June 10, 2017 - Church at Worship 1st Service

Sermon: "What Helps Determine Your Destiny" by Randy Roberts

Pastoral Welcome: Tyler Stewart, MDiv

Scripture Reading: 1 John 4:7-12, TNIV 

Sermon Notes:

I am honored to welcome you to today’s Baccalaureate services! All three of our services today focus on graduation: The services at 9 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. celebrate Loma Linda University Baccalaureates, and the service at 10:30 a.m. celebrates Loma Linda Academy Baccalaureate. A Baccalaureate Sabbath worship service is an exciting event! It is a day when students who have worked so hard to accomplish their goals come together to worship God with family and friends. It is an opportunity to praise and thank God, honor family and friends who have offered support, and simply bask in the glow of a special moment. It is a day to live out the words of the psalmist: “I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live” (Psalm 146:2, NIV). This day is a good day for gratitude. As such, consider the following quote: To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives—the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say “thank you” to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God. – Henri J. M. Nouwen Can you do that today? If so, then today’s services will offer you the opportunity to express gratitude to God from the deepest places in your heart. Congratulations! And don’t forget to say thank you—to God and others.

Randy Roberts,

senior pastor