Believe His Love Through the Understanding of His Holy Word

Welcome to Covenant of Hope Ministries and our sermon or midweek study. You will normally see us posted on Sunday and Wednesday. I am Rev. Laura A. Neff. Our ministry was built on the truth of God’s love. It doesn’t conform to society’s wishes. This ministry shares the Word of God, the Spirit of Christ Jesus. Those who know me well will recognize that there are definitive differences in the creation of every sermon from this point forward. It is God’s will that has brought this to be. We wish only that God’s truth will be shared within His words as brought to us by the Spirit as it fills my heart, mind, and soul to be shared with my hands, but with His words alone.

You will find us in the following location: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com

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Prayer List: We have many on our prayer list. Some wish to remain anonymous, and others only wish to have their first names mentioned. Our prayer list grows or changes every week. This is our current list.

- Pray for my granddaughter Maria. She is getting stronger and bigger every day. At this time, she has passed 3 pounds, and 6 ounces. She is eating, and breathing on her own and out of the NICU into the regular nursery, an amazing view of the gift of God’s grace and love.

- Pray for my sister, Emilie, who is very sick right now, on a lot of medication due to a bad sinus infection. Add prayers for her youngest son, August, who suffers from seizures and is in desperate need for a seizure dog.

- Please continue to pray for Elder Cal Jennings. His pain levels have been astronomical, and his memory needs encouragement due to the effect his Bell’s Palsy that has plagued him for more than a year. May the Lord bring his spirits up and help heal him.

- Please pray for relief in the trials and tribulations for Sister Theresa due to continued pain in her shoulder and tailbone from a terrible hit and run accident late last year.

- Be thankful for each day we live as we do not know what tomorrow brings.
- Pray for our nations that the voice of God be heard through the Spirit.
- Pray for our friends and families that their tomorrows bring blessings and pray our own be the same.

- Please pray for my co-worker and one of many dear friends as she has had two terrible incidents with her ankle in less than a week. It is swollen and painful making it difficult to be comfortable and able to get things done that need getting done.

- Pray for those suffering as a result of the terrors that have occurred just this past week around this world.

- Pray for our sick and wounded that they may heal.

Prayer: Father in heaven, we lift several people up in prayer this day. Our prayer today is for the gracious gift of the Holy Spirit to surround each of us with Your healing touch. We pray for peace within each of us, heart and soul, and for the ability to share that peace, creating the perfect view of everyone and everything here on this earth. We pray for the many who are sick in or out of the hospital. We pray for those who are in pain, that their pains be eased. We pray for those who have lost loved ones this week. We pray for forgiveness in our ignorance and pray for enlightenment as we study Your Eternal Word. We pray for peace around this world. We pray for justice and for empathy in the terrible things that have happened this past week. For each of these we pray in Your Holy Name, through our Savior Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Amen and so it shall be.

Opening Song: ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg5mVgR7JuA

Sermon: Last Sunday Elder Cal Jennings asked me if I would clarify something from the sermon. So, today, I will start with the verse that had him asking for the assistance. That verse is here.

John 10:34 KJV – Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

Jesus always referred to Old Testament truths as given by God in the Word. Law was very important for the Jews back in those days. Jesus shares that the Law is something none truly understand in full. There are more laws in this world today, than there were when Jesus lived, or when David, who is considered to be the scribe of the scroll of Psalms, which is where this verse originally found. I will put here, not just the one verse, but all the verses for that particular psalm, so we can understand it more easily.

Psalm 82: 1-8 KJV – God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods.
How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.
Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

Note how the verses share that we must defend the poor, the weak, the weary, and orphans too. Do you remember Jesus said the same? These verses David shared in Psalms would share that we should always be wary as to what our life should be. A life filled with faith and unconditional love for the gifts God gave us, to share with those around us, and to prove our unconditional love, for all of us, even ourselves and those we believe to be angels among us. Do you remember when Jesus spoke of angels and their proximity to Him and to God? Let’s look further into that chapter of John just a few verses later.

John 10:35-38 KJV – If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;
Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.
But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

Remember, David, the author of Psalms, was anointed king of the Jews by God Himself. If the Pharisees and elders of the Jews believed David as he spoke of God, then why would they not believe that Jesus too was chosen by God, as God’s own Son, to share the fact that the Pharisees and Elders, charged with upholding God’s Law, as He was, is, and will always be? Jesus worked through all His lifetime on earth to prove that they were blind to what true faith in God’s Holy Word was, is, and will always be. That they could not see the Truth of Scripture as it was rolled out, carried out, in the prophecies fulfilled from the moment of His birth and through until His thirty-third year of life. It was up to the point where His life on earth ended that this was something done only to ensure that those who believe in Jesus and the truth of His Word would be destined to stand beside our Lord and Savior at the end of days, when life here on earth will forever be transformed from what it is to what Jesus promised it would be.

John 14:10-11 KJV – Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.

Throughout His lifetime as a minister to the Jews and others around them, Jesus was often reminding His followers, disciples, and apostles that their belief was more important than anything on this earth. Believe, He said, and we will see the wonderous gifts God and Jesus have for us through their gift of the Holy Spirit. The problem we human beings have would be that our memories don’t always click within our heads the way they should be doing. It is why we have to be reminded of the great gifts of unconditional love that Jesus continually shares with us through the Holy Spirit, an eternal gift that transcends all the bad, ugly parts of life here on earth. Here is one last verse for us to look at, also from the Gospel of John the Beloved.

John 15:24 KJV – If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.

Jesus had to prove to EVERYONE that He is, was, will always be, God’s ONLY BEGOTTEN SON. He had to prove that His love comes not just from Jesus and His love of all of us, but as a gift of unconditional, amazing, awe inspiring love. Now, that’s something to think about as we pray in the prayer that Jesus taught us saying:

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. (Matthew 6:9-13)

Closing Song: Song of Joy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxio54dWfX4

~ Shalom ~

Rev. Laura A. Neff

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Elder Calvin Jennings

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Covenant of Hope Ministries Main Site: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com

Scripture Excerpts: The New Open Bible Study Edition: Copyright © 1990: Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc.

Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright © 1982: E. E. Gaddy and Associates, Inc.

Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright ©circa 1890-1910: International Bible Press, The John C. Winston Co.; Philadelphia, PA, USA

Sermon or Study Copyright © 2019 http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com

Our mission for Covenant of Hope Ministries is not to exploit fear, but to conquer it, and overcome all that is created through fear together as the bringers of the light of Jesus found in the midst of darkness.