The Greatest Command

This morning's church service was the worship service since Pastor Wesley's funeral. He had passed over the main pastoring to his son, Jeff several years ago and Wes was serving in the Assistant Pastor capacity from then until he went home with the Lord last Sunday morning.

The message today was from Matthew 22, where one of the Pharisees asked Jesus a question; "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?"

37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38This is the first and great commandment.

39And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Matthew 22:37-40 KJV

Sometimes we don't get it as far as the love part is concerned. If you check out the 10 commandments it's broken down this way: the first set of commandments tell us how we should love God, the other set tells us how we should love one another.

God loves us so much that he bankrupted heaven to come to earth and pay the penalty for our sins. We, as humans have a problem showing love towards other, even the brotherly love we get the name "Philadelphia" from. God wants us to love one another with the love he describes through the apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 13. I linked up King James version of that chapter, but you can go to the drop bar and switch to a version you are familiar with.

That love is translated from the Greek word agape, which is the love you can get only from God himself.

I was thinking about this while sitting in church this morning. Most folks who read these words will never come face to face with me in this lifetime, but I love(agape) all those who read these words and want you to be with me in heaven. Click here for the plan of salvation from Billy Graham's web site. (Also remember to pray for Dr. Graham as I saw he was hospitalized yesterday.)

Those who know Jesus as their savior, pray that His love shines through you and others who see this message. And pray the same for me.

Fellow Blogger Using Time wisely

Some of the blog surfing that I have done has gotten me some new friends. One of these new friends is a gentleman called Pilgrim. He writes a blog called Pilgrim's Scrawl, dedicated in leaving the world a better place than he found it.

The post that caught my eye last night was one which he describes himself as a "serial intercessor" which to means that he prays for people methodically. He will pray for you without your knowledge, which to me is very cool. This means Pilgrim doesn't want personal glory for his actions. We should all be that way.

A man of God goes home

I received a call a few minutes ago that pastor Wesley Ball went home to be with the Lord. He was the founding pastor of the South Main Street Church of God in Rittman. He also sang bass with the Mighty Sons of Thunder gospel quartet.

Pastor Wesley was one of a dying breed of preachers, one who preached the Word of God without fear of favor, one of those who had a vision to see souls saved. His son Jeffrey Ball will see that vision proceed.

Pray for the family in this time and pray for the church, that we can continue with Brother Wesley's vision.

Looking unto Jesus...

...The author and finisher of our faith.

We seem to forget those words in this personality driven time we live in. That's unfortunate.

Jesus is our only hope if we want to make it.

We can look up to others if we like, but we shouldn't try to copy them, since as human beings, we all have flaws. Flaws that can only be smoothed out by the masters hand.

We should strive to be just like the master who does the smoothing.

The great I Am

While I was getting ready for church this morning, I was watching David Jeremiah. I turned the program-Turning Point, on with about 10 minutes to go. Dr. Jeremiah was talking about Jesus being the great I Am, meaning he is the Lord of the present. He is not the great I Was, or the great I will be. Jesus wants us to hand Him our problems as they come along.

The Bible tells us to "Cast all our care upon the Lord for he cares for you" It says care and not cares. We are not supposed to pack all our troubles in our old kit bag and smile. What we are supposed to do is hand our problems one by one to Jesus, as they come along. Then we have to praise Him. There is power in praise.

Bearing one another's burdens

I made mention on my "secular" blog-WIXY's Gone Bananas, that I wanted my readers to pray for me. I've been dealing with depression for several months now. This got a response from my good friend Danny, who posts on message boards as BoredOp0930. We then exchanged e-mails, each mentioning personal problems. Danny shared on the comment section of WGB about his ex-fiance who had betrayed his trust.

Sitting at my desk at break time this morning, I got to thinking about the book of James, a book that I think Christians should read often, and I will apologize to my KJV only friends right now. They should read the book in several translations.

The main thought I get out of the book of James is that "Faith without works is dead". I've noticed in the past several years that churches say that they have a missionary thrust, but with their lives they pretty much say "bless us four and no more"

Case in point: about 10 years ago, we changed churches after a long painful decision on our part. My wife had grown up in that church, but doctrinal differences between the pastor and her dad had caused a split within the church. We settled in a church where we had thought the people shown love one towards another. The problem was it was a family church. We had about how much people were quick to visit the sick and support those in need.

Fast forward about 3 1/2 years. I was in the hospital having knee replacement surgery. The stay in the hospital was five days. You want to know how many come to the hospital to visit, besides the pastor? Uh, none. One member told my daughter that "Cliff needed his rest".Funny though some time later the assistant pastor's wife was in the hospital having a baby(by c-section). She wrote in the church newsletter about the stay, and commented that "crowd control was needed" when she mentioned about her visitors. I guess that someone who just had a baby didn't need her rest.

Galatians 6:2 says "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ" KJV

Prayer request time comes and we are told to keep it brief when we present our requests. In keeping our worship time in the neat little package we forget that some people are hurting and maybe the Lord wants us to know it. Keeping it brief sometimes only stifles those who are being attacked in a big way by the adversary.

Bearing some body's burden means more than saying "Wonder how so and so is doing?" without actually seeing them and praying for them.

Next time you are in church and you hear a prayer request for the umpteenth time and you are tired hearing about remember our Lord spent nine hours on a cross after being spit upon and beat almost to death for that person(and you too) to give that request. Take note of that request. Turn their burden into your burden. Pray as hard for it as you would pray for your self, and maybe you can shout the victory with that person.

Keeping it simple

As I was in church this morning, we had a man get up to sing. His name is Issac Sipple, known around town as Brother Sipple. He is 89 years old and goes around from church to church, always carrying his guitar in with him. It seems that everyone is always blessed to hear him, because intead of him coming in and complaining about all his aches and pains, he always talks about how good the Lord has been to him.

Our church has a really good sound system with a CD player, cassette player, and mini disc player. We have several musicians playing guitars, drums, piano and keyboard. But simply this morning it was an "old boy", as Brother Sipple likes to call himself, an acoustic guitar, and a voice which for many years has gone from place to place praising the Lord.