Loving Jesus Style

In my young career as a preacher I have already had several opportunities to preach a final sermon. I do not keep a “canned” sermon ready to preach at the end of a season of preaching. Every situation is different. Every congregation needs a different message. I stand here today not knowing if we will be able to continue this monthly time of fellowship next year or not. I sincerely hope we will be able to continue, but the future is not clear at this time.           The words that God has given me for this time focus on the relationship that Jesus wants to have with each of us from this point on. Many teachers of ancient religions would never have called their followers friends. Jesus was obviously different. He wanted his original followers to be called friends and he wants to call us friends. Why would the God of all creation insist on calling us friends?           I believe the answer is in the scripture for today. The Christian religion is based on love in a way that no other

If You Love Someone Build Them Up, You Don’t Know Enough To Put Them Down! Scripture: 1 Corinthians 8:1 (NRSV) Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Devotion:             I have noticed a trend in modern Christianity. It is a tendency to seek more and more knowledge. If you have a Bible Study you can count on a crowd. If the teacher is well known and a charismatic speaker the better the crowd will be. At the same time I have noticed that discernment among Christians about what they are being taught has fallen to an all time low. As a result more Christians are learning things that are less and less useful to their Christian walk and sometimes even damaging to it.             In order to determine what things are truly useful for Christians to invest their time in learning during Bible Studies I think the scripture above will point us in a good direction. When I was in seminary I delivered a sermon in chapel encouraging the students to study their Greek, Hebrew and other