This Sunday, we wrapped up the series “Learning from Jesus”, learning this time about his heart and his acts of service, Pastor began by giving a recap of the last Sunday’s message and shedding more light on what she had taught.
She emphasised the need to walk in righteousness and not sear our consciences by doing the wrong things consistently without any form of remorse, she reminded us that our eyes and ears are windows to our soul and so the things we see and hear affect us, she charged us to self reflect and examine ourselves from time to time to ensure we are always on the right track.
Pastor then began the day’s teaching from John 21:15, where Jesus appeared to his disciples for the third time after Peter had decided to go back to fishing, during that encounter, Jesus asked Peter three different times if he loved him and upon affirming that he did, Jesus’ instruction to him each time was to feed his sheep, this points to the fact that the only requirement for serving Jesus is our love for him, not whether we have time nor whether we know the Bible well enough nor anything else, if we love Jesus, we will serve him; he gave his life for us and now he expects us to live our lives for him, that’s why he sent us just as his Father sent him and we should no longer live our lives seeking our own glory but the glory of the one who sent us.
We went on to see Jesus’ response when he was asked for the first and most important commandment, he was unequivocal in replying that loving the Lord will all our heart, soul, mind and strength is the most important thing of all, we saw in John 14:31 that his motivation for life was that the world may know that he loves the Father, this should be our motivation for living too, not survival or trying to prove anything to anyone but our love for the Lord.
Pastor went us to show us his acts of service, in Acts 9:4, Jesus declared that he must be about his father’s work as long as he was on the earth and we saw how that in spite of various persecutions and attempts on his life, he remained dogged about the work of his father, in Luke 4:42-43, the people tried to keep him in their city but he insisted that he had to preach in other cities, in Luke 8:1, we saw how he went to every city and village preaching the good news of the kingdom of God, Pastor admonished us to have the same attitude to God’s work, to give it our best and look only to him for our reward, we saw in Haggai 1:2-4 God’s expressed displeasure at those who gave priority to themselves over him and his counsel to them to do his own things first similar to how Jesus taught us to seek first the kingdom of God because that is what matters most to God.
