Welcome to Covenant of Hope Ministries and our Sunday sermon. You will see the sermon posted, most of the time lately with video included on Facebook, Blogspot, and Twitter. 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
Rev. Laura’s other sites: Facebook & Blogspot & Twitter
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.
- Please continue to pray for Elder Cal Jennings and his health issues, which are numerous. He has been having issues with his pain, vision, and memory. Add to the prayers with a need for new housing as the family is in dire straits there at this point in time.
- Please pray for calm and peace for Sister Theresa Bogard who is still going through a lot right now.
- Please continue to pray for my daughter’s grandmother-in-law, Judy, who has been in the hospital with health issues and my daughter’s mother-in-law, Suzanne, is unable to travel to be with her during this worrisome time. Pray for healthy outcomes and peace for the family.
- Please continue to pray for my friend Marci’s mother who has contracted COVID-19 Coronavirus.
- Please continue to pray for my friend Jeff’s father, who also has contracted COVID-19 Coronavirus.
- Please pray for a dear friend of mine, Paul, who lost his beloved support dog, Winston, and misses him terribly.
- We are still ever watchful in regard to the weather, the unrest, and the virus and response to that virus. Let us pray for calm skies and seas, calm voices and spirits, and also healthy outcomes for those who are affected.
- We pray that the school year is filled with progress for our children who are attending virtually and in person and for the teachers and staff that must adapt to what is considered the “new normal” around this world. We pray for our parents who are struggling with distance learning this year and hope that they are able to get through what remains of this school semester and on into the next one.
- Continue to pray for the same five family members of mine as they go through some health issues and other dramatic changes in some cases.
- Be thankful for each day we live as we do not know what tomorrow brings.
- Pray for all of our outreach ministries with Pastor Stephen Okoth, Pastor Robert Nganwa, Pastor Simon Peter Javaji, Rev. Lisa Tyler, and all the others who have joined us.
- 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.
- 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.
- Pray for those who are risking travel this holiday here in the USA. Pray that careful plans are laid for any who gather in large groups for the holiday as well. We all understand how hard it is on our families and friends in the USA where Thanksgiving celebrations are muted significantly due to travel and other restrictions across this country.
- Pray that truth is revealed where falsehoods have been shared around this world.
- I am sending out birthday wishes for our member Wayne Bartosh, whose birthday was the 13th, my brother Matthew, whose birthday was the 14th and also in memory of my sister Alicia, who joined the angels twenty-seven years ago, her birthday would have been today, and she would have been 39.
Prayer: Father in heaven, this is our prayer for today. We bring our sick and wounded up in prayer, including Elder Cal Jennings and several others on our individual and collective prayer lists. We pray for answers to mysteries for health issues and money issues with several members and family members. We pray for our poor and desolate, our brothers and sisters who have been brought devastation due to the terrors around this world and all of the natural disasters, storms, and so forth this past week. We pray for those in our outreach ministries that their reach gains momentum and their needs are met. 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: Mercy Me ~ Word of God Speak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8cJQMU9Q-U
Sermon: We are about halfway through Chapter 5 now in Ephesians. This particular chapter has spoken a whole lot in regard to roles men, women, and children are to play in the church that Christ built within us to share with each other. Let’s start here:
Ephesians 5:17 KJV – Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
It’s not easy to gain and then share wisdom. The reason for that is that we are bombarded by everything that is not meant to help us gain wisdom only to speed us from one day to the next to forget our past and hope we start over in the present and on into the future. Yet, true Christians understand that the gaining of knowledge of God and Jesus through the Spirit and applying that knowledge of God and Jesus in life, will help us gain the wisdom that God wishes us to gain and then we are able to share it one to another. There are lots of reasons we need these daily, sometimes hourly, lessons, because everyone forgets something somewhere and somehow. This pair of verses is a reminder for all of us.
1 Corinthians 12:27 KJV – Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 KJV – For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
We’ve spoken of fornication several times over the years. The engaging in evil thoughts, actions, and reactions would prove that we do forget, and we do need reminders daily on occasion. Let’s look at this with clear minds, clear thoughts, and clear consciences. The fact that we can fall off the path is seen in this next pair of verses in Paul’s teaching in Ephesus.
Ephesians 5:18-19 KJV – And be not drunk with
wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody in your heart to the Lord;
Moderation is the key, not only to gaining wisdom, teaching or learning anything from God’s Word, but in how we care for our bodies, our minds, and our spirits outside of our faith and inside it as well. God knows that, being human, we tend to ignore things in this world, like, for example, when enough is enough regarding food or drink, or over-exposure to the elements, whether that is sunburn, hypothermia, or frostbite, a massive stomachache due to eating way too many helpings of Thanksgiving supper or whatever, or any of the other things that can happen by being poorly dressed or out too long for whatever reason. Our lessons might be learned through our parents, or through life after we are grown up and leave childhood behind. This is where these five passages come in.
Genesis 2:24 KJV – Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
When we are grown, normally we leave our parents and the security of that home, whether it is to go to college or work full time. In Scripture we see that it wasn’t a job or any of that, it was marriage that would change everything for the child or children in a household. In today’s world it’s not unheard of to have the parents, children, grandchildren, and on occasion, great grandchildren all under the same roof depending on circumstances. And this is where we have seen issues with spiritual growth and physical or mental preparedness for marriage and growing up in the true Spirit of God as Jesus wants all of us to manage. This is a warning from Paul to the Romans, and the citizens of Corinth as well, in regard to this.
Romans 1:28 KJV – And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
1 Corinthians 6:16 KJV – What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.
We also see how Paul spoke of marriage here to the Hebrews. It is a warning to keep the sanctity of marriage as we keep our faith with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, pure and clean without sinful thoughts and actions between husband and wife. It’s not easy in this world filled with divorce, abuse, and all the rest, but if we remember and remind ourselves and each other, just how important our marriages are between husband and wife, and from husband and wife down to their children, grandchildren and so forth. No, it isn’t easy. This, I am certain, has been experienced by just about every person at one point in their lives. Marriage should be honorable and honored just as the marriage vows we share between bride and groom, no matter how many years have passed. The sanctification of marriage is something that we all should experience in one form or another. That’s what this pair of verses share and warn at the same time.
Hebrews 13:4 KJV – Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Revelation 22:15 KJV – For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
Paul and the other Apostles saw just about every possible style of sin in their lives after Jesus was resurrected and went to heaven. It is something that Jesus warned them about many times in the days He walked on this earth teaching those who were Jews and Gentiles equally.
Ephesians 5:20-22 KJV – Giving thanks always
for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
This passage of Scripture is one that causes people to erupt in arguments as to how it points to the wife to be submissive and fearful of God for retaliation, submissive to any whim a husband may have, and let me tell you, I’ve heard the arguments about these verses thousands of times already in my short time as an ordained minister. This is not speaking of all men and women, in all walks of life. This is specifically for the citizens of Ephesus. Yet, we should all listen to this, because it is as much a lesson as a warning. There are times when we do not see eye to eye with our spouses, or our families, and those times are tests to see how we react and whether we overreact. Basically, we need to pay attention and find the path that will prevent us from jumping off that dangerous cliff without a safe landing zone or a parachute. That’s what this verse to those citizens of Colossi points out.
Colossians 3:5 KJV – Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
There are five definitions to consider from this one sentence. It is important to know every one of them and think about them not just in a Scriptural way, but in a real life way as well. Let’s start here:
Fornication – voluntary sexual intercourse between two unmarried persons or two persons not married to each other.
Uncleanness – Chiefly Biblical. having a physical or moral blemish so as to make impure according to the laws, especially the dietary or ceremonial laws:
Inordinate Affections – An inordinate affection is an unhealthy and obsessive attachment to a person or thing that manifests through uncontrollable “love”. ... In the King James Version, the word that is used synonymously with evil desire and lust is “inordinate affection”. The word inordinate implies excessive, unnatural without limitation.
Concupiscence – sexual desire; lust. ardent, usually sensuous, longing.
Covetousness – eager or excessive desire, especially for wealth or possessions:
We have definitions for each of these words or phrases and how they connect in Scripture to the Seven Troubles we know so well. In today’s world fornication is all but celebrated, which is not something we should exploit or take advantage of as true Christians. This is the reminder of the Seven Troubles that God and Jesus both warn us about. Vanity, Envy, Lust, Enmity, Wrath, Shame, and Doubt are all seen in these definitions and in many places throughout Scripture we are warned again and again to avoid them at all costs. This next verse helps us understand this concept.
Jeremiah 29:8-9 KJV – For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the Lord.
These last two verses share the proper path that avoids those seven dastardly and deceiving troubles that invade our lives, our minds, our hearts, and our spirits far too often as we have seen historically and even just in our own lives individually and collectively. That’s what God wants us to understand. He is in our lives because we need the encouragement outside a human voice in some ways. His love can envelope this world if we let our hearts, our minds, our spirits, our very souls, connect to Him in that way. That’s why God asks us to listen to our parents and care about them, no matter their age, actions, or reactions to things we individually decide to do in our lives. These two verses share that concept.
Proverbs 23:22 KJV – Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.
Colossians 3:20 KJV – Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.
It’s not easy to be obedient to the Spirit of God and His existence in our lives, especially in a seriously corrupt world like the one we are living in. Yet, we all should try our best to do just that. We all will feel better in the long run, spiritually, physically, mentally, and morally. 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: Sons of Pioneers ~ God Speaks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qloo-vwzPA
~ Shalom ~
Rev. Laura A. Neff
Elder Calvin Jennings
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 © 2020 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.
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