NO. LIVERMORE — At the North Livermore Baptist Church August 15 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 “Living for Jesus”, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus”. We concluded the service with “Go Now in Peace”. Linda Lyman is the organist and Janet Diaz is the pianist each week.
The sermon, titled “The World”, and reading the scripture from 1 John 2:15-17. Pastor Bonnie began asking the congregation if they viewed themselves as a Christian and living a Christian life? Then she asked, how does the world see you as? Sometimes the world views us differently than how we want to be viewed.
The scripture is John telling the children not to let anyone lead them astray. The children are Christians as we are today, those who have decided to follow Jesus and has accepted Him as their personal Savior. John is telling them and us that even though we live in a sinful world, we don’t need to follow it. We need to stand out from others that are still living in their sins. We understand from scripture that when we become Christians, our lives will change, we will have a different outlook on this world than we did before accepting Christ. Because our lives change, our lifestyles need to change so others will see Christ in us. We know that we will have struggles in this world, it won’t be a bed of roses, but we know that we don’t go through it alone. We never walk this world alone.
Scriptures tells us not to love the world or the things in this world. If we do, we are not of God. If we love this world, we don’t put God first in our lives and we, as Christians, know that God is first in everything. We shall have no idols above Him. We learn from our scriptures today, there are 3 things that stand out. The first one is we have a lust of the flesh, which means we all have a sinful nature. We all are born in sin and because we live in this sinful world, we were once against God. We can overcome the lust we have in our flesh but putting God first and accepting His Son Jesus. The second thing we see in this scripture is that we have lust in our eyes. We want what others have; we envy our neighbors when they get something we want for ourselves. To many people lust after what others have because it looks good and we feel we deserve better than we have already. The only thing wrong with thinking this way is that everything on earth is only temporary, we should be concentrating on what is eternal. The last thing is where we boast about our lives, we show our pride in things we do and take credit for it and not give God the credit that is due to Him, and only Him. Everything we have, from our families, our jobs, our homes, cars, etc. are all because of God’s blessing us. All these things come from the world and not from God the Father. Pastor Bonnie told the congregation that they should be thankful for everything they have, but they should be thanking God for all of it. We did nothing on our own, God helped us get what we have.
We need to remember that as Christians, we are not of this world, our home is in Heaven with Jesus. We are only temporarily living here in this world. Right now, this world has a temporary ruler and that is Satan. We know that this world is wicked, we know that it is corrupt, and we know that this world put Jesus on a cross to die. We know that this world attacks Christians, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. Satan’s desire for this world is to corrupt us all through our bodies, soul, and spirit. God, on the other hand wants us to find His Son, Jesus, and to repent from our sins, so we can live in peace and harmony with Him eternally. We, as Christians, need to live our lives with the attitude towards God. We should be living our lives as children of God by not pursuing sin, by telling others about Jesus, by doing the right thing, to love our neighbors, to have our lives resemble Jesus.
Pastor Bonnie told the congregation that the focus of each of our lives should be the Word of God, the walk we have with God, and to do the Will of God. We must concentration on living for Heaven in a world that we don’t belong in.
Announcements listed in the bulletin was that the congregation will be collecting Crackers for the Food Pantry in the month of August. If anyone would like to become a member or be baptized should see Pastor Bonnie. We are collecting donations for the backpacks/school supplies for the local schools. The Advisory Board will be meeting August 15th after the morning service. The AA meetings are held on Friday nights at the church.
For information, check out our website at northlivermorebaptistchurch.org. You can email the church at nlbcmaine@gmail.com. Pastor Bonnie’s office hours are Monday and Tuesday’s from 9:00 a.m. to noon.
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