Steve Ma Installation Video.MOV: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix
Steve Ma Installation Video.MOV: this MOV video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Speaker1:
Well, it's a great delight to be joining you
today in this fashion, my greetings to Pastor
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Lau, Pastor Ma, all the members of Christ
Church of China, how I wish I could be with
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you today, how my family wishes they could be
with you today.
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That would be our great joy, because we want
to celebrate a great day.
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And this is indeed a great day.
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It would be our delight to be rejoicing in
God's grace to you.
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And pastors are a gift from the Lord.
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And therefore, that's why we want to be
there, because we like these celebratory
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things. We wish we could rejoice with you.
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I want to be concise, which you know me well
enough to know that's going to be a
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challenge. There's a lot of praise the Lord
for today.
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So I want you.
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What I'd like to do is read one little verse
and I'm not wanting so much to exegete the verse
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as kind of launch out from there and give you
some very practical suggestions on what it
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means, what your responsibility is as the
members of Christ Church of China to your new
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senior pastor, Pastor Steve Ma.
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So I'm going to read from Philippians,
chapter two, verse twenty nine.
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Paul writes this, So receive him in the Lord
with all joy and honor such men.
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For He nearly died for the work of Christ,
risking his life to complete what was lacking
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in your service to me, receive him in the
Lord with all joy, honour.
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Such men very nearly died for the work of
Christ.
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It sounds when you read that verse like this
guy must have been one of those, you know,
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preach Jesus in the face of a Roman soldier
kind of dudes.
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But he wasn't.
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This is actually in reference to Epaphroditus who
was a courier.
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He was bringing information back and forth to
Paul and to the Philippines.
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And as he's returning with this letter to the
Christians in Phillipi, Paul instructs the
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members of the church to honour this man, to
honour him, a man who wasn't some great
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radical. He was just faithful.
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And that shows me that when I see that the
level of honour is not based on the size of
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his audience or the supposed results to his
ministry, it's just based on one thing his
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faithfulness, honour, Epaphroditus because of
his faithfulness.
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And I think I know why Paul says to honour
him, to honour him is really the full
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expression of love.
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And the older I get, the more the Bible seems
to be telling me about the love of God.
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God, our father acted in love when he sent
his son Christ in order to save us in love
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for God and for us.
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Christ gave his life in our place.
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Love is the primary fruit or evidence of
God's Holy Spirit.
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But the fruit of the Spirit is love.
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The Apostle John, the Apostle Paul writes so
much about the Christians love Paul would say
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in Romans twelve nine.
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Do you remember this?
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Let love be genuine.
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Abhor what is evil.
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Cling to what is good.
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Hold fast to what is good.
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Love one another with brotherly affection.
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Outdo one another in showing honour.
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Now you may read your Bible and think I need
to love my husband or my wife.
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Check. I need to love my kids. Check.
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I need to love my church mostly. Check. But
love my pastor?
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I need to love my pastor?
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Isn't it my pastor supposed to love me?
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Members of Christ Church of China.
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Can I give you one job?
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And it is this: Love your pastor.
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I can think of a lot of things to tell you.
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I have very strong opinions about how people
should listen to sermons or give their money
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or support the decisions of their pastors,
because I get lots of opinions about a lot of
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things. But I want to tell you one thing and
that one thing should guide all those other
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things. Love your pastor.
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I'll give you seven ways to love him, because
as we all know, seven is the biblical number.
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So, Number 1.
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Number One: love is preaching.
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Love is preaching.
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Now, your pastor may not end up being the
most remarkable preacher you ever hear, but I
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can't..I can't find a single Bible text that
tells me you must only love the supreme
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preachers. I see a lot of texts that tell me
that your pastor needs to be faithful.
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And I can tell you that nothing is going to
encourage his faithful, deep, prolonged
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study of God's word and his pulpit ministry,
than your love for his preaching, if you love
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his preaching, tell him so you don't need to
worry about puffing him up.
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There's enough things in pastoral ministry
that'll pop that bubble, but you will help
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him and you will strengthen him.
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If you tell him regularly how God is using
his preaching of God's word in your own life.
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What's more, if you love his preaching, you
will pray for his preaching.
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And if you're praying every week for the
preaching of God's word, then you better hang
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on to see what the Lord is going to do.
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Number 2, don't just love his preaching, love his wife.
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This is an easy thing to do in your case, but
it's not always so.
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In Jane Austen's book, Emma, there's a
character of Mrs Elton, the pastor's wife.
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She has described this way, Augusta Elton.
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She is a boasting, domineering, pretentious
woman who likes to be the center of
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attention and is generally disliked by
everyone.
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That's something else.
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Perhaps you have been sometime in your life.
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It wasn't in this church, but in the church
where a good pastor married poorly.
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I've been in one of those churches.
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It's no picnic for anybody.
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More men have lost churches due to unruly
wives than I care to mention.
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So how blessed you are to have a pastor who
can look at you and say, hey, I may not have
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done a lot of things right, but I know I did
one thing right when I married Debbie, says
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Pastor Steve.
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I did one thing right.
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And everybody says, amen.
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Let me tell you a big secret for pastors.
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One great way to have a happy pastor is to
have a happy pastor's wife.
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Few things are going to encourage your pastor
more than when you love his wife.
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You got to remember she helps to carry the
load of pastoral ministry, but she's not paid
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for it.
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Now she enables him to be hospitable, which
he has to be in order to be a pastor.
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She carries the brunt of raising faithful
children, which he must have in order to be a
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pastor. So honor, love, Debbie.
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You don't deserve her, but you got her and
she is a blessing.
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Don't take her.
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Don't take advantage of her and God's great
gift to you in giving her to you.
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Love his wife.
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Thirdly, love his children.
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There is a silent pressure on every single
pastor.
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It can weigh on him like a bag of wet cement,
and that is his children.
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He knows that he's called to prioritize these
children and teach them the ways of God.
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But like you, he has to learn all this stuff
on the fly.
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And so here he is trying to learn how to be a
dad while he's trying to teach you how to be
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a dad.
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I've been in some churches where things are
not going all that well with the children of
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a pastor.
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Why churches know just what to do in those
situations.
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They play the long game.
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They realize that there are seasons in any
family's life where things are difficult.
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And so they come alongside that pastor with
encouraging words and they actually get down
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on their knees and they pray for the children
of that pastor.
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If you're going to love Steve and Debbie, if
you're going to love Steve as your pastor,
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then you will really, really love his
children.
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You're not going to judge Andy and Davy.
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You're going to hold them to some kind of
higher standard.
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You're going to expect them to be just like
all the other kids in this church who hear
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the gospel.
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And you're going to pray that they respond to
the gospel.
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You're not going to be fooled by their Sunday
school answers to questions, and you're not
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going to demand of them that they all become
pastors and deacons.
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You will love them for who they are.
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Let Andy and Davy be sons of the church like
all the other sons of the church that you
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pray for and you love and you encourage. Number 4:
for love him with all your complaints,
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Christians have a really, really hard time
with this.
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But I want to call you to it.
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We have lost the art of disagreement.
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We've become numb to Bible texts that teach
us to speak the truth in love.
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We're more discipled in our methodology,
sometimes by cable news than we are by the
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Apostle Paul.
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But if you love this man, you will learn to
come to him in all humility and speak
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privately to him with in gentle tones of your
concerns about the church or issues in church
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life. You're not going to be one of those
people who make snide remarks or gossips or
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spreads disunity or holds
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Resentments that spread into gangerous
bitterness, when you truly love someone, you
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can really come to them quietly submissively
with honest questions, not presuming or
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assuming, just coming and saying, this is how
I'm seeing it.
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Am I right?
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Am I wrong?
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You'll come and you'll learn to have these
disagreements in Romans 14 kind of way where
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you can maybe walk out the door and say,
well, I think it should be otherwise, but I
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love you, brother, and I'm with you.
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And I'm 100 percent unified with you.
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Paul, again, if we live by the Spirit, let
us also keep in step with the Spirit.
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Let us not become conceited, provoking one
another, envying one another.
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Brothers, if anyone is caught in any
transgression, you who are spiritual
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Should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
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Keep watch on yourself, lest you to be
tempted, bear one another's burdens and so
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fulfill the law of Christ. Five: love them
when you don't understand them.
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It is an odd thing to be a pastor.
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You need to love him when you don't
understand him.
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Pastors, elders become involved in all the
intricacies of other people's lives.
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Sometimes we know things about other people
and their situations that we simply cannot
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divulge. That would not be loving to give all
the information.
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And sometimes it's in these situations where
misunderstandings grow.
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Why weren't, you know, why aren't you doing
this or putting a stop to that?
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Where were you when this happened?
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Why didn't you come when we asked how come I
have to wait so long to meet with you?
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These are the kinds of questions that easily
grow.
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But brothers and sisters, if you love your
new senior pastor, then you will remember
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that love hope's all things.
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It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes, all things endures.
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All things.
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You're going if you have that kind of love,
then you will assume that your pastor is
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using his time wisely.
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You will expect there's things he knows that
you don't know and you don't need to know.
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And you will bless him even when he seems to
be going in a direction that you find less
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than compelling.
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Love him when you don't understand him.
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Six: Love him for a long time.
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Love never ends.
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There is a curse on the pulpits in Canada.
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Men are afraid to stay in one place for a
long time or they stay long that they stop
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growing in Christ.
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Both of these things are a scourge.
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But a wise church will set her heart on
loving her pastors for a very long time, not
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just putting up with them, but loving them.
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I'm a big fan of Wendell Berry, the author,
and he has one novel called Jayber Crow.
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But I'm not a Christian.
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But he makes this very astute observation
about churches and pastors.
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The preachers were always young students from
the seminary who were, you might say, the
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mantle of power, but not the mantle of
knowledge.
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They wouldn't stay long enough to know where
they were.
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Now, this is not the case for you.
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You have a young man who's come to you from
the seminary and who is staying long.
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And this is a blessing.
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You want a pastor who's going to be there
long enough to bless your babies and baptize
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your believers and bury your dead.
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You don't want a stranger to do that.
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And if that's so, then you must commit to so
much more than tolerating this man.
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You must love him, love him, love him so much
that on his worst days he's going to think I
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would be nuts to leave this church.
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Finally, Number 7: love him because God has
loved you.
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The final and great motivation to our love is
never what it gets us.
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True love is seen in Christ.
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Therefore, this is Paul in Ephesians chapter
five.
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Verse one. Therefore be imitators of God as
beloved children and walk in love as Christ
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loved us and gave himself up for us a
fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
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Did you catch that?
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Be imitators of God. Copy God.
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Be a God copycat.
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Do what he does be like him.
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What does that mean?
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He goes on, walk in love.
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You want to be like God.
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You will walk in love. Love one another by
all means.
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But remember to love your pastor too.
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And as you do this, your church will continue
to be a beacon of the gospel on the other
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side of our great country, For the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and
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the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
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Be with you all.
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We love you all from Toronto.
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Can't wait to see you again.
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