Notice. Pray. Obey.

Welcome to the Islands Christian Church podcast.

Subscribe to hear a new episode every week.

Thanks for joining us. So last week we talked about who

is our neighbor? This whole command to love the

Lord, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and

mind, and love your neighbor as yourself, the second greatest

commandment. And we said, well, who is your

neighbor exactly? And we said Jesus.

That was a common question that was asked of Jesus.

And Jesus answered that question in a story He told a famous

story of the Good Samaritan. And what we said last weekend is

that most of us cast ourselves as the what the Good Samaritan

like. In other words, we we tell the

story like we're the good guy. We read the story like we're the

good guy. And what I think Jesus was doing

in that story was trying to get us to see that we were not the

Good Samaritan, but that we were the beat up left for dead Jew on

the side of the road. And that how you determine who

your neighbor is, how you determine who your neighbor is

that you're called to love is a simple question.

If you were dying on the side of the road, from whom would you

accept mercy? In other words, who would you

let rescue you? Who would you let save your

life, which is draw any lines and say no, no, no, not you.

I don't want you coming to my aid.

I don't want you rescuing me. Or would you accept aid from

pretty much anybody if that would meant you get to live?

The answer to that question is obvious.

We would all accept aid from anyone.

So therefore, who is our neighbor?

Anyone. So who are we called to love?

Anyone. And everyone, that's our

neighbor. OK, so that was our question

last week. This week we're asking this

follow up question. How do we actually love our

neighbors? That's the question.

How do we actually love our neighbors?

Because here's the thing, when we talk about love in the church

world, it's so it's so very, you know, like undefined and it's

sentimental. And we do love everybody and,

and, and just just love people. And love oftentimes kind of gets

interpreted as telling everybody, you know, you're OK.

It doesn't matter what you do. As long as you know, you feel

good about yourself, we'll love you.

Like, that's not love, that's sentimentality, right?

So love without truth is sentimentality.

And so how do you actually have biblical love for your neighbor?

What does that actually look like?

That's what we're going to wrestle with today.

So here's the first premise that we have to start with.

You have inside of you, if you're a Christian, the love of

Christ. You have the love of Christ.

Paul talks about the love of Christ compelling us in his

letters. So you have inside of you the

love of Christ. Now, the love of Christ includes

things like kindness and gentleness, for sure.

But the love of Christ certainly is more than just being nice.

Like this can't be the welcome to Christianity where we're the

nicest, right? That's that doesn't sound all

that world changing. So what does real Christ like

neighborly love look like in everyday life?

And how do we do it practically? So to answer this question,

we're going to look at a well known story from the Gospel of

Mark. It's a miracle story, a miracle

story that happens in all four gospels.

And in the moment, in this moment, Jesus performs an

incredible, incredible miracle. But what I want you to notice as

we read this is that a lot of Jesus's miracles he did himself.

He was the agent of the miracle. You'd spit on some dirt and rub

a guy's eyes, which had to be a cool day, right?

And it's like, boom, that guy could see.

And then other times he would be like, hey, get up and take your

mat and walk. And that guy would get up and

walk. But this is a miracle.

Jesus actually did and executed through his followers.

And that's an important detail. He did a miracle, but he

executed it through his disciples, through his

followers. The disciples became the ones

through whom his compassion reached others.

His disciples became the conduit through whom his compassion

reached others. And that's a powerful reminder

for all of us if we're going to love our neighbors the way

Christ calls us to love him, love them.

This is this is key. Don't don't miss this if you're

going to, if you're going to love your neighbors the way

Christ has called you to love your neighbors, we're going to

get the biblical understanding of this.

It absolutely must be founded first and foremost in your

relationship with Jesus Christ. To try to love others without

you yourself. Being loved by and loving Jesus

is a fool's errand and is going nowhere.

You will end up loving your neighbors in what in Christian

terms we say the flesh, meaning you will do it in your own

power, in your own wisdom, in your own understanding.

In other words, you will be trying to love your neighbors

without knowing intimately the author of Love.

Does that make sense? In other words, Jesus is the

author and originator of love. He's the one that that came up

with the whole idea of love. You know, if you're a skeptical

and don't believe in this whole God stuff, don't believe in

Jesus. Here's what you here's what you

need to know is that that the idea of love doesn't exist

unless there's a God. It doesn't exist.

It's made-up. It's a made-up thing in the the

in Christianity is a is a, as a faith says in its founding

documents in the Scriptures. It says that our God is a is is

love. It doesn't say it's just a God

of love. It says God is love, that his

very nature is love. And so and so the idea that we

could somehow love people and love our neighbors without also

first and foremost being engaged with the author and originator

of love is crazy. So you got to get this, you say,

well, first command is the love of the Lord your God with all

your heart, soul and mind. And the second command is to

love my neighbor as myself. The reason why they're one and

two is because if you aren't not engaged in a loving relationship

with your Heavenly Father, it is impossible to be engaged in a

loving relationship with your neighbors.

You may be sentimental towards your neighbors, you may be

affirming towards your neighbors, you may be kind, you

may be nice, you may be all of those things.

It may feel good to you and your neighbors, but if it is not,

start with you, the believer Christian right now engaged with

Jesus Christ in a loving relationship that won't be love.

Is this clear? All right, so let's read Matthew

chapter 6, verses 30 through 44, and then we'll unpack this a

little bit. All right, the apostles, verse

30, the apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to Him all

they had done and taught. Then because so many people were

coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat,

He said to them, come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and

get some rest. So what you have is the, the

apostles have been out doing some ministry, doing some cool

stuff. They come back to Jesus.

They're all excited. Like, you know, like the little

kids are like, guess what? I did, Dad, you won't believe

this happened and that happened. They're coming back super

excited and they people have been coming up to them and

taking from them. But you know, and because

they're doing ministry and Jesus says to his apostles, Hey, check

this out guys, we need to get away.

You need some rest. You need to relax a little bit,

which is very interesting for those of you who do ministry.

If you serve in ministry here, every now and then you got to

hit the pause button and you got to go rest.

You got to rest. All right, Verse 32 So they, so

Jesus and the apostles, so they went away by themselves in a

boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leaving

recognize them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there

ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a

large crowd, He had compassion on them because they were like

sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many

things. By this time it was late in the

day and so his disciples came to him.

This is a remote place. They said it's already very

late. Send the people away so they can

go through the go to the surrounding countryside and

villages to buy themselves something to eat.

Now to me, verse 36 is the most like that's the most pastoral

verse that you that I've read a long time in the Bible.

And you say, well, how's that pastoral?

Because most pastors I know would tell Jesus, can you make

these people leave, right? Can you just make these people

go away for a little while? Can you just give us a break?

Like they're, they're, they're coming to Jesus going.

There's a lot of people and they're needy.

And I also know what to do here. Can you get rid of them?

Can you make them go and like go away?

They, they don't know what to do.

They're not sure what to do. They know something should be

done, but they don't know what to do.

So they come to Jesus and say send them away and in verse 37

Jesus says, but he answered, you give them something to eat, you

give them something to eat. And then they said to him, well

that would take more than 1/2 a years away.

Just are we to go spend that much on bread and give it to

them to eat. How many loaves do you have?

He asked. Go and see.

Or when they found out they said five and two fish and five

loaves and two fish. Then Jesus directed them to have

all the people sit down in groups on the green grass.

I love the I love the Bible, by the way, that Mark includes the

word green. Isn't that great?

He's like, you're like, bro, we figured grass and he's like, no,

I just want to make sure, you know, this was a pretty day.

This was a pretty day. The green grass verse 40.

So they sat down in groups of hundreds and 50s, taking the

five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven.

He gave thanks and He broke the loaves.

Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the

people. He also divided the 2 fish among

them all. They all ate and were satisfied.

And the disciples picked up 12 basketballs of broken pieces of

bread and fish. The number of men who had eaten

was 5000. So here's a miracle.

And these are the three ideas we're going to take from this

text today. You ready #1?

Love starts when we notice people's needs.

Love starts when we notice people's needs.

When you see it, when you see it, that's when love starts #2

love brings those needs to Jesus, love brings those needs

to Jesus, and #3 Love's power comes from obeying Jesus.

Love's power comes from obeying Jesus.

So love starts when we notice people's needs.

Love brings those needs to Jesus.

Love's power comes from obeying Jesus.

Now let's say that much more simply.

For those of you who take notes, here's a much more simple way to

say it. Loving our neighbors means we

notice, we pray, we obey, we notice, we pray, we obey.

Very simply, we notice, We pray, we obey.

So let's jump into that first idea.

We notice. Look at what Mark tells us.

Jesus noticed the needs of the people.

Mark tells us that he saw the crowd of people there had come

on foot and he had compassion on them because they were like

sheep without a shepherd. Now, there's a lot of

commentary. You know the Bible.

I don't know if you guys know this or not, if you're new to

the Bible. So the Bible is this book.

It's actually 66 books and there are every in the Bible.

You know, like the book, the Mark is a gospel.

It's like a biography and then they're on the Gospel of Mark.

There are many, many, many, many, many, many commentaries

written by scholars. Do you got is this new

information for people like so like there are commentaries and

there are there are, I don't know, hundreds of commentaries.

And so people write these books about the gospel of Mark, about

the, you know, the Gospel of Luke, about the book of Acts.

And so you the amount of information you have access to

is limitless. OK.

And the this whole issue around the feeding of the 5000, the

Gospel of Mark in this language that Jesus uses, that Mark uses

to describe Jesus's thoughts that they were sheep without a

shepherd. There's a good chance that this

crowd of people is literally 5000 men and that this is

literally 5000 men who are coming to try to convince Jesus

to be their military king, to be their military leader.

Like some of the language in here suggests that, especially

in John's as well. And that that what's happening

in this moment is the people have come to Jesus.

These men have come to Jesus and say, hey, listen, we've had

enough of the Romans. You've done some miraculous

stuff. You seem pretty awesome, and we

think you could destroy the Romans.

In other words, there's a good chance that what's happening

here are 5000 men. Imagine that five.

I want you to just imagine for a second if 5000 men of military

age showed up to say, you will be our king.

We want to make you king. That'd be tough to turn that

down with it. That's a pretty good army.

I'd be like, well, let's give this a shot, bro.

If I win, I'm the king, even if I only get this little small

part. But Jesus doesn't do that,

right? He he doesn't, he doesn't accept

the type of king they want him to be.

Now he becomes their king, but not the type of king they want

to be. They want him to be.

And what's interesting about this language, this sheep

without a shepherd language is that that language is actually

in the Old Testament to refer to an army without a leader.

That is one in the in the Old Testament scriptures, that

literally is how it's used in one occasion is an army without

a leader, an army without a general.

And it's used in the Old Testament to describe people who

don't have a guide to care for them, An army without a leader

or just the people without protection, a sheep without a

shepherd. Now when Mark uses it here, I

think he's trying to make something very clear is that

Jesus is ultimately for God's people.

From the very beginning of the Bible to now, to now, and Mark,

for all of history, Jesus is the one who cares.

In other words, he is and has always been the shepherd for

God's people. He's he is the one who truly

cares. And that's what we learned from

Jesus in this story is that he notices and that he cares and he

takes responsibility for people who are in need.

He notices and he cares and he takes responsibility for people

who are in need. And that's how neighbor love

begins. It begins when we notice and

when we care, when we notice and when we care.

When we start seeing people the way Jesus sees them.

When you start putting on, you know, glasses in the lenses let

you see people the way Jesus sees them, your hearts grow

softer, your compassion grows deeper, and your love becomes

more than a feeling it. It becomes attention.

Attention to them. Now, what keeps us from noticing

people's needs most of the time? Is it because we're just

self-centered and selfish and just like super narcissistic?

Is that the reason we don't notice people's needs around us?

Is that really what's happening? Or is it that we're just very

busy? Do you ever think maybe you

might sometimes miss people's needs around you because you

are? Hold on a SEC.

I got to I got to check my face. Oh, look, we're live and see

what's going on. I need to like this push real

quick. Do you think it's do you think

that ever happens that maybe we're buried in a device?

We're busy going from 1:00 appointment to another.

We're busy. We not necessarily something

we're going to, but does your brain run 90 miles a minute all

the time? We rush past the very people

that God has called us to notice.

So if we can't notice, we can't. Love, a few years ago I was

walking to a parking lot in a grocery store and I was with a

friend. It was pouring down rain and we

didn't have an umbrella. And we kind of took off running

in the rain to try to get inside the grocery store.

And as we're running, I noticed a little little old lady with

with a like a raincoat kind of over her head or something.

And she was pushing her groceries to the back of her car

and she had popped her trunk and she was trying to hold this

thing over her head and trying to unload the groceries.

You see, had a big basket buggy full of groceries.

And I ran over there and I said, get in the car, get in the car.

I got it. So she went and got in the car

and I unloaded her groceries in her trunk and I shut the trunk

and I pushed her buggy off and she thank you.

You're welcome. And I got inside and my buddy

goes, what happened to you? I said, I was helping a lady put

groceries in her car out there. He was there was a lady who

needed help putting groceries in her car.

I didn't even see a lady. I didn't see anybody.

He goes, you're you're kidding me.

Like you saw somebody putting groceries in the car in the rain

and you stopped to help them. I said, yeah.

He said, how is it? I just didn't even see them.

I said, I don't know. Try to get saved, bro.

I don't know what to tell you. You know what I mean?

So now I don't tell you that story to be like, oh, our pastor

is so great, although he is, that's not why.

That's that's not why, that's not why I tell you that story.

It is, it's, it's just a reminder that love begins when

we notice, we notice like we see things and we don't miss it.

We, we just kind of go, oh, I see that and and it's in my path

and I can help immediately. I can help immediately.

But let's be honest, not every act of love is that simple.

In other words, if everything was just as simple as helping

little old ladies load their groceries or hold the door for

somebody, then loving people would be easy.

Sometimes what we notice is way too difficult for us to handle.

It's way bigger than stopping and helping someone put

groceries in the back of a car. And that's exactly how the

disciples felt that day. They felt overwhelmed.

They looked at the situation. They saw the problem and they

said, man, this is a big deal. But notice what what they did.

They did bring the problem to Jesus and that's that's the

second point They prayed. Love begins when you bring the

problem to Jesus. They prayed literally.

They didn't pray, but we pray in applying this passage.

So that's our second idea this morning.

When we notice someone's need, we pray, we bring it to Jesus.

Listen to verses 35 through 36 again.

It says by this time it was late in the day and so his disciples

came to him. This is a remote place, they

said, and it's already very late.

Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding

countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.

Now, you could argue that their advice to Jesus isn't exactly

loving and and but it is exactly human.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by somebody's problems and said,

man, there's really nothing we can do with this, this

situation, This is beyond, they need to go out and figure this

out on their own. But notice the principle here.

While they didn't know what to do and while their first

instinct was to, you know, get rid of them, actually their

first instinct was not to get rid of them.

Their first instinct was what? To bring the problem to Jesus,

to bring the problem to Jesus. They recognize there's a real

problem that needs solving and then they bring it to Jesus.

They come to Jesus and they say, look, Lord, this thing is too

big. We don't know what should be

done. We know something must be done.

And so our suggestion to you, Lord, is send these people away

so they can get some bread and then get some food.

That's what prayer looks like when we notice a need that we

can't meet. Broken families, hurting

friends, some people in just deep financial need, people who

are far from God, that no matter how much we talk to them, we

can't convince them there's a God who loves them.

This is our first move to pray. Now, if you don't pray, if you

don't pray, you will do one of two things.

You will attempt to fix it and it'll be too big for you to fix,

and you will burn out and you will get cynical.

Anybody ever been cynical trying to help people?

Amen. Yeah, I've been in ministry a

long time, bro. Cynicism is like a cousin of

mine, always coming to my door. If you don't pray, then you end

up trying to fix it yourself. It's too big for you to fix.

And then you invite cynicism and burnout into your life.

Why? Because you didn't go to the one

who can solve it. You try to solve it on your own,

but the other option is if you, if you don't pray, you either

you're in cynical or burnout. But also if you don't pray, you

end up fleeing, you flee. So either you become cynical and

burnout or you flee, meaning you run away from that person.

Like this person's in need, they got something going on.

It's too big for you to solve. You don't know how to solve it.

You're not praying, you're not talking to Jesus about it.

You're getting cynical, you're getting burnout.

And then you're like, I'm not, I'm not talking to them anymore.

Who's that calling me? Oh no, ignore that call.

And you think I would never get to that?

No. Well, you do get to that because

there's this point where you're like, I'm just burned out on it.

I don't want to deal with it. I can't help them.

And it's all because we didn't stop and pray.

So the disciples didn't ignore the problem.

They didn't flee. They didn't get burned out.

They didn't get cynical. But they also didn't pretend

that the problem was theirs. They didn't go, well, I got to

solve this. And you know, Matthew and James

and John, they didn't get circled up.

You know, Peter, Jim, you know Peter, Jim, John.

Hey, guys, what we going to do? We got to figure this out.

We want to make Jesus proud of us, right?

Let's figure out a solution. We'll go tell they they didn't.

They didn't see it as their problem to solve, but they did

go and they talked to Jesus about it.

They did, in a sense, pray. They brought Jesus the problem.

Even with the wrong solution attached, they still at least

came to him and friend. That's your first move.

Your first move is not to strategize.

Your first move is not to to call a friend.

Your first move is to pray. And that is your after you

notice. Your first act of love after

noticing is prayer. Prayer invites Jesus into the

solution. Prayer admits this is bigger

than me. Prayer acknowledges I don't have

capacity to solve this, but I want to.

I want to. You see, This is why prayer is

the first move of a loving heart towards your neighbor.

Because if you love somebody so much that you're burdened by

their circumstance, that you're willing to go before the Creator

of the universe and intercede on their behalf, friend, that is a

deep love for that person. There's something else that

prayer does. When you pray and you talk to

the Lord about a problem, you see that you can't solve, that

you're not quite sure what to do, but you know something

should be done. Prayer softens your heart to be

part of the solution. Prayer softens your heart to be

part of the solution. You can see when I pray for

others and I ask Jesus to solve a problem in someone's life, he

turns around and oftentimes says to me, this is great, glad

you're praying for them, but I want you to be a part of the

solution. I'm going to have you help in

this situation. And that's exactly where we're

headed to next in this story. When we notice a need and we

bring it to Jesus in prayer, oftentimes we're expected by him

to obey him to be, to be part of the solution.

Now, sometimes He fixes it for us and we don't have anything to

do with it, but other times He fixes it through US.

He serves those people through US.

I mean, we are, after all, the first ones who brought them to

the Lord in the 1st place. We are, after all, the first

ones who interceded on their behalf and asked the Lord to

soften our heart toward them. And so we should at least be

open to this idea that we might be the ones through whom Jesus

is working. And so that brings us to the

third idea this morning. We obey, so we notice, we pray

and the number three we obey. When the disciples told Jesus to

send the crowd away, he surprised at me.

He goes, hey guys, y'all give them something to eat, which had

to be shocking to them. Their response was basically,

man, that's impossible. We don't have the resources.

Now that's important. That's what they're saying.

We don't have the resources. We don't we don't have the

capacity. We don't have the resources.

We cannot do this. But but wait a minute, Jesus

just command. He commanded you to do

something, but you can't do it. I mean, that's that's what's

going on here. Jesus is like you must feed

these people. Go, you go feed them Jesus.

We don't, we don't have enough bread.

We don't have enough food. It would take a half a year's

wages. We got to go into town.

Like, what are you talking about?

We can't feed. It's impossible.

But yet he commanded them to do something that was impossible.

So then he asked a question. Well, what do you have?

What do you have now? What's going on here?

Yeah. Listen, when Jesus calls you or

commands you or leads you or directs you to be a part of a

solution in someone's life, He will always take what you have

to do it with. He'll take what you have.

Now, will he multiply what you have?

Well, what what happened in the story?

They brought 5 loaves and two fish.

Did they? Did Jesus multiply what they

have? Certainly, yes.

And this is how the principle works. 5 loaves and two fish is

not nearly enough. But Jesus says to them, bring me

what you have. And so, hey, here's the command.

You feed them, man. We can't.

Can't feed them. What do you have?

We got 5 loaves and two fish. Bring me what you have.

You see how this is working? Jesus gave a clear command.

You feed them. We can't.

What do you have? Give me what you have.

Now guess what? Now you can obey the command I

gave you. The command I gave you was you

to feed them. And now because you trusted me

with your resources, you're going to actually be able to

obey that command. Don't miss this.

Jesus took the bread that they gave 5 loaves and the Bible says

that he gave thanks and that he broke it. 2 verbs gave thanks

and then he broke it. Friend, when you say Lord, I see

this person, there's a saying I'm burdened by them, I want to

help them, will you leave me on what to do?

Oftentimes he may say, well, this is how I'm leading you to

help. I want you to be a part of the

solution and it's going to include your resources.

This is the hard part. It's going to include your time,

your energy, your emotional energy, maybe your, dare I say

it, money. Now you're hold on brother.

Can I just go back to praying? It may include this.

It may include this. Let me help you.

But when you put those resources, your time, your

money, your energy, your emotional self, your words of

encouragement, when you put those resources in the hands of

Jesus, in other words, you'd say, Jesus here these things

belong to you. When you do that, then he

blesses them and he breaks them and he multiplies them.

And then the Bible says that he gave it to the disciples and

they distributed it. And that's what he does.

He takes your resources that you say, Hey, Lord, you own

everything. Here's everything I have is

yours. My money's yours.

My time is yours. My my emotional self is yours.

Everything belongs to you. I'm giving it all to you.

And he says, OK, thank you. I'm going to take it.

I'm going to bless it. I'm going to break it and put it

back in your hands for you to distribute, to use to serve

others. So don't miss this.

The miracle mood from the disciples hands first bread, 5

loaves of two fish into the hands of Jesus.

That was that's the first miracle.

By the way, if, when a human being like if you're in a group

of 5000 and you're starving and you have 5 loaves of fish, is it

your tendency to give it to one person?

No, your tendency is to be like, no man, we didn't, we couldn't

find anything. We might want to send these

people away. That's not our.

So the first miracle is you gave up the resources, you gave up

the five bread, you gave up the 2 fish, you gave it up.

That was with miracle number one.

And then the miracle number 2 was, was Jesus's miracle where

he took it, he blessed it, he broke it, and then he began to

multiply it and then he put it back into your hands, back into

the disciples hands and then they distributed it.

So notice the miracle was, hey, it was in our hands.

At first we gave the resources to Jesus.

He took those resources, he broke them, He blessed them, he

multiplied them and then he put them back in our hands and they

distributed out. That's how the miracle worked.

And it all started with prayer from the disciples to Jesus

going to talk to him. We bring what we have, we place

it in Jesus hands and then we obey what he tells us to do and

he multiplies it. And friends, Jesus can do

incredible things with your life with very little.

You think you need to be wealthy and you think you need to have

some kind of fancy job, or with very little, He can do amazing

things with very little, with very little of your time, very

little of your money, very little of your encouragement,

very little of your prayers, very little.

If you just give him a little, he takes ordinary obedience and

turns it into extraordinary impact.

It's what he does. So if something feels

impossible, I want you to talk to Jesus about it.

I want you to just say, hey, this is a situation.

I see Jesus, I want to help it, I want to solve it.

I don't know what to do. And then listen and do what he

says. You don't have to have enough.

You don't need to have enough. Did the disciples have enough to

feed 5000 that day? But did 5000 get fed that day?

That's the sermon, man. That's the sermon.

This is what obedience looks like.

It isn't always flashy, but it's always faithful.

You may not have much to offer, but friends, if you put it in

the hands of Jesus, you'll be amazed.

So how do we love our neighbors? We notice, we pray, we obey.

Super simple, We notice, We pray, we obey.

If you skip Step 2, you're cooked.

Is that OK? I can't say cooked.

Thanks, Aiden. You're cooked.

Cook's bad, right? Dylan?

Cook's good. Cook's.

What do you think? Bad.

I'm going with them. Cook's bad.

If you skip, skip two. I'm so confused right now, I

can't even keep up with it. Let me say it this way.

If you skip, skip 2, skip. If you skip Step 2.

And you don't pray. If you don't pray, that's bad

and not like bad in the 90s when bad was good, but that's like

bad. That's real bad, OK, it's

actually bad. No good.

Don't skip Step 2. Y'all will never forget this

part of this sermon. Like 10 years from now we'll be

talking about it. You, you notice, you pray, you

obey and obedience will cost you something.

So if you don't think you can give up something, don't pray.

I'm telling you. Because if you see a need and

you start praying about it, there's a good chance it's going

to cost you something. So if you know now you can't

give up your 5 loaves and two fish, don't pray.

You and I cannot fix every problem we see.

Can I say that again? You and I cannot fix every

problem we see. This is why prayer is so vital

because He's the one that directs where we should be

involved and where we should just keep praying.

But we can offer Jesus what we have and let Him lead us and how

we distribute our 5 fish and two, our five bread loaves of

bread and two fish. So when your prayer meets His

compassion, people experience neighborly love.

I got to say it again, when your prayer meets His compassion,

people experience neighborly love.

So how do I love my neighbor? I pray, I talk to Jesus, I let

Him guide me and direct me because He's the author of love.

So this week, don't wait for the perfect plan or the perfect

moment to love your neighbor. Just bring what you have to

Jesus. It could be as simple as it's

raining and a little old lady putting her groceries in the

back of a sedan and you're just going to get wet because that's

what loving others looks like. Will you stand with me?

I want to say a benediction over us.

So therefore, my brothers and sisters, as you go from this

place, open your eyes. Notice those around you bring

their needs to Jesus in prayer and then listen for the voice of

Jesus and do whatever it is he asks of you.

May his compassion flow through your life in all moments, and

may your ordinary moments become places where his love multiplies

like a miracle. Now you, my brothers and

sisters, go in peace and love your neighbor in the name of

Christ. Thank you, Amen.

Love you guys. If you enjoyed this episode,

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You can also worship with us in person in Savannah, GA or watch

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Have a great week.