Don't Try So Hard

Here is this morning's sermon. You can listen here.

Offering Leftovers to God

God wants our best, deserves our best, and demands our best.

When you give blind animals as sacrifices, isn’t that wrong? And isn’t it wrong to offer animals that are crippled and diseased? Try giving gifts like that to your governor, and see how pleased he is!” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. -Malachi 1:8

But when you had eaten and were satisfied, you became proud and forgot me. -Hosea 13:6

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 – How are you doing?

______________ is patient and kind
______________ is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude
______________ does not demand its own way
______________ is not irritable
______________ keeps no record of being wronged
______________ does not rejoice about injustice
______________ rejoices whenever the truth wins out
______________ never gives up and never loses faith
______________ is always hopeful and always endures

And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? –Mark 8:36

It is hard to bear with people who stand still along the way, lose heart, and seek their happiness in little pleasures which they cling to…. You feel sad about all that self-indulgence and self-satisfaction, for you know with an indestructible certainty that something greater is coming. –Henri Nouwen

Don’t Try So Hard

Believers bring glory to God when we see ourselves as partners with God who desire to love Him and enjoy serving Him rather than feeling that we must love and serve God out of obligation.

For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” –Galatians 5:13-14

Closing Prayer: Jesus, I need to give myself up. I am not strong enough to love You and walk with you on my own. I can’t do it, and I need You. I need You deeply and desperately. I believe You are worth it, and You are better than anything else I could have in this life or the next. I want You. And when I don’t, I want to want You. Be all in me. Take all of me. Have Your way with me.