The highest form of love is to protect those you love from your control.
This is why God’s plan for eradicating evil from the world requires time and historical process, and unavoidably involves messiness and pain.
THE SERMON AS SACRED ART
The pulpit is a holy place and the sermon is sacred art. To stand in front of a congregation and preach must be approached with conscious reverence and intelligent preparation, because two extraordinary things are taking place in those moments:
First, people are granting you access to their inmost being, to the most vulnerable, hungry, and private spaces in their souls. You must not violate their trust by failing to feed their longing to hear from God through His word. The sermon is not your personal time. It's God's time and, as such, it is holy time. Your job is to become a semi-invisible point of entrance into the mind and heart of God for the people gathered before you.
Secondly, the Holy Spirit is expecting you to faithfully discharge the task of magnifying the love of God as manifest in Christ. You simply are not at liberty to preach whatever you want. You are on mission for God, and the mission He has assigned you is to preach the gospel, not whatever speculations, personal grievances, extra-biblical ideologies, or cultural fads you happen be into. Preach Christ! Christ incarnate! Christ crucified! Christ risen! Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father! Christ ministering the endless flow of God's grace as our heavenly High Priest! Christ coming again to receive His spotless bride into eternal matrimonial union!
Therefore, it is not doing acts of righteousness that makes us righteous; it is being declared righteous by God that makes us do righteous acts! Our solution is Right-Being not Right-Doing!
We need Jesus 😊!
(Relevant Scriptures: John 6:44; 1:9; Jeremiah 31:3; 13:23)
Wounded by truth, healed by grace!
That’s what the gospel proposes to do to you, for you.
The gospel will wreck you before it repairs you.
It will crush your self-righteousness under its feet like a beautiful leviathan of love.
It will demolish your sense of superiority over others like a massive moral wrecking ball.
It will level your ego like a D9 bulldozer.
It will tell you the truth about yourself—exposing your sin and guilt to your conscience—and then promise to keep on loving you anyway, while insisting that you find healing in God’s mercy.
“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but He will heal us; He has injured us but He will bind up our wounds. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will restore us, that we may live in His presence. . . What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. Therefore I cut you in pieces with My prophets, I killed you with the words of My mouth—then My judgments go forth like the sun. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. But like Adam, they have broken the covenant; they were unfaithful to Me there” (Hosea 6).
Don't miss out on the week of Spiritual Emphasis from 13th to 19th April 2025 with Pr. Nicholas Bitamazire
Catch it Live at https://t.co/aiZeUj8Mv0
from 9:45am - 11:00am morning session
and 6:45pm - 8:00pm in the evening
On such a day as this,we come before our God with thankful hearts full of praise, adoration, and gratitude. 🤗
Together with kindred minds, we sing songs of praise, worship, and thanksgiving to our Maker and our King! 🎶 🎹
O for more of the Sabbath delight! 🤲
Holy Father in heaven, I acknowledge my failure in this regard!
I often ignore my own blind spots. Many times I am terribly unaware of my own character flaws and biases that distort how I see others.
Please help me to see others just as You see them! In Jesus' name, Amen! 🙏🙏
The destruction by fire of the stately buildings, supposed to be fireproof, is an illustration of how in a short time earth's architecture will lie in ruins.
—Last Day Events, p. 111
Great News! Kids Bible Songs Vol 1 is out now! #KidsbibleTV 10 BrandNew Original Kids bible songs that will have everyone in your family singing along! Amazon https://t.co/ohFivgHByx Apple Music https://t.co/5snkKEPRdi #kids#kidssongs#bibleVerses#JesusIsKing#God#GospelMusic
Now, 2024 might not have been the year you expected it to be, spiritually... Well, that's that, it happened that way anyway!
Heading to 2025, make a plan of how you are going to make time for studying the Bible, God wants you to do it, He will help you do it!
Come on 💪