NO. LIVERMORE — At the March 3 North Livermore Baptist Church service the congregation was welcomed by Pastor Bonnie Higgins at 9:30 a.m. to begin the service. The Invocation/Lord’s Prayer were recited.
The hymns that were sung were “There is Power in the Blood”, “At Calvary”, and “Lead Me to Calvary”. The service ended with Communion. Linda Lyman is the organist each week. Lew Lyman leads the music for the congregation each week.
The sermon, titled “A Christian’s Journey to the Cross” and scriptures from 1 Peter 4:12-19. Pastor Bonnie started out by asking What is a Christian? What are the characteristics of a Christian?
Too many people consider themselves as a Christian because of the church they go to, or by elimination if they are not Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Islam, or any other religions that don’t call themselves Christian. The question is, does that make a person a Christian?
The Bible tells us the answer is no, that there is only one way to be a Christian. That is through accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and are willing to submit our life to Him.
If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior, your life needs to show it. As a true Christian, we must imitate Jesus in our own lives. Jesus was a servant to others, and we should be too. We should not be living our lives for ourselves, but to honor and bring glory to God.
In Romans 12:1 it tells us that we should offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, that is our worship to Him. Every day we should submit to God everything in ourselves.
We should be checking ourselves every day that we are in tune with what God has planned for us and to live our lives for Him. The heart of being a Christian is allowing God to work in and through us.
How do we show God we are with Him? When our life is going great, we should be giving God the glory. Every blessing we receive each day, no matter how many blessings, they all come from God and we should be thanking Him for them.
As we go through a hardship, we should be drawing closer to Him and giving it over to Him to deal with. We should not be losing sleep over anything. God has a plan and we should trust Him to complete it in our life. There are times when tragedy strikes in our lives.
What you do during this time will show others your faith in Christ. We should be leaning on God during a difficult time in our lives. Whether we have triumphs, trials, or tragedies, our Christian character will be shown to others.
We should be showing others that we know that God will take care of everything in our life so we can rest assured and not worry about it. God has got it! We should remember that according to Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
God wants us to remember that as a child of His, He is there to protect us through all areas of our lives. We also need to realize that God has already seen us come out the other side victorious.
To say we are a Christian and mean it, we must first accept Jesus as our personal Savior, live our life as Jesus lives His life, when He was here on earth and in Heaven. We must not plan for our future here on earth, but to live our life on earth for our final destination, Heaven with our Savior. We must make the decision to worship God of the Heavens.
Announcements listed in the bulletin are that the congregation will be collecting canned spaghetti sauce for the Food Pantry in March. Bible Study: Tuesday at 1 p.m.
You can email the church at nlbcmaine@gmail.com. Pastor Bonnie’s office hours are Tuesday’s from 9 a.m. to noon.
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