Winter 2009 Newsletter
Love Your Neighbor
I'm sure you will all be happy to know that this tour has been… AWESOME! At the beginning of this tour I told God that I wanted to be closer to him and that I wanted to be a better servant for Him, and then I realized that the best way to do that is to know His Word. So, I started this tour and made a sort of pledge that I was going to really buckle down and try to study God’s word and apply it to my life. One of the first things that He really stressed the importance of to me was about loving my neighbor as myself, so as I thought about it, I was like "God I've always loved my neighbor. I love everybody what are you talking about?" and God said something to the effect of, "No, Tim loving someone is more than a feeling or words that you say speak, it’s an action! Love is a verb; it’s a constant, not a passive thing. Truly treat others as you would wish to be treated and love them as I love them." So I set out to truly love my neighbor even if they don’t live next to me. At first it was a little difficult because usual thought processes went something like this "Man I really don’t want to do those dishes… I wish someone else would do them… and I thought to myself I bet everybody else feels the same way and they don’t want to do them either, so I’m going to treat everyone else like I wish to be treated and I do the dishes!" and I applied that to everything I did whether it be volunteering to be the one to help the driver on the early morning drives or cleaning up dinner or taking out the trash or deciding where to sleep… and to tell you the truth, at first, it really stunk I didn’t like doing all that stuff but after the first week it felt really good. To know that I was serving God by following His word, helping my team by doing stuff for them, and blessing the host by helping them out has been a real blessing to me as well. And in the last couple weeks I've grown a lot closer to God simply by serving.
Applying this lesson to my life has really showed me how important serving really is. Serving isn't just something that's nice you do for someone, it is a command given by God. Galatians 5:14 says this "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” This scripture fulfills the whole law, and the more well known scripture pertaining to that, is in Matthew 22: 36- 40 when the Pharisees asked Jesus "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth and the prophets." Everything in Gods law hangs from those two commandments, Love the lord your God with all your heart and Love your neighbor as you love yourself. So if there is anything that I want you to hold onto after your finished reading this is to truly, truly love your neighbor as yourself. I promise you, if you apply it to your life to the best of your ability, you will see God use you in mighty ways.
Well everybody that’s all I have for you today but I really appreciate your support. Also if there is any way you might be willing to help me financially that would be awesome. As you probably could've guessed traveling isn't cheap and our ministry runs mainly off of love offerings so anything you were willing to give would be great. even 5 dollars would be enough to at least get a stick of deodorant so please search your heart today…and your wallet and your sock drawer and your couch and anywhere else you might have anything you'd be willing to give. Your support helps more than you know. Thanks again for everything.
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