LIVERMORE — At the July 7 North Livermore Baptist Church service, the congregation was welcomed by Pastor Bonnie Higgins at 9:30 a.m. to begin the service. The Call to Worship, Invocation/Lord’s Prayer were recited. The hymns that were sung were “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”, “I Believe in a Hill Called Mount Calvary”, and “Blessed Assurance”. The service ended with Communion. Linda Lyman is the organist, Janet Diaz is the pianist, and Lew Lyman leads the music for the congregation each week.

The sermon, titled “Fighting Against Pride” and scriptures from Proverbs 16:18-19. Pastor Bonnie began by saying that we live in a time that everything seems to be about “me”. We live in a “me” generation. We seem to live in a world where many think they are doing a better job than God is doing. This is called pride, when we think we are better than someone else.

What is pride? Pride will damage relationships, it will tell us lies, gets us into trouble, makes us selfish, and will cheapen our relationship with Jesus in our lives. What we can do, is to put others needs ahead of our own, consider others feelings, and to serve others and not think everything is About us.

We know that winning is always better than losing in anything. There is a competition that is going on in our world every day. Satan is trying to rule you and this world, he wants to over take God, he has been trying to do that since before time. God has given us the answer of who rules this world through His Son, Jesus Christ when He died and rose from the grave. Jesus was the winner and still is today. Reading the Bible shows us that God is victorious in the end when Jesus comes back and judges the world as King.

Too many people are so into themselves thinking that they are better than anyone, including God that they allow their pride to lead them. How do we let go of our pride and set our own ego aside? First, we must clothe ourselves with humility, compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience. These are heavenly virtues that come from God. If we want to live our lives in the image of Jesus, we must clothe ourselves with these good virtues. Second, we must be broken.

When a person is broken, realizing that they cannot do anything on their own, that they need Jesus, we come to Him to be fixed. Only Jesus can fix us and this world from being broken. Thirdly, we must also learn from the example of the men and women of the Bible that followed Jesus. In the Old Testament, people looked to God to guide them and to bless them with the coming Messiah. By the time we reached the New Testament, Jesus comes to save us.

John the Baptist even said that Jesus must increase and himself decrease. Putting Jesus first means putting your pride away. Finally, we see Jesus giving of Himself, not for selfish reasons, but to honor His Father. He humbled Himself to washing the feet of His disciples and most importantly, He died and rose for all of us so we could have eternity with Him.

We must set aside our pride/ego in our lives and acknowledge who Jesus is and who we are not.

Announcements listed in the bulletin are that the congregation will be collecting canned Green Beans for the Food Pantry in July. There will be no Bible Study on July 9.

Coming Events: Vacation Bible School “Breaker Rock Beach” – July 22 – 26 from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. Ages 4-12.

You can email the church at nlbcmaine@gmail.com. There will be no office hours on July 9.