Sermon Transcript
Colossians. So I hope you brought your Bible or your tablet or your phone or something, or the message note sheet if nothing else. And pull out, um, or pull a message note sheet out and you can find it there. But let’s look at the book of Colossians together. We just finished in the fall and a little bit into the winter the book of Philippians.
And so today we’re going to come to the next book, the book of Colossians. It’s not that we’re working our way all the way through the books of the Bible, but it just happened that it worked out this way. If you were out late last night, I hope you could stay awake. I see Laura over there yawning. It’s okay, Laura.
As soon as you stand up, you know, yawn means you just got relaxed. So you’re pretty relaxed right now. And you guys had so much fun last night. I don’t know if a number of you were at this wedding that we were at for Samantha and Jonathan. Now called the Fares.
They went on their honeymoon last night after they— well, I guess it was part of the honeymoon. The first thing they did on their honeymoon was get on an airplane and fly all night long. Doesn’t that just sound like something you want to do at the beginning of your honeymoon? Fly the red-eye all the way from San Francisco to Florida. But that’s what they did last night.
They should be right now on the cruise ship. Cruising the Caribbean. That’ll be awesome. So we won’t think any more about them. But anyway, so it was a great time together last night.
Those of you that were there, you know, you have permission to go to sleep. It’s okay. So just make sure you leave here rested today or spiritually refreshed or something. The rest of us are tuning in, right? No, you came because we want to study the Word of God together and worship the Lord.
We’re starting Colossians. Colossians is like any other New Testament book. It focuses on our relationship with God and each other. And, of course, this relationship with God matter is something that is prominent all throughout the New Testament. One of the ways we see that is in the use of the one another passages.
Are you familiar with the one another passages? There are 59 one another passages in the New Testament, which would obviously say this relationship that we have with one another is very important. So you have passages like love one another, serve one another, encourage one another, Forgive one another. Pray for one another. And as we jump into the beginning of Colossians, we’re going to see how to express to others your support, your loving support to them in tangible ways that can make a huge difference in their lives.
Or to put it in modern vernacular, as we’ve titled the message today, How to Have Their Back. Now, some of you use that language. You actually say to other people, I have your back. And when you say that, you’ve got in mind how you’re going to support them and help them and encourage them, or you stand up for them. If somebody comes their way that could hurt them, you’ll, you know, take care of the situation, whatever it is.
When I first came to the church, and Brad mentioned it was 6 years ago, and it’s just hard to believe it’s been 6 years now. We’re thrilled about what God is doing and where the church is going. And the things that have happened over these 6 years. But when I came to the church 6 years ago, the first person at the church that said to me, I have your back, was Mel Lyons. Now, some of you were here and you were part of Mel Lyons’ ministry for years.
He was on staff for over 30 years. Mel was nearing retirement at the point that I came. Now Mel’s in heaven. He’s happy in heaven, and he’s no longer in pain and dealing with back issues and other things that he had at the end of his life. But when I first came here, Mel on more than one occasion came to me and said, Dave, I’ve got your back.
Now you’ve got to understand, Mel’s a Marine. Okay, I don’t know if he’s still a Marine, but, you know, he was a Marine. You’re never out of the Marines. And so he would let me know about that, and he would basically, you know, come and just check in with me from time to time because he had my back, which meant from Mel’s perspective, if you come across any ornery people, I can take care of it. If, you know, you need somebody to do hospital visitation, I’d be happy to do that.
If you need prayer, I’ll pray for you. Whatever it is that you need, Mel was ready to do whatever was needed. Just a great guy. We miss him, but he’s in a great place today. When somebody says they got your back, It’s wonderful, isn’t it?
Anytime a person says that to me, I’m grateful because I know they’re going to support me and they’re going to help. They’re going to pray. They’re going to do whatever they can to be an encouragement. They’ll check in. Hey, how you doing?
People this week sent me a text message. Dave, how you doing? You want to get together for lunch? Maybe we can have an encouraging time together. They’re in essence saying, I got your back.
When somebody says that to you, I’m sure you feel grateful for their willingness to watch out for you and to do what they can. Well, at the beginning of this letter of Colossians, essentially you have Paul saying to the church at Colossae, I have your back. And what’s fascinating to me is how he expresses that first. There’s a lot of things that he could talk about first, but what he talks about here first, I think kind of sets a tone for one of the important ways that we can support each other, that we can love each other. Paul, of course, is qualified to write about that, being that he was a person who was called into the ministry, and he was concerned about others.
In his 13 letters, his 13 epistles, over and over he writes about the one anothers, the one anothers that are important in this relationship that we have with one another. But he not only wrote about it, and he modeled it. So we’re going to just jump right into Colossians, and we’re going to see how he has the back of others. And in seeing how he has the back of others, I think it’s going to help us have each other’s back. Now, what do you know about Colossians?
Well, we could probably say, I know that it was one of those letters he wrote in prison. We call it one of the prison epistles. Paul was imprisoned in Rome. While he was in Rome or in chains in Rome, he wrote the book of Philippians, which we just studied. And now he writes the book of Colossians.
He also ends up writing the book of Ephesians. And the 4th prison epistle was— anybody know? The book of Philemon, the book of Philemon. So these 4 come from a guy who’s in prison or he’s in chains, and yet he’s still thinking about others. It’s one of my favorite epistles because it’s short, it gets to the point.
When you talk about the subject of marriage in this book, he gets at it in 2 verses. When you talk about the subject of parenting, he gets at it in 1 verse. When he gets at the subject of raising your parents, you know, how do I raise my parents as children? Because there’s a passage here that talks about that. It’s another verse on that.
And so he starts by focusing on these theological areas and then these practical areas, and together they come to show us what’s most important in relationship with God and with each other. So let’s look into the book this morning. I think it’s going to be helpful. Especially as we jump into it, but today just especially as we think about how do we have one another’s back, how do we express loving support and loving concern. Here’s how Paul begins.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the holy and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. A couple things he just wants the church to know as he begins this letter. An epistle is just a letter, is a personal letter that was sent from one person to another or to a church in this case. Paul is an apostle. It’s not something that he thought up.
It was something that God willed for him. So by the will of God, he’s an apostle. So immediately his credentials are established. If you were here at the beginning of the service this morning, I stood up and I said something about Jason’s credentials. It’s nice to know something about a person’s credentials, it changes perhaps our viewpoint on their ministry.
The same way here, he authored the letter with Timothy. Timothy was possibly somebody that Paul led to the Lord, and he was certainly somebody that ministered with the Apostle Paul. He calls those in Colossae who know Christ, he calls them holy and he calls them faithful. 2 great signs of Christ followers. We should want to be holy people.
Who are living separate, who are honoring God with our lives. We want to be faithful. We sometimes say we want to be fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ, which is an expression of faithfulness. And he says, and you know what? I wish for you grace.
Isn’t that true? We all want to experience the favor of God in unmerited ways. And also he wishes for them peace. Peace in their relationship with God, peace for them in their relationship with each other, And of course, just internal peace. So that’s where Paul starts.
But then having said that, this is what he says, verses 3 and following. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we’ve heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints, the faith and love that spring from the hope that’s stored up for you in heaven and that you’ve already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf and who also told us of your love in the Spirit. Now let me just ask you a question.
Just having read through that, what do you see there? What’s the first thing that Paul wants them to know about? He wants them to know about his prayers for them, doesn’t he? And so he says to them, you know, I’m praying for you guys. How often was he praying for them?
Do you see it there? He was constantly praying for them, right? We always are thanking God for you. And notice the we here. We always, and we pray.
And verse 4, we heard. It’s interesting that it wasn’t just Paul who was praying, but it was Timothy, and possibly it was Aristarchus. In chapter 4, verses 10 and following, you have a list of other names. There’s Aristarchus and Mark and Jesus— not Jesus Christ, but the one that’s called Justus— and Epaphras and Luke and Demas. So you have this whole collection of other saints who send their greetings, and one of them, Epaphras, in chapter 4, it tells us, was wrestling in prayer for them.
So all of that is to say that at least Paul and Timothy and Epaphras are among the we in the plural pronoun found there in verse 3. But it’s probably more than just that, maybe 8. So at the outset, he wants them to know that there’s a group of people that are praying for them. Now let me just ask, How would it make you feel this year to know that there was a group of 8 people that were enough interested in your life that they weren’t praying for you maybe like once sometime during the year, but they were praying for you always? They were praying for you all the time.
That’s where the Apostle Paul begins. And what’s really fascinating about this is that the Apol— Paul and the others that are praying for them didn’t necessarily know them. They knew of them, but not necessarily knew them. And how does he pray for people that he doesn’t necessarily know? Well, in 2 ways.
And this is the big idea here that’ll help us kind of pull this together this morning. They first of all are praying for them with prayers of thanksgiving, with prayers of thanksgiving. Do you see it there? We always thank God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. So thanksgiving is a part of our prayers.
I think that’s a great thing to have in our prayers, always giving thanks to God. And in this case, he thanks God for a couple things. He thanks God for their saving faith, that they’ve come to faith in Jesus Christ, verse 4, that they, they had heard about Christ through Epaphras. If you go on down in verse 7, It says that they learned about Christ through Epaphras. So they didn’t learn about Christ through the Apostle Paul, this church at Colossae.
As far as we know, Paul may have never visited Colossae. But they heard about Jesus Christ. They heard the gospel, which is spoken of here, the word of truth in verse 5, that they’ve heard the word of Christ, the gospel, and they came to faith in Jesus Christ. And the Apostle Paul wants them to know that he is thanking God that they have been saved, that they found Jesus Christ. And by the way, if, if you don’t have a personal relationship with God, God’s made it possible through Jesus Christ.
That’s what the gospel is. The gospel is the good news that God has made it possible for us who are separated from God by our sins to come into a personal relationship with him through the Savior, Jesus the Messiah. Messiah who came and lived and he died on a cross and he was raised from the tomb and today he’s in heaven and he’s provided salvation for us. And when they heard that message through Epaphras, they received it. They received it by faith.
So Paul gives thanks for that and the others who are praying for them. And he’s also giving thanks, notice, for their living faith. And their living faith is evident in a few ways and, in fact, it’s evident in a couple of primary ways, some ways that sometimes we talk about when we look at New Testament epistles. It’s known through their love and through their faith and through their hope. So their faith, hope, and love, you’ve heard of that triad before.
Well, you see the triad show up right here. We’ve heard of your faith in Christ and the love that you have for all of the saints, the faith and the love that springs from hope. And this hope is a hope that’s based upon what you know is to come in heaven. So it’s a group of people who’s hanging on to hope, and this hope and this faith and this love are changing the way that they live. In fact, this whole picture here is somebody who hasn’t just received salvation, but somebody who’s being changed by that salvation.
It’s changing their demeanor, it’s changing their outlook, it’s changing their hope. It’s changing the people that they are. So all I want to just point out here at the very beginning is simply this: it would be a great encouragement to others for you to tell them you’re praying for them, wouldn’t it? I mean, you’d have to be praying for them, but it would be a great encouragement to others for them to know you are praying for them. And if they are people that are saved, it would be a great encouragement for them to know that you are thanking God for their salvation, that they have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and you’re thanking God that they are living out that salvation in their life.
That would be a great encouragement to them, even if you don’t know them. And that’s the picture here. Evidently, Paul doesn’t know them personally. Notice the words, I’ve heard, in verse 4. Notice in verse 8, they told us of.
So he actually doesn’t know them personally, but he knows of them, and he knows of them through who? Through Epaphras. Through the one who led them to faith in Jesus Christ. But nonetheless, even though he doesn’t know them, he’s praying for them. Now there’s a huge jump.
Some of us don’t pray like we could because we limit our prayers to only those that we know. Now let’s not stop there. I mean, let’s take it farther than that. You say, well, how would I pray for somebody I only know of and not somebody I know? Well, go on, look at the rest of the text because Paul reveals to us how he prays for those he knows of and doesn’t personally actually know.
He says in verse 9, for this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will, through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of life. Now that’s a mouthful, right? You look at that and you say, it seems like there’s a lot going on there. And there is a lot going on there, but let me just summarize it for you around the word knowledge.
Do you see the word knowledge that’s used first of all in verse 9, and then it’s also used again in verse 10? That knowledge is a word that speaks about facts, But it’s also a knowledge that speaks about application. And so what Paul is praying for is specifically that they would have a knowledge of God’s will and they would apply God’s will. So simply stated, not only did he pray with prayers of thanksgiving, he also prayed with prayers of supplication. Supplication meaning petition or request.
He’s asking God to do something specific in their lives. That’s That’s obviously something God wants us to do. He doesn’t want us just to only pray, Lord, bless everybody. Okay, the bless everybody prayers, or Lord, bless that group over there, whatever it is. I mean, do you notice how specific his prayers are here?
And I think this is so helpful, especially at the outset of a new year where potentially prayer could take a step up in all of our lives and in the life of the church as a very important way of us expressing relational love to one another. Or he says, I’m praying that God will fill you with knowledge, and then I’m praying that this knowledge will work itself out in your lives. So there’s kind of a 2-part to the knowledge he’s talking about here. The word is epignósko in the Greek language, and it speaks about knowing something, but then it speaks about doing something with what it is that you know. So it’s information, So he’s praying for information, for facts, that they would know the will of God.
They would know what God wants, what is right, what’s not right, how to get right, how to stay right. They would know the will of God. And secondly, then they would do the will of God. It’s kind of like, I know I should diet. Well, now the big question is, are you going to do, you know, something about what it is that you know?
So it’s not enough just to know. Epignósko brings both of these together. So simply stated, how Paul is praying is like this. He’s praying that they would know God’s will, that they would, as it says here, be filled up with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and all understanding. Charles Spurgeon used to, used to say, our goal is that your blood would be Biblin, Biblin blood.
What’s that? It’s a picture of knowing the will of God. Understanding what it is that God requires, what it is that God wants. Is knowing God’s will important? Absolutely.
We oftentimes spend, you know, important times in our lives where we’re just trying to figure out the will of God. What is it that God wants me to do? Being clear on the will of God is absolutely crucial. And believe it or not, even Christians aren’t clear on the will of God. Even when the will of God is clear, They’re not clear on the will of God.
So praying that a person would know the will of God— you got friends, you got family who are professing believers— pray that they would know the will of God. But don’t stop there. Go to the second part of this, as Paul talks about in verse 10, and pray that they would do God’s will. They would know it, But then they would do it. They would live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.
So it’s a picture of taking what we know, walking in what it is that we know, always seeking to please our Savior. Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5:9, it’s my one ambition in life to what? To be pleasing to the Lord, always bearing fruit so that there’s an indication in our lives that we’re Living in line with the supernatural power of the work of God, continually growing in the knowledge of God intellectually and experientially. So that’s Paul’s prayer. That’s how he prays.
It wasn’t just a, Lord, bless the believers at Colossae. Now, this is a very specific prayer even though he doesn’t know them. And you say, well, why would I take the time to pray that way? For people I don’t know, or for that matter, for people that I do know? Why should I take the time to pray that way?
Well, look at verses 11 and 12. And it goes on where he says, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience and joyfully giving thanks to the Father who’s qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints of light. What’s he talking about here? The king— saints in the kingdom of light. What’s he talking about here?
He’s actually talking about about the results of a person, of a person knowing the will of God and then living in the will of God. And the results of a person knowing the will of God and living in the will of God are power.
Anybody here need power? Anybody here find that this life depletes you? Power. And also the results of knowing and living in the will of God are endurance. Anybody here need endurance?
Anybody find— I see one hand. Anybody find that life tests you, that life gets you down? Absolutely. And also patience. Anybody here need patience?
Well, now we’re getting a few more hands. Yeah, life stretches us. Are you kidding? It’s a constant stretching experience of our patience. And joy.
Anybody here need some joy? Yeah, because life saddens us. It’s hard. And anybody here need a little bit more thanksgiving in their life and a little bit more gratitude in our life? Anybody need that?
Yeah, we would say yes to every one of these things. You say, well, how do you do it? Do you just like conjure it up? Do you just coach a person into this? You know, you need some more power and you need some more endurance and you need some more patience and you need some more joy and you need to have more thanksgiving.
That’s what you need. There’s a better way. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with coaching, but there’s a better way. And the better way is the supernatural way, and it’s to actually begin to pray even for people that you don’t know, that they would come to know the will of God and they would live in light of the will of God. Because in knowing and living in light of the will of God is power and endurance and patience and joy and thanksgiving.
How does that sound?
Well, we were away over the holidays for the Christmas holiday and New Year holiday. We were up in Grants Pass, Oregon. Our family came in. There were 15 of us up there in my stepmother’s home. So it was kind of a crazy place.
It was a zoo. And there are all these young children running around all over the place. And it reminded me again why I need to pray for my kids. Because when you have kids that are young, you know, and they— the power is like, it zaps, Right? And the endurance.
Do you need endurance? Yes. Do you need patience? Yes. Do you need a little bit more joy?
Yes. Do you need a little bit more thanksgiving, especially after you’ve cleaned things up the 30th time? Yes. I mean, that’s life, right? If you’re a student right now, I mean, this is tough, right?
Here you go, you’re jumping back in. Some of you are saying, please don’t remind me, we’re still on vacation. We love it. It’s great. But pretty soon you’re going to go back and you’re going to need some power and you’re going to need some endurance and you’re going to need some patience and you’re going to need some more joy and you’re going to need some more thanksgiving.
Working in a job where it’s tough working with a boss? Yeah, that would be— you know, I see some hands. Yeah, I need a little bit more of all of that stuff, right? Well, where’s it found? One of the places it’s found is in having each other’s back, in praying for each other.
You don’t even have to know people to have their back. That’s what I’m saying here is Paul did not know them personally, yet nonetheless He knew of them. He knew enough to be able to pray for them. I pray now differently for the young professional group than I used to pray for them. I pray for them now by name because I know them.
I pray differently now for the college group because I know them now. I knew of them before. I was the pastor that was removed from them because David Collister was ministering directly to these groups, but now I am the interim Pastor, this is one of the reasons why I have a little bit of stuff going on on my face right now. Some of you are saying, why are you doing that? Well, because I’m working with the young adults and the college students, and it’s not because I want to try to look like them.
Part of the reason for this is so that you would remember to pray that I’m working for the young adults and college students who oftentimes, you know, guys are wearing this kind of a look around. I could wear it. You don’t even know it looks this way because it’s all gray, but it doesn’t matter anyway. But it could be a reminder, and you don’t even need to know them to pray for them. You can know of them.
You can know that we have some college and young adult people in this church, and you could pray for them just by knowing that. Or you can know them personally, and you can pray in different ways. But the point here is all of us can have one another’s back in huge ways. By praying for the faith that we have or we don’t have, and by praying that the faith would live itself out in the knowing of God’s will and not just leaving it there, not just leaving it there, in the doing of God’s will. So let me ask you 3 questions this morning.
Question number 1, do you regularly pray? Because the focus here is Paul is regularly praying for them. I’m always, I’m constantly, I’m praying for you. So let’s just back up just for a minute and just ask the basic question. The basic question is, do you regularly pray?
You say, Dave, what’s regular? Because then I’ll be able to answer your question. What’s regular? Regular is automatic. Regular is habitual.
Regular is what you do when you brush your teeth. Okay, that’s regular. At least I hope. I hope you brush your teeth regularly. Most of us brush our teeth regularly because our parents ingrained it in us and we want to do it now.
So we brush our teeth a couple times a day at least, and we would call that regular. And you know what? We don’t even give any thought to it. I mean, in the sense of, oh, I got to remember now to go and brush my teeth. Is your prayer life that regular?
That’s the first question. Some of us in the room, we would say, yeah, it is. Because I have this automatic thing that I do. I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is fall out of my bed, and then the second thing I do is get on my knees and I start praying, oh God, help me make it through this day. You know, so maybe that’s your automatic, that’s your regular, whatever it is.
But maybe you have a time early in the morning you pray. You are, you know, automatic when it comes to meals, you pray, or you’re automatic as you’re driving to work or as you’re going to school or whatever it is. The point is, is prayer a habitual thing in your life, or is it something that, eh, if it happens? What you see here is a guy that was committed to praying, and he prayed constantly. He prayed always.
That’s the place to start. So if you haven’t started praying, start there. Make it regular. Second question is, Do you regularly pray for others? A lot of us could say yes to the first one.
I regularly pray. Well, this is a little bit tougher question. Do you also pray for others? Because oftentimes when we pray, we’re focused on our thing, on the thing I’m going to be doing this day, on the challenges that I’m faced with, on the needs that I have, on whatever it is. But do you regularly pray for others?
And the wonderful thing about this passage is that it’s focused exclusively on others. So it’s a great reminder to us, you know, let’s be thinking about others when we pray. And then the third question here is, do you regularly pray for others’ spiritual progress? Do you regularly pray for others’ spiritual progress? You say, how do I pray for their spiritual progress?
By praying for more than just blessing, you know, oh Lord, bless them. No, pray that they would be saved, or if they’re saved, thank God for their salvation. And pray that they would then live out their salvation and go even more specific on the living out their salvation. This is a great way to pray for friends, a great way to pray for people that are a part of this church. Pray that they would live out their salvation by knowing God’s will and then by doing it.
Now you say, well, Dave, does this mean I can’t pray anymore for, you know, people’s health? Because that seems to be a big request, right? Pray for my health. Pray for my back. Pray for my foot.
Pray for my toe. Pray for whatever it is. Okay, pray, pray. And actually, the Bible doesn’t demean that. In fact, you have 3 John 2 where it says, dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health.
So even the Scripture has prayers that are found in it, this one being from the Apostle John, for other people’s health. So there’s nothing wrong with praying for a person’s health. There’s nothing wrong with praying that their financial needs will be met. There are Scriptures that talk about that. But let’s not let our prayers stop there.
Let’s go past that. Let’s get more specific about praying for each other’s well-being spiritually, that we would know the will of God and that we would do the will of God. And out of knowing the will of God and doing the will of God, we will experience more power endurance and patience and joy and thanksgiving. And I think about my life, I really think that many of the good things that have happened in me spiritually are directly connected to the prayers of others, to people who’ve had my back spiritually. Started with my mother, she prayed for me.
I mean, she didn’t have anything else she could do. This David was not, you know, living a life that she was proud of. And so she prayed for me, and it kicked in. God has a way, right? When I was a pastor in Southern California, I had a woman come to me named Wilma Price.
And Wilma said, I want to pray for you. Another woman named Mary Ann Miller, I want to pray for you. So would you just keep me posted? Would you just keep us posted? And a group of people like that grew.
It grew to be a group of men as well. When we went to Phoenix, Arizona, and pastored over there, Jerry Wibberly cornered me and he said, we want to pray for you, but we need to know what it is that you need to be prayed for. So would you be willing for us— he said, I’ll do this— to put together a prayer team? And then if you would just email us every week and let us know what to pray about. And when I came here 6 years ago, we decided to do the same thing.
And so there’s a group of people who either are praying for me specifically because they get my weekly email, or there’s a group of people that are just praying. They don’t have to have the email to pray. And I want to tell you, I absolutely believe that it is impacting my life in a positive way. And, and that’s what I’m saying to you as well. This is the kind of impact that we can have on one another and we need to have on one another.
Paul would not have started the book of Colossians with, hey, you need to know I’m constantly praying for you. And at the outset of this year, as we look into this year, the great things that potentially could happen in our lives and through our lives here and around the world, So let’s make sure that we have each other’s backs by praying, by specifically praying, by doing essentially what the scripture says. Let’s pray for one another. That’s the bottom line of this whole thing. Let’s pray for one another.
Let’s do that right now. Lord, thanks for time to worship you this morning and for this passage that’s a great reminder to us at the beginning of a new year of how to take what could be an area in our lives that we neglect and make sure that it’s a priority, that we would be people who, who take seriously prayer, and we would pray for each other, whether we know each other personally or we know of each other. We would just be people that are committed to praying. And we ask, God, that as people are saved, that they would grow in Christ. They would know your will.
They would live in your will. That would be true for each one of us. They would experience abundant measure of faith and love and hope. We ask, Lord, that you would give us a knowledge of your will and, and that we wouldn’t just know it, but we would do it. And Father, may the result be greater power and endurance and patience and joy and gratitude.
And may it make an impact in homes and friendships and communities and campuses and workplaces and the places that we find ourselves this day and for years to come. For we pray this in Jesus’ name. And everybody said Amen.
Why don’t we stand up together as we close this morning?
‘Cause you give life, you are love. You bring light to the darkness. You give hope, you restore every heart that is broken.
Great are you, Lord.
You give life, you are love. You bring light to the darkness, give hope. You restore every heart that is broken. Great are you, Lord. It’s your breath.
It’s your breath.
So we pour out our praise, pour out our praise. It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise.
