Sermon Cloud

Tonight’s Message: The Sacrifice Of Sharing!

Sacrifice - It may cost more, but it’s worth it in the long run!

Hebrews 13:15, 16

The verses are speaking about three different sacrifices. The first one is praise, the second is good works and the third is sharing or fellowship or communion. It doesn’t mean just giving, it means giving of yourself. I’m coming to find the definition of fellowship is sharing life with each other. I believe we’ve scratched the surface of what fellowship was intended to be, here at Freedom Fellowship. Fellowship means a certain amount of accountability. Right now I believe our motto is “We’re going to labor until Christ is formed in everyone.” That’s what we’re pursuing right now. We’re going to labor until Christ is formed in each of us, and that doesn’t mean it’s all my job, either!

We need to hold each other accountable to the destiny of God in each of our lives. It’s not something I can do all by myself, it’s your job, too! We’re supposed to be provoking each other to good works! The one I want to focus on tonight is the sacrifice of sharing. It’s pretty easy to share with our family, but we need to do a good job of sharing with the family of God, and not just the people in this room. We need to make connection with other Christians, churches, ministries, etc.

The more we get to know each other, the more we’re going to know that each one of us is doing our best to be what God wants us to be, and encourage each other to pursue that.

1 John 1:4-6

How many of you want your joy full? If we continually go towards darkness and say we have fellowship with Him, He calls us liar! Not just a slip and fall, but an act of our will.

1 John 1:7

Fellowship is a key! It doesn’t matter where (Starbuck’s, Coco’s, your living room, the park, etc.), but spend time talking with members of the Body, talking over the things of God, holding each other accountable to the things of God. When we confess to God there’s forgiveness, when we confess one to another there’s healing! We need both!

Verse 7, if we are walking in the light as He is in the light, that’s when you and I have fellowship with one another and that light gets brighter when that occurs!

Isaiah 65:8

As the new wine is found in the cluster…

This is representative of the Spirit of God. He lives in us individually and corporately.

Reference to the significant change with regard to the unity of the local body for the Billy Graham crusades from 7 churches in 1976 to over 700 in 2003. God has done and is continuing to do something here! They’ll know we are Christians by our love. I can’t love you unless I really know you, and I won’t be able to really know you unless I spend time with you. It’s got to cost me something. That is my intent, to know you all more than I do now, to become better acquainted with you. I want to see the vision that God has for your life and I’m going to provoke you, I going to hold you accountable, even if you don’t want me to.

I know most of us are living way beneath our calling. That’s got to stop! We all want God to say “Well done, good and faithful servant!” We need to be about forgiving and making amends. Those of us that had siblings occasionally had parental intervention to make sure that our differences were handled. We might have even had to take the little brother or sister along. God’s got us all together and it works! He doesn’t let us keep an attitude. Each of you has Jesus living in you and if I have an issue with you then I have an issue with Jesus. I better rectify that! I better be taking care of my side of the street, as should you, then we can all hear God say “Well done!”

George then spoke about some sample tracts that Kathy had from Grace Fellowship. We will be making our own personal testimonies and publishing the Freedom version of the tracts.