NO. LIVERMORE — The North Livermore Baptist Church Dec. 27, service:

The congregation was welcomed in by Pastor Bonnie Higgins at 9:30 a.m. to begin the service. The Call to Worship was read and the Invocation/Lord’s Prayer was recited. The hymns that were sung was “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore You”, “What Child Is This?”, and “Go, Tell It on the Mountain”, with “Go Now in Peace” to complete the service.

There was a dedication/blessing over the Reverse Advent food boxes that were collected for the Food Pantry. There were around 40 boxes of food that was delivered on Tuesday.

The sermon, titled “After Christmas, what now?” using the scriptures of Matthew 2:13-15. Pastor Bonnie began with talking about how during the month of December, kids and adults will count down the days until Christmas by using an Advent calendar. But what happens once Christmas is over? Most of the things from Christmas is packed away and our lives will continue on. That is what happened when Jesus was born. Not too many people even knew He was born and their lives just carried on like usual. After the people registered for the census, they went back to their homes and continued on with their everyday life. Even Joseph and Mary did. Then Joseph heard from God in a dream that he, Mary and Jesus needed to leave and go away to Egypt to save themselves from Herod. Herod was jealous of Jesus, even Herod knew that Jesus was something special.

Pastor Bonnie explained four things that we need to get from this part of the story. The first thing was we are to listen for God, you see we can’t listen to God if we haven’t listened for Him. We need to be still and quiet so we can hear from Him. Second, we need to expect to have obstacles in our lives. We are going to have speed bumps in our lives, and we need to look toward Jesus to give us strength to move past them. Some speeds bumps would be other people trying to get in our way of worshiping Jesus, life’s problems, our worries, and what is placed in our lives to take our focus off of Jesus and onto worldly things. The third thing is that we need to be flexible, for us to follow Jesus, we need to be able to move in ways that God will show us. We cannot be so stuck in our ways, that Jesus can’t work through us. And lastly, we need to rely on God’s Word in our lives. We need to be reading the Bible each day to hear what God has to say to us.

This world is ever changing, God is our only constant, He never changes. No matter what is going on in your life, God will always be there for you if you only seek His Son, Jesus, accept Him, follow Him, serve Him, and worship Him.

Announcements listed in the bulletin were that the congregation will be collecting tuna fish for the food pantry in January. There will be a Deacon’s and Trustee’s meeting on January 2nd. The AA meetings are held on Friday nights at the church.

For information, check out the new website at northlivermorebaptistchurch.org. Also, on the North Livermore Baptist Church’s Facebook page the sermon is posted and on their website is a link to YouTube for the sermon. You can email the church at nlbcmaine@gmail.com. Pastor Bonnie’s office hours are Monday and Tuesday from 9:00 a.m. to noon.

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