Sermon Central
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Authentic Relationships Series
Contributed by Christian Cheong on Oct 28, 2012 (message contributor)
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1. Friendship: I Have Called You Friends
Contributed on Oct 28, 2012
Our motivation is love, because Christ gave His. Be open and share your life, for Christ shared His and we are blessed.
Relationships define life - relationship with God and relationships with people. • You take that away and you’ll be left with an existence, not life. • You take relationships away, and your home will be just a house, this church will be just a building. Jesus summed up the Commandments with ...read more
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2. Loyalty: Loyalty Rewards
Contributed on Oct 29, 2012
Loyalty is a virtue. Loyalty seeks to honour God, it values the relationship and God rewards our faithfulness. God is loyal.
Loyalty is a virtue. Loyalty is to be faithful, to stick to a commitment. • But unfortunately loyalty is losing its appeal today. People do not see it as necessarily a good thing. • Marriages are breaking up because spouses do not want to keep to their commitment to stick together “for better ...read more
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3. Intimacy: Building Strong Friendships
Contributed on Nov 6, 2012
Love is the context for intimacy. Commitment is the promise of intimacy, and trust is the anchor and precondition for intimacy.
When I was young, I like to go to the bookstore’s cards section and browse the cards. • I like to read the words – especially cards for the different occasions like graduation, wedding, sympathy, love or friendships. • The words are beautiful and well-thought out. But I ...read more
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4. Forgiveness: Choose To Forgive
Contributed on Nov 13, 2012
Forgiveness is the gateway to freedom, from bitterness and resentment. Forgiveness is a choice we make. It chooses to see the good. It comes through the grace of God.
I believe most of us know the Story of the Prodigal Son by now – a father with two sons, and one decided to take his share of inheritance and left home. • The other stayed and worked hard in the field to please the father. • His younger brother eventually squandered everything ...read more
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5. Conflict: The Heart Of Conflict
Contributed on Nov 19, 2012
Conflict is inevitable. Watch your heart in a conflict. Focus on the heart of the matter. Seek to please the heart of Christ.
Just like to share with you a funny story at the start. A man was stranded all alone on the desert island for years before he was finally rescued. His rescuers asked him what the 3 huts were that he had built on the island. It’s perplexing for one man to have 3 structures. He said ...read more
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6. Change: Change We Can Believe In
Contributed on Nov 26, 2012
Learn from Barnabas. Know the power of encouragement and believe in the power of the Holy Spirit in changing lives. Don’t just look at who a person is, but who he can become in Christ.
Paul wanted to go on a second missionary journey, to return the churches they had visited on the first journey. • He shared the plan with Barnabas, who suggested taking John Mark with them again, and a quarrel broke out. • Mark had travelled with them on the first journey (Acts 13:5 ‘as their ...read more
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7. Support: Giving Real Support
Contributed on Dec 9, 2012
Give real support for friends in suffering by being present with them, providing them a listening ear and share the promises of God.
What can you do to a friend who is suffering? • Support him. 2 Cor 1:3-4 “… the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” ...read more
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8. Greatness: The Pathway To Greatness
Contributed on Jan 3, 2013
Jesus redefined greatness for His disciples - not to go for positions of privilege and power, but to be a servant and serve the needs of others.
Jesus redefined what it means to be great, at Christmas • Phil 2:6-9 “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, ...read more