up.
You know, Peter, Jim, you know Peter, Jim, John.
Hey, guys, what we going to do? We got to figure this out.
We want to make Jesus proud of us, right?
Let's figure out a solution. We'll go tell they they didn't.
They didn't see it as their problem to solve, but they did
go and they talked to Jesus about it.
They did, in a sense, pray. They brought Jesus the problem.
Even with the wrong solution attached, they still at least
came to him and friend. That's your first move.
Your first move is not to strategize.
Your first move is not to to call a friend.
Your first move is to pray. And that is your after you
notice. Your first act of love after
noticing is prayer. Prayer invites Jesus into the
solution. Prayer admits this is bigger
than me. Prayer acknowledges I don't have
capacity to solve this, but I want to.
I want to. You see, This is why prayer is
the first move of a loving heart towards your neighbor.
Because if you love somebody so much that you're burdened by
their circumstance, that you're willing to go before the Creator
of the universe and intercede on their behalf, friend, that is a
deep love for that person. There's something else that
prayer does. When you pray and you talk to
the Lord about a problem, you see that you can't solve, that
you're not quite sure what to do, but you know something
should be done. Prayer softens your heart to be
part of the solution. Prayer softens your heart to be
part of the solution. You can see when I pray for
others and I ask Jesus to solve a problem in someone's life, he
turns around and oftentimes says to me, this is great, glad
you're praying for them, but I want you to be a part of the
solution. I'm going to have you help in
this situation. And that's exactly where we're
headed to next in this story. When we notice a need and we
bring it to Jesus in prayer, oftentimes we're expected by him
to obey him to be, to be part of the solution.
Now, sometimes He fixes it for us and we don't have anything to
do with it, but other times He fixes it through US.
He serves those people through US.
I mean, we are, after all, the first ones who brought them to
the Lord in the 1st place. We are, after all, the first
ones who interceded on their behalf and asked the Lord to
soften our heart toward them. And so we should at least be
open to this idea that we might be the ones through whom Jesus
is working. And so that brings us to the
third idea this morning. We obey, so we notice, we pray
and the number three we obey. When the disciples told Jesus to
send the crowd away, he surprised at me.
He goes, hey guys, y'all give them something to eat, which had
to be shocking to them. Their response was basically,
man, that's impossible. We don't have the resources.
Now that's important. That's what they're saying.
We don't have the resources. We don't we don't have the
capacity. We don't have the resources.
We cannot do this. But but wait a minute, Jesus
just command. He commanded you to do
something, but you can't do it. I mean, that's that's what's
going on here. Jesus is like you must feed
these people. Go, you go feed them Jesus.
We don't, we don't have enough bread.
We don't have enough food. It would take a half a year's
wages. We got to go into town.
Like, what are you talking about?
We can't feed. It's impossible.
But yet he commanded them to do something that was impossible.
So then he asked a question. Well, what do you have?
What do you have now? What's going on here?
Yeah. Listen, when Jesus calls you or
commands you or leads you or directs you to be a part of a
solution in someone's life, He will always take what you have
to do it with. He'll take what you have.
Now, will he multiply what you have?
Well, what what happened in the story?
They brought 5 loaves and two fish.
Did they? Did Jesus multiply what they
have? Certainly, yes.
And this is how the principle works. 5 loaves and two fish is
not nearly enough. But Jesus says to them, bring me
what you have. And so, hey, here's the command.
You feed them, man. We can't.
Can't feed them. What do you have?
We got 5 loaves and two fish. Bring me what you have.
You see how this is working? Jesus gave a clear command.
You feed them. We can't.
What do you have? Give me what you have.
Now guess what? Now you can obey the command I
gave you. The command I gave you was you
to feed them. And now because you trusted me
with your resources, you're going to actually be able to
obey that command. Don't miss this.
Jesus took the bread that they gave 5 loaves and the Bible says
that he gave thanks and that he broke it. 2 verbs gave thanks
and then he broke it. Friend, when you say Lord, I see
this person, there's a saying I'm burdened by them, I want to
help them, will you leave me on what to do?
Oftentimes he may say, well, this is how I'm leading you to
help. I want you to be a part of the
solution and it's going to include your resources.
This is the hard part. It's going to include your time,
your energy, your emotional energy, maybe your, dare I say
it, money. Now you're hold on brother.
Can I just go back to praying? It may include this.
Let me help you.
But when you put those resources, your time, your
money, your energy, your emotional self, your words of
encouragement, when you put those resources in the hands of
Jesus, in other words, you'd say, Jesus here these things
belong to you. When you do that, then he
blesses them and he breaks them and he multiplies them.
And then the Bible says that he gave it to the disciples and
they distributed it. And that's what he does.
He takes your resources that you say, Hey, Lord, you own
everything. Here's everything I have is
yours. My money's yours.
My time is yours. My my emotional self is yours.
Everything belongs to you. I'm giving it all to you.
And he says, OK, thank you. I'm going to take it.
I'm going to bless it. I'm going to break it and put it
back in your hands for you to distribute, to use to serve
others. So don't miss this.
The miracle mood from the disciples hands first bread, 5
loaves of two fish into the hands of Jesus.
That was that's the first miracle.
By the way, if, when a human being like if you're in a group
of 5000 and you're starving and you have 5 loaves of fish, is it
your tendency to give it to one person?
No, your tendency is to be like, no man, we didn't, we couldn't
find anything. We might want to send these
people away. That's not our.
So the first miracle is you gave up the resources, you gave up
the five bread, you gave up the 2 fish, you gave it up.
That was with miracle number one.
And then the miracle number 2 was, was Jesus's miracle where
he took it, he blessed it, he broke it, and then he began to
multiply it and then he put it back into your hands, back into
the disciples hands and then they distributed it.
So notice the miracle was, hey, it was in our hands.
At first we gave the resources to Jesus.
He took those resources, he broke them, He blessed them, he
multiplied them and then he put them back in our hands and they
distributed out. That's how the miracle worked.
And it all started with prayer from the disciples to Jesus
going to talk to him. We bring what we have, we place
it in Jesus hands and then we obey what he tells us to do and
he multiplies it. And friends, Jesus can do
incredible things with your life with very little.
You think you need to be wealthy and you think you need to have
some kind of fancy job, or with very little, He can do amazing
things with very little, with very little of your time, very
little of your money, very little of your encouragement,
very little of your prayers, very little.
If you just give him a little, he takes ordinary obedience and
turns it into extraordinary impact.
It's what he does. So if something feels
impossible, I want you to talk to Jesus about it.
I want you to just say, hey, this is a situation.
I see Jesus, I want to help it, I want to solve it.
I don't know what to do. And then listen and do what he
says. You don't have to have enough.
You don't need to have enough. Did the disciples have enough to
feed 5000 that day? But did 5000 get fed that day?
That's the sermon, man. That's the sermon.
This is what obedience looks like.
It isn't always flashy, but it's always faithful.
You may not have much to offer, but friends, if you put it in
the hands of Jesus, you'll be amazed.
So how do we love our neighbors? We notice, we pray, we obey.
Super simple, We notice, We pray, we obey.
If you skip Step 2, you're cooked.
Is that OK? I can't say cooked.
Thanks, Aiden. You're cooked.
Cook's bad, right? Dylan?
Cook's good. Cook's.
What do you think? Bad.
I'm going with them. Cook's bad.
If you skip, skip two. I'm so confused right now, I
can't even keep up with it. Let me say it this way.
If you skip, skip 2, skip. If you skip Step 2.
And you don't pray. If you don't pray, that's bad
and not like bad in the 90s when bad was good, but that's like
bad. That's real bad, OK, it's
actually bad. No good.
Don't skip Step 2. Y'all will never forget this
part of this sermon. Like 10 years from now we'll be
talking about it. You, you notice, you pray, you
obey and obedience will cost you something.
So if you don't think you can give up something, don't pray.
I'm telling you. Because if you see a need and
you start praying about it, there's a good chance it's going
to cost you something. So if you know now you can't
give up your 5 loaves and two fish, don't pray.
You and I cannot fix every problem we see.
Can I say that again? You and I cannot fix every
problem we see. This is why prayer is so vital
because He's the one that directs where we should be
involved and where we should just keep praying.
But we can offer Jesus what we have and let Him lead us and how
we distribute our 5 fish and two, our five bread loaves of
bread and two fish. So when your prayer meets His
compassion, people experience neighborly love.
I got to say it again, when your prayer meets His compassion,
people experience neighborly love.
So how do I love my neighbor? I pray, I talk to Jesus, I let
Him guide me and direct me because He's the author of love.
So this week, don't wait for the perfect plan or the perfect
moment to love your neighbor. Just bring what you have to
Jesus. It could be as simple as it's
raining and a little old lady putting her groceries in the
back of a sedan and you're just going to get wet because that's
what loving others looks like. Will you stand with me?
I want to say a benediction over us.
So therefore, my brothers and sisters, as you go from this
place, open your eyes. Notice those around you bring
their needs to Jesus in prayer and then listen for the voice of
Jesus and do whatever it is he asks of you.
May his compassion flow through your life in all moments, and
may your ordinary moments become places where his love multiplies
like a miracle. Now you, my brothers and
sisters, go in peace and love your neighbor in the name of
Christ. Thank you, Amen.
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Have a great week.