Pneumonia, Father, not feeling well, I pray that you'd wrap your arms around her, make her aware of your healing touch. Even while we're praying together right now, I pray that you would deliver just a strengthening blessing to her life, that she might be aware of your presence. Guide us through the study tonight, that God, you'll be glorified in what is said and done. And Father, for all that you do in the midst of us, we'll give you the prayers, we'll give you the praise, we'll give you the glory. for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. So we are in Colossians chapter four, is where I wanna pick up tonight. And last week, for those of you who are students of the teaching, last week I spent a lot of time talking about praying with thanksgiving. Were you here last week? You remember me talking about that? Praying with a mindset of thanksgiving because we believe God is already doing something in our circumstance so we have something to be thankful for. Would you say amen to that? We have something to be thankful for because we know God is already working. Even if we can't see it every time, we have a mindset, a spirit mindset toward the Lord that says, God, I'm gonna thank you ahead of time for what you're about to do. I'm gonna thank you ahead of time because you already know what I need before I ask. I'm gonna thank you ahead of time because God, you're already ahead of me in my circumstance. You've also been behind me the whole way, and you know where I'm at right now. All right, that seems like an old part of the message, right? Y'all have heard that. So let's move on. Let's move on to the subject or the idea of fellowship. Fellowship is what we share in common, listen, in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the centerpiece of true spiritual fellowship. Without Christ, you can have a gathering, but it's not fellowship. All right, you can have a get together, but it's not fellowship. People have Christmas parties. That doesn't mean they're necessarily having a fellowship. You can have a meal together. That doesn't necessarily mean you're having fellowship. Not from a biblical standpoint. A biblical standpoint, fellowship is when we have in common a relationship to Jesus Christ, and we draw and we offer strength to one another, and it is about relationship that has Christ as the center of it all. And Paul, well, I wanna pick up one other thought before I move into the fellowship. I think this is part of the thing that is mentioned, or in the mindset of Paul, that when he says in verse, chapter four, I wanna make us look at together for a minute at verse five, 4-5. He says, walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. You remember I was talking about that some last week? Redeeming the time means that we make the most of the time that we have now. How many of you know we don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow? Some of us don't know what's gonna happen when we leave this building. We don't know what's gonna happen next. And so the idea is redeeming the time means that I have a mindset that says whatever is happening in the present, I'm going to thank you God for what I have as a gift from you and that is this present time. And God, I'm going to be thankful and I'm going to be contented and I'm going to be blessing your holy name in appreciation for the present. It's redeeming the time means I'm making the most of the time that I have right now. Now, what do we do in our modern culture? We're always thinking about what's coming next. We're always thinking about what we gotta plan for. We're always thinking about how we gotta save and how we gotta do this and do that. Anybody thinking about Christmas stuff? Some are saying no, some are saying yes. All right, so we got all this stuff on our mind. And here's a real simple way for us to realize this idea about redeeming the time. What if, everything we're worried about and fretting and thinking about or even fearful about for the future, what if it doesn't happen? Have you ever had one of those experiences? You've been so worried, so worked up, so overwhelmed with what could happen that you can't enjoy what? The present, because you don't, and then when you get to that moment, it doesn't happen at all. It doesn't happen the way you were dreading it happened. That ever happens to anybody in here? You ever have that experience? And so the idea is God is trying to teach us, redeem the time. The present is something that is a gift from God. Live like it is. Love like it is. Appreciate like it is. We don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. The other thing I see in a lot of our lives is we spend a lot of time regretting the past. Oh, none of you do that. None of you ever think about that. Okay, I can tell by your reaction, that never happens. You never think about the past. You never dwell on the past. Well, I'm gonna confess to you and shame the devil. I'm guilty of sometimes looking too far into the past, the things I shoulda, woulda, coulda, and I talked about that a little bit last week. I'm guilty of that. Always, always, always the Lord's gotta remind me, but that's not now. That may have been then, but that's not now. That may have been the way you saw things then, but it's not the way you see things now. That's why he says, he talks about the subject of wisdom. Wisdom is when we grow up in the Lord. Can I hear an amen to that? I didn't say just getting older, because all of us are getting older, but I know a lot of old folks that aren't much wiser than they were years ago. Wisdom is a process of growing up in the Lord and being seasoned in the things of God. Growing up in faith, growing up in wisdom means that you're living proof. that you've trusted the Lord and He has brought you to deeper understanding as you have believed Him and as you've lived for Him and as you've loved Him and you've grown in your understanding of the Lord, that's wisdom. Wisdom is not just book knowledge. Wisdom is not how many sermons you've listened to. Wisdom is not how many times you've been to church or how many churches you attend. It has nothing to do with that. whereby we're growing up to look and act, think more like Jesus Christ. Wisdom is not given to us by osmosis. It's not just something that we just hope we get enough wisdom. No, wisdom is tried and true. You can't have wisdom without a relationship with God and the application of his word and wrestling with the truth of his word and saying, God, I want to live like you. I want to trust you. I want to have faith in you. I want to know you more intimately, more personally. You and I, in order for us to grow in wisdom, have to have to desire the relationship with God to get stronger, stronger, stronger. Do you know there are a lot of people that attend churches all over America week after week after week, but if you were to talk to some of them about their personal relationship with the Lord, the depth, listen, the depth of that relationship is I say a prayer and I sometimes read my Bible. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if we thought about that in the context of relationship, like our relationship, your relationship with a spouse or a friend, would that be enough? Would it be enough to say, well, I called her a month ago. I spoke to her yesterday for about five minutes. Would that really be enough if you have a meaningful or purposeful relationship with somebody? No. But yet we somehow believe that it's okay with God. And it's not okay with God. God wants our heart first and foremost. He wants our focus. First and foremost, he wants our love and devotion in our hearts. And so he says, redeeming the time. And here's a way that you redeem the time, because we've already talked about wisdom in verse five, walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time, that is making today count. And then here's how you do that. Verse six, let your speech be always with grace. always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man. Now, what does that mean, ladies and gentlemen? That means in the context of my relationship with my heavenly father, there is a reality that nobody can take from me. There is a reality that nobody can change my mind about. There is a reality that nobody can convince me I haven't got Christ on the inside of me. Nobody can take him away from me. As a matter of fact, the Bible says nobody and nothing can pluck you out of his hand if you belong to him, right? And so you are convinced that Christ is with you and you're with him. You are absolutely convinced and nobody's going to change your mind about that. So what's he saying right there is he's saying, as you have that relationship with God, what are you supposed to do? Share that relationship with other people. But be very careful to always remember that people around you will sometimes try to diminish what you're convinced about. There will always be people who will try to take away from you what you say, no, nobody's going to change my mind. There will always be people who are trying to stretch that idea in your mind. And you know what you got to do? You got to go back in the spirit of your relationship with the Lord and say, no, I'm not going to move. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to waver. Nobody's going to take that away from me. I'm absolutely 100% convinced. And that settles it. Your name, you're on the rock, right? And your name is on the roll, rock and roll Christians. Just see if you're listening, right? The idea is nobody's going to take that away from you. Please listen to me. When you talk about redeeming the time and you talk about sharing the gospel, the gospel that you share is what you have experienced in Christ first and foremost. I try to tell people about witnessing and about sharing their faith, and people get all worried about, well, what if they ask me a question that I can't answer? Well, guess what? You don't have to worry about every word of this Bible. You just have to worry about the word that changed your life. What changed your life is what you and I are responsible to share with other people. God is not, I say this so often, I feel like I need to write it on a poster somewhere. God is not holding us responsible for what we do not know. He holds us responsible for what we do know and whether we're sharing it or not. And so that's what he means in this little context. He said, redeeming the time, growing in your wisdom, growing in your relationship with the Lord, becoming more and more engrafted in divine. trusting the Lord, believing the Lord, so that you have something to share with anybody who has a question about your relationship with God. And you might not be able to point at every chapter and verse. You might not be able to say, well, the preacher was talking about, I don't know what verse it was. Well, guess what? That is what matters most. When you look at somebody with a tear welling up in your eye and say, I was lost, and I was in a condition of brokenness, and I didn't feel like I had hope to go on, and I didn't know which way I was gonna turn, and I didn't know what was gonna do with the next steps of my life, but I called out to God, and God rescued me, and God saved me, and God redeemed me, and God brought me into a relationship with himself. When you have those phrases that are real to you, it changes you. Can I hear an amen to that? And it gives you something to share. It gives you something to tell other people about. You say, but they're going to ask me a question I can't answer. They probably won't, because guess what? They know, listen, if they're lost, they know less than you do. Did you catch what they said? They know less than you do. You know the Lord. He's your Lord and Savior. He's in your heart. He's with you. He'll never leave you nor forsake you. And you have a relationship with him. He's real to you. He's very, very close to you. The Bible says he sticks closer than a brother, that he'll never leave you. So you're looking at somebody and saying, you need a relationship with the Lord. And they say, well, what makes you some kind of a spokesperson for that? You say, because I know what my life was like without him. And I can see some evidences in your life that it seems like something might be missing. I'll pray for you. And you have no idea by just talking about what God means to you, how it can help impact somebody else's life. And we don't have to have all the chapters and verses. If he's changed you, that's enough. to give a good testimony of God's glory, isn't it? I mean, after all, you were dead and he brought you to life. That's a pretty big testimony right there. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. He saved you. You were alone in your sin. and he rescued you, he redeemed you. I know, I'm belaboring the point, but I feel like we're connecting on that issue. I think it's something we all need to think about. Are we redeeming the time? Are we making the most of what we have in the present? Somebody looks at me, and I've had some that have recently, they've said, Pastor, at this point in my life, I wasn't expecting to have to spend this much time in a hospital. And I look at them and say, well, I'm sure you weren't expecting it. I'm sure you didn't plan on it, but God knew you would be. So if you're living to redeem the time and you're in this moment with Christ and Christ is with you, then in this moment, is there something that he wants you to testify to others about? In other words, are you one of those grumpy patients or are you one of those patients that is telling everybody about Jesus? Or are you sharing witness with other people? I'm here, but God's got me. Is anybody still listening right now? To redeem the time, even in the negative circumstances, I am convinced what God is doing with me is not all that he wants to do with me. And in this circumstance, I'm still going to remain faithful to be a blessing to his holy name. And I'm going to at least tell other people God's with me. He's not giving up on me. One lady said, I'm going stir crazy. I don't want to be laying in this bed. I said, hey, I understand. I don't think I'd be contented just laying in a bed, suffering through the healing process. I don't think I'd be real happy with that either. Anybody been through that stuff? And you say, I'm not happy about that. But you look at it and you say, but how do I apply the truth of the scripture to redeem the time? to make the most of that time in the bad circumstance. Well, if I'm redeeming the time, I'm making my relationship with Christ known to somebody else's life. Look at what God has saved me from. I might be in the circumstance, but God's still with me. He's not leaving me. And I give testimony of that to the lives of other people. That's what it means to season, to show grace, but always to season with salt. That's the gospel. By the way, gospel is the salt. Did I say that right? Y'all get me? Gospel is the salt. I hope we don't have to deal with a lot of ice. I know we will, but we know what we do, right? We call it salt. Ain't got no other chemical stuff with it, but what do we do when we get icy out on, we throw some salt on it, right? Hope the sun shines up and on and on, and then it's gonna melt that into water on the pavement, right? But it has an impact. It has an effect. Listen, I know we're a Sunday night crowd. Can I just tell you something? Don't ever underestimate one word spoken for God's glory. Don't ever underestimate one word spoken for God's glory. God can do more in one word than I can speak in a million sermons. God can do more with one word from his holy scripture. to change somebody's hardened heart, if they're at least willing to adjust their focus to him. He can do more with one word than we can do in a lot of other words. Redeem the time. Now, I talked about fellowship and I want you to pick up on that. He says that you ought to know how to answer every man. And then verse seven, I want you to notice the transition of the Apostle Paul. He says, all my state shall Tychius declare unto you who is a beloved, what everybody? He's a beloved brother. But notice the next phrase that's used about this Tychius. Look at what the next phrase is. And a what? Faithful minister. And what? Fellow servant in the Lord. Now I can preach the rest of the sermon right there. Because those three words are declarations from the Apostle Paul about this man, Tychius. This is the Apostle Paul lifting up his brother. You do not see him tearing down his brother. You do not see him saying, well, he's faithful, but he has this issue. Come on now, y'all listening right now? He doesn't go into this letter. Remember, this is a letter that's been going out to the church. It's been shared with the congregation. This is especially for the Church of Colossae. And what is Paul doing? Paul is lifting up his brother in the sight of the church. How many of you know we all got flaws? Oh, I'm the only one, I guess, okay. Thanks, Brother Frank. Yep, that's you, right? We all have issues in our lives. We all have character flaws. We all have things that we have to work on and work through. Come on now, you with me right now? We all got stuff. How many of you find it very easy, oh man, this is a tough question. How many of you find it very easy to find a flaw in somebody? How often is it that it's easier to find a flaw than it is to find something good? Think about it. It's always easier to find a flaw, isn't it? That's just human nature. That's the way we're wired. We're wired to look at the negatives first. And we have to, when you come to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, that God has now placed you in the context of relationship with Him, and He's told you to love one another as you love yourself. And then He looks at you and me and He says, wait a minute, wait a minute. You want everybody pulling out your flaws and your faults and your character issues? No, you want somebody that believes in you. You want somebody that can come alongside you and pull out the best in you. You want somebody that's gonna fan the flame of goodness in your heart. You want somebody that's gonna lift you up, not somebody that's gonna keep on putting you down. And so what he does is exactly that. Now, when Paul had a problem with somebody because they kept talking to him and they kept trying to stop the gospel and they tried to cause trouble for him, he called them out too, ladies and gentlemen. But in this particular phrase, in this particular part of the chapter, what Paul does is he admonishes the good things that he sees in these fellow servants. It would be kind of like you going out from Beacon Baptist Church and saying, somebody says, write on a piece of paper somebody that you know in the church, and they might give you a name, and you say, oh yeah, I know that person, and well, I can tell you a few things about that person. And guess what? By the way, once it's in writing, even if it's on Facebook, it's out there forever. Hello. What stuff is negative is said and what's put out there, it's out there, isn't it? And it's hard to overcome that stuff. And so what you and I have to recognize is when I am asked to speak about somebody, I want to speak that which is good about them. If there's anything in them, a fellowship with each other. Now, ladies and gentlemen, please understand me. He's writing specifically to the church. He's writing to us as believers. If we walk away from a gathering and find fault with each other in the world, it's kind of like a marriage. When a husband goes out and badmouths his wife, or a wife goes out and badmouths the husband, guess what? Once those words are in people's minds, how are they able to overcome what they've already heard? Is anybody still listening to me right now? And it's the same thing when it comes to us and the fellowship of believers. We have to be really careful what we say about one another. Because we're accountable for those words first and foremost in our relationship with the Lord, but we're also responsible for whether we're building a brother up or a sister up or we're tearing them down. And Paul is admonishing this Tycheist. He is a beloved brother. That means we share Christ in common. Anytime you see the word beloved, it means dearly loved. That dearly loved relationship is in Christ. He says he's a beloved brother. He is also a faithful minister. What does that mean? He is faithful to the task of being a minister in spite of the circumstance. Hello, y'all still listening? He's faithful in the ministry in spite of the anger of the culture, in spite of the people out in the world that try to tear him down, in spite of any accusation that's unfounded and ungodly, anything that comes at him, he still remains faithful to the Lord. That's what he says about him. He goes a little bit further and he says, and he is a fellow servant in the Lord. And I think I feel like in my heart, based on what I'm going to read to you, I feel like that is the most, that's the one that is closest and dearest to Paul's heart. We're fellow servants. I get a little taste of that when I watch the church involved in certain ministries or I watch the church helping, you know, some of the ladies go down there and put the meal on the table and everybody's kind of working together to make stuff out there and get it all ready, warmed up and all that stuff. And you say, there's something special about the ladies working together. Come on. Don't you feel that? Don't you feel that when you're working in the food pantry and you see people just kind of fellowshipping together? We're not talking about or down about anybody. We're not gossiping about anybody. We're looking for the good in each other and we're serving the food and the people that come to get it, but we're also serving each other. We've got a ministry to each other. Right? Fellow servant, fellow, we're in a fellowship of service. We're in this together. And we want to demonstrate to others that we're of one mind and one heart. This is how we unite around meeting a need. He goes a little bit further and he says, hmm, in those verse 80, he says, I've sent him to you. And he says, I've sent him unto you for the same purpose. Well, what's that mean? He's sending him to this church of Colossae to demonstrate that he's a beloved brother, he's a faithful minister, and he's a fellow servant of the Lord. That's what he's telling him to do. And he says, I'm gonna send him to you that he might know your estate, the condition of the church. And what? and comfort your hearts. Why did the church need comforting? Because living in life is tough. Amen to that? Come on now. Some of you just nodded, but you didn't, you didn't amen me. Isn't life sometimes hard? Right? And so what he's telling us is he says he's coming into the life of the church and he's faithful to the Lord. He's a beloved brother. And he's also going to, he's also going to prayerfully comfort your hearts. Comfort you with what? Jesus Christ. The love for God. Well, he doesn't stop there. And he goes on in verse nine, and he mentions another servant. He says, he's also with Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. That means he's coming out from among them as a body of believers. He is one of you. They shall make known unto you all things which are done here. Now, real quickly, let me put this in a context for you. Paul is writing a letter He writes letters sometimes from prison. Sometimes he writes letters from other stations of life and other places in the culture. But he has churches all over the place that he has been a part of seeing established, right? And so his mindset here is Onesimus is a faithful brother. He is one that's going to know how things are going with you. and he's gonna bring you a word from me, Paul, but he's also gonna bring word back to me from y'all, right, from the church. There's a mutuality here. There's a condition of love for one another, even if there's distance between us, even if there's physical distance. Hey, have you ever known somebody that you had a great friendship with for a long time? And maybe they moved away, or circumstances kept you off from being around each other. And all of a sudden, you get the opportunity to get back together, and it's like you didn't even miss a minute. You got anybody in your life like that? It's like we started right where we left off. My uncle, sometimes when I go to see him, it's like we can not talk on the phone or nothing for months. And then I see him, and I said, well, he's a big time golfer. I said, how's your golf going? Well, it's like we pick up right where we left off. No, you don't have anybody like that in your life. Don't have somebody like that. You're away from them for a while. Do you understand? The reason that happens is because you have genuine fellowship. You have something in common that touches your hearts. You have something in common. I've been in ministry for a number of years. There are people to this very moment in time that contact me from Kentucky or Texas or Ohio, and they contact me, and we talk on the phone, that's like we didn't miss a minute. We've been away from each other, some of them for 20 years. We haven't really interacted face-to-face for that long of a time. You have somebody like that. Now here's the follow-up to that. Are you like that for somebody else? Do you seek out a fellowship with somebody else that even if there was a time of absence, Paul would have seasons of absence from these different churches, and he was an intricate part of helping pull together these believers. And they would come into one place, in one accord, in one house, and they would break bread together, and they would study the scrolls, the scriptures together, and they would speak about the letters that Paul was writing, and they would have this mindset, oh, I wish I could hear his voice in person. That was their attitude. More importantly, they wish they could hear the words of Jesus. That was what brought them together in the first place. I get up here and preach 40, 50 minutes of sermon. My job and my goal is not to make you listen for me to be drawn on. Sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown's teacher. I feel like I'm up here, and y'all are just, and I'm looking, I don't want that spirit in us. I want you to feel like, hey, when he's speaking, he's speaking from the heart of God. I want you to receive the scripture. I want you to, the scripture is what's able to save you. The scripture is what is able to deliver you. The scripture is what is able to help you. The scripture is what gives you hope and encouragement. It's my role, my job to share that with you. That's what Paul had as a mindset. Paul said, I just want you to have a, I want you to feel, I want you to sense the passion that I have for Jesus Christ when you read this letter. Don't read it like it's just another writing on a piece of parchment. Don't read it like it's just another pen word. No, read it with the idea that you and I, even though we're not in the same space, you can as almost hear my voice while you're reading the words. And that's what God wants us to do with this scripture. He wants us to read it with a passion toward the Holy Spirit of God. God, I want this word to come alive when I read it. Why do you think I ask you all to give me an amen once in a while? Why do you think I ask you to speak the word with me once in a while? It's because I want the word of God to be what's speaking to your heart more than just a pastor droning on about a subject. the Lord. He can change everything in your life. Can't he? Doesn't he? That's what this is. And Paul saying, even though I'm separated from you, I want you to have a desire that when you read my words, you could almost imagine me being right there seated in the midst of you. I want you to have that attitude that I am representing Christ and I'm sharing the words of God with you so that your life will never, ever, ever be the same. So he goes from Onesimus, he says, he's a faithful brother. Verse nine, he's one of you. He says that they shall make known to you all things that are done here. Aristocharus, my fellow brother, Fellow what, church? Fellow prisoner. You did hear me say prisoner. They're in prison together for loving Jesus, for preaching the gospel. But wait a minute, I thought when you gave your heart to Jesus, you said the little prayer at church on Sunday, and you asked Jesus to forgive you for your sin and come into your life, I thought that meant that everything in life was going to get better. No, not necessarily so. The Bible teaches us that that is just the beginning of sometimes a lot of sorrows, a lot of challenges, and surely a lot of persecution. The modern day church really doesn't know what persecution is, Let me give you an example of it. It's when you preach your heart out, somebody looks at you and they say, ah, hogwash, and they walk away and they never want to hear it spoken again. You say, that's a little bit of persecution. That means they didn't persecute me. Who did they persecute? They persecuted God, but they're trying to do that to me. Right? That's God working in their mind and their heart. That isn't, I don't take, I take that and wear that as a badge of honor now. Oh, okay. You disagree? Well, you deal with the Lord and come back when you get an answer and you explain it to me differently. Oh boy. So Onesimus, and then he gives you this error to, I almost said it right the second time. My fellow prisoners salute you and Marcus's sister's son to Barnabas. By the way, son to Barnabas. You remember Barnabas was the son of consolation. He was known as the one to encourage. He was the one that was blessing. He says, touching whom you receive commandments, if he comes to you, receive him. And verse 11 in Jesus, which is called justice, so that's not his first name, he's called justice to take away from that name Jesus. And he says, who are of the circumcision, these only are my fellow workers unto the kingdom of God, which have been a comfort unto me. A comfort unto me when, when I am in prison. How many of you in this room realize that there are times that we disobey the Lord? And in those times, if we stay in that condition, we can literally get ourselves tangled up in our circumstance. How many of you would agree with that statement? We can kind of get shipwrecked in our faith. We can kind of get locked in our own mental or emotional or spiritual prison. the place where we just get distant from the Lord and we just kind of isolate ourselves and sometimes it all started with just one sin of disobedience to the Lord. It's kind of the idea here that the Bible teaches that the context of this is these guys know what it's like to be in prison and they come with a message of comfort. They come with the salve, they come with the healing strength of Gilead. They come with the balm of Gilead in their hands. That's the principle that I get out of this, that they're a comfort unto me. I know it's just the Sun and Night crowd. I know some of you have probably listened to me a little too much today, but I hope you're willing to at least hear one more challenge. When did you see someone in prison and you went and sat with them? When did you see someone suffering with depression? That's a prison, and you sat with them. When was it that you saw somebody that was physically broken, emotionally broken, spiritually broken, and you went to them, and you didn't have much to say, but you just sat there with them? Or you simply said, I don't have all the answers to your problem, but let's pray together. When was the last time that you became a comfort? Can I just be so brash as to remind you of something? When you and I minister to somebody, we're an answer to somebody's prayers. When we care enough to put ourself on the back burner and we put their needs ahead of our own, we have no idea how we might very well be the answer to their prayers. They're lonely. They're broken. They don't know which way to turn. And all of a sudden you see that they're missing. You see that their countenance is down. You see that they might be struggling in an area of their life. And you say, I'm not coming here to tell you what you should or shouldn't do. I'm just here to sit with you for a while. I'm just here to try to minister to you. I'm just here. Isn't that what Jesus meant when he said, if you even give a cup of cold water in my name, it's as if you're giving it unto me. Isn't that exactly what he means? Because in that whole scripture, he says, if you see somebody that needs a drink or you see somebody that's needing clothes, do you just leave them? Or do you minister to them? If you give a cup of cold water in my name, it's as if you're doing it unto me. You look at this word of comfort and you say, what did Paul receive? He received comfort from those fellow, those guys that were with him, that guy that was with him in prison. I've got to hurry. He goes on and he says, he says, Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluted you always, laboring fervently for you in prayer. Oh my goodness, that you may stand perfect and complete in the will of God. Wow. For I bear him record that he has a great zeal for you, and them that are in Laodicea, and them in Hierophilus, and Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you. Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea and Nephes, and the church which is in his house. And when this epistle is read among you, cause it to be read also in the church of Laodiceans, and that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea. and say to Agrippus, take heed to the ministry which thou has received in the Lord, that thou fulfill it, thus salutation by the hand of me, Paul, remember my bonds. That's the same thing as Jesus saying, remember the cross. It's the same thing. Paul was saying, remember my bonds. Jesus said, take up your cross daily and follow me. It's the same kind of principle. He's saying, remember the cost of being a servant for the Lord. Remember that it's costing somebody something. Remember me in my bonds, in my prison, in my desperation. Now, Paul was contented, whatever state he was in, he learned how to be contented, whether he was in prison or he was out of prison, whether he had a lot to eat or a little bit to eat. The Bible says in Philippians, he learned how to be contented. Can I close by looking one more time for just a moment back at the verse 13? I'm sorry, verse 12. He says, Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, salutes you always. But notice what he says, ladies and gentlemen. laboring fervently for you in prayer. Now, most of us don't think about prayer being very laborious, right? We just pause and we say a little prayer for somebody. That isn't the kind of prayer that this guy's talking about. This is a prayer that he brings a sweat for, right? This is a prayer that he's pouring out his heart on the altar. This is a prayer that he's saying, I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop laboring in this prayer until there's some answers. I'm not going to stop laboring in this prayer until there's a breakthrough. I'm not going to give up knocking on heaven's door on behalf of my brother until something happens. That's a prayer life like that. That's what he's talking about. This guy can pray, man. He labors and pray. That means he breaks a sweat for you in prayers. But the prayer is that you would do what? And I'll close. That you may stand perfect and complete in the will of God. Can I just give you all this last point about this? What is the will of God? Now, when I was young in the ministry, I went through a season of my life. I was very young age, very young in the ministry. I went through a season of my life that says, I want to know what God's will is for my life. Has anybody ever said that to yourself? I just want to be in God's will. I want to know what his purpose is for me. It's kind of what's behind that question, right? What's God's purpose? Somebody's going through great difficulty, what's God's purpose? They're having problems, what's God's purpose? What's God's will for me? And I just want to summarize the entire will of God, but I don't want it to come across cliche or trite. I want it to be something that just touches your heart. The will of God for your life is to love him. That is God's will. God's will, ultimately, and you all heard me say it a lot, you probably have written it down somewhere, or you probably say, boy, if he says that again, I'll know that's where he's going. It's to get you home. The will of God is for you to be so close to Him that you recognize and realize and you align yourself with a mindset, for me to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord. The mindset is the will of God. You said, but no, I want to know the will of God for my problems. I want to know what the will of God is for this cancer. I want to know the will of God for this heart disease. I want to know the will of God for a broken relationship. I want to know the will of God for my children turning away from me. I want to know the will of God. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to overspeak it, but it's still the same point. The will of God in every circumstance of your life. is that you remain in love with him. The ultimate will of God in every point and every circumstance is that you still love him, that you don't turn your back on him, that you don't stop serving him, you don't stop being obedient to his word. The ultimate will of God is that you would love him, and through that, you would experience his love in you, right? that you would experience that work of God's work in your heart and your life. But ladies and gentlemen, His ultimate will, get you home. Home. I want this way, I want that way, right? And get us home. You all know that's a perspective, don't you? I had a preacher tell me this week, he said, I know you're a Baptist. He said it like it was a bad word. He said, I know you're a Baptist. And he said, do you believe in healings? I said, oh yes. He says, well, do you believe that you can lay hands on people? I said, oh yeah, the Bible says if there's any sick among us, let them come and ask for the elders to lay hands on them, pray for the sick. I believe we're supposed to do that. I'll never forget kneeling down right next to Bob Fuson's bed and putting my hands on his hand as I pray. I believe God can do anything. But I always leave room for the greater will of God to be done. And what is the greater will of God? He took him home. He took him home. Now it's hard for us. It's a loss for us. I could go on with others that have gone on too. You've had family members and friends that have gone on before you. And you look at that and you say, how could that be the will of God? Because ladies and gentlemen, this is not our home. The will of God is to get us home. You say, well, can God in the middle of my cold, my flu, my COVID, can God do a miracle and get me healed up? Sure he can, and he does. He does all the time, doesn't he? Otherwise, he would have killed you. Your life would have been over. I don't say that laughing at anybody, I say that in a joy-filled mindset. If God wanted that to be the element that took you out of here, if you're a true believer in Jesus Christ, you draw your last breath in this physical body, the first breath you take in heaven is the glory of God, hallelujah. This is not the will of God that you and I would be stuck in a mindset that this is all there is. No way, God's got a bigger will than that. God's will is to get you home. For those of us who are left behind, his will is to make us long for home. When we see those loved ones take their last breath here, that sigh that we feel in our spirit is a sigh of longing. I long to be at home with them someday. I long to see them again. I can't believe that there's a time coming, and remember what I said? If you have fellowship with them, and you get into the realm of heaven, and you are there worshiping in the throne of God, and all of a sudden, you hear one of those loved ones speak your name behind your head, and all of a sudden, you know that voice. And you turn around and you're able to embrace that loved one again. All of the pain and all of the suffering and all of the longing and all of the sadness will be swept away. That's why the Bible says he'll wipe away all the tears from our eyes. That is exactly what that means. I'm absent from the body, present with the Lord, and I'm with those that I have fellowship with in this world. And even though we've been separated by space and time, we're never separated from our heart for one another. And one day I'll hear that voice say my name. and I'll embrace him again in a place called heaven. That is everything that our faith is about, isn't it? That's what all this is about. God's will is to get us home. God's will is to get you and me every day to love him just a little bit more and to whet our appetite for the things of God. Let's pray. Father God, we love you. We thank you for life.