Love Others - In the Church

Welcome/Introduction

Good Morning North Brook Church. It is an honor and privilege to be with you this morning as we continue our Building Blocks sermon series.

Hey if you don’t know who I am, or this is your first time checking us out, my name is Shea and I am the Associate Pastor here at North Brook Church and I have the honor of leading our Student Ministry here which I think is the best ministry here at North Brook but I don’t know I might be bias.

Well, this morning I want us to answer one question. Just one. That question is how do we love others in the church. How do we love our fellow brothers and sisters.

So, if we could just be honest for a second. While it sounds easy to love others isn’t it also something really hard to do? It’s ok to agree with that and it’s ok if that is where you are at currently…but don’t let yourself stay there. Allow Jesus to move you forward.

I would actually contend it is even harder for us to love other people nowadays because we live in a hyper-sensitive and individualistic world and that is contrary to how God made us.

The way the world operates is that we are to think of ourselves first and the community we belong to second…but if we are to love others, specifically those in the church, we have to move away from an individualistic mindset and move towards a community mindset.

Let’s put it this way. Throughout the New Testament just at a quick glance you would notice there are a number of passages that use the phrase “one another.” If you are wondering there are 100 different times in the New Testament that the term one another is used and that one another is not talking about the unsaved person in the checkout line. These one another’s are specifically meant for us in the community of faith or THE CHURCH.

“They love one another, and he, who has, gives to him who has not, without boasting. And when they see a stranger, they take him into their own homes and rejoice over him as a very brother. And if there is among them any that are poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days in order to supply to the needy their lack of food. Such, O King, is their manner of life, and verily, this is new people and there is something divine in the midst of them.”

~ Aristides to the Caesar Hadrian (125 AD)

A spy sent to figure out why the Church can’t be stopped.