Welcome once again to the posting of the Weekend Sermon. I am very glad that you have taken the time to read the sermon this week. I hope and pray that everyone is having a really good week.
This hasn't been a very eventful week in my part of the world. I am still trying to find work that will be more in line with what I want to do. The job I have now makes me very nervous. Each day I ask the Lord to help me make it through. I am now asking the Lord to help me with each encounter I have with a client. The Lord is helping me, and I am thankful. I am making good progress on my book and writing projects. Please pray that I will be able to finish up the book and be able to get it out on schedule.
In your prayer time this week, please pray for those suffering with the bad fires out in the the western part of the United States. Also, pray for those affected by the storm in Central America. Pray for an end to the Zika virus.
There is something that I think we should give thanks to the Lord for this week. I heard a report that the level of homelessness among veterans in the United States has dropped by almost 50 percent. This is good news. This is an issue I care deeply about.
Let us continue to pray for peace in this world. Pray for peace in Libya, South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. Pray for and end to terrorism and violence
For our prayer focus countries, pray for the nations of Eritrea and Oman.
Throughout this summer, we have been switching back and forth each week between two different sermon series. We have been studying what the Ten Commandments have to teach us, and we have been looking at lessons I have learned from the animals that I have had in my life. Contrary to what I thought when I began the sermon on the animals series, it has not proved to be very well read here on the blog. However, I do feel that it is something that the Lord placed upon my heart to share, and I am going to finish with the sermons that I had planned on the series. I hope that you will continue to read them and try to gain understanding and insight from them.
So, this week, I would like us to focus on another lesson that the Lord taught me by using my friend Toby. It is a lesson about learning to trust and move on in life in spite of what may have happened in the past.
As I mentioned previously, my friend Toby came to live with me when he was about one and half years old. It took awhile for us to form the very close friendship that we came to share. I have written about that already in this sermon series.
Shortly after Toby decided that he wanted to be friends with me, we discovered that he had a very bad ailment known as ulcerative colitis. It took a lot of work and good veterinary care for Toby to get to the point that he was stable.
One thing that my vet pointed out was that Toby had to have been sick with this prior to having come to live me. When the veterinarian took x-rays of Toby's colon, he found evidence of past scarring in the colon that had to have been from previous episodes.
Also, when Toby first came to live with me, I noticed that he would become frightened and go run and hide if someone picked up a magazine or a newspaper. Whenever, he had problems with the colitis and couldn't make it outside he would go and hide under the table.
I told my veterinarian about this, and he told me that he thought that the people that had Toby before me probably got angry with Toby when he was sick and hit him with a rolled up newspaper or magazine or kicked him. He said that it would take a lot of work and patience so that Toby would realize that I wasn't like the people he had lived with before. I wasn't going to throw him out because he was sick, and I wasn't ever going to hit him.
Thanks be to God, we were able to find a way to control Toby's colitis, and he had little problem with this through the rest of his life as long as he stayed on his medication.
It took awhile, but eventually Toby realized that I would never hurt him in any way. He got over his fear of newspapers and people's feet being too close to him. In fact, in later years, he liked me to scratch his back with my foot.
I never faced anyone being physically abusive to me like Toby did. I did face what I consider to be emotional abuse when I was growing up. This was not from my parents, but from the religious institutions that they were affiliated with. I became very depressed and withdrawn. At one point when I was in seventh grade, I was so stressed out that I was getting sick all of the time.
In the situation that I was in, I also felt what I consider to be spiritual abuse because I was presented with a picture of the Lord Jesus that is not accurate. I was afraid that the Lord would punish me for everything I did. I was constantly afraid that if I stepped out of line even a little that dire consequences would ensue.
Just like it took Toby some time to overcome the bad things in the past and move into a better future, it took me some time and some important experiences.
One of the things that helped me to overcome the past was to have Toby become my friend. I've said here on the blog before that I firmly believe that the Lord gave him to me to help me. And he certainly did help me.
I know many people who have been in a bad way who were helped when an animal came into their lives and made it better. Dogs don't judge. They accept you and love you for who you are. They can really make a big difference in someone's life. I am not a Lutheran, but I think that the Lutheran church has a great idea going with their comfort dog ministry. This team of volunteers and their golden retrievers go to places where there has been a tragic situation. The dogs bring peace and comfort in a very hard situation. They help people make it through.
Toby helped me make it through. We helped each other.
Something that really helped me to heal the spiritual abuse from the past was my study of the life and ministry of Jesus. I had been a Christian since my earliest remembrance, but I didn't have the kind of relationship with Jesus that I wanted to have.
I decided to read all that I could about Jesus. It took a lot of study, but through my study, I came to realize the true depths of Jesus' love for me. I learned about who He really was and about how much He cared for me as an individual. This truly changed my life.
Everything in my life isn't perfect by any means. I still fight depression. Sometimes the old thinking creeps in and I feel that the Lord is mad at me and doesn't love me because I must have done something wrong somewhere. However, most of the bad times of the past have been healed in my spirit.
There were times when I wanted to give up on life and give up on the Lord. But the Lord brought things into my life to keep me going. He kept me going so that I could overcome the past and live into a better future.
That is a lesson the Lord helped me to learn through my friend Toby. He had a bad past. It took work to overcome, but overcoming is possible. We can live into a better future and enjoy the future that the Lord has prepared for us.
You may have faced many hard times in the past, and you may be facing hard times right now. You don't feel like things can ever get any better. They can get better. Not everyone is a horrible person who will hurt you. There are good people in the world. Not every church is abusive. Jesus is not mad at you, and He does not want to bring pain into your life. Jesus loves you and cares about you. That is what I want everyone who reads this blog to really and truly understand.
One of the reasons I started these sermons was so that I could tell people about the love of Jesus. I hope that I have been able to get that across over these last five and a half years of writing these sermons.
No matter how hard life has been. No matter what you have faced and are facing. Jesus loves you. He wants to help you and be with you through every circumstance of your life. Look to Him. Trust in Him. He will help you and be right along side of you wherever life takes you. And one day, you will be with Him for all of eternity.
For those facing hard times right now, I urge you to find a friend who will help you. If you need counseling seek that out. Maybe an animal companion will help.
If you have faced spiritual abuse in your past, I would encourage you to look to Jesus and not His followers. Read the words of Jesus in the Gospels. Read good books about Jesus. Many of these I have mentioned in other posts.
Thank you for taking the time to read the blog this week. Next week, we will be back in our series on the Ten Commandments. We have five more sermons in that series, and we have two more sermons in this series. I have one more sermon about a lesson from my friend Toby and a sermon about a lesson I learned from my friend Colm. On Monday, I will post the verses. I am currently reading some good animal books. I hope to have a review a Wednesday. May God bless you all. May you all realize how much Jesus loves you. Amen.
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