Serving in new ways

It has been an amazing week.

On Monday night as I tried to clean up my house and my Dad was watching Monday night football, I saw a player go down without being touched. My heart sank. I know football and this wasn’t a normal football injury.

You may care less about football and in just a few seconds all those like me stopped carrying about football too. We cared about a man. Damar Hamlin, a player for the Buffalo Bills, collapsed because his heart stopped beating.

The announcer that night came back from commercial and said they are doing CPR on him. I have never seen CPR done on a player before. I’ve read about it. I’ve heard about it in basketball and hockey.

What happened next was the most concentrated call for prayer I have witnessed since September 11. Players from both teams knelt in prayer. Twitter erupted with calls for prayer. Broadcasters started calling for prayer, one man stating that his mother was in church 8 days a week, there isn’t 8 days a week. At this time of need, He called on people like his mother. On another tv show later, A sports broadcaster prayed on air.

In the hour of need people revealed that they know their is a God who listens.

Damar Hamlin, lived, thanks to the prayers, that equipped the medical personnel, he is breathing on his own. His first words to all of us this Saturday were, “ I’m thankful for every single person who prayed for me and reached out. We brung the world back together behind this.”

God was and is glorified. Today, you come, how you come, into a place to worship God. This most powerful one who is with those in desperate times but also in the normal. We come to work here in this hour, setting aside this time to give something to God. That God who we can call upon at any time, we come today, right now to give honor, to give ourselves, and to hear from the God who answers prayer.

Did you know that is what you are doing here right now? Phil, Lori and EJ didn’t perform for us. They led us to sing songs that tell of who God is. We put the words up there so we can sing along. We gather to give God glory.

Personally I do not sing that well. It does not matter, I sing to give God glory. Because God calls each of us to serve him in this way:

Psalm 100:1–3 NLT

1 Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth! 2 Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing with joy. 3 Acknowledge that the Lord is God! He made us, and we are his. We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Come to God with singing. The Bible is full of singing, that whole book with the funny spelling

Psalms is all songs.

God calls on us to praise Him. I know some of you might say Bill, it says shout for joy, we aren’t shouting.

Psalm 100:1 NLT

1 Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth!

Let’s shout then, do you have something to be joyful for, do you have a voice? Then you have a reason to be joyful, let’s shout for joy!

Shout for Joy

That was awesome.

Each and every single one of you, look to the person around you, that person added to that shout didn’t they. Each and every one of you is vital to the worship of God for the other. That shout doesn’t work without the others shouting with you, right?

Shouting with others is just more wonderful. In my home later today I will be enjoying the games and might give a shout which is fun and a little weird but in a stadium full of people it is powerful.

So look around and thank the person to the right or to the left. Worshipping together is powerful. It is purposeful work to encourage each other in praising God.

Now linger, looking around the room for a minute. What have you learned about God from the people you see in this room. How have they lived out there relationship with Jesus towards you?

Last week Ariel and Jennifer were baptized here and one of the questions I asked them and I asked you is were they willing and were you willing to

raise them up in the Lord, to encourage them to love and good deeds, in other words to teach them what it means to follow Jesus.

Anyone who I have baptized at this church I ask the same question to, and every time the church agrees,

you personally and as a group agree to take on the responsibility of teaching them about Jesus.

What have you taught about God to the people in this room? How have you lived out your relationship with Jesus so others grew in their faith?

In the Bible there is a very short book, it’s actually a letter, called Philemon and in this letter some important verses were written about what it means to be a part of a church.

Philemon 4–7 NLT

4 I always thank my God when I pray for you, Philemon, 5 because I keep hearing about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all of God’s people. 6 And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ. 7 Your love has given me much joy and comfort, my brother, for your kindness has often refreshed the hearts of God’s people.

These are the verses that should be written about each of us. Philemon was not a pastor. He didn’t have special titles from the church. He was like you.

Look again at what was said about him.

Philemon 4–5 NLT

4 I always thank my God when I pray for you, Philemon, 5 because I keep hearing about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all of God’s people.

It is his faith, his actions based on his living other the knowledge that God is real. Just as you had faith in your driver or in your brakes of your vehicle when you started driving, Philemon lives out his life with full knowledge that God is alive.

So many of us look to others to say we are doing something right, or we to look to them for likes, for up lifting statements. We need encouragement.

I promise you that if you live like God is real, and you do what God says, you will have many who say, “they are thankful for you.” It was his love for all the people, his faith that brought Paul, the writer, to have to thank God for him in his prayer

But Paul’s statement also brings up an application, it brings up something we can do about what we read in the Bible, that is what I mean when I say application. We can remember each other in prayer. I mean we can pray for each other! I don’t care if you can lift a 100 pounds, can preach a sermon, know 14 languages, or you can barely walk to bed without your knees giving out. You can pray for another.

Prayer is what we need.

This past week when people could do nothing they first thought of prayer. Even when we can do something we can first pray.

Prayer saves time, as God will do the work and show us what we really need to do. Prayer builds intimacy. Prayer builds care. Prayer builds humility. Prayer relieves stress. Prayer puts us into a better space of knowing who we are and who God is.

Once again, I want you to look around, I want you to memorize the faces, the names, make a list on your phone, in your Bible, on your hand of who you’ll be in prayer for this week. You have a responsibility to each other.

Do you love the people in this room? Philemon brought joy to face of the writer of this letter, Paul, because of his love for all God’s people. Genuine love.

What is genuine love?

1 John 3:16 NRSV

16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

My fellow people of New Day, you are not a parishoner, an attendee, a congregant. or just someone who goes to New Day. You are a vital part of a church family that needs your love and to love you in return.

As your pastor, I call on this church that each and every one of you will make this their goal, that when the people in this room think of you, when they pray for you, they will thank God for your faith and your love for them.

Our church doesn’t have tons of programs or a lot of resources but we have what God needs us to have if we will give it: LOVE.

How do we love like this? Exactly like Paul told Philemon

Philemon 6–7 NLT

6 And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ. 7 Your love has given me much joy and comfort, my brother, for your kindness has often refreshed the hearts of God’s people.

Put into action the generosity that comes from your faith. Generosity means giving. Generosity can be money, time, attention, prayer, communication, help, favors, hugs, I could go on and on. Sometimes generosity is showing up to worship when you don’t feel like it because you know someone else needs your encouragement.

Generosity means calling a church member and seeing how they are doing.

By the end of this month, I hope that we will be able to unveil a tool that will help all of us stay in better contact. Apple and Google just this week approved a new app just for our church. New Day will be in the app store. It is my hope that this will be a new, fast and easy way for all of us to be able to live more generously too each other.

I am so excited for 2023 as it can be the years in which our faith grows because our love for Jesus pours out in how we treat each other. How we encourage each other. How we point each other to God.

You don’t have to wait for the app to come out. You can be committed right now.

I accept my responsibility to live out my faith in God before others in New Day

I will show my love for God by loving others generously.

I will pray for others here

I will care to seek out ways that I can love others here

Look around you, will you take on this responsibility?