Walk Worthy of God

One of the reasons we have not been back to Flint recently is because we just got back from Camp Pinecrest in Missouri this past week. So last week, about this time, we were in Missouri enjoying the hot weather. You think it's hot here? It's hot in Missouri. They're known for their heat. Sometimes the whole camp will run in 100 degrees or right below it. We were in the 90s, but with the dew point, we got into the low 100 several times. Actually 107 one day. And so they had to cancel some of the outdoor events that were out in big open fields. But it was wonderful to be there. Laura, Kelsey, and I were able to go. Laura served on the journalism staff, so she got to sit down in air conditioning the entire time. And I was on the softball field in those 95-degree sunny days. No air conditioning, but we had a good time. The kids are a good sport. You can ask them to do just about anything, and they'll get out there and do it. Now, the hard part is getting the old folks like me being able to get out there and run with them. But it was good. At first, just a funny story, I was pitching softball because they need somebody who can do it consistently. And after I got my arm warmed up, then the consistent part started to come.

But I was pitching, and the very first time I was doing it, if they came back my direction, I would go ahead and field it, as a pitcher normally does. But we had about 15 kids on the entire field. So we had like eight in the outfield, we had seven on the infield. And after fielding a couple, I realized I'm the only one really having fun out here. And so I got to let them field some of these, too. So I started, even if they were coming close to me, I started letting them just go on by and things like that. And I think the kids, I know at least one counselor thought I was unable, because I'm the old guy right out on the field, unable to field those. So Mr. Smith, this is Gary Smith, the director, he used to do softball before he became the director, he used to pitch and everything else. So he wanted to come out one time, and anytime you got the camp director at your activity, it makes you a little more nervous. So I'm pitching to him, and he wants to take a few swings. And he smacks one right back at me, a couple feet to the left, and I quickly jump over, field it, and then go ahead and throw him out at first. And I think I can still go back next year. I'll have to see about this. But one of the staff, one of the assistant counselors, so this is a young adult, says, Oh wow, you've been playing us the whole time. He goes, I didn't think you could get to those balls, but you just showed me that you can. He goes, I see how you're playing now. So it made me feel a little bit better that I still had enough that I could impress at least a young adult a little bit. But it was fun. When you're there, you realize we have a thing the church does. It's called the zone for those who haven't been there before. It's this environment that we, based on God's words, it's got seven elements to it. But what it does is it produces this zone, this environment where kids can be themselves as Christians and as growing up with knowing God's ways as they try to apply it the best they can. But also, it provides a boundary of when you step out of the zone. And in God's way, we know works. And at times, you get some kids who will step on one side out of the zone and you encourage them to get back in and they respond. But it produces an amazing environment for our kids because they go to a lot of them public schools and they're part of the world just as you and I are. And for one week or as many camps as they can go to, they get to be in an environment that is just beautiful to see work. The adult staff are there encouraging. They're hearing, we have Christian living every day. We have the Sabbath that falls, which is a wonderful blessing when you're tired and running around. It's just a great opportunity to see God's way work, even in a world that we know is governed and led by Satan. And so it's a wonderful thing. If you ever get an opportunity to go, I highly encourage it.

The theme for this year's camp program is God's vision for you. And it's one of those that we, that was thought up by those in the administration to help encourage our kids to realize that God does have a vision and a plan for them, just as he does for all of us. And the Christian living topics covered ideas and concepts that God has a story that he's using and building through these teams, that he has a way that works and that they can apply to their lives and they can see the results of living God's way, and that he will continue to work with them for their whole lives as they continue to bring him into their hearts. And it was a wonderful theme. A passage and a concept that was shared by one of the elders giving a Christian living class, and one that I've never spoken on before, but after hearing it, it grabbed my attention and I thought I'd share it with you today. There's a passage in 1 Thessalonians 2 where Paul encourages those in Thessalonica to walk worthy of God. And this is in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 10.

Here Paul is inspired to write, You are witnesses and God also, you are witnesses and God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you who believe. Verse 11, as you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father does his own children.

And verse 12, that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. In the new living translation for verse 12, it says, We pleaded with you, we pleaded with you, encouraged you and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his kingdom and his glory. The concept that was shared by the seltzer was walking worthy with God.

And reading through this passage, one might ask the question, what does walking worthy entail? What does walking worthy entail? So today, let's examine walking worthy and how we as a congregation can walk worthy together. Because it is an individual walk that we have with God. When we committed our lives to baptism, that was between us and God. But yet, as a congregation with his spirit, we can walk worthy together. And in doing so, I hope that as we go through the message today, you'll see the benefits and the blessings as a congregation that we have as this body.

So as we often do, and as the Bereans did of diving in and studying and understanding God's Word, what does the word worthy mean here? What is the Greek? The Greek is from the word axios, which means appropriately. So as we consider what does worthy mean? Appropriately. Deserving due reward after a godly sort, or of value or worth. The Life Application Bible says, having sufficient merit or importance or honorable. So these are all different ways that the word worthy here in the Greek can be used. We see it in 1 Thessalonians and also in a couple other verses we're going to go to, of how that word just is so powerful as we consider walking and worthy, and the two going together.

Again in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, Paul is saying that we should live our lives in such a manner that our example would honor God who has called us towards and into his kingdom. We have been called to this great understanding that brings each of us here today on the Sabbath day. This understanding that makes us want to be here to worship him, to honor the Sabbath. And as we grow in the knowledge of what God desires for us and how we are to conduct our lives, we then accept the calling and choose this way. You and I have accepted this calling and we've chose to live this way and we'd say that when we were baptized, we would walk this way forever.

And that is what we continue to strive for doing today. Therefore, as God has shown us the path we are to walk, Paul encourages us still today to walk worthy. And walking worthy should impact all areas of our lives because it is our high and our holy calling. This concept must have been an important one to the Apostle Paul because he shared it in two additional letters. Let's look at the first one of the letters. This is in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 1. Ephesians 4 and verse 1. It's the same concept that we saw in Thessalonians, but he wrote this one to the church in Ephesus.

Ephesians 4 and verse 1, he says, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. And how do we walk? And he starts to describe it here. With all lowliness and gentleness, with long suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Again, the New Living Translation through this passage says, Therefore, I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.

So it's not just asking, it's not just if you feel like it, but Paul is begging them to walk worthy. And it's a request that is still valid for us today. When Paul writes this letter, he's under Roman house arrest and has lost a great deal of his freedoms, as we can only imagine being under house arrest.

As we just read, he starts out the beginning of this passage saying, As a prisoner of the Lord, we know someone who is in prison can't walk around as a free person, but then he says to them to walk worthy of the calling to which you were called. What a powerful statement that Paul makes, because here he is, unable to walk around, unable to visit the churches, that he would love to do.

We know he was not one to shy away from a perilous journey or to do things to spread the gospel message as far as God was inspiring him to go with it. But yet now he can't. Now he can't get out and visit as he would like to. But yet he tells everyone here in this letter in Ephesus that knows he's in prison to go out and to walk worthy because he can't. And it's a powerful passage, and I can only imagine the impact that it had those on Ephesus. When they know that he's in prison and he's not able to be a free man anymore, but yet then he's telling them, you go, you're free still, and you have the ability.

Now go and walk worthy because I can't. It's just an amazing, I think, example that we have here of Paul encouraging those in Ephesus, even though he, in his own situation, was unable to. He wanted them to be that light. He wanted them to be that example, to go forth in the Spirit and display the attributes that he offered throughout this passage.

Again, he begs them in the New Living Translation to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. The New Living Continues says, always be humble and gentle. Be patient with one another. Make an allowance for each other's faults because of your love.

Make every effort to keep yourself united in the Spirit, binding yourself together with peace.

It's a powerful passage that we have there, and one that we should evaluate and hold against ourselves and see, how am I doing in these areas that Paul outlines here? Because it goes along with walking worthy.

Another passage that he shared this concept in is in Colossians 1, chapter 9.

Or, Colossians chapter 1, verse 9.

Colossians 1 and verse 9.

Again, when this letter was written, he wrote to both of these churches while under house arrest.

Here in Colossians 1, verse 9, Paul says, For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, for all patience and long suffering with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in the light. He goes on to say, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

Another translation says, Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, as we consider walking worthy, that the way you live will always honor and please the Lord. Again, the definition for worthy, appropriately, deserving due reward, after a godly sort or value or worth. Through these passages that we just read, Paul is appealing to these churches to seek unity among one another, to be humble and gentle, to be patient, to show love, to increase in good works, to increase in knowledge of God's truth, which should lead us to be more united than ever. How many seeds of strife and roots of bitterness would be destroyed if we could keep these concepts of walking worthy and how to walk worthy in our minds? Philippians, let's go ahead and since we're near, let's turn to Philippians 1, verse 27. One chapter or one book back, Philippians 1, verse 27.

Because Paul was always preaching about unity and the importance of it, and here in his letter, he says here in Philippians 1, verse 27, only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or I'm absent, I may hear of your affairs that you will, that you stand fast in one spirit with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. He's just saying, I don't need to be there to witness it myself. I don't need to be there to provide correction. Just do it. Just walk worthy of this calling that you have in the faith of the gospel and do these things because we have that unity of one spirit, one mind, one God, one Lord, that we can serve and this oneness should pull us all together. We do have great diversity among our congregations. We have all ages represented. We have people of different races and ethnic backgrounds. We have people employed in a vast array of fields. We have people who've been in the church a few years, some for many, many years. Diversity is a good thing in a congregation, but it will at times produce challenges for the Christian, won't it? Because we are all unique. We are all different. All we have to do is to understand that is look at society around us.

Differences among Americans can lead to division. Is it different among us? I hope it is.

But as Americans, we often lose sight of what we have in common in this nation, and the same can happen to us as a Christian. We can lose sight of all that we have in Christ that unifies and strengthens us, and because of this, we often take the things that we disagree in, we then elevate them, and then we feel that we can no longer walk together.

God says we are to walk worthy, but sometimes we say, well, I'm sorry, I can't walk next to you. God says, walk worthy together, but then our nature sometimes gets in the way and says, I can't do that. And that's obviously not the direction that God wants us to go.

What God desires is that we recognize our unique experiences, and that we look upon these differences as strengths to the body as a whole, because our individual uniquenesses, our strengths, help us to do God's work more effectively.

Growing up with my experiences in my life, I have my own lens that I look through. You have your own lens based on your experiences, based on the things you have had that you look through.

My cultural background, my upbringing, my experiences, produces the lens in which I view, most likely, most of the time, other people's lives and society around me. But my lens is limited.

It's not complete. Walking worthy of the calling that I have challenges me to expand my lens by learning, growing and loving more fully those that are in the body of Christ. It's just part of our nature to view things through our cultural heritage, our unique experiences that maybe I've only experienced. And at times, that's great, because that brings a part of our family together that I have a piece of my life that I can share that maybe nobody else has had. But then if I only expect everybody in the congregation to operate within my lens, what I view as normal or everyday life, I lose something there. I lose something that could be greater because God has called us all to be together with our unique differences and the ways that we can all walk worthy together will strengthen our congregation. At camp, one of the Christian livings that I was asked to share with the staff and the campers there was I asked them to consider if they came to a camp where they were all everybody was just like them. Same likes, same dislikes, same personality, same jokes, same joy, same talents and gifts at doing everything. How much fun would that have been for the campers? Some of them even wrote about that thinking, well, I don't want to be at a camp where everybody would be just like me because you lose a lot of that joy, you lose a lot of the uniqueness that God has given to them. And I told them I wouldn't want to be at a at a camp with a whole bunch of Mr. Phelps's. The joke I made was that the dance would be really awkward.

But that is the truth of why God has called us with our own personalities and the way that we think and the way that we work. When we align our wins with God's way, then our uniquenesses can shine and the experiences that we've had in life can come out. God has chosen us, well, excuse me, but with the diversity that we have, we also have unity through Christ and the calling we have to walk worthy comes with instructions that we are to emulate Christ. God has chosen us to be Christ representatives on this earth. We're called Christians for a reason. Therefore, we're instructed to walk worthy of whom we are to represent. A couple years ago, when we were still in Cincinnati, Laura was attending ABC and I was able to sit in on quite a few of the classes.

And a member of the UCG came and shared a presentation of his experience working for the State Department here in the United States. He held several positions in many different countries working for the U.S. embassies and the consulates in these foreign nations. Something he shared struck, like stuck out with me, something that it's always been one that I've remembered. He said that when he was overseas, he was a representative of the United States, which meant that he had a requirement that he had to support the laws and the positions that the United States held as he's in these foreign countries. The direction that the nation was going, the direction that the nation had in these foreign countries in the affairs. Even if he did not agree with them, he felt because of the responsibility he had. Now, of course, he put God first, but then after doing so, he had his duty he felt was to represent the position and the views of the United States. Is this any different for us? While we're still in Philippians, let's look at Philippians 3 and verse 20. Because who do we represent today as people, as a body? Philippians 3 and verse 20. It says, For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to his glorious body, according to the workings by which he is able even to subdue all things to himself.

Right here, we have crystal clear that our citizenship is in heaven. Yeah, we may be Americans, but a greater citizenship is that we have a citizenship that is in heaven, and that is who we represent. I decided to kind of Google and look around at how an ambassador's job is described, and one of the websites, this is a website designed for helping people find their perfect careers.

I'm not sure if the name actually can be pronounced, but it's S-O-K-A-N-U.com. S-O-K-A-N-U.com. And this is how they describe one who's an ambassador, or one who works for the State Department in this way. It says, an ambassador is a diplomatic representative that attends international meetings, banquets, and parties, and acts as a figurehead for their country of origin.

Ambassadors are also known as diplomats, a more general term describing those who work in a foreign country while retaining citizenship in their home country. The foreign country, known to ambassadors as a host nation, serves as the base of operations for promoting international relations while concentrating on specific areas of government, including trade, military involvement, and cultural relationships. An ambassador will smooth relations between countries, especially in the highly sensitive area of politics and trade. Due to the sensitive nature of their careers, ambassadors perform all their duties with a diplomatic demeanor, ensuring a positive relationship between their country of residence and home nation. And then it goes on, it says, what does an ambassador do? Ambassadors are subject to a wide range of responsibilities dealing with foreign relations. Each task is carried out in a diplomatic manner that is engineered to meet the needs of the ambassador's home country while maintaining a positive relationship in that country. Another responsibility of an ambassador is to act as a representative of their country of origin. They attend social functions, political parties, and banquets with the intention of smoothing relationships between nations. As a representative, they also offer up their home country's position on numerous political, social, and economic platforms. Additionally, ambassadors meet with important political leaders and greet or host other diplomats.

Now, of course, every analogy breaks down at some point. Some of the things described here is not what God has called us to do, but I think you understand what I'm trying to portray with this. We have a responsibility as Christians to represent Christ and the coming kingdom of God. We do this through our speech. We do this through our actions. We do this in our schools, in our work, in our homes. We do this every day, and we should be doing it every day of every minute.

Through these sections of scriptures where we're encouraged to walk worthy, something I noticed is that there aren't any commandments listed, per se. No keeping of the Holy Days mentioned. Doesn't talk about the Sabbath, or clean or unclean meats, or tithing, but what it does speak to were matters of the heart. Now, granted, a heart that follows God will keep all of His commandments and other things I just listed, and they are part of walking worthy. I'm not saying that they're not, but many times people get caught looking at a list that they can check the things off that they're doing. I'm keeping the Sabbath day, and then I'm keeping the Sabbath day in this way, and they go down the list checking these things off, and therefore they start to feel and step back and look at it and start to feel pretty good about themselves. It's a temptation that our human nature desires, but again consider what does Paul say about walking worthy? It does encompass the keeping of God's laws, His commandments, and everything that we do teach as a church, but it gets down to the heart level. Would we say that we are lowly, a lowly and gentle congregation? Are we humble, recognizing that we ourselves aren't perfect? And if we aren't perfect, then do we treat others with the gentleness that God has Himself shown towards us?

Do we bear with one another in love as a congregation? We can say, yeah, most of the time we do. Well, maybe some of the time we do. It's a question we should ask. What are you doing to show love? Does what I do please God? Does what we do here together as a congregation please God? These are all questions that not only am I asking, but I have to ask myself.

Let's look at Romans as we consider these questions. Let's look at Romans 12, verse 1.

Romans 12 and verse 1.

Because when we look at the things that Paul outlines in Ephesians and Colossians of walking worthy, they should touch and speak to our heart. They should move us to action, and they should move us to further our relationships and strengthen ourselves within our congregation. And here in Romans 12 and verse 1, we have, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. That we give up of ourselves. We give up of our self-will.

We give up of our nature that wants to do things our way. Put us first. He's saying that you present your bodies a living sacrifice. Holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. I love that reasonable service. It's kind of like, that's the bottom line. That's reasonable. Then we go up from there as just growing and knowing more. Verse 2, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Boy, that's a sermon right there in itself. This aspect of being conformed, not being conformed to the world, but transformed. Satan has a mold that he desires each of us to fit into. And society around us has a mold that it desires that we fit into. And often we're pressed on all corners to fit the style and expectations of society around us. And it's not just our teens who often feel this pressure. It's you and me. We can't deny that when we walk out of here and we go to the store, we interact with people at work, or that we go to college and we interact with other professors and students. We can't deny that you and I are even pressured to fit this mold of life around us. We have to be honest with ourselves and evaluate our lives deeply and ask the question, am I conforming to this world or transforming from this world? Am I walking worthy? We know we're not commanded to separate ourselves away into a corner of the world to find our own little private cave and shut the door up and live there. God has not called us to just alienate ourselves. We are to be part of, we are to be in the world and to be a light to the world of God's transforming power and his might working in the lives of humans. But this requires us to be different, which isn't always easy. Are we walking worthy as we engage on social media, whether it be Facebook or Instagram?

What do your profiles or what does my profile say about me? If someone didn't know you or if someone didn't know me and took a look at our social media profile, would we blend right in with the most of society around us? Would we look just like anybody else? Do we represent Jesus Christ in our lives when we are online? What about the pictures we post or the things that we say we are doing?

Naturally, we want to post fun pictures, the positive pictures of the life that we're living. But does that truly represent who we are? There's a book I was reading and shared with Kelsey and asked her to read. One of the important things of this book, it was one I shared here at one point called Hashtag Struggles, is that people's lives on the internet aren't really reality. I don't think that's blowing anybody's minds right now, but have you ever looked at somebody's life and you've seen their pictures and you've seen the joy and you've seen the fun times they're having and you were saying, I wish I had that life. Why can't I? And you're dealing with your bills and you're dealing with having to go to a 40-hour work week job or maybe 50 hours. There's times where we look at other people's lives and if we're not careful, we can slip into the mindset of, I wish I had that life. I wish I could go on vacation. I've been on vacation in 10 years and yet they go on one every year, it seems like. But is that reality for what we're seeing somebody else's life? Because they have bills too. They have challenges. They have days where they wake up with bed head, but you never see that. And so it's a fake persona that many people put out there. And I'm not saying that we need to go out and put the best days that we had and the worst days. I'm not saying we have to share everything about our lives online, but to consider for a moment, what does your online profile represent of you? What is it showing others of the life that you live? And this maybe at times even the difficulties and the struggles that you deal with. It's okay to not look perfect all the time, but that is what society wants us to do out there. And that's what Facebook and a lot of social media is. Even Instagram, where you can take a photo, put it online, but then you can edit it before you put it up there. How sad that we can't even put a natural photo, that it needs to be edited. Things need to be softened. Things need to be removed to portray something that's not really there. Yet we can fall into that same trap that many others around us. It's a question we have to ask. Are we walking worthy on social media? Are we walking worthy at work? Is our conversation around the break room the same or different from our co-workers?

Are we involved in full right, full right, or full left political conversations? Are we involving ourselves in the affairs of the world? Are we speaking poorly of the government authorities that are allowed to rule over this nation? Or maybe past government authorities that were ruling over this nation? Do we speak poorly of them? What about the work we're doing? Is it ethical?

Do we put in a full 40 hours worth of work for that paycheck that we're getting each week?

So these are just different questions that we each have to consider and ask ourselves. Are we walking worthy in our work? Are we walking worthy in how we keep God's Sabbath? Are we remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy? Again, it's not a checklist. The church doesn't have a checklist. We don't post it on the door. You do these 20 things on the Sabbath day and you're considered righteous. We don't do that. God doesn't do that. But He asks us to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, to treat it special, separate from those other six days of the week.

Do we do that? And how are we doing at that? Are we walking worthy in how we keep the Sabbath?

Are we walking worthy in fill in the blank? This is your life. Your life is different from mine.

We each have to ask ourselves and consider the different areas of our life. Am I walking worthy in... you fill in the blank.

I think as we near our conclusion, we must also consider what Jesus instructed when asked, which is the great commandment of the law. This is in Matthew 22, verse 34. Matthew 22, verse 34. This is another important aspect about walking worthy with God. Matthew 22, verse 34. Sometimes I put myself in Christ's shoes and think about how difficult it would be to always be on the defensive. To always have people looking for you to trip up, looking for you to ask you these difficult questions, just so they can say, aha, we got them. And I find it so interesting how this section here in Matthew 22, 34, starts out. Because it says, when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced all the Sadducees, so he had just silenced all the Sadducees, they gathered together.

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him, and saying, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. We know that all things come back around to this question. Are we showing love to one another? I think more times than not, when we make the right decisions in life, we are showing love. But when we get off track, at times, we have to ask ourselves that question, am I showing love? Because I think the two are combined together when we're showing love, we're making the right decisions. When we're making the bad decisions in life, that's probably not an aspect of love being brought in, because whether or not we're loving the other person, or whether we're loving ourselves to make those right decisions, it's something that we have to consider. Let's look at what Peter said about love here in 1 Peter chapter 4. 1 Peter 4 and verse 1.

1 Peter 4 and verse 1. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind. For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles. Let's pause for a moment. We have spent enough time not walking worthy. I know I have.

We've spent enough time of not doing the things that God has instructed and wants us to do, and Peter is saying, so let's move on from that. Let's recognize that that's our past. Let's go forward in the right direction. And it continues in verse 6. For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit. But the end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers. And above all things, have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins. What a powerful passage we have here from Peter to consider that power of love covering a multitude of sins. To me, this is the pinnacle of Christianity because we know that God is love, but the hard part is keeping this thought and attitude on the front of our minds daily, every minute, every hour of the day as we go forth. It's a struggle to always love someone as they need to be loved, to look at them from a mindset of love. This can be hard, but this is a type of love that Christ has for each one of us. God's love is a giving love. It's a sacrificing and selfless love. It's a love that also shows itself in action. We have never done anything great enough to deserve God's love, yet, as Romans 5 verse 8 says, but God demonstrates his own love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. That is love, and that is that benchmark of love that you and I are to be building in our lives, that mindset that we are to be changing daily and keeping on the forefront of our mind, not just going through the day and say, well, at the end of the day, how did I do it? Loving others. Well, it's too late, because it is something to consider at that point, because we do have another day ahead of us, but we need to have that on the front of our mind. How am I loving others? So that is our final question for today. Are we walking worthy in love for one another? As we encouraged our team this year at camp to consider what walking worthy means in their lives, we must all consider how we are walking as we continue through our life. Walking worthy is a requirement of all Christians, and we must constantly be evaluating how we are walking. Each of us walking worthy will produce a unity within us as God's people. When we exhibit the characteristics that we looked at today from Paul's writings, we will naturally grow more closely together. It's like taking a single twig, if you'll imagine this with me for a minute. It's like taking a twig off of a tree. One single twig. We can bend it. We can turn it into any shape we want. But what if we took a whole handful of twigs off that tree, and we bundled them tightly together? It suddenly becomes stiffer, becomes stronger. And that's what we have here. We have a group of God-fearing people with His Holy Spirit. We're not that single twig by ourselves that can be bent one way or another. We have unity together, and we have strength in our congregations. And I want us to consider that as each of us walk worthy before God, we become a stronger congregation because of this fellowship, this family that God has called us to be part of.

Remembering back to what Paul said in Ephesians 4, where he says, I beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. Matthew Henry's commentary on this passage says, we are called Christians. We must answer that name and live like Christians. We are called to God's kingdom and glory, that kingdom and glory. Therefore, we must mind and we must walk. May each of us continue to walk worthy before God.