NO. LIVERMORE — At the North Livermore Baptist Church May 2 service the congregation was welcomed 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 “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, “The Solid Rock”, “Break Thou the Bread of Life”. We completed the service with Communion”. Linda Lyman is the organist each week.

The sermon, titled “Be In The Now”, and reading the scripture from Genesis 50:20. Pastor Bonnie started with how we will dwell in the past or look to much into the future and not live with today. We can’t change the past, we can’t do anything about what hasn’t happened yet, so it makes sense to live for today. God even tells us to live in today, when He says, “Give us this day our daily bread”, Take up your cross daily”, “This is the day that the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it”, “Don’t worry about tomorrow” and so many more. So why don’t we live in today?

We don’t appreciate what we have, we always want to see what is coming up. We know we can’t change yesterday, what is done, is done. But we can anticipate what tomorrow will bring. When we do that, we are not living to our full potential today. We aren’t able to enjoy the day God has given us. In Genesis, we read the story of Joseph and how he told his brothers about his dreams that one day they would bow down to him. His brothers also knew that Joseph was their father’s favorite child. Long story short, they decided to do away with Joseph. Some of them decided that Joseph had to die, but the older brother Rueben said no. Rueben thought he could do something to make everyone happy and they placed Joseph into a pit for safe keeping until a plan was in place. When Rueben wasn’t with them, the other brothers sold Joseph and had everyone believe that he had died. Years later, when famine hit the land, and the brothers went searching for food for the family, they found Joseph, as the second in command to Pharaoh. When they met up with Joseph (not knowing who he was) they bowed down to him and Joseph realized his dreams came true. But instead of Joseph punishing them, he forgave them and gave them food. As Joseph spoke to his brothers “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good…” Joseph didn’t understand why things happened to him, he didn’t know the future, he only could live one day at a time and trust God to work everything out. Any bad situation we get into ourselves, God can use it, so He is glorified. We need to remember that any tough times we go through, our faith should not falter, God is still on the throne and in control.

Sometimes we need to go through some kind of physical pain. It is uncomfortable to us, if you put your hand on a fire, you will get burned. We need physical pain sometimes to understand that it is harmful to our relationship with God. If we don’t go through it, how will we need to understand that we need God to direct our lives? We also need to go through disciplinary suffering. Why? Because we know as parents, when our child does wrong, they need to have consequences. God does that to His children too. It is for our own good to know that our Father, God, wants His children to live the correct way by His Word. We also need to have some growing pains. We can’t get deeper in faith and our relationship with God if we don’t face trials. We need to learn from these experiences for our faith and trust in God to endure in our lives. All our suffering or pain should show others our faith in God, even in things that are out of our control. It is not out of God’s control! God wants us to show others that no matter what our faith gets stronger and stronger, and they will see the outcome of the pain and suffering when it passes, and God is glorified through it all. Our suffering and/or pain will add to our testimony of how God was always there for us and got us through it.

How do we live through our trials each day? We need to stay faithful to God, we must not show or be bitter or unforgiving to others, don’t rule out that God has a greater purpose for your life, and for us to live by the promises God has given us by never leaving or forsaken us.

Sometimes we blame what happens in our past for our life today, or we jump to the future because we don’t want to live it our daily. God wants us to appreciate everything He has given us, even when things are going right in our lives. Today is the day He has given us, find the joy in it, even during the hard times, there is still joy. We need to remember, yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not promised to us, but today is here and we need to live it as God intended us to, with Him by our side.

Announcements listed in the bulletin was that the congregation will be collecting any dry pasta for the month of May. Upcoming in the church on May 8 will be the Deacons and Trustees meetings. 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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