BE YE FOLLOWERS OF ME
A lot of people want to be leaders, but you know, you can’t be a good leader if you don’t know how to follow. A lot of people want to lead but not many know how to follow. Right?
God has been good to us, hasn’t he? Can we give him just a little bit of praise…could we just honor him? Yes. How thankful we all should be.
I noticed in the song, “Victory in Jesus”...you know if you have a problem or a battle…anything we the church is fighting as a whole…things we are going through, anything we have to deal with…the only way we will ever win is through Jesus.
I am very excited about serving the Lord. The title for a Sunday’s sermon sometime back was “Be Ye Followers of Me”. A lot of time we want to lead. We want to give direction. We want to show paths but we are not willing to listen or learn from anybody else from anything that is going on.
Examine What You Are Listening To
BE ON THE RIGHT PAGE
I will say this if you would take the time to examine what you are listening to, you may find out somebody else knows a little something. You may not be exactly on the right page. It pays sometimes to find out what you are talking about before you go all “gun ho”.
Luke 9:23, And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, (boy that’s a tough one isn’t it) and take up his cross daily, and follow me. KJV
Do you want to follow the Lord Jesus? Anybody want to follow the Lord? We want his will to be done in our life.
Up above the 23rd verse, reading in Luke the 18th verse: And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am? 19 They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, E-li’-as; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again. 20 He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. KJV
Now, Peter could have told him, “You are the man who came and showed me this is the way I need to go”. He could have said, “You are just Jesus, the son of Joseph”. He could have looked at him in many different ways. But Peter had his eye on him because he was the Christ of God.
That’s why we look to Jesus today. He is the Christ…he is the Saviour…he is the one we look today to help us through all of our trials…all of our hardships…everything maybe we don’t understand. Some things we do, and we know that God has us in a place that we are having to fight these battles.
Have you ever been through a battle and you thought you knew what was going on? And, when you got to the end of it you looked back and said, “Oh, that’s what that was all about”. Anybody ever been there? I have. I have come through some fights, and some battles. I get to the end of it and the Lord gives me the victory. I think back over what he brought me through and I am like, “I didn’t see that at the time but thank you for being there for me. Amen? That is the way we are a lot of times.
I will be honest with you, the day I drove down S. Hamilton Street (Dalton, GA), God laid this work (being Pastor at Dalton) on me. I didn’t know what was going on then either but God had a plan. I may not like it…you may not like it but God had a plan. As long as we follow him…follow his will and his way.
Don’t you know Peter would have loved to have just kept fishing? Evidently, he really liked to fish. Evidently, when the Lord was crucified, the bible said Peter went a fishing. He went right back to where the Lord had found him, didn’t he. But the Lord said, “Follow Me”.
Now, how many knows what Peter was in Acts the 2nd Chapter? Was he not a great leader? Did he not lead those people? In Acts 2:36, he told them, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” KJV
He preached one of the greatest sermons ever heard…that was ever recorded but he had to know how to follow Jesus first. If we want the Lord to use us, we have to know how to follow him. If we want to be a good leader, we have to know how to follow.
21 And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing; 22 Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, (he told them not to tell anybody who he was at that time because there was a reason behind it) and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. KJV
The songs that the family and the choir sang on Sunday, all lead us to the remembrance of Christ, his suffering and how that he had rose victorious over death, hell and the grave. How thankful we ought to be.
The Church of God, we ought to be the most happiest people in the world…even through persecution, through distress, through disagreement…through everything that we go through, we still should be happy. You may say, “Well, I don’t get that”. There is a joy that comes with serving the Lord. There is a calling on your life.
You may not know this but you have a calling and a purpose on your life to do something particular. God don’t just have each and every one of us here just by circumstance or by chance. We all have purpose in life. We have been called to do a particular work.
One of the prettiest things that I could image is in Romans 8:28, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. KJV
I want you to take that home.
You can watch the Sunday, April 16, 2023 Morning Service in its entirety via YouTube/DaltonServices with Pastor Stoney Kiser.
Be Ye Followers of Me via YouTube.
We hope you received a blessing from this sermon.
To find out more information about our church, [visit] - lookupnlive.net.
"Consider what we say, and the Lord will give you understanding in all things."
