Cultivating Your Garden: Removing the Weeds

uh verse one therefore I urge you brothers and sisters in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as a Living Sacrifice holy and pleasing to God this is your true and proper worship and um this this verse here was actually written by Apostle Paul and um it was addressed to the Christians directly in Rome and this verse that kind of urges us Believers to offer our bodies as a Living Sacrifice and that requires a lot of different sacrifices in our life um so with that I'd like to stand up and pray Lord God we thank you for this time that you given us today Lord that we were able to make to this service God and we pray and we ask Lord bless the whole service God bless the preachers the singers Lord and fill this place of the Holy Spirit God touch our hearts Lord and open up to us what you want to be said today Lord we ask for your guidance in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen good evening brothers and sisters today will'll be singing a song called I worship you almighty [Music] God I worship you almightyy God there there is none like you I worship you oh Prince of Peace that is what I long to do I give you [Music] praise for you are my love [Music] rightousness I worship you almightyy God there is not you I worship you all myy God there is n like you I worship you oh Prince of Peace that is what I want to do I give you praise for you are my rightousness I worship you Alm Mighty God there is none like [Music] you I worship you Alm mightyy God there is none like you I worship you oh Prince of Peace that is what I long to do I give you praise for you are my rightousness I will Worship You Alm Mighty God there is none like [Music] you you You Are My Strength when I am weak you are the treasure that I See You Are My All In All seeking you as a precious Jewel or to give up I be a fool You Are My All In All Jes Jesus Lamb of God Worthy is your name Jesus Lamb of God Worthy is your name taking my sin my cross my shame Rising again I praise your name You Are My All In All when I fall down you pick me up when I Amy you fill my cup You Are My All In All Jesus Lamb of God Worthy is your name Jesus Lamb of God Worthy is your name [Music] Jesus Lamb of God Worthy is your name Jesus Lamb of God Worthy is your [Music] name praise the Lord brothers and sisters um so today my topic um is going to be about uh trusting in God and giving everything into his hands and um let's open up to Jeremiah uh chapter 29 verse 11 Jeremiah 29:1 and it says here for I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord thoughts of peace and not evil to give you a future and a hope so many of us youth we are pretty much uh starting out in life and uh you know from the age 18 and up you could say uh that's when our life kind of begins After High School and we're thinking about our future career and which is totally normal because we have a choice what we want to do in our life and uh this could be um either finding a career you could say or even taking up uh the cross for Christ and um but it is a literal promise from God that if you trust in the Lord he will plan out your life for you and uh and he has plans and has a future for you and plans for you to have hope and plans for you to prosper and but that but that does not mean for us to completely like stop trying uh to plan our life out and let's open up to Proverbs uh 16:9 and and it says here a man's heart plans his way but the Lord directs his steps uh so as we just read here that we must have a plan to make our in our life and but the Lord promises in our lives that as long as we plan you know our life kind of the Lord will direct our paths and uh so of course plan out the Lord just let the Lord or plan out the your plans and let the Lord Lord lead your way and but the question is what do we do to have uh trust in our Lord and let's also open up to uh Matthew 6:33 I feel like I always mention this verse but it's it's pretty important so uh Matthew chapter 6:33 but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be given unto you um so you must of course first seek his kingdom and his righteousness and and the question is do you have a strong relationship with Christ right and do you really know Christ as your friend um because how can you put your trust on somebody if you don't even know that person like for example like even a stranger right how can you put a trust on a stranger if you don't even know them like it just you can't do that you're not going to trust them so that's why you have to know Christ before you could put your trust in him and so also uh let's open up to uh Proverbs uh chap 20 verse uh 24 and it says here a man's steps are of the Lord how then can a man understand his own way so now since uh we give God our life then the decisions will be made by the Lord um and sometimes it might be hard uh to accept God's decisions and especially in my life sometimes things work out the way I don't want them to work out but as it says here in Proverbs how can a man understand his way and so with some decisions we might not understand but just know that whatever God has planned for you it is always going to be the best way for you uh even if it makes no sense and we shouldn't question God no matter what and I also want to open up to Isaiah uh chapter 49 uh 45 verse 9 and it says here woe to him who strives with his maker let the PO strive with the pots of the Earth shall the clay say to him who forms it what are you making or shall your handywork say he has no hands and like I said also before this verse it pretty much shows that why would you question God in what he's making because he knows so much more better than us and even with like I actually had some decisions in my life that I just made recently and at first it didn't really make any sense uh but the more I I live on it kind of it makes sense and the more I think about it and it just it's so important not to question God and just to keep on moving forward and to trust in him because it it'll just take off all the weight off your shoulders and that's pretty much for all of us as a Christian that's how we're going to have to live our life and just to trust in the Lord and he'll I promise you he'll plan it out very well um and so just trust in the L Lord and do not lean on your own understanding uh amen let's pray Lord God I thank you for this day you have given us Lord that we can all come here together Lord and Lord let us have trust in you Lord God but first let us build a relationship with you Lord God so then we can put your trust on you Lord God we will trust in you Lord God and give everything to your hands and we'll let you lead our life Lord I ask you just give give us that strength and trust in you Lord God I ask you in the name of Jesus Christ and bless his service all glory to you God in Jesus name I pray am amen amen thank you brother Dimitri and we'll be going on to be singing When the Music Fades [Music] Majesty when the music FS all is stripped away and I simply come longing just to bring something that's a wor that will bless your heart I'll bring you more than a song for a song in itself it's not what you have require you search my sheeper within then the way things appear you're looking into my heart I'm coming back to the Heart of Worship and it's all about you it's all about you Jesus I'm sorry Lord for the thing i' made it cuz it's all about you it's all about you Jesus king of endless world no one could express how much you [Music] deserve though I'm weak and B all I have is yours every single breath I'll bring you more than a song for a song in it's not what you have [Music] require you search much deeper within and the way things appear you're looking into my [Applause] [Music] heart I'm coming back to the Heart of Worship and it's all about you It's All About You Jesus I'm sorry Lord for nothing I've made it cuz it's all about you it's all about you Jesus I'm coming back to the Heart of Worship CU it's all about you All About You Jesus I'm sorry Lord for the I made cuz it's all about you it's all about you Jesus praise God my dear friends so we're going to have some announcements right now and um so next week we're going to have an opening a grand opening I would say or just an opening so so after service we're going to all go to the gym and we'll have some desserts some salty food and if if anybody wants to you say uh bring something you guys can but next week tell your friends that there's going to be a feast usually everybody shows up to the feast if they want to or not they're here so uh let your friends know that uh next week is going to be our our English service opening with a feast at the at the end um and also another announcement before I forget so starting February 4th is uh we're having Bible study Sundays from 10:00 a.m. and one from 400 p.m. so if you can't make it to 10: come to 4:00 if you can make it to 4: can't come to 10:00 a.m. uh and Doug will be leading that service Okay and like I said last week that there's Ministries that are open and if you feel like you want to be a part of this of this evening service we have some open Ministries um our ushers have taken their spots so so the Usher Ministry is sold out um and we have some good ushers Paul Ivan and my uh dad and so they're they're solid people and I'm like can I go downstairs I'm afraid to go downstairs and that's the ushers we need that's like hey where you going um okay so so that then so I have a list over there at the end of the service if you want to come and uh Join one of the Ministries you can put your name down and so there's uh greeters so when people are coming in there's going to be some like young men women that are going to welcome the people coming in uh greeters so we're looking for some of those before service starts um if you feel that God is calling you to do that or if you want to do that uh just put down your name so there's also gym Ministry gym Ministry um it's so not next week but next next week we're going to have already the gym open in the evenings and there's going to be different games and um just Gatherings and so if if anybody wants to take that upon themselves to open it uh close it organize Sports then just put your name down then there's going to be local Outreach um even though there's there's a lot of like Outreach example in the homeless shelters we know uh we also know that there's a lot of Outreach to the the shelters of the of the orphans and stuff but there's really no local neighborhood outreaches and um our goal is to reach the community around our church and around where you guys live and tell them about Christ but not only that uh there's going to be drives kind of like we did before where we were giving out shoes and uh clothing to to people that um couldn't afford that uh for Christmas we also did the youth remembers uh for those people that couldn't afford gifts we were G giving away gifts so kind of stuff like this and in the summer there's going to be uh different events to to reach the local communities um and if you feel that you want to be a part of that just put your name down and then we also need a social media team we uh we have uh a social media account and we would like to have somebody that is willing to to put our uh Church calendars events um maybe pictures you know of our services on this social media platform so we're looking for those people if you feel that you want to do that put your name down and the last well not the last one but another one is announcer exactly what I'm doing right now so if somebody feels that they want to take my position right now what I'm doing announcing put your name down we only need one so um there's only line for one person so you know I know everybody wants to be announcers but there's only one so the first person to get there gets that spot okay and lastly um of course if you're your say you know how to sing you know how to play our worship team beautiful thank you guys but say that you know you want to be a part of this evening service well we also kind of have like an opportunity for you to come out and sing a song solo do what a group uh say a poem kind of have we how uh we have it in our morning Services if you feel like you can form a small group a band that's great you know and you guys can also be part of the evening service I think it's good what we have in our morning Services because um a lot of the church these days they have just people on the stage and everybody else comes but since our church is not that big we have place for everybody to be a part of this evening service event um so that's that and if you guys feel like you guys want to be involved somehow come up to me or Pastor Henry um and talk to us but that will be it and brother Vlad you can take the stage with your sermon praise God brothers and sisters um so I didn't know that my brother would actually be preaching today but I guess both of us are preaching today and actually his message is a little bit related to mine um and uh mainly the idea is that god holds up his end of the deal but you also have to hold hold up your end so um my topic will kind of have a little demonstration today as well um so I have to set that up right now and uh today my message will be called called cultivating your garden um and I wanted to dive deeper and explain how our spiritual and physical lives are like a garden and how you must know what your plant is and you must relentlessly remove weeds and you might be asking why I have this weird plant up here which is a good question uh but this is one of the easier ways that this concept can be explained and this plant here is is a picture of how most people's lives are can anybody see uh the beautiful pink roses in there I don't think anybody can see it right now but there is um and it looks like a bunch of weeds or a shrub and why I compare people's lives to these weeds here is because so much of the time we confuse these weeds for the plants and focus on what is not the main thing and uh what is the quote unquote main thing what is it that we are striving for in our lives let's figure that out first so as a Christian there's one main goal that we all strive for and does does anybody kind of know what that is like what what is that and um that is to achieve eternal life with God that is the main goal of every Christian and the verse that everyone knows so well is John 36 16 which is for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life and that is why Jesus died for us and that was his whole mission on this Earth and how does a Christian go about achieving something like this and um as we all know Jesus Christ actually discussed this and the first point is to love God we can read this in Matthew chap 22:37 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind this is the great and first commandment and the second point is to love others which it says in Matthew 2239 and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments so our goal or main thing in our lives is to achieve eternal life with God by loving God and loving others loving our neighbors and now that we have that established we can move on uh so back to the plant most people's lives look like this to where the weeds have grown so much because they have been mistaking the weeds for the plants and the plant that they once planted in there had and had the intention of growing has now been forgotten and is nowhere to be seen so every day now they're just feeding the weeds instead of the plants so what you've got to do is get rid of these weeds and these weeds they just they grow very very quickly and very easily um but what happens when you remove these weeds is you start to uncover what is at the bottom and that was the original intent this is what the person wanted to grow this is what our main thing was and and good Christians lives they look like this uh the pure form of what God actually intended and we know that also in the Bible there are a lot of different places where uh Jesus uses plants soil dirt seeds to kind of explain his point and we can read this also in Matthew 13:3 then he told them many things in Parables saying a farmer went out to sew a seed as he was scattering the seed some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up some fell on Rocky places where it did not have much soil it sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow but when the sun came up the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root other seed fell among Thorns which grew up and choked the plants still other seed fell on good soil Where It produced a crop aund 60 or 30 times what was swn Whoever has ears let them hear so we as Christians have to be intentional about the seeds that we plant plant and what we cultivate and these good seeds they just don't come out of nowhere we have to be very intentional of what they are and where they exactly come from uh but the thing is about weeds is that you don't need to be intestional at all they just come so and uh these we they come super quickly in our lives which uh for example could be social media uh it could be gaming for some people um for others it could be you know chasing guys or girls or for some drugs and alcohol bad friends wasting our time on pointless things so the list just goes on and on and it's very easy to get these weeds and now all of a sudden this is how your spiritual life looks um you're back to a weed infested garden and you can't see your plant anymore because all your time and energy is going to the weeds so your plant starts to die and all of a sudden you're lost in life uh you're depressed and you start falling away from God because you can't see your plant you can't see your main thing so how do we make sure that we keep the weeds at Bay and we are poisoning them as soon as we see the smallest hint of one growing how do we fulfill our main goal of eternal life with God uh so going back to the two things Jesus talked about loving God and loving your neighbor so how do we love God in John 14:1 15 it says if you love me keep my Commandments and in order to keep God's Commandments we first need to know what they are and the only way to do this is through reading the word the word of God the Bible and now all of you might have guessed this one you know it's it's preached a lot but the problem is we do not read enough of the Bible and we have so many weeds that we are focused on that setting aside a little time for God is a massive hassle let's say uh for example we even remove one weed which is uh social media man that's probably like a few hours a day but to be conservative let's say 30 minutes and you can read a lot of Bible with 30 minutes you can listen to a sermon with 30 minutes uh you could pray for 30 minutes and the crazy thing is once you start removing these weeds from your life you have so much free time that you you start wondering what to do with yourself and uh actually I think a lot of us experienced this this last week where none of us had social media uh so you're probably coming back from work and you're thinking man what should I do you know I can read the Bible maybe do that maybe you prayed and then you're like man so much so much time or maybe you're busy maybe you have kids and and it goes to that but so much time and then you start filling up that new time you have with new seeds which are either good plants or you can go back to the weeds and let's say you're already at the point where you've already filled it up with quality Bible time Bible reading um Bible study sermons prayer maybe going to Services you can fill up the rest of the time with something positive like learning a new skill helping someone out doing a good deed for somebody um just becoming a better version of yourself somebody that God would would want you to be so reading the word listening to sermons going to church it's actually not enough to love God is to know the Commandments of God and to practice them daily in your life it's obedience it's discipline every single day of your life and it's not an easy route but it's the one you chose when you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior and um of course another way to express our love to God is talking to him just like you would talk to your parents your mom your dad um it's it's spending quality time with them that is what prayer is with God and you know not just asking God for the things that you need or about the unlimited needs that you have but worship Shing and praising him for all that he has already done in your life how much more joyful are we when we praise instead of ask ask ask and complain and dwell on our negatives you know when we praise God and we worship Him and we thank him that is how we love God so also how do we love our neighbor 1 John 4: 20 whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar for whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen and he has given us this command anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister how can we love our neighbor uh I've actually named a few points here which is acts of kindness and generosity which could be helping someone in need listening to them being a good spiritual support order also another point is forgiveness you know holding grudges or hating someone is it's the exact opposite of loving them so we have to forgive another Point could be Ser uh service and selflessness having the characteristics of Jesus Christ so volunteering helping our church taking on a ministry that's that's one way we could do that and also another point is praying for others so so when you see someone is struggling with something or or going through you know tough times we can pray for them so those are a few points of how we can love our neighbor and there's a lot of different ones that we could also do but I'm sure that everybody here wants to have a successful 2024 uh with it being better than 2023 or uh the previous part of their lives and ask yourself how often do you really sit back and reflect on your life is it daily weekly monthly um you know maybe never and we actually did with our youth an exercise uh where we re reflected on our previous year and our past life um and we made it three parts in three minutes which was thinking about the things that the bad things that happened to us in 2023 then we thought about the good things that happen happened to us and then we thought about what the best version of us looks like in 2024 that God wants us to look like and what God would actually be proud of and whatever best version of yourself that you can imagine is completely possible with God's help and all you really have to do is reverse engineer the steps to get there and I guarantee you that all of those weeds that you identified in your life need to be terminated in order for you to get there you want to start reading your Bible for 30 minutes a day or an hour remove the weed that's preventing that you want to look healthier more fit remove the weed that is making you unhealthy or fat you want to have a more successful career uh you don't see Jeff Bezos sitting on Tik Tok for 5 hours a day you acquire more skills you put in the work that is what you have to do so it's good to reflect on our lives and see where we are at because uh it can just fly by so quickly as we probably EXP experienced in 2023 so the whole point is to be very self-aware of who you are and and to reflect more often and we can also read this in Lamentations 3:40 let us examine our ways and test them and let us return to the Lord brothers and sisters I will be ending this but if it's one verse that you should know by heart and try to fulfill on every day for 2024 it is Matthew 633 which my brother actually read as well um but it's but seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you and you can try to achieve as much as you can with your own power but from my personal experience every time I focused on God first he always figured out what is the best way and it's turned out 1 million times better than what I could have ever done so brothers and sisters let us cultivate our garden in 2024 and strive to have the most successful year of Our Lives by removing those weeds and putting God first amen let's pray Lord God we thank you for this day that you given us today God and for the messages that you have given us Lord for your word God and we ask you and we pray Lord help us to to praise you God and to follow your Commandments your word as it is written in the Bible Lord and to cultivate our Gardens God and to remove the weeds that are preventing us from being closer to you God bless us in this new year of 2024 in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit we pray amen amen and we'll be ending with Lord I need [Music] you Lord I come I conf we I find my rest without you I fall heart you're the one that gues my [Music] heart Lord I need you Lord I need you every every hour I need you my one defense my rightousness oh God how I need you R Your Grace is more Your Grace is found is where you are and where you are for I am free Holiness is Christ in me Lord I need you oh I need you every every hour I need you my one defense my [Music] rightousness oh God how I need you [Music] teach my song to rise to you when Temptation comes my way when I cannot stand I'll fall on you Jesus You're My Hope and stay [Music] Lord I need you oh I need you every every hour I need you my one defense my [Music] rightousness oh God how I need you Lord I need you oh I need you every every hour I need you my one defense my rightousness oh God how I need you praise God my dear friends and we'll be end in our service and I think we all learned something today and um it's it's pretty interesting because last year um at the beginning of the year I I just wrote down some uh goals that I wanted to achieve for 2023 I think I put like like four or five and just like a month ago like I randomly like stumbled upon that uh paper and I'm like oh that's the goals I said didn't I did I achieve any of them and I achieved like like two out of the the the rest and so I'm like well that's not so bad because I set some goals and I achieved them even though the paper got lost so my dear friends how is our garden going to look at the end of 2024 is it going to be with weeds or is it going to be that beautiful flower you know so so hopefully God he he um gives us all strength to make sure our Garden is like that beautiful flower where God looks at it and he's like wow now this person I can use Amen to that and um does anybody have any needs no needs um I know a lot of people are sick uh Zach was supposed to be preaching today but he's like Tim I can't even talk and so and so uh we're going to pray for some people that are sick I'm kind of sick I guess and and a lot of people are sick and we're going to like end off our uh prayer with the Lord's Prayer at the end so Lawrence just have it on the screen for all of us thank you okay let's pray Lord God we thank you for tonight for the two messages that we heard Lord God help us Lord to always seek you in our life that you're number one God God that we seek the kingdom of God like your righteousness and like in everything else will be added to us Lord God help us in the in our daily lives to seek your face Lord God bless each person here Lord God that when we walk away from these doors Lord we know that God it is time to seek you in our daily lives Monday through Sunday every day to pick up your word to read your word to learn to instruct Lord and also to spend time in pray prayer with you god thank you Lord for everything you have done for us in jesus' name amen thy father in heaven Hallowed Be Your Name Your Kingdom Come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from the evil one for your kingdom your power and Glory forever are yours amen thank you have a good night