Date: 5/12/2003
Time: 8:52:07 AM
I am thinking about , maybe God's leading to this passage...LOve makes the world go round. All you need is love...Pastor Mary in Ohio
Date: 5/12/2003
Time: 10:00:43 AM
I am wrestling with the question of "How do we know God?" According to John we can't know God unless we love. But how can we really love unless we know the God who shows us how to love? Is it a Catch 22? Or is it a growth issue, Love being perfected or completed in us. As we grow in the knowlege of God we grow in the ability to love. If we are growing in our ability to love. I am thinking of the sermon title "God Started It" God loved us first and we keep it going. Fisher in TN
Date: 5/12/2003
Time: 10:01:30 AM
I am wrestling with the question of "How do we know God?" According to John we can't know God unless we love. But how can we really love unless we know the God who shows us how to love? Is it a Catch 22? Or is it a growth issue, Love being perfected or completed in us. As we grow in the knowlege of God we grow in the ability to love. If we are growing in our ability to love. I am thinking of the sermon title "God Started It" God loved us first and we keep it going. Fisher in TN
Date: 5/12/2003
Time: 7:27:37 PM
I was talking with a 91-year-old woman today whose daughter died rather suddenly last December. She recalled that her daughter's last words, spoken during one last moment of consciousness, were as follows . . . "God is love -- how wonderful!" .... (I added the exclamation point myself). . . It struck me because I had just reviewed the lections earlier today, and read this passage stating -- among many other beautiful words -- that God is love. I shared that verse with the elderly woman (Montana is her name), and jotted down her daughter's quote because of it's deathbed observation of the simple yet profound truth. . . . It was only later this afternoon that it finally dawned on me -- DUH! -- that this is what I'm supposed to preach on this week. (I had been figuring on the Gospel lection.) So I'm going to go with this passage, and you can probably guess my sermon title: "God is Love -- How Wonderful!"
Dave K. in West Ohio <><
Date: 5/13/2003
Time: 6:47:42 AM
So many of the themes in this lection and the gospel lection are in common. Well, why should I be surprised, same writer and all? (or at least closely connected) Anyway, it is as if the gospel lays out the groudwork and the epistle gives the therefore. Gospel - you must bear fruit. Letter- the fruit you must bear is love. We believers can not respond that we don't know how to love, because God has shown us how it is done. -- Fisher in TN
Date: 5/13/2003
Time: 5:21:53 PM
Fisher writes: We believers can not respond that we don't know how to love, because God has shown us how it is done.
THAT'S A FACT, JACK! :-) God has shown how it is done through Jesus. I'm mindful of the scripture for Maundy Thursday from John 13, and the footwashing. This letter (same writer) again echoes that love.
Fisher writes: the gospel lays out the groudwork and the epistle gives the therefore. Gospel - you must bear fruit. Letter- the fruit you must bear is love.
A GOOD CONNECTION . . . very good. Another common denominator for these 2 passages, gospel and epistle -- "ABIDING" in Christ, the Vine, the embodiment of God's love.
dave k. in west ohio <><
Date: 5/15/2003
Time: 7:40:38 AM
I seem to recall a frequently repeated line in a TV cop show from the '70's (Kojak, I think) that went, "Who loves ya, baby?" Anyone else remember that? Was it Telly Savalas in Kojak?
Whatever it's source, today's epistle reading is the obvious answer to the question. I'm working my way towards this idea.
StudentPastor in KS
Date: 5/15/2003
Time: 8:26:36 AM
Student Pastor is KS is telling his/her age LOL. I know God lead me to preach on this for Sunday. See, my charge is doing something new , Can you say merger? Well, excitement and honeymoom wearing off... Truth sinking in and selfish people that we all are want things our way. Well, we can't find property, we'll just use this one Church. But, others see and say we gay up our scared cows...and anyway the building you want isnt really appropiate for growth and facility (no place to expand, no parking, next to railroad track) Love is there? I feel led to use this passage to get them thinking and back on track...and God's way not ours... Do you love when you gossiping about others in congregation about this issue? Wake em up! Pastor Crazy in OHIO
Date: 5/15/2003
Time: 2:47:13 PM
I think a big question for people these days is, is God really love (or just an impersonal power)? How do we know that God is love? We certainly don't know by nature (nature can be indiscriminately destructive), nor by the course of history (is the anarchy in Iraq an expression of God's love, or a sign of progress?), nor by our own flawed human relationships. We know God is love by Jesus' love, and that he suffered for others.
This ties in to the Acts passage. The eunuch is reading the suffering servant passage, and wondering whom it refers to. The eunuch has suffered himself (or at least his own vitality and capacity to love has been negated by the cruelty and selfishness of others...). Philip doesn't say "smile, God loves you" to the eunuch. Instead he points out the connection between the suffering servant and Jesus. The eunuch "gets it", sees in this something he can identify with, something that includes him. This is good news, he is baptized and goes on his way rejoicing.
DGinNYC
Date: 5/16/2003
Time: 2:14:04 AM
An common acronym for fear is False Evidence Appearing Real Does anyone know an acronym for love?
PKFlyer in TX
Date: 5/16/2003
Time: 9:17:45 AM
Let Octopi Vote Equally. But I don't see how that's going to help your sermon.
Date: 5/17/2003
Time: 6:05:12 PM
To PKFlyer in Texas: Here's one I created some time ago: Live Out Voluntary Empathy
Empathy is not easy, because it involves asking God to help you feel what the other person is feeling. Or at least listening to the other person long enough to know them, to know where their pain is. This is not something we "have to" do, it is voluntary, loving others because He first loved us. It is painful, just as watching our children go through the agonies of this life is painful, to feel for them and with them, but we feel what they are feeling because they are connected to our hearts and souls -- because we LOVE them. This is the way God loves us: unconditionally, because we are His kids. He may get hurt and angry at the things we do, as we do with our children, but He never stops loving us.
Live Out Voluntary Empathy.
Blessings :) rev judy in New Mexico