Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Good morning.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Mark. And I'm so happy to bring the word of God to you this morning and happy Mother's day once more.
And welcome to all of you joining online. And so.
And welcome, nita, I've seen you for a while.
So we're going to pray as we listen to the word this morning. Father, I pray that you speak to us, and I pray that you heal us by your word.
In Jesus name, amen.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: So we are going to be continuing our know. We are talking about freedom in Christ.
And today we would be looking at freedom in Christ as it pertains to our relationship with others.
And it's a very sensitive topic because each time you put a group of people together in a room, there are bound to be issues, conflicts. In organizations, they would usually talk about conflict management.
There will be people. Some people will be hurt, others will be offended. Not because there is any other thing, but because you've just put two people together in one single space.
People coming from different backgrounds, people coming from Africa, like myself, and meeting people from Wales, from Scotland, all in a single building like this. And there is really absolutely nothing wrong with that.
And when you meet leaders in industries, in organizations, and you ask them what are their main challenges. And if you look at the top five challenges in most organizations, you would find that human resource management comes up in one of the top five, conflict management. And it's also very true for church organizations because we are humans.
And at times it's difficult to juggle between these things because we don't want to hurt feelings, we don't want to talk about them. But this morning, we are going to talk about these things. Amen. And I pray that the Lord is going to touch your heart.
The Lord created us to be complex beings, and he created us, and he gave us a free will, but he never created us to be free.
Because when he created man, the first thing he did was that he put man in a garden under his government and under his authority.
And so man's free will was supposed to be used under the government of God.
But we know the story. Genesis, chapter three. An intruder came in and brought sin and disrupted man's relationship with God. But did not only disrupt man's relationship with God, he also disrupted man's relationship with man.
The proof is that when God spoke to Adam, have you eaten the fruit? Adam said, it is the woman that you gave me that shows that their relationship was disrupted at that particular point. And man's relationship with man has forever been disrupted even up to this time. And so it's very difficult. It's a critical subject. It's so critical that Jesus had to pray for his disciples.
And if we look in John, chapter 17, verse 20 and 21, we see the prayer of Jesus. And he said, neither pray I these for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word that they all may be one, as you, Father, I in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you have sent me.
So Jesus, looking forward into the future more than 2000 years to rediscover church to all of us seated here, prayed for us that we should be one. But at times when we look at this scripture, we tend to look at being one as relating to me, trying to be one with my brother or with my sister.
But the key in that passage is Jesus is saying that they have to be one in us.
That is, you have to be one in Christ. I am one in Christ. And as we come together, then we all shall be one in Christ. At times we try to fix relationships with one another. But if we just fix our relationship with the Lord, we will feel the compulsion to fix our relationship with the other.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: And so it is important, Jesus did not only pray for us when he left, he left us his word and he has given unto us his spirit as well. The Holy Spirit dwells in you. The Holy Spirit dwells in me.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: And so being united in Christ is very important and we should lay that emphasis on being united to him.
I'm going to be highlighting certain things which we have probably heard already over the course of this series in French. There's a statement in French that says that la repetition elame de la science or repetition is the mother of knowledge. So to look at certain ways we can bond together or strengthen our relationship with other. The first thing I'm going to start is with law is love.
We read in Matthew, chapter 22 Jesus talking about the two greatest commandments. He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind, but also love your neighbor as yourself.
Notice he didn't say, love your neighbor more than yourself or love your neighbor less than yourself. He said, love your neighbor as yourself. And loving oneself is tricky. It's not easy as it seems.
And how do we love ourselves?
We have to love ourselves with the love that we have received from God. And it's that same love that we have received from God that we need to use to love our brothers and sisters, and not with our humane love, but the love that is divine, the love that comes from God. Because the Bible says in first John that we love him because he has first loved us, and because he has first loved us, our reservoir now is filled with his love. And we can take from that love and love those who are around us.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: And first Corinthians, chapter 13. Usually when this portion of scripture is put up, we think of marriage. But in the context, Paul was not dealing with marriage. Paul was dealing with spiritual gift. And as it pertains to us relating with each other, so it is important that our love resembles what is written in first corinthians, chapter 13.
The second thing we are going to look at is living a lifestyle of forgiveness.
We had a very important and good message on forgiveness a while ago, but some of the key things I want to bring about forgiveness is that in church there is usually the issue of offense. And when there is offense, there is usually an offender and someone who is offended or an offendee.
So usually we look at the offender. But why are you also susceptible to offense?
We never look at that. And so God also wants to help us, because in proverbs, chapter 19, verse eleven, it says that the discretion of a man delays his anger, and it is glory to overlook an offense. So I pray that God is going to give you a heart that would overlook offense and that you will look at your brother, you look at your sister, and not the offense. And I have a picture. I don't know if it can come up, but maybe the picture is not coming out. Oh, this is a typical hot afternoon in Yawunde, where I'm from. And bet you you can tell if you count or if you can calculate the number of offenses that one can have in a traffic jam like this. When the sun is at 30 degrees in Yawunde, the closest other thing I've seen like this is probably in Kampala, in Uganda, in Lagos. It's worst.
Yeah. So I remember one day I was driving and then someone hit my car with a motorbike. So, and I went out and I scream and I shouted at him. And when I came back into the car and I sat down, the Lord said, well done, good and faithful.
And I had to spend the next 30 minutes praying and repentance in my car. And so these little things are very important.
But why are we so quick to retaliate in anger? The Lord says that we should instead be quick to forgive.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: And the last thing I want to talk about is our responsibilities and our rights.
All of us have got rights and responsibilities.
Right is about what I gain and my entitlement, but responsibilities about duty, what I'm supposed to do. And the Lord wants us to lay emphasis on responsibilities rather than our rights. And we can see that perfectly in the relationship between a man and a woman in marriage, where the Lord says, wives, respect your husband, husband, love your wife. It is very difficult to love a woman who is not respectful, and it's very difficult to respect a man who is not loving. But if we focus on that, there will never be unity in marriage. Each and every one of us. We have to focus on our responsibilities and not on our rights. And the last thing I'm going to talk about, about how we can build and bond together as a community of people is to pray together for one another.
We learned from our men's weekend, from, I was not in that meeting, I was so tired that morning. But I learned that you bond together and you are in relationship with the person you pray to, the person you pray for, and the person you pray with. So when I learned that, I was like, oh, my God, that is powerful. And so when we gather like this, it is good for us to pray for one another.
The Bible says, watch and pray that you fall not into temptation. But the Bible also says in Luke, chapter six that we should pray for those who have mistreated us or who have hurt us.
And so when we pray, prayer has a mechanism of making us less susceptible to offense.
Prayer has a capacity of keeping our hearts in the Lord. Prayer has the capacity or a mechanism of keeping our minds in the Lord. Remember, the Bible says that we should keep our heart above all things, because out of it flows the issues of life. And so if we want to live a life that relates with each other at the level, the higher standard that Christ has called us to, it is important for us to pray not only for ourselves, but to pray for those around us. Pray for our brothers. Pray for our sisters. Pray for those you are in relationship with in the family. And when we do that, we are uniting ourselves to Christ. And if my brother is doing that, he is uniting himself further in Christ. And when we come together in worship like this, we easily can migrate to the place of one accord. And when we get to the place of one accord, who knows what the Lord can do? The presence of the Lord comes and we are going to start seeing extraordinary miracles. I believe this is a season where the Lord is calling us to really unite in hearts, because the Lord expects so much. There's so much to be done in the city, so much change, so much transformation. And the Lord wants us to unite our hearts because he wants to use us to touch the city. And I pray that you would allow your heart to be transformed and be used by God in this season. Amen. Amen.
