Fight for Community

Family Acts 16:31-33 NKJV

[31] So they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household." [32] Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. [33] And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized.

This doesn’t mean “If you believe your whole house will be saved” But it does suggest that when you believe and they believe they’ll be saved as well. Family we have to believe together in order to reap the blessings together.

WE ARE STRONGER BECAUSE WE ARE TOGETHER!

I believe the family was established long before the church, and my duty is to my family first. I am not to neglect my family.

Dwight L. Moody

2. Friends John 15:12-15 NKJV

[12] This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. [13] Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. [14] You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. [15] No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

Jesus never commands us to feel something, He commands us to do something.

Jesus is teaching love is not so much an emotion as a decision.

And the beautiful thing is oftentimes when you implement the action, the emotion will follow.

To seek to be friends with those who will not be the friends of Christ is to be a traitor to our Lord.4

A. W. Tozer

Proverbs 12:26 NKJV

[26] The righteous should choose his friends carefully, For the way of the wicked leads them astray.

Be friendly to all, but make none your friends until they know you, and you know them.

A Faithful Friend, Volume 3, Sermon #120 - Proverbs 18:24

Charles Spurgeon

3. Faith 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 NKJV

[6] So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. [7] For we walk by faith, not by sight. [8] We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

Now, I hold no man’s faith to be sure faith unless he knows what he believes.

Faith, Volume 3, Sermon #107 - Hebrews 11:6

Charles Spurgeon

Faith is to believe what we do not see. The reward of this faith is to see what we believe.

—Augustine

Augustine of Hippo

Hebrews 10:23-25 NKJV

[23] Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. [24] And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, [25] not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

Faith is only as valid as its object. You could have tremendous faith in very thin ice and drown.… You could have very little faith in very thick ice and be perfectly secure.

—Stuart Briscoe

Stuart Briscoe

Conclusion:

Ephesians 2:8-9 NKJV

[8] For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, [9] not of works, lest anyone should boast.

 8   The only way to get into the human family is by birth, and the only way to get into God’s family is by birth.

Warren Wiersbe

Be What You Are (1988)

Warren W. Wiersbe