NO. LIVERMORE — At the June 11 North Livermore Baptist Church service, the congregation was welcomed by Pastor Bonnie Higgins to begin the service. The Invocation/Lord’s Prayer were recited. The hymns that were sung were “Revive Us Again”, “We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations” and “Freely, Freely”. The service ended with “Go Now in Peace”. Linda Lyman is the organist and Janet Diaz is the pianist each week. Lew Lyman leads the music for the congregation each week.

The sermon, titled “I Will Never Leave or Forsake You” the scripture from Matthew 28:19-20. Pastor Bonnie started out by reading two poems, “Quilt of Holes” author unknown and “Footprints in the Sand” by Mary Stevenson. From God’s Word, we know that God has offered to walk with each of us in our life here on earth as one of His children. Even when we try and go a different direction in our lives, God will never lose us along the way. He is always by our side in our journey.

As Christians, Jesus has said he will always be there during the good days and the bad days. Unfortunately, why do we feel alone sometimes? Mainly, because we are taking our focus off Him and more onto our circumstances here on earth. We get so wrapped up in this world, that we forget that we aren’t alone, Jesus is with us. Even in our scripture, Matthew 28:20, Jesus has stated to His disciples that He will be with them and us always, to the very end of the age.

God has given us everything we need to get through this world, He gave it to us through His Son, Jesus Christ. We have the strength and the power to accomplish everything we need to do through the Holy Spirit that God’s Will needs us to do. Many times, with our walk with Jesus, during times of trial and hardships, we need Jesus’ footprints so we can walk in them, we need to remember, Jesus is walking in front of us, keeping us from the enemy. Walking in His footprints gives us the hope in Him to get us through safely. We need to remember, when we choose to follow Christ, we are walking in His footprints. When we follow Jesus, we should be living like Him, so whose better footprints should we follow in, but His!

When we look back at our lives, we should see where God has touched our lives. Many times, when we look back, we only see the bad times and not the good times. We need to realize that God was shaping our lives for His glory in our lives, past, present, and for the future.

What should we learn from God? First, we should never be afraid, Romans 8:31 says, “If our God is for us, then who can be against us?” Who is bigger or more powerful than our God? No one, not even Satan! Secondly, we need to remember we are never alone. God is always fighting for His children, always protecting them from the enemy, and from ourselves. Sometimes, we are ready to make a decision and God is there to help us make the right one for His glory. Thirdly, we must remember that we aren’t that strong, but our God is. God has said “His grace is sufficient…”, so why do we look elsewhere, when He is all, we need? Lastly, we can give God’s hope to others. We all know someone who needs Jesus as their personal Savior. The One who can save them from this world. We are weak, He is strong, He will never leave or forsake us, He is our Savior!

Announcements listed in the bulletin are that the congregation will be collecting canned Spaghetti Sauce for the Food Pantry in the month of June. Bible Study is at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays. The AA meetings are held on Friday nights at the church.

For information, check out our website at northlivermorebaptistchurch.org. Sunday morning service starts at 9:30 a.m. You can email the church at nlbcmaine@gmail.com. Pastor Bonnie’s office hours are Monday and Tuesday from 9 a.m. to noon.