Standing Firm & Taking The Heat--Black Lives Matter, Transgender, Gay Lifestyle

Standing Up And Taking The Heat

February 28, 2021 Jeremiah 38:1-6 I Timothy 4:1-8

Have you ever had the experience that for some reason a person just didn’t like you? You can’t think of anything you did or you said, but you knew they just didn’t like you. I use to go jogging at this park, and there was a lady with a dog who arrived about the same time I did.

Every time I got close to pass them on the trail, the dog would just start barking away. One day the lady said to me, “I’m sorry he acts like this, but for some reason he just doesn’t like you.” That was over 10 years ago, and I still wonder, why that dog didn’t like me.

We all want to be liked, but that can become our Achilles’ heel as a believer in Jesus Christ. Achilles’ mother had dipped him into a magical river that was to protect him from arrows and sword. But in order to dip him in, she held him by the heel.

That part wasn’t covered and protected by the dip. The only place Achilles could be defeated was an arrow in his heel. The desire to be liked can be used as our Achille’s heel to get us to turn away from Jesus.

Who was it that said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first?” What is Jesus trying to tell us? What do you think he means by the world?

If you want to be a sincere follow of Jesus Christ, not everyone is going to like you, as a matter of fact some people are going to hate you. Jesus says the reason they are going to hate you, is because I have called you out of the world. Are we willing to come when he calls?

How many of you realize the Bible tells us to renew our minds? It says it because something is always seeking the control of our minds. If it can get us to think a certain way, we will let all kinds of things slip into our hearts and our love for Jesus takes a slight shift.

Let me ask you something, how many of you know some other believers who love Christ where you work? How many of you know of other believers at your school or where you shop, or get your hair done? How many of you know there are millions of believers in other churches in this country? I’m talking about just normal believers who are great people.

Let me ask you something else, are there any normal believers who have leading roles in the tv shows you watch? I mean you know the person is a Christian because they actually talk about going to church or to say I can’t do that because of my faith in God?

Can I ask you this, who decided that followers of Jesus Christ have no place in society on tv? What is there agenda?

I have to confess, I was looking forward to the series on the Black Church. I became very disillusioned very quickly. The Black Church, they were talking about was not the Black church I grew up in.

In my Black Church, Jesus was the foundation upon which the church was built. That program insisted the Black church’s foundation was built upon women and gays. It made it seem as though women were never allowed to preach.

That have been true at some black churches, but there were a whole lot churches where women preached their hearts out and were pastors. The established churches may not have ordained them, but the smaller churches did. And many women started their own churches.

What was the intent of the program? Was it to humiliate the church today? To change people’s minds on the church today and to further marginalize us.

Somebody asked, where was the church during Black Lives Matter. Now that politics have subsided, can we lay aside our prejudices and actually talk about Black Lives Matter.

I can remember another highlight of my life was the birth of our daughter Samantha. I could hold her entire body in the length of my arm. She was wrapped in a pink and blue blanket.

I pledged to her that day, that I was going to be there for her and for her mother for the rest of my life. She had no idea what I was saying, but I remember those tiny little eyes looking back at me.

I’m a morning person and my wife is not. So for the next 18 years of her life, I was the one that got up with here early in the morning. I fixed her breakfast. I drove her to school almost every time she went from grade k to 12.