11/05/2023 (Part 1) - A Taste of 2024: Love God, Love Yourself, Love Your Church, Love Family, Love Others, and Love the One You’re With!

Grace Place Atlanta COGBF 4700 Mitchell Street Forest Park, GA 30297 Website: atlantacogbf.org Email: info@atlantacogbf.org Phone: (404) 241-6781 Wayne D. Mack, Pastor / Pastor Wayne D. Mack Sermon Notes November 5, 2023 A Taste of 2024: Love God, Love Yourself, Love Your Church, Love Family, Love Others, and Love the One You’re With! Ephesians 3:17-19 (NKJV) 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Not counting this Sunday, can you believe only EIGHT more Sunday remain in this year – 2023? For that reason, I want to press the pause button and do sort of an announcement message today that gives GP a sense of expectation as to 1 where we’re going in the days ahead. I’m calling or entitling today’s message: A Taste of 2024: Love God, Love Yourself, Love Your Church, Love Family, Love Others [Your Neighbor], and Love the One You’re With! Although we know that tomorrow, let alone next year or next month, is not promised to us, wisdom teaches us to plan in two ways: “Plan as if there is a tomorrow and Plan as if there is no tomorrow. Given that, I’m compelled to share with you the burden of my heart to minister in the coming days and throughout 2024 from some topics that I feel [along with many of you] are timely and very needed in our fellowship. I realize that life keeps coming at us. I realize the times that we live in [the times that God has reserved us for] are complicated, unprincipled, and absent of a reverence for God . . . and a sense of Right and Wrong. What are we to do as Christians and as a community of believers? How are we to respond in a world of worldliness and secularism. What is the answer for marriages, money, faith, family, and relationships? The only real answers for all of life – rests with God Almighty and the truth of His Word. And so, for GP, because God is Love, I believe that LOVE is the lift we need and must aspire to in order to be the exemplary church and community of believers God wants to represent Him in a world that is “sinking deep in sin, Far from the peaceful 2 shore, Very deeply stained within, Sinking to rise no more”! [Our lift is not found in programs, or politics, or popularity contests. Rather, our lift as church will come from being the loving, active church that wants to be right with God, each other, and the community. And so, because we know the Master of the sea, and that He has heard and yet hears our cry -- whether despairing or otherwise, we must commit to living and serving God, Self, the Church, Family, and Neighbors – from a lifted position of LOVE. For it’s “From the waters we were lifted to serve and Now safe we are -- safe am I, and safe are you! Love lifted me! Love lifted you! Love lifted us. When nothing else could help Love lifted US! A lifted position of LOVE is a position where everything we do, and everything we’re about is done in the spirit and reverence of a godly love. A Godly love is unselfish and unconditional. It doesn’t expect to be loved back. It only expects honesty and truth. [More on that in a future message, but for now . . . Look at . . . ] Look at how the Bible expresses a godly, lifted love: 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 (NLT) 3 4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. 1 John 4: 7-11 (NLT) 7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. Matthew 5: 43-46 (NKJV) “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 [o]But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on 43 4 the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? The work and service of 2024 must be driven by God’s Love and an understanding of it with regard to everything we do. [In a group meeting the other night, I heard cries for love [on display] on a few different levels. Concern that the GP Family be intentional about loving and showing love was intimated/inferred. So, my word to the wise today is to remind this family and the Body of Christ that the Love God wants us to experience is the love He has freely and without strings - lavished upon each of us individually. It is a love that we will never be able to repay. Once a believer awakens to that love, nothing else in life really matters. It doesn’t matter if you or “they” love me, because only one love lifted me – and rescued me from myself, my sins, my doom. That was Christ’s love. The true Greatest Love of All. Without Christ you can’t truly love yourself or anyone else completely. And because of Christ’s love, me and you are able to personally love Him back. Listen to how Romans 5 says we are able to do so: Romans 5: 1, 5 – 9 (NLT) 5 5 Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. [He has given a great hope] 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. 6 When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. 7 Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. 8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. 9 And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. Christ’s love causes stony, sinful hearts to turn to Him. And for every heart that does, Christ replaces the stony heart with a heart of flesh – a heart that has been made right and that can respond to God. In Ezekiel 11:19-20 God says: (NKJV) 19 Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. 6 The times we live in are not getting better. They’re growing darker and more sinister with every passing day. That, in and of itself, is reason enough for our lights to shine. And the darker the world grows, the brighter our light must shine. Contrary to what Satan would have us believe through his deceptive tactics, people want love and they want the goodness of God. Do you think more people are going to heaven or hell? I don’t really know, but I do know that Satan cannot, has not, and never will beat God at anything. And so, to begin with, God has declared that “All souls are mine”. I know the rest of that verse, but I also know that God said, “He would that no man perish.” As we prepare to sunset 2023, I want us to finish the year strong – which means doing the things that will set us up for starting 2024 even stronger. What better way to do that than to walk in love and add love to everything in our lives – especially how we Love God, Love Self, Love Our Church, Love Family, Love Others, and Love the One You’re With! This will be the key to 2024 -- Our fabulous GP Family honoring God and each other with God’s brand of Love according to Ephesians 3:1719 (NKJV) which reveals what will be the result if we follow through and obey . . . 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s 7 people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. A Taste of 2024: Love God, Love Yourself, Love Your Church, Love Family, Love Others, and Love the One You’re With! END Love Lifted Me! I was sinking deep in sin Far from the peaceful shore Very deeply stained within Sinking to rise no more But the master of the sea Heard my despairing cry, From the waters lifted me Now safe am I Love lifted me! Love lifted me! When nothing else could help Love lifted me Love lifted me! Love lifted me! 8 When nothing else could help Love lifted me Souls in danger look above Jesus completely saves He will lift you by his love Out of the angry waves But the master of the sea Billows His will obey He your savior wants to be Be saved today Love lifted me! Love lifted me! When nothing else could help Love lifted me Love lifted me! Love lifted me! When nothing else could help Love lifted me 9