With a heart to share Christ and love people, Joyce’s messages help people in all walks of life to grow in their faith, learn to study the Bible, find healing from the wounds of life, get answers to life’s questions and encounter the love of God in a powerful way.
today we’re in the second chapter of
philippians and paul starts out in the
first four verses
and he says so if there is any
encouragement in christ
any comfort from love
any participation in the spirit any
affection and sympathy
complete my joy by being of the same
mind having the same love being in full
accord
and of one mind
so
what do we get out of that well if we
just read over it probably not too much
but
paul is basically saying here so if you
want to encourage me
if you want to bring some comfort to me
if you want to participate in the
spiritual work that i’m doing
if you have any real affection for me or
any sympathy for me the one thing you
can do for me that will make me really
really really happy and complete my joy
is if you will just get along
so we’re going to talk
about a couple of really important
things though we’re going to talk about
how to get along
unity and how important it is to get the
strife out of our lives
now when i said the word strife some of
you don’t even know what that word means
i had somebody asked me recently what is
strife
well strife is bickering arguing heated
disagreement but it’s something else
that is very dangerous it’s an angry
undercurrent
and you know what an angry undercurrent
is it’s when everybody is smiling at
each other
praise the lord brother
glad you’re here thank you jesus
but you’re gossiping about them behind
their back or
you know you really don’t like them i
i’m not surprised at all that the world
is not impressed by us
we as christians must
lay aside our pride
come on
our pride
and our vanity
and we have to learn
to stop fighting in our homes
in our churches in our neighborhoods in
our schools
about things that really
when you take a look at it in light of
eternity
are just so petty
so totally completely petty
[Applause]
you know if you’ve been married more
than 20 years or say
who here has been married more than 30
years
okay
now
how many of you can remember things that
you argued about year one two three four
and five
that you look back now and think how
stupid
now only four or five people that have
been married that long have realized
that
well i might have to change my message
i mean so many things that dave used to
do that made me so mad and now i think
they’re funny
all those things that we think drive us
crazy about a person is really what
makes up that person
and we love them as a whole but we try
to pick everything apart
that they do
when we first started our ministry
god said i’m going to tell you three
things i want you to do and if you do
them i’ll bless your ministry
and every one of these was news to me i
didn’t even really fully understand what
they were
but he said do what you do with
excellence be a person of integrity
first thing he said
and basically
being a person of integrity means you
keep your word so even in the very
beginning what god put on my heart is if
you’ve taken a speaking engagement from
say
a small church
and all of a sudden you’ve committed to
them but you get a huge opportunity
to speak in a big conference
i want you to keep your word to the
first people
[Applause]
so it’s things like that from the very
beginning from the foundation of our
ministry
god was dealing with us about
truthfulness and
keeping our word and he said do what you
do with excellence i talked a little bit
last night about excellence
being an excellent person somebody who
always goes the extra mile
and being excellent
or doing something with excellence
doesn’t mean extravagance
some people think if they don’t have a
boatload of money they can’t do things
with excellence but all it means to be
excellent is to take what you have
however little that might be and do the
very very best that you can with it
even if you have an old car you can keep
it clean
[Applause]
amen
if you’re going to roll down your window
your car window at a stop sign and throw
your trash out
get the fish off your bumper sticker
amen
[Applause]
if we would just follow
one thing the bible says and we even
call it the golden rule
i guess that
phrase means hey this is like the most
important thing
and it basically is so simple it says do
unto others as you would have them do
unto you
what would happen in a family
or in the church
if people would just treat other people
the way they would want to be treated
or not say anything about another person
that you wouldn’t want somebody to say
about you
each one of us is responsible
to maintain peace
in our lives and as much as is possible
to be a peace
maker