We Love, We Serve, We Invest

This series was birthed from a conversation with the church in October where I facilitated a discussion surrounding our core values, vision, mission, and process.

Our first week we went over our core values:

Loving, Inspiring, Bold, Enthusiastic, Relational, Timeless, Yearning to Impact

Say those with me.

These speak to who we are and how we make decisions in order to accomplish what God has called us to as a body of believers.

Our vision statement reads

VISION-Liberty Baptist Exists to Become a Diverse Family that Inspires People to Follow Jesus by Multiplying Followers of Jesus who love, serve, and invest in our community and beyond.

Liberty Baptist Exists to Become a Diverse Family that Inspires People to Follow Jesus by Multiplying Followers of Jesus who love, serve, and invest in our community and beyond.

We’ve seen from scripture that being a diverse family lets us experience a little Heaven on earth. We also saw that to inspire people to follow Jesus we have to be an inspired people following Jesus.

Today we are going to look at what it means to Love, Serve, and invest in our community and beyond.

Today I want us to focus on three simple truths about us as a church family and that is this “We love, we serve, we invest.”

Say that with me. We love, we serve, we invest. Iif someone asks you what do you do at Liberty you can answer them, we love, we serve, we invest.

Why do we do those three things? What would be the impact if you did all three of those things through your local church?

Not only do I want you to consider what would happen to your life if you did these things, I want you to consider how the lives of those around you could be impacted.

let’s start with that first one

I. We Love

What’s the biblical foundation for this being part of who we are?

John 13:31–35 KJV 1900

31 Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32 If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him. 33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you. 34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

John 13:31-35

The setting that John is writing about here is the last supper.

Jesus has washed the feet of hisi disciples, and dismissed Judas to go betray Him.

Then he says the words we just read. I give you a new command, love has I have loved you.

While the great commission are the last words Jesus spoke before his ascension, before leaving His disciples at this dinner, he had a dialogue with them and this was how he started it, Love one another.

As followers of Jesus we are supposed to love one another and that is how we are supposed to be known.

Are you known for your love for others? Does your life reflect the love Jesus has for you by the way you love others?

Can I give you a few ways to determine if your loving like Jesus loves? These are not exhaustive but are a great start.

Ask yourself, am I being intentional in showing my love or am I waiting for people to ask me to love them?

You see to love like Jesus loves we must be intentional with our love. Our love to our family, our love to our friends, and based on the words of Jesus here, the love we show to fellow believers.

How can you be intentional? Just ask. How can I showyou love? You say pastor, that’s weird. I don’t care. Be weird. I like to ask people that I’m praying for “is there anything practically that I can do for you?”

I’ll pray and I know God working is better than me working anytime, however if I can do something and be used of God to be blessing and show love, I want to do that.

Have you asked your spouse recently..what could I do today to help you out? That’s a means of intentionally showing love.

Some have said “see a need meet a need” and that is a fantastic philosphy for someone to have. Sometimes I’m a little dense and Idon’t see the needs. I have to ask.

What are the needs of the church? Great question. We need volunteers in nursery. We need an usher team. We need someone to lead the first impressions team. We need help with our digital database and organizing it. We always need a clean up team for events.

Don’t be a consumer when it comes to church, or any relationship you have. Be a contributor.

it’s been incorrrectly said that marriage is a 50 50 relationship. You do your 50 and I’ll do my 50 and we’l;l have 100. That’s wrong.

All relationships are 100/100. You give 100 and I give 100 and we have the best relationhip we can.

Jesus didn’t give half of himself to us, He gave us everything He is. He was intentionally pursuing us. Then he said, love others like I’ve loved you.

2. The second questioin you can ask yourself is, Am I being sacrificial in how I show love?

Does the love I’m showing cost me something? Money, time, convenience? When Jesus loved, He loved sacrificially.

He was the lamb lead to the slaughter. He sacrificed Heaven, He sacrificed communion with the father when He hung on the cross, He sacrificed all that He was so that we could take part in all that He is.

It’s been said that to go up, you have to give up. If you want to go up in any area of life, you have to be willing to give up something to do it.

Are you willing to give up anything to go up in your love for others?

Are you willing to acrifice somet iime to go sit with a widow you don’t know to be an encouragement? We have one who needs visits.

Are you willing to sacrifice some money and time to cook a meal for people in need? We have someone right now that needs it

Are you willing to sacrifice time to serve in ministries at the church to love on the people here and the community we serve? We have opportunitines.

The last question I’d challenge you to ask yourself to see if you are loving like Jesus is this

3. Am I cheerful in showing love?

Man, you ever done something you know you were supposed to do but you didn’t really want to do? Ever been there?

It can be difficult to keep the right attitude towards it. What is it that impacts your attitude? It’s what we talked about last weekend, mindset. Or even better, heartset. What is your heart set on?

When you show love you don’t always start out desiring to. But when you see the impact of your love on the life of another person, your heart is impacted and your focused.

Too many of us wait until we feel like loving to show it. Choose to be cheerful when you show love and see what the impact from that is.

When we are a loving people, we are a serving people

II. We Serve

Mark 10:45 KJV 1900

45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45

Jesus came to minister. He came to serve others with his life.

Who does your life serve?

I recently read about a man that lived life to the fullest. He worked hard at is business, he had a great amount of success, and stayed on this path consistently until his final days.

As an older man he realized what he had done with his life and he was overwhelmed with regret.

Do you know what realization struck this man? Do you know what caused overwhelming regret to a succesful businessman with tons of money?

The regret that he had only lived his life for himself.

He never served in a soup kitchen, at his church, or anywhere that gave back to the people around him.

We can all think of this mans life and say “wow, what a scrooge”

Let me ask you again, if you looked back on your life this week, who did you serve?

The sole reason Jesus came to this earth was to serve others. But for what purpose? To feel betterr about himself? To feel fulfilled?

No. Jesus came to serve so that you could know Him and know the father.

Jesus said He is the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the father but by Him.

When we serve, no matter where we serve, when we serve in the name of Jesus to put others to Jesus, we are serving them like Jesus. Because pointing them to Jesus, points them to the Father.

Think of it this way. If I serve at a homeless outreach or in the church and I just help someone feell better, I’m like the person who gave a man a fish. Yes, I’ve improved his day BUT I haven’t done anything that will help with his life.

If I serve him some food and then go sit down with him to get to know him and help him get to know my savior, then I’ve not only helped his day, I’ve introduce him to the one that can change his life.

We can often pass off biblical service as just volunteering in a role somewhere, but can I point you to what I believe Christian service looks like? Now, real quick..I’m not telling you your not right with God if you dont’ serve this way. I’m telling you that by looking at the life of Jesus and the Apostles, we see how they served and should mimic their example.

Matthew 9:10–12 KJV 1900

10 And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. 11 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? 12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

Matthew 9:10-12

Acts 17:1–4 KJV 1900

1 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: 2 And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 3 Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. 4 And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.

Acts 17:1-4

Jesus didn’t just serve them soup and move on. Paul didn’t go to each town and ensure the homeless had a place to slleep, they ate with those that were arround them whether they were homeless, sick, or political elite of the day. They developed relationships and pointed them to the Savior.

When our lives our lived in service to Jesus, our relationships are abotu getting people to Jesus.

You say, Pastor shouldn’t you just be friends with people? Sure. But if you are friends with someone and wont’ tell them about Jesus, I question if you are really their friend.

Listen, I have a motive for every relationship I develop. It’s not how much money can I make off you. It’s not how can I get you to attend the church I preach at. My motive for relationships is about how I can get you to know Jesus, be closer to Jesus, serve Jesus better, or live for Jesus more.

Am I perfect at it? nope. Do I try? yep.

That’s how and why we serve here at Liberty. To help you take your next step to Jesus.

We serve because Love. We also invest becuase we love.

III. We Invest

Matthew 6:21 KJV 1900

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6:21

We spoke about this some the last couple weeks.

But what does it actually look like to invest into your local church and your community for the cause of Christ?

I know you all remember the message from last week where we saw that when it comes to giviing to the Lord, He calls us to give him our all.

When we have given God our lives, our hearts, our desires, and our passions, then all that we do will be for His glory. That’s when giving our time and finances becomes easy beccuase it is us liviing from the identity Jesus has given us and understanding the truly important things of life.

Thinnk with me for a moment.

You and some friends find a treasure map. You all begin working together to find the treasure. You spend countless hours togethere making mistakes, laughing, searching, and when you finally get near the treasure, you realize it doesn’t meean as much any more. Sure there is a desire to have it and a sense of accomplishment but what would you use the treasure for?

more timee with friends and family. More time creating memories.

We all begin life on a treasure hunt. Often looking at money as the tresure and seeking to accumulate abunch of it. However, what you discover along the journeey of life is that money iisn’t the treasure. It’s the friends, the memories you’ve created, the adventures you’ve had, that are the real tresuree.

What did it take to create those treasures? Time, money, and effort.

How are you investing your time, money, and efforts into the lives of others at the church and through the church for the glory of God?

You may be sitting back and saying 1 of three things right now:

Pastor, I hear you. I like waht your saying. But I’m just here to consume and be minisitered to.

Pastor, I love what your saying. I’ll come to services from time to time and I’ll toss some dollars in the plate or give a little onlinie each week and I’ll consider volunteering.

Pastor, I’m in. I’ll be here when the doors are open and when we have outreach opporunities. I’ve sat up recurring giving, I’ve decided to serve on a minnistry team. Count me in forr the next outreach. Wahtever you need for the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel.

Let’s call those the three levels of investment.

Consuming

Participating

Surrendered

And don’t surrender to me or the church. Surrender to God and ask him where and how He would have you serve. I believe it’s in and through the local church. We are a local body of believers that desire to see the gospel preached and multiply followers of Jesus that love, serve, and invest into their cchurch and community.

That’s my motive ya’ll. That’s the vision of Liberty Baptist. To become a diverse family that inspires people to follow Jesus by multiplying followers of Jesus who love, serve, and invest in theeir community and beyond.

If you are here and apart of Liberty, that’s what we are about. Helping you take your next steps with Jesus.

We love, we serve, and we invest into our community and Beyond.

IV. Our community and beyond

We have a two fold target audience. The local bristol community and the world.

Acts 1:8 KJV 1900

8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

Acts 1:8

How do we do this? With our #forbristol fund and our missions program.

We have funds where you can give regularly towards geetting teh gospel out to your local community and around the world.

In this last year we brought in over 34k in these two funds.

We used the majority of them by investing into worldwide missions. However, we used them here for ministering to local teachers, the police and fire ddepartments, and others.

These two funds are based on faith promise. That means we ask you to commit to giving by faith to them and we determine budgets off of that. For instance, our missions fund giving went down by $4k this last year. We are prraying for that to increase. Do you knwo how you can help with that?

If 80 family units, which is a little less than what we have here, would commit to give $5 more than they commiitted to give towards missions on a monthly basis, we woudl have our $5k deficit cared for.

If 80 family units said “I’ll give $20/mo to #forbristol” we would have a little over 19k to invest into our ccommmunity and mobilize our efforts.

Nwo, this is on top fo your regular giving for standard operationis of the church.

We have to invest into ourselves so we can invest in others.

We invest in ourselves, our community, and beyond so that the name of Jesus will be known.

We don’t point people to a church or a man, we don’t inspire people to be religious or traditionialist, we inspire people to follow Jesus and that takes: heart, time, talent, and treasure.

Time of response

What would your life look like if you were to love, serve, and invest into your community and beyond for Jesus?

What would your community look like if you were to love, serve, and invest into it for Jesus? How many people would be pulled from the bondage of religion and released to live in a relationship with Jesus?

What would the state, the country, the world, look like if you loved, served, and invest into getting the name of Jesus out more?

Will you? Will you love, serve, and invest into your community and beyond? That’s who we are at Liberty. You are welcome to be here but know, that’s the person each of us is striving to become and if you stay around long enough, you will too.

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