NO. LIVERMORE — At the North Livermore Baptist Church March 10 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 “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”, “Wonderful Words of Life”, and “Footsteps of Jesus”. The service ended with “Go Now in Peace”. Linda Lyman is the organist each week. Lew Lyman leads the music for the congregation each week.
The sermon, titled “What Hinders Us from the Cross” and scriptures from Mark 10:13-16. Pastor Bonnie began as God’s children we should all be focused on our walk with Jesus towards the cross. During this time of the year, we are reminded to deny ourselves daily and to take up our cross and follow Jesus.
We are to prepare ourselves for not living here but for living with Jesus in Heaven. Not only did Jesus bring us hope through His birth as our Savior, but He enhanced our hope through His death and resurrection for eternal life.
Jesus has asked us to be like little children and to go to Him when we are in need of protection from this world. As parents in this world, we watch out, protect, and love our children, just like God does for His children, us.
During the Easter season, we go from His ministry, His miracles, His teachings, to His last week on this earth and we get anxious for the last few days of His life, because we know what is about to happen to Him. Many times, during this season, we focus so much on the resurrection, we forget the hard road Jesus went on to get there.
We also start thinking about eternal life with God, that we forget why we are here on earth now. We are here to continue the mission Jesus left us with, we need to serve Him. We need to pick up the cross daily to remind ourselves our mission is not complete yet.
To be a child of God, we need to be humble, trusting, obedient, loving, forgiving, not prideful, not to hold grudges, not to be boastful, etc. If we can be like a child, God will be able to use us in His plans. As a child of God, we should be following a different path than this world does. We should be putting away things that would take us away from God to putting God first in all things.
What keeps away from living the life God has for us? What hinders us from following God? Things like fear, doubt, being self-absorbed, unbeliever, sin, depending only on us, letting others pull us away by peer pressure, our jobs, etc. There are many reasons why we take our focus off Jesus and the cross.
But God is telling us that believing in Him and acknowledging Him and depending only on Him instead of our own strength. We cannot not make it to Heaven without personally knowing and accepting Jesus Christ.
To stay focused on Jesus, we need to pray, have faith in Him, abide in Christ, be forgiving to others as Jesus is to us, be obedient, be persistent, know and believe that God is on your side and knows what is best for each of us.
We need to see the roadblocks in our lives that hinder us from following Christ. We must see them and recognize them and know they are from Satan. We need to overcome the roadblocks that hinder our ministry in Christ.
We need to remember the mission we are on, not forget who is in charge, make Jesus a priority, don’t focus on worldly things, and don’t be discouraged, God has a plan for you and your life, not only here on earth, but in Heaven also.
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 9:00 a.m. to noon.
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