BY: Manny Bustos

This past Sunday Pastor Lyndol continued his sermon on The Me I Want to Be with the theme of The Unstoppable Community of Love.

He kicks off the sermon by talking about some of the statistics of happiness in life in saying that, through backed up scientific research from academic journals, our “happiness quotient” isn’t about how high our IQ is or how good looking we are or how many material possessions we have for that matter, but it’s really more about the amount of rich, joy-producing, meaningful relationships we have in our lives.

Now, in the rest of the sermon Pastor Lyndol presents us with the idea that Jesus’ life of love was like three giant signs that all pointed to the love we find in community;

1-Everybody’s Welcome, 2-Nobody’s Perfect, 3-Anything is possible.

In the first sign of Everybody’s welcome, we’re given two examples about loving the least of these. The first one is a story of a pastor in a doughnut shop who overhears a group of prostitutes in conversation and hears that one of them, whose name was Agnes, had a birthday that day and with the help of the baker of the shop and her friends, end up throwing Agnes a surprise birthday party. She was so moved she began crying and saying that she didn’t want to eat the cake they made for her because she wanted to show it to her mother. The second example comes from how Christ loved others. He talked to the sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf, and even prostitutes and slaves. Telling them how much He loved them and that they were healed and forgiven; giving them a second chance at life.

How awesome would it be if we lived our own lives in the same manner of these examples? Showing small gestures of kindness to our fellow man and remembering that you and I are all sinners and not to look down on someone because they happen to have made poorer choices than ourselves. That’s what Jesus was doing, loving people as much as the Father loved Him.

Sign number 2, Nobody’s Perfect; and here’s the gist of this one. Most of the time when we think about how we can serve God and others, we start to put up our own barriers of how we aren’t equipped for the task or “Hey God, I would really like to get more involved with church but right now really isn’t a good time.” Sound familiar? It does to me because I’ve had that same thought before. Jesus isn’t asking us to have our lives together before we come to Him, He wants us to come to Him as we are. He already knows the embarrassing, dirty parts about us, but that’s why He wants us to come to Him as we are because He can cleanse us of the sin that weighs us down in our lives.

Lastly, Sign number 3, anything is possible and it boils down to this; Transformation. And, not just any transformation, but one that involves you and the Holy Spirit. Pastor Lyndol talked about how the twelve disciples were a bit of motley crew, each one having their individual quirks. But Jesus, knowing this, asked them to follow Him all the same.  Why though? Jesus was great enough on His own that He didn’t need anybody else’s help. He called on them because He knew of the richness of fellowship and community and that through His examples, these twelve men would have a tremendous impact for the Kingdom of God. Now the disciples could have said no and not followed Jesus and just continued doing their own thing, but through the Bible, we all know how less fulfilling their lives would have been and how different the church might look like today. That’s the transformative power of God that helps change us into the Me that we really want to Be.