Share Your Life

People are hurtful and hateful

A. I am a preacher. I know they are. One day you’re their hero, and the next day you’re their enemy. It’s not what have you done for me; it’s what have you done for me lately.

B. (2 Th 3:2 NIV) And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith.

C. My uncle Wendell says, “Deliver us from unreasonable people.”

D. I have shared information on my finances with others and they have used it against me. I have shared struggles in my marriage and in my family and the next thing I know it is all over the gossip sessions.

E. Unfortunately, there are long time Christians out there who are not interested in helping you, they are not interested in being your friend, they are just interested in what kind of dirt they can drag up or make up on you. IF we share with them, watch out! They can’t sin out in the open so they sin with their mouths behind people’s backs. It is a shame!

H. I remember at my ordination, the elders at my home church asked me this question, “Why do you want to be ordained?” I told them the story about Kevin Masters. Kevin was the star of the Bible Bowl program at the church I was serving. It didn’t start out that way. I worked with him and several others and through time and effort the program took off. We had a lot of fun. All of us were not that far removed in age, I was in college and they were in high school. We had a lot of fun, I shared my life with them, and they shared their life with me. I remember that I was about to graduate and Kevin’s father, Randy Masters, came up to me and said that he appreciated what I had done with his son. Without me he didn’t know where his son would be. Before I came along Kevin was starting to fall in with the wrong crowd. When I came along with the Bible Bowl program it gave Kevin something to do and it gave him close Christian friends. Why do I want to be ordained? So that I can help people like Kevin Masters.

I. Even in the life of Jesus there was one who kicked him in the teeth, Judas. However, think about the other 11.

People are so different from me

A. I grew up on a farm, raised as a teenager in the big city, moved from the North to the South; I have learned that people are basically the same.

D. Paul Colman Gloria- We all walk the same earth, We all breathe the same air

We all feel the same rain that falls, We all have the same call

We’re all God’s children after all, Made for love by the maker of all

We all have the same heart, Beneath our skin the same blood

Flowing from our maker’s hand, We all wear the same wrong

E. (2 Cor 5:14 NIV) For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.(2 Cor 5:15 NIV) And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.(2 Cor 5:16 NIV) So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.

F. All of these worldly divisions- North vs. South, rich vs. poor, white vs. black or Hispanic, educated vs. uneducated, married vs. single, young vs. old, those with a job vs. those on disability or retired, those with children vs. those without children, white collar vs. blue collar, those who are overweight vs. those who are underweight, those with brown eyes vs. those with blue. All of these things need to be removed as Christians. They are worldly distinctions and they are ungodly.