Well, I hope there will be a lot of times where I get to say in the next few weeks, if the Lord tarries, if he waits, I hope there is a lot of times when I can say, please open your Bibles with me to 1 Peter, chapter 4.

In thinking about that, we’re all here this morning and everybody coming in with their tails wagging and excited. I think everyone’s excited because maybe you’ve been praying for this church plant for 20 years. Maybe it’s a decade. Maybe it’s a couple years and this is closer to home than Prescott Valley. I don’t know what your story is, but everyone’s excited, I trust, and it seems to be part of Canyon Bible Church of Prescott. And I’m thinking about this morning, thinking I can’t believe we’re here. I don’t know if you’ve had that thought. It almost seems too good to be true.

As I was thinking this morning, I thought more than just, I can’t believe that I’m here at Canyon Bible Church of Prescott, I can’t believe I’m here as a Christian. Why would he give his Son for me? His only begotten Son. I have three sons. I love them deeply. He gave his Son to die for us. So more than I’m astonished that we’re here as Canyon Bible of Prescott, I’m astonished that we’re here as Christians. Why in the world would he choose us?

But he has; and therefore, our only logical response is, okay, now we’re yours. Do with us whatever you want to do. And so as I think about the weeks that we’re going to be enjoying together in boot camp, I want to do a series called Give Your Life Away. That’s really the Christian life. It’s giving our entire lives to him and saying, now we’re an offering to you.

You know the world is okay with the idea of a savior coming to give them an eternal gift, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want that? You’re telling me I can have eternal life and it’s a free gift? I’ll take it. Of course, anyone in the world would want that. And even as we, together as a family, moved here December 1st so that we could be part of Arizona’s Christmas City, as I was going around and listening to radio stations and just seeing different Christian things here and there in the community, you hear the words–the invitation to unbelievers is accept the gift that God has given you.

Well, the New Testament doesn’t really use the words “accept the gift” language. The gospel call is, take up your cross (instrument of death), follow me, die to yourself daily. That’s really the gospel call.

Even as I was reading in Mark this morning, Jesus came saying, repent and believe. Follow me. It’s more than just “accept the gift.” I mean, who doesn’t like accepting gifts? It’s more than that though. Yes, it’s a free gift, but we fall to our knees and give our lives to him in order to receive it. We’re committed to the Lord forever.

So I thought it would be a good time to just start as a body saying, we’re here to give our lives to him. Let’s just make that clear together. We’re here to give our lives to him. We don’t add Jesus to our life so that he can kind of help us in our career. We don’t add him to our lives so that our marriage kind of goes well. Add him to our lives so that we’ll just kind of be moral people.

We submit to Jesus Christ because he’s king and we want to do whatever our king says, for his glory. So when you think of give your life away, I really want to look at a couple different areas the Lord wants us to give him our lives. You all know what the State of the Union is. It’s when the President gets up, customarily, reports to Congress and basically tells the American people this is how our union is. Here’s how the economy is doing. Here’s how the military is doing. It’s the State of the Union.

If you want to do a State of the Union of your own Christian life, you’d look at it in certain categories, and those are the categories we’re going to look at in the next couple weeks. You would look at your life of holiness. You would say, am I being a holy sacrifice for the Lord? What do I watch? What do I think? How do I resolve conflict with people? How do I meditate on the scriptures? How do I confess sin? You look at your holiness. So if you want to measure how well you’re doing as a Christian–how you’re growing–you want to consider how holy you are.

But that’s not it. You would also look at your evangelism. We’ll look at that in a few weeks. We’re not in heaven right now for a reason, because there are people around us that don’t know our Lord and need to. That’s why we’re here. The church comes together to worship and it goes out to evangelize. That’s why starting February 15 we’re going to start in Matthew 28 and say, what is the mission of the church? The mission of the church is to make more disciples.

So are we here for each other? Yes, we are. And, Lord willing, we will all grow together. The fathers in this room will be better fathers in Christ, Lord willing, in a year. The mothers, the grandparents, the employers, the employees, everyone in this room will be better at those things as they are better Christians growing into the image of Jesus Christ more and more every day. Lord willing, we will grow together as a body in a year.

But what’s also important is that more people are added to our number. We read that in Acts 2. The body coming together, worshiping, breaking bread together, coming to the Lord’s table together, listening to the teaching of the word so that they know how to live their lives together. And then what happens? More people were added to their number daily.

So we want to measure our Christian life and say, “Lord, how am I doing before you?” I’m a gift offering to you. How am I doing? Let me think about my holiness. Let me think about my evangelism. And there’s a third area. The third area that the Lord wants us to examine – he wants us to examine our commitment, not just to our own personal holiness, not just to the lost, but also to the church. He expects that we would be a part of the church.

I’m preaching to the choir here. You’re here in boot camp. I mean, you were smiling at a meeting called boot camp. I know I’m preaching to the choir, in large part. But this morning we come together and we say, how does the Lord want us to commit to the church? And that’s what we’ll look at this morning in 1 Peter 4.

1 Peter 4, we’ll look at verses 8 through 11. I’ll read them right now for us. I’ll start in verse 7.

The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

This group in here today is part of lots of other groups–a PTA, a quilting guild, a sports team, a political party. We’re part of groups, aren’t we? We are. A part of different groups. But there’s no group as important to the Lord as the church, as his bride. Now those groups are all important to you. You get excited about the groups you’re in. You get excited about the political party you’re in – sometimes. You get excited about the sports teams that you like and how you identify yourself there. You get excited about the school you go to. You get excited about the group that you’re in. And that’s good. Those groups are gifts from the Lord. Most political parties are gifts from the Lord. They’re gifts from the Lord. And those might be very important to you, but no group is more important to the Lord than the church. Therefore, no group should be as important to you and I as – look around you – each other.

This is what he says. They aren’t my words. They’re his. He expects a New Testament believer to be committed to a local church. The New Testament doesn’t know about people who are saved but don’t belong to a church. There’s no category for that. A New Testament believer is part of a local church. And by God’s grace, your local church is a little closer than it was a week ago. Thank you, Lord.

But we commit to the church. And Peter’s clear here. Petey … Peter … Peter. Did I call him Petey? Peter. He’s a brother in Christ. We’re on good terms. Peter is writing to a group of believers who are on the run for their lives. Now, if you ever get a pass for not being a part of a local church, it’s then. The government’s chasing me, trying to kill me and, therefore, myself and my family are going to pick up our stuff and flee to an area we don’t know and try to find other believers who’ll let us stay in their home. If you ever get a pass at not being part of a local body, it’s then.

Peter doesn’t give them that pass, so we don’t get that pass. And Christians all around us don’t get that pass. No, you must be part of a local body. And there are dozens of reasons why. And so we ask ourselves the question, well then how do I become a part of the local body? What do I do in the body? And he will teach us that in these verses.

So in these verses, and there are notes on the back of your little agenda/bulletin there for you. A little space for you to take notes. This morning we’ll look at two essentials of committing your life to the church. Two essentials of committing your life to the church. What must be true if you are actually going to be part of this church? And we need this message. This culture, this Christian culture needs this message today.

Way too much individualism in the professing evangelical church today. Way too much. It’s not just you and Jesus and everybody can just go jump in the lake if they don’t like me. It’s just me and Jesus. No, it’s not just you and Jesus. Jesus doesn’t want to be just you and Jesus. Jesus wants it to be you and his body. And we’ll see why.

1.  We must commit to loving the church.

So, two essentials of committing your life to the church. First, we must commit to loving the church. Loving the church. Verse 8: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” You see in the New Testament there’s a number of places where godly characteristics are listed; and love, very often, is at the top of that list. And the writers do that intentionally to show that this one trumps the others. If you’re loving right, then you’ll do the other things right.

Love is the Christian virtue that all the others flow from. If I love my neighbor well, I won’t gossip about them. If I love them well, I won’t steal from them. If I love them well, I’ll be patient with them. So love, above all, is important in the Bible. Love. “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly.”

1 John 4:21 shows the priority of love. “And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also” (NASB). So we say we love God, we must then love our brothers and sisters.

Matthew 22, a man came up to Jesus and said, okay, there’s lots of commandments in this Old Testament. There’s ten commandments. They’re expanded. There’s a lot to do. Tell me the most important ones. And so Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (v. 37). Seems obvious. But Jesus wasn’t done. “This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (vv. 38-39). And really, right there, Jesus is saying if you love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, all the other commandments happen. Those are the primary. Love God. Love your neighbor.

“Above all,” Peter says. He says, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly.” Earnestly: to stretch out for something, to want something, to try for something. Earnestly.

Now, everyone thinks they’re good at love. They do. Watch a high school senior who goes to prom. He thinks he’s great at love because he bought the girl a little flower. All right, that’s nice. But everyone thinks they’re good at love. Someone comes to you tomorrow at work and says, do you love your wife? Yeah, I love my wife. But it doesn’t mean we always are good at love.

The New Testament gives us all kinds of passages, which we won’t go through today, that tell us what love is. 1 Corinthians 13 is one I would go to regularly. 1 Corinthians 13 isn’t as romantic as it sounds all the time, by the way. Patient with one another, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. Not a lot of romance in there, but that’s love. That’s love. And so he says, above all, in the church, earnestly love one another.

Now, we need to let the New Testament teach what love is. We need to have New Testament love because all too often in a superficial church we’re okay loving people as long as they make me my coffee and it’s right there and they treat me nice and they speak to me when I walk in; but as soon as someone doesn’t make me my coffee or doesn’t smile at me the way they should or doesn’t do what I think they should in children’s ministries, then all of a sudden there’s gossip and there’s dissention and there’s disunity. That’s not love. Love is patient, kind, gentle, longsuffering. That’s love.

Hollywood thinks they know love. Hollywood love is raindrops, the man who hasn’t seen the woman in two decades and they turn the corner and run to each other and embrace and swing each other around and that’s love. Well, that’s part of love. And I’m all for romance. I mean I have one. But that’s not it.

Don’t think of life in the body as, it’s just going to be wonderful all the time in the church. Somebody will offend you soon. Whether it’s me or the person next to you, which might be your spouse, or the person you haven’t met yet that’s also in the church. Somebody will offend you. Somebody will have a disagreement with you. Somebody somewhere will not be patient with you. Whatever it will be.

Above all earnestly love one another. And that’s hard. But if you’re going to be committed to this church, if you’re going to be committed to any church, that has to happen. Love one another.

So I think a natural application to this passage from Peter is to stop right here, as believers in the new church on the first Sunday of boot camp and to say, is there any Christian that I’m not loving this way? And I would ask, is there any Christian you’re not loving this way in this room? In your home? In the universal body of Christ?

The Lord says in Matthew 5, if you think someone’s got something against you, if there’s some disunity between you and a brother, don’t keep coming to church and think you’re okay. Lay your offering down, go make it right and then come back and tell the Lord that you want to serve him and love him. So we need to do that.

So this might be a day where you go and seek forgiveness, seek reconciliation. I don’t know. But we can’t pretend that things are going great, Lord. New church. We’re together as a body. If there’s disunity already in the body, can’t do that. Peter’s clear–the Lord himself is clear in his Word. “Above all, love one another earnestly.”

And we don’t just go to someone when they admit that they’re wrong and then that resolves the conflict. It doesn’t always work that way. The Lord doesn’t do that with you. The Lord doesn’t do that with me. Rom. 5:8 – “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (NASB). Even if they won’t admit their fault, we go to them in love and seek reconciliation because they are our brother and sister in Christ. “Above all, love one another earnestly.”

And then verse 9 says this: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” Another way to love people is not just to earnestly do it, not just to do it and to eagerly stretch out and to overcome their weaknesses or forgive them, but another way to love is to show hospitality to one another. And again, think of first century context. So believers on the run, dragging their suitcases and children behind them, leaving their home and coming to an area, asking, are there any Christians in this town. Oh, there’s one over there. Knock on the door. Sir, can my family stay at your home?

And so Peter’s saying, show hospitality. Let them in. Let them in. And he says, without grumbling. Why in the world without grumbling? Well, we can do a lot of nice things for people. We just had Christmas. We bought people presents and that’s great. We can serve people and it’s my joy to wrap this package and give it to you or to have you over for a meal. And that’s great until they don’t say thank you in the way they should. Or until they don’t respond in the way you think they should. And then what do we do? Grumble.

Have you into our home. We’d love to have a fellow believer into our home. We’d love to welcome you from your persecution. And then a couple weeks becomes a couple months and all of a sudden they’re not making their bed very well and they kind of smell, and we grumble, grumble, grumble. And Peter’s saying, don’t do that.

And I think the application for us is, we’re all excited to be part of this group and to start doing things. And we’ve got groups we want to be in and ministries we want to be part of and things we want to do. And we want to do all those things, but we’re going to do those and we’re going to be excited to do them and then someone’s not going to respond to that act of service the way we thought they should, and in that moment instead – I’m out of here. Or gossip. Or grumble. It’s keep loving one another. Because you want people to be patient with you when you drop the ball, so we want to be patient with other people when they do the same.

So keep loving one another. Show hospitality without grumbling. And hospitality is a big way that we can show love even to an outside world. We may have people come in here that don’t know Christ and don’t have a home and this is not going to be a place where we stare at them and give them those angry looks, because the Lord didn’t do that to you while you were a sinner. We will show compassion and hospitality and that’s what Christians do. We show love. First and foremost we show it to one another. We speak well to one another in public, in private. We love one another. We do this without grumbling.

So we talk about two essentials to being committed to the church. The very first essential, if we’re going to be committed to one another in this body, is we got to be committed to loving one another. We’ve got to love one another.

2.  We must commit to serving the church.

Secondly, the second essential of committing to the church is that we must commit to serving the church. Commit to loving the church and, secondly, commit to serving the church. Verse 10: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” Each person has received a gift. The believer that’s been in Christ for five minutes has some way that he can benefit the body, and the believer that’s been in Christ for 60 years, 70 years has a way to benefit this group – the body of Christ.

“As each has received a gift,” what are those next two words? “Use it.” This is God telling everyone in the gym at Miller Valley Elementary School on January 4, 2015, use your gift to benefit one another. And don’t use your gift because this is a church plant and we just kind of need some help at the beginning. Use your gift because you are a Christian and the Lord’s given you a way to benefit one another. Already this church is doing that.

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” Now we know that God is spirit. God is everywhere, right? God is everywhere. God is spirit. But just for illustration’s sake, God is over here. The believer in need of something is over here. And that need can be a lot of things. The need can be physical needs, like the believer needs food. The believer needs employment. Or it could be that the believer needs to be rebuked in an area of their life.

Brother or sister, the way you respond in that situation must be Christ-like. They might need a rebuke. We all need that sometimes. They might need a rebuke. They might need to have their children cared for in the children’s ministry. We all have needs all the time as believers. That’s my point, okay? And God has everything. All the resources to give us all of those needs.

This passage is saying that God gives someone what they need because God has varied grace. Multi-faceted grace. All kinds of grace. You want money? God’s got money. You need food? God’s got the ability to get you food. You need clothes? You need someone to care for your children? You need someone to help walk you through the Bible? You need someone to help you become a better mother, father, husband, wife, better employer, employee? God’s got all of those resources. This passage tells us that there’s someone else in that equation. There’s a middle man. There’s the good steward. We take what God has given his church and we give it to those in need. That’s what this is saying.

So Christians have needs and we are here to take what God has given us as a gift to give it to them. So some of you can teach or speak the Word of God. You know the Bible. You know how to help people live wise lives. People need that. The body of Christ needs that and God has given you those gifts, not to puff yourself up to say, look, I’m some great teacher. I’m wonderful. I know Greek. Whatever it may be. God’s given you that, not for you, but for them.

So that’s why the message is God’s given everyone a gift. Use it. It may not be teaching. Some of you are stronger than others. You can do things that need moving and endurance in the body. Some of you serve and show hospitality. There are people in the body that need hospitality and you can do that. And God doesn’t just zap them with some magical hospitality. He does it through us. That’s the way he designed it. He can do it on his own to get it to them, but he uses us in so many instances. We’re good stewards of God’s multi-faceted grace.

When a five-year-old gets a Christmas gift, a big Christmas gift, like a hundred dollars in Christmas gifts, and they can’t give anything back – they don’t have money, they don’t have a job, they can’t go to Walmart, they can’t give much back – it’s cute. They get the big gift and they can’t give much back and it’s cute. When an adult receives a generous gift and never gives any gifts back to anyone – you think of a Christmas setting where you’ve got a 42-year-old grown man who’s receiving all these gifts and he doesn’t even think about giving anything to anybody ever. That’s no longer cute. It’s kind of sad.

The common statistic is that 20% of the people in the church do the work of the church. That violates this. And those words that we looked at – “use it” – in this passage, that’s a command of the Lord. So if we’re not using our gift, what can we say about that? That’s sin.

And already I’m encouraged that in this group so many get it, but we need to keep getting it. We need to keep serving one another, caring for one another, because we’ve all got needs. Every single person in this room – me, anybody – we need you. We need each other. I need you to come and rebuke me. I need you to come and encourage me. I need that and you need the same from everyone around. We need to do that.

That’s why God says, I’ve given you each a gift. Now go and use it. What’s hard about that? Honestly, what’s hard about that? Twenty percent of the people in the American church actually use their gift. That means 80% are disobedient to the Lord. We can’t do that. That can’t be us. That can’t be us.

Verse 11: “Whoever speaks” – and now we learn how we use our gifts. “Whoever speaks as one who speaks the oracles of God.” And this isn’t just whoever gets behind the pulpit on a Sunday morning and preaches must speak the oracles of God. Now, that’s certainly true. I need to do that. And as soon as I start not doing that, you need to come and rebuke me. We need to preach this, what he says. It doesn’t matter what I think about how the world works. It matters what he says. So the speaker needs to speak the word of God.

But this isn’t just about me back here. It’s about each other, as we’re on the phone talking through how to go through this work situation. We speak the word to each other. When we get together and talk about how to love our wives and husbands better, how to care for our children better, what to do with our money. We need to make sure that we’re giving each other biblical counsel, biblical wisdom.

There’s a fine line sometimes between biblical wisdom and what we think is right. We need to be careful there. We need to speak the Bible. But we can’t speak the Bible until we know the Bible, so we need to be a Bible-saturated, Bible-knowing, Bible-believing church. Whenever we start to try to help someone with words, we’ve got to do it from the scriptures. Have to. That makes us different than any self-help guru out there. We’re different because we have the God of the universe who tells us how to live. So we’ve got to speak the word of God.

The oracles were the Old Testament Scriptures at this time of 1 Peter. Now we know there are 27 more books of the Bible to make a total of 66 and we speak truth from those 66.

Col. 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Let the word of Christ dwell in this body richly, so that we can talk to each other about how to live our lives for the glory of the Lord. That’s the message. So we know our Bible and we teach our Bible.

The passage continues. “Whoever serves” – that’s one who serves by the strength that God supplies. So there’s a qualifier to those that are going to speak to one another. We speak the word of God. The qualifier for serving is serve in the strength that God supplies. What does it mean to serve in the strength that God supplies? Does that mean when I’ve got enough sleep I serve and no other time? That’s not what it’s talking about. It means serve in the way that God has gifted you. Serve in the way that God has gifted you, in the strength that God supplies.

So some of you shouldn’t be moving rooms full of furniture. You shouldn’t do that. There are other people that can. God’s given them the strength or the ability in that stage of life to do that. There are others of you that maybe should not teach a Bible study for whatever reason. Others of you can. My point is the Lord puts you in different places at different times and strengthens you in a unique way. And so you serve and you minister in the way that God has wired you. And all of those are wonderful. All of them. All of them are needed in the body. No one is more important than the other. We serve in the way that God has supplied.

I love to preach. That’s me. Last night Michelle and I were sitting there talking about what I’m going to preach next and I’m thinking about what I’m going to preach next. I’ve literally got the next ten years planned. And I know that I’m not sovereign; the Lord could change those plans. I get it, Lord, and I’ll probably change my mind. But I love thinking about that. I daydream thinking about teaching God’s word so that people understand it better, so that they can then understand it and go and do it better so they can honor their King. I get excited about that. I buy books about preaching. I love to study for preaching. I love to preach. I just love it.

Now, listen. You love something like that just as much as I do. I went to preach at a camp recently and I got to my room and there’s a huge gift basket. I mean huge gift basket with ginger ale and a little notebook, I mean just all – snacks. And I’m thinking, first of all, Peter died on the cross upside down, why do I get gift baskets? Honestly, it’s not right. But I do. They gave me a gift basket. But I also thought, if I was in charge of the gift basket ministry here at our church, it would be a pathetic ministry.

And there are some of you in here that as soon as I start talking about gift baskets to a visiting preacher, your wheels started turning. Oh, I know what I would put in there. And you would do that so well. And already in a month and three days people from this body have served our family so well. You’ve all got gifts and you use them well.

So let me ask everyone individually, how are you gifted? How’s the Lord equipped you? What stage of life are you in? What do other people in your life tell you that you’re good at for the body of Christ? Those are all important things to know because we want to be obedient to the Lord and this isn’t going to be a place where 20% of the people are going to do the work. A hundred percent of the people are going to do the work because the command – “use it” – is for 100% of the people.

Now, I get it, we’ve got senior saints in here, and it’s like, I can’t do much. You can do a ton. There’s so much for you to do for this body. Pray for this body. Financially give to this body. Meet with other people who come to your home and you can walk them through the Bible together for this body. There’s so much you can do for this body. You’ve got something to do. We’re not in heaven yet for a reason. You can do something.

So we use our gifts. And then we ask the question, why? Why do we love one another this way? Why do we use our gifts this way? We can think of some reasons and some good reasons. Because people have needs. That’s a good reason and that’s true. Because the Lord wants us to, so we would be obedient to him and we would be honoring him. That’s a good reason, too. The best reason for all of us to be actively loving one another and serving one another, the best reason is because he gets more glory. He gets more glory.

Now, theologians talk about two types of God’s glory: intrinsic glory – that means he is who he is. You’re not going to add to God. He is faithful. He is loving. He’s a judge. He’s righteous. He’s compassionate. You can’t add to who God is. That would imply that he had a weakness. Can’t do that. He’s intrinsically all glorious.

Theologians also talk about a second aspect of God’s glory: God’s ascribed glory. It’s how much glory he gets from his creation. And right now the earth is cursed. We still have sin in our members. The Lord does not get the glory he deserves from the world. The Lord does not get the glory he deserves from the United States. The Lord does not get the glory he deserves from Arizona. The Lord does not get the glory he deserves from Prescott. The Lord does not get the glory he deserves even in our own homes.

He deserves more glory. And that’s why we want to become more and more like Jesus Christ every day so that he gets more and more glory. So that as our kids grow up and grandkids and neighbors, as we–every passing day our desire as believers is that he would get more glory from our lives as we look more and more like his son, right? This passage is saying, if we love one another and serve one another, he will get glory in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. That’s what it says.

If we’re serving and loving one another, God will be glorified through Jesus Christ. We come here and sing to the Lord. We’ve been excited about this new church and we want to give glory to the Lord. We can’t say, Lord, we want to glorify you, and hold grudges in the church, in the body. We’re not giving him glory. And we can’t say, Lord, we want to glorify you and not serve in any way in the church.

I’m not talking about formal service. Like everyone needs to have a title in something. But it can be informal ways as well. Praying for one another. Speaking the truth to one another in love after the service. Whatever. You’re serving the body. It doesn’t always have to be formal with a badge and a title and a jacket, whatever. Informal as well. The Lord will get more glory if we’re doing that.

If you want an illustration of this, think about having a duffle bag. You got a duffle bag. Every morning you pick up your duffle bag. You get out of bed, step on the ground, pick up your duffle bag. And there’s lots of bottles. Think of those little plastic water bottles. They’re full of bottles and there’s bottles in the bag every single morning you wake up. And those bottles are full of ascribed glory. Ascribed glory.

You get ready and maybe if you go to work somewhere, you’re going to the store first thing in the morning, you’re going and someone cuts you off. Someone doesn’t drive as well as you do. Someone cuts you off and you either shake a fist or glare or mumble something or, the funniest of all, you pull up next to them and stare at them. What’s that going to do?

In that moment, you’re taking a bottle of that ascribed glory and you could have responded to that driver in the way that Christ would have, and you could have offered that to him. Or you could take it and keep it for yourself and you can make yourself glorious by the way you treat them. You’re not as good as I am, other driver. You choose in that moment to ascribe glory to the Lord or to ascribe glory to yourself.

You have countless choices every single day about what to do with your time, your children, your spouse, your grandchildren, the lost around you. You have countless choices about whether to ascribe glory to God or to yourself. So at the end of the day, if we’ve given one bottle of ascribed glory to the Lord and kept the rest for ourselves, we have to recognize that. And this is the place where God is telling us, do these things and I will receive more glory. Love one another earnestly. Serve one another.

And so if we’re going to be a church that glorifies the Lord–just between us here, not all churches function the way the Lord wants them to function, and we can’t think that just because someone’s going to get up here and preach the Bible and we’re going to sing some songs and some of them are going to be hymns and it’s going to be a real biblical church, we’re not going to assume that that automatically means we’re glorifying the Lord. It doesn’t mean that. We need to do what he says brings him glory. And he says use our gifts and love one another earnestly. We have to bring him glory in the ways that he says. So he gets glory from us and we commit to the church by loving and serving one another.

So I have some questions for you to consider this week – today, this week, whatever. Two questions. How can I love more? That’s question number one. How can I love more? And that’s with the Biblical understanding of what love is. How can I love more? And so under that one question, how can I love more, I’m going to give you two parts. I know I’m throwing a lot of things at you. How can I love more?

Two parts to the question. First, consider your forgiveness. Consider the forgiveness you have given or have not given another believer. And there may be something for you to do this week or some way for you to make that right.

So how can I love more? First, consider your forgiveness. Second, consider the unknown; and when I say unknown, I’m talking about an unknown person, because the command was to show hospitality to another believer when they’re in need. One thing I’ve heard as we’ve kind of gotten ready for this day is, many of you have gone to Canyon Prescott Valley and you’re saying things like I just met so-and-so at the Christmas party. I never met them before because we go to different services. Right? Well, now we’ve got one service and so let’s try to get to know each other better. And that would just be a natural implication of this. I want to show hospitality to new brothers and sisters I don’t know very well and I want to love them.

So how can I love more? First, consider your forgiveness. Second, consider the unknown person now in your church.

Second question. First, how can I love more? Secondly, how can I serve more? Or how can I serve? Maybe some of you don’t need to serve more, but how can I serve better? Maybe that’s the better question. How can I serve more? How can I serve better?

And again, under that I give you two things to consider. First, speak the Bible to one another. Everyone is a preacher in some regard. Everyone is to influence someone else with the scriptures.

That passage I read in Colossians 3, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” that wasn’t written to preachers. That was written to the church. How can I speak the Bible to people better? Maybe that means knowing the Bible better. Maybe that means you know it, but you need to speak it more. You want to bring it to more people. You want to encourage people with scripture. So whatever it is for you, how can you speak the Bible better or more to other believers?

And secondly, how can you serve eagerly? We read Psalm 100 before we sang together and it says, serve the Lord, but there are two other words after that. Serve the Lord with gladness. The Lord doesn’t need our rote routine – sometimes grumpy service. He needs our joyful service. He wants our joyful service, I should say. Serve the Lord with gladness. How can you serve eagerly?

So the two questions today: How can I love more? How can I serve more or serve better?

I know a man – just spoke with him yesterday. He works a full-time job, is a father of three, husband of one, he is a leader at the church, he meets every Friday morning with a number of younger leaders to help encourage them in their leadership of the church, he takes countless phone calls during the week to help others grow in Christ and to become better husbands and wives and honor the Lord in their money. This is pretty amazing.

I know another married couple who the husband works full-time, so does the wife. She does it in the home. He does it at the place of employment. And they’ve got kids and they love their kids well. They serve in student ministries at their church and they give their time, they give their money, they give even vacation time. They want to help the body grow. They evangelize people. They help new believers grow. That’s just a part of their life.

I know a retired couple that are well into their 80s and one of them was well into his 80s. He went to be with the Lord just four weeks ago. Alan was his name. And Alan would – back at my old church, every Sunday we had communion. He would be one of the men that would serve the body communion. And he and his wife were part of a college Bible study. Not a lot of 80-year-olds in college Bible studies, but it was wonderful. He wasn’t a teacher at the study; he just went there and tried to encourage the young people in that study. He prayed for them. He was always smiling. When I think of Alan, I think of him smiling and shaking my hand, warmly. Serving communion – 80 years old. Serving in college Bible study – 80 years old.

I think of Alan. I think of the man I told you about. I think of the husband and wife I told you about. And we could think of all kinds of adjectives about those people, can’t we? Extraordinary, exemplary, loving. I think the New Testament has a better adjective: normal. Giving your life to the church is normal, everyday, good old fashioned Christianity. My prayer is that Canyon Bible Church of Prescott would be a normal church; and therefore, because there are too few normal churches, it would be an extraordinary church. Normal Christianity.

We’re all together here saying, we want to give our lives to each other, because when we do that, we’re giving our lives to you. Let’s pray.

Father, you deserve our best, always. You deserve our best for one another. And Lord, every single one of us falls short. As we’re looking at this passage in 1 Peter, our hearts, if they have been regenerated by you in salvation, our hearts are saying, yes, we want to be like that. Yes, we want to do that. Yes, we want to do that for your glory. But if we’re honest with each other, we don’t always do that well.

Lord, I’m asking you to forgive us for that. Forgive us for any shortcomings. Forgive us for not obeying the simple command to use our gifts. Just forgive us. We swim in your grace. And forgive us and bring us joy knowing that those sins are forgiven and then launch us into faithful service to you. With those joyful, forgiven lives allow us to launch into service for you. Not so that Canyon Bible Church of Prescott would be seen as amazing and wonderful and the best church in Prescott. Big deal. We pray that people would think of you, your Son, as the most glorious, most wonderful being, person they have ever encountered and they would give their lives to you. Lord, allow people to be drawn to your Son because they see us functioning like him. And we pray all this in his glorious name. Amen.