27th February 2022 - Teaching Service - Peter Kasirivu - A love that changes everything

Bay and then Peter's going to speak on a love that changes everything. Father,

I thank you for my brother, Lord, those from another nation.

Lord, he is still my brother. And thank you for Peter. Thank

you for his ministry. Thank you for what you're doing through him and the

Life Links network in Uganda. Father, we pray that you continue to bless

it. You continue to keep them safe and continue to multiply what they set

their hands to do. Father, I pray for us in the room listening

now and listening later. Lord, would you open our ears, would you

soften our hearts? Would you speak to us? O? God, Lord,

be ready to hear from you this morning in Jesus' mighty name. Amen.

Now, my name is Peterka City Woman pastor here in Uganda, Africa.

The chance that I'm in part of this is called Gabba Community Church on

the shows of Late Victoria. I'm so excited today that the Lord has given

me the opportunity to preach and teach and share the message with you. They

are a seer family. Pastor Dale, thank you so much for allowing me

and inviting me to be part of your church fellowship today. Now, friends,

I have a message for us this day and this is the message about

love. What does it mean to love? Actually, the title of our

message is love that changes everything, Love that changes people, but also love

that changes us. You know, this has been a very very difficult season

for all of us practically around the world. It's been tough. It's been

very very difficult. And as a pastor here and Uganda, I've realized that

it's so important for us as Christians to actually love our neighbors, but not

just love them, but love them practically. So today we are going to

be sharing a story that all of us knows, the story of the Good

Samaritan, our friends. We all know very well that over the thousands and

thousands of years the people who are religious have been known to be loving people.

That's what we know. But also we need to realize that over time

things change. In the last so many years, the evangelicals and the mainline

churches have had some real serious differences. The mainline churches have actually done a

lot of works, the Gospel of works, and for those of us evangelicals,

we have actually done a lot about the Gospel which are called the Gospel

of Salvation. But I would like us to realize that the Bible does not

split what it means to follow Jesus and what the message of Christ means.

It is all a holistic message and the Lord is looking for us to really

be real Christians. Now, the current pandemic has challenged the way we live

as Christians. It has actually done a lot to help us realign our faith,

realign our values, but also become the real Christians that God has called

us to do and to be. I live in a very very broken part

of society. I live among us very very poor people, especially here around

where we do the church ministry. Not only poor, but we also have

so many people who are you know, drug addicts. We have people who

are you know, prostitutes. We have people who are doing all kinds of

things now here Your God that we've had lockdowns, just like you people in

the UK, where the lockdowns are being real lockdowns where we could not go

out to work, where life was hard and very very challenging, and because

of that, very many people found themselves not working, very many people found

themselves starving. And what it needs necessitates is for us Christians to rise up

as Christians. I would like to begin before I go to the story of

the Samaritan, I would like to begin by actually reading for us a potion

that we all know very well, found in the Book of Luke, chapter

four and verse eighteen. This is what it says. The spirit of the

Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the

poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery

of sight for the blind, to set the oppress free, and to proclaim

the year of the Lord favor. Now, for those of your Bible readers,

you know where this comes from. This is the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

He is in a synagogue and it is his first standing up practically to

speak and freach the message. And where as he goes, he goes to

the book of Isaiah, and he actually courtes Isaiah. Now, Isaiah was

prophesying about who Jesus is and how and what he's going to do. So

he says, Jesus says, the spirit of the Lord is on me,

And what is happening after the spirit of the Lord is on him? He

says, I have been anointed to proclaim good news to the poor, and

he has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners. Recovery of sight for

the blind, and to set the oppress free and proclaim the year of the

loose favors. So Jesus was saying, I have come. My arrival is

all about bringing the good news of our God. The father. Jesus was

a proclaimer, was a deliverer of good news to wound that is broken.

Now you and me will leave among as broken people. People were suffering,

white paying people were confused, but also people were hopeless. So the gospel

of Jesus Christ, the message of the Bible, is a message which we

call good news. And what does that good news do? It gives hope

to the poor. It gives freedom to those who are in prisoned, either

in sein or in bondages, in addictions. And then also bringing enlightening,

which means he says, I have been anointed to actually bring sight to the

blind and also to set the captives free. Now, for many of us

also we know that setting the captives free is to deliver people from the bondages

of the powers of darkness. The message of Jesus, when you start looking

at it and break it down, this is what you find. He putted

the gospel of salvation that see us would repent. He healed the sick,

Jesus fed the poor, fed the hungry. But not only that, he

rescued those who were in trouble, and was also an advocate of the old

breast. That all this is a part of the Gospel that the Lord has

given to us. And for those of us who are evangelical Christians, this

is a message for us that the Bible is holistic. We need not to

take one part and leave the other. Every person on the planet needs the

whole message of the Gospel. Unfortunately, many of us in the vanierlical world,

we've not done it too well. We are focused on one part and

we've left other people to focus on the other. We have actually focused alone

on the preaching of the world. But when we look at Jesus's message,

it was both word and deed. That's what the message of Jesus Christ was.

It was the Bible, and it was the feeding of the poor.

It was deliverance from demons, but also delivering people from poverty and hunger.

That's the calling that God has given you and me. So what I see

here is that the message of the Gospel is both spiritual and physical, or

spiritual and physical. It is about the now, and it's about heaven.

It's about our role as the church to share a bit of heaven here.

We all know. The Lord tells us in the Lord Is Prayer, our

Father, who are in heaven, how LOLd be thy name, thy Kingdom,

Come on earth as it is in heaven. People need to test the

goodness of heaven from us who have tested the goodness of God. That's why

we need to touch the poor, heal the sick, love the people who

are oppressed, be deliverers of justice. So now let's go to our story.

And our story is the good Samaritan that you all know very well.

It's a story where Jesus begins by teaching of what it means to practically love

someone. He tells us what it means, and the very interesting thing is

that he's speaking among us, very religious people, and he wants to bring

a point to us. My prayer is that Jesus will bring a point to

us Christians who love him and serve him. In the twenty first century,

look chapter ten and Puse twenty five. On one occasion, an expert in

the law stood up to test jesus teacher. He asked what must I do

to inherit eternal life? Verse twenty six. What is written in the Lord?

Now, Jesus is asking, He replied, how do you read it?

How do you read it? Verse twenty seven. He answered, love

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

and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your

neighbor as you love yourself. Now, this is a person who is trying

to test Jesus, who is a religiously very person. He's asking Jesus,

and this is what Jesus says, you have actually answered correctly, answered correctly,

love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as you love

yourself. So he says, you go on and do this, then you

will leave. In other words, when you love God with all your heart,

with all your soul, with all your mind, I love your neighbor.

You are said, you can actually go to heaven anytime you're good,

our friends. Jesus wanted to teach a deeper lesson to the people around him,

so verse twenty nine, but he wanted to justify himself, so he

asked Jesus, now, this is a religious person. He's asking, who

is my neighbor. He's asking Jesus, who is my neighbor. Then Jesus

tells a story that has become one of the best stories in the book.

Look chapter ten and verse thirty three. But as Amar return, as you

journeyed, came to where he was, and he so objumped a few verses.

There he journeyed and came and is so where he will, and when

he saw him, he had compassion. Now let's just go back with a

bait. Someone is moving, traveling around the both the villagers are on the

roads and he falls among us criminals who beat him up and rob him off

everything. So Jesus speaks and says, by the way, when this happened,

several people passed by, including business people, good people, busy people,

but also including religious people who passed by. So Jesus goes on to

explain what exactly happened when the Samaritan who in those cases or in those times

sam Items was not a real Jew or they could probably have been half Jews.

Some of it Tims were not very much respected in their society. Now

Here in Uganda we have very many tribes, and what I found among us

tribes is that many times the tribe that is next door, you don't actually

usually are not friends with them. So normally other tribes have kind of conflicts

among us other tribes. Now the Lord is helping us, But that used

to be very, very very strong in my society. So let's go back

to this man. So the Samaritan, who is not respected amongst the Jews,

who is despised and looked down amongst them, he finds a man beaten

on the street, and the person who is beaten on the street is beaten

by Jews. And the person who is beaten is a Jew himself. Okay,

Now, a person who won't be a stranger, who won't be a

foreigner, would be someone you wouldn't expect to care. The Bible here tells

us that he passes by, and the Bible tells us when he saw the

person bleeding, he had compassion on him. The Bible tells us he went

to him, bound up his wounds, poured an oil and wine on this

person, sett him on his own donkey or horse. The Bible doesn't tell

us brought him to an inn, a lodge, a hotel and took care

of him. And the next day he took to Denari which was the kind

of money they had give them to the innkeeper, saying, take care of

him, and whatever more you spend when I passed by, I will actually

pay back. What a beautiful story for all of us to learn from.

One is the first part of the story is a negative part of the story

in that the people who are his own, the people who are religious.

Now, I'm a pastor, so in society, I'm a religious person,

and we expected to laugh, we expected to actually have of compassion more than

other people. So the negative part of the story is that the priests,

the Levites acted very poorly. They looked they passed by. I think they

say, oh, this person is going to actually contaminate us either way he

is a criminal, or maybe he's a drunk, or or they would actually

judge you and say, I think he was careless. That's why he suffered

the way he suffered. That's a negative part of the story, but it's

a learning to us. Does your faith challenge you enough to act when you

see pain, when you see suffering? If your faith does not, I

always wonder is your faith working for you? Now? The Bible says something

very very practical that many of us don't even know or have never read.

In the Book of Proverbs, chapter three and as tunis than, the Bible

says, do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it is in

your power to help them. That is perhaps free and use twenty seven.

I'm using the New Living Translation as a as a translation to help make this

very clear. Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it is

in your power to help. So what I see here the Bible is speaking

to us is that when you see a situation like this and it is in

your power to act, you actually need to do it. Don't you see

so much in society that many of us care and are very selfish about life.

Whenever we see someone suffering, we actually say, I think it's because

they're lazy or because they don't care for themselves. So we tend to blame

before we help. But the Bible tells us and challenge us that if it

is in our power to act, let us act whenever we see the situation.

Now, for those of us who are Christians, this is a very

strong message, the message of the Samaritan. Someone said this that people don't

care about how much you know until they get to know how much you care.

And that's a message for me as a pastor many times and they tell

people I love you, but they need to see action. It needs to

go more than words and become actions. So the main message of the Samaritan

is about compassion and about love. Now, remember we are talking about love.

I've been friends and partners with an organization called Compassion International, and I

know you people in the United Kingdom know a lot about them. This is

the definition of what compassion is. Because the Bible tells us that this man

had compassion. What does it mean to them? Compassion is to have it

to okay, this is the way they're define it. To emphathize with someone

who is suffering and to feel compelled to reduce that suffering. To emphathize with

someone who is suffering and to feel compelled to reduce that suffering. This is

a very very powerful definition of what it is. In other words, that

love and compassion is not feelings alone. It involves action that will reduce the

pain. So compassion is a heart issue. Love is a hot issue.

It moves us to act and not just see it and pray. So when

you think about love, what comes to your mind. It is both a

feeling and an arcid It is an attitude, but it must be followed by

an action. So for us Christians, what we do to show the world

that God loves them is what love is all about. So that means that

as Christians, we should love our friends with our feelings. We should tell

them that we love them, but that love should go beyond what we say

to what we do. So let's just look at the Samaritan because it's very,

very practical. He moved from where he was to where the man was.

Remember, he's walking and he's seeing a suffering man on the side of

the road. So what does he do. He stops and he moves from

where he was to where the person who was suffering was. So what that

means is that our compassion and our love should move of us from where we

are to where the suffering person is, from where you are to where the

suffering person is. There's something else this man did. He actually bound up

the wounds of the man and it took the man to a safe place.

He did not leave him on the street. He took him out. So

what does that mean Our love and our compassion should get us directly involved.

Now you are from the Western world and Western world, you are known to

have been generous for the last so many centuries, especially you people United Kingdom

and the people in the United States of America. You are known for your

generosity. But let me tell you this. Being generous has a little bit

of difference from being loving and compassionate. You can actually give all that you

have. You know this in first Quoring Fils Chapter thirteen. You know that

some people will say I gave up, I gave I gave him. I

said no, no, no, no, no, no no. Love

is more than that. So this man God directly involved. So the question

I want to ask him, when you see the pain and the suffering of

the people in your community, do you get involved. Yes, we can

share our money, but it needs to be more than our money. This

man went, got off his horse, got off his donkey and went to

where the man was. He picked him up, he cleaned him up,

and it took him to a place of safety. So the Lord is calling

us to act on what we believe because that is the right thing for us

to do. There's something else. He paid for the treatment. So in

other words, our payment, our sharing of our money should be should come

later, not the first thing. Many many times we act by giving out.

Giving should happen, but it should not be the first thing to do.

So he paid and treated and he spent his money. So a few

things we see here. Compassion costs us, love costs us. We have

to go out of our way to help financially. So if you can look

at what we've just seen today, is that the Samaritan men moved from where

he was to where the need is. And God is calling us at the

Church of Jesus Christ, to get ourselves from our comfortable zones and go to

the places where pain is. I always challenge my people that we need to

go to pleasures which God is moved, that we will be moved by the

things that God is moved about. And you will never be moved until you

go into a situation where I come from. Here in Uganda, we have

a slam and Islam is called Katogo. During the lockdown during the pandemic,

we also had a flood. It was terrible, so so many people lost

their homes because the lakes, the waters of Lake Victoria goes up. It

was painful and it was difficult. So I remember going to that place,

and I could not believe to see so many people living in houses which were

already underwater because they didn't have anywhere to go. So what I found that

if you want to increase in your love and in your compassion, it is

important to go to places where your emotions, your nose, your feelings will

be challenged by the pain that people go through and go to. Can you

pray about those kinds of places? Can you get out of your comfort zone

and go to those places of pain? But then God is challenging us to

act on what we see. Act. This man acted, he got involved.

But also we need to spend some of our money. Now I want

to summarize my message or to end my message by talking about why we should

act as Christian. Why love must be love of action, Love must act

because we are commanded to act. It says, love your neighbor as you

love yourself. It is not a suggestion, it's a command. Love your

neighbor as you love yourself. Why should we act as Christians because we have

a different heart. Now, I know that sometimes my pronunciations are a little

bit difficult for people because I'm here. So when I say heart, I'm

trying to say, h e a rt. Jesus has given us a different

heart. I am different from the man outside there. Something happened to me.

I had an encounter with Jesus. He saved my soul, he changed

my heart. And because I've changed, my life should be the life that

shows he who changed me and he whom I belong to. So we have

a different heart. But also why should we do that, because all good

people do. I always tell people our acts of love should go beyond the

acts of religious feeling the people who do not know God. Our acts of

love should go beyond the governments who in whose countries will leave. We should

not actually delegate works of action and compassion to the government. Compassion, generosity

and love for the poor and the neighbors actually started with Christians. We should

not delegate it to the government. Good people do that. We should not

think that Red Cross will do our task. Friends, there is also what

they call the Crescent Cross. The Crescent Cross I think it is. It's

not the Red Cross, but it's the Muslim side of it. We shouldn't

we should do more than what the Muslims do, what the Red Cross do.

Someone once said that I think was a British we lived a long long

time ago. In your car trip, he said that the only thing necessary

for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. This season

of the pandemic and the pains and the poverty that has come through this world,

this will lockdown on all kinds of things, has shown us one thing

that it is time for the Christian community to rise up and be the feet

and the hands of Jesus for our generation. Today. The Lord has blessed

us to be a blessing, and the Lord has called us to be a

channel. And when we open our hands to give, we open the channel

to get more people to give. But also when I do that, I

become a connuit for God to use to be a blessing. So, friends,

I just want you to know that we love you with the love of

the Lord. And my prayer is that the Gospel will be practical by us

being the lovers of our neighbors. As a ministry, we have done that

through the pandemic. We have fed the poor. We have gone and knocked

on people's houses. We have moved people from those areas of landing to other

places. We have had to look for rent for many of these people for

a few weeks as the flood waters are continuing, when we've had to help

kids go back to school because we knew that God has called us to do

that. And during the pandemic we realize that so many widows we are actually

stabbing, and many often people chi people who needed more food in order for

them to be able to survive and take those very strong drugs. The people

who drive this little commuter are your pastor knows. We call them taxis,

but they are really commuter little buses. Many of them were told to stop

and not work. What we did as a church we actually went out of

our where we call them and say, oh God, we want to feed

you because we know you are not working and I want you to know this.

We sow very many people saying I love the Jesus that you love,

and now I know that Christians are not people of words only, but the

people of action. This is my prayer for you, This is my prayer

for me. That God will better hearts, that God will touch our hearts

that will be pained by the pain of the people around, but that our

love will go beyond sayings and it will be practical made the Good Lord bless

you. May His fast shine upon you. May the Lord help you,

as a Christian and as a child of God, to get out of your

way and be a blessing to those people in the community where God has blessed

you. We love you from you Gander, and I want to say this

that because God loved you first. And if you're happen to be there and

you don't know Jesus as you're very personal Lord and Savior, I want you

to know this. For God so loved the world that he gave his only

begot and soul that weaver believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

It is the love of Jesus that took him to the cross. And

because of that I am a Christian. And if you God know him,

this is the time to give him your life. God bless you, and

again greetings form Uganda, Africa.