I invite you to turn with me to Ephesians chapter 4. Ephesians chapter four, I'd like to read verse seven through verse 16. And it was such an appropriate prayer that we just sung that the Lord would continue to speak to us until his church is built. For the theme of this passage is that the church of Jesus Christ would be built by Christ through his gifted people. Ephesians chapter four, beginning in verse seven, But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Let's pray together. Father, we've asked you in song. We ask you now again that you would speak to us. Would you please open our eyes that we might behold wonderful things out of your law. Father, You know at times how dull of hearing we are, and I pray it would not be so this morning, but that you would, by your grace, help us to live out what we learn from your word. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Although we read the whole passage, The verses want to focus on verses 13 and 14. The main idea is that Jesus Christ has risen victorious. He is given all authority in heaven on earth. He even now sits at the right hand of his father. And as the victorious king of all things, he has shown his power by giving gifts to his people. Those gifts are intended by our Lord to be used in his people to build up his church, those who belong to him, so that heaven knows his victory and earth would know his victory through the exercise of the gifts that he has given to his church. And he's given some individuals in the church to equip all the saints to exercise their gifts in the work of the ministry. Every one of us. Every saint, every member of the church is called by the Lord of the church to exercise your gifts in building the church. There are to be no seat warmers in the church. On April 23rd, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave a heart-rousing speech at the Sorbonne University in Paris. He was giving it as a then former American president to a fellow republic of France, and he focused on individual citizenship. convinced that the United States and the Republic of France stood as beacons of freedom and beacons of a government of, for, and by the people. And his argument was that a nation would only be as great as its citizenship. And he said this. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, everyday affairs of life, and next, in those great occasional crises which call for the heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. It's quite insightful. He then goes on to acknowledge that at this prestigious university that he's speaking to, that he is speaking likely to a group of people that come from the above-average strata of society. And with that come certain advantages afforded to them, including mental training and leisure and affluence. And he cautions then that group who sits in kind of a seat of privilege against the common temptation that can come upon them, a kind of removed cynicism where they look upon society as spectators and critics. And he says, quote, the poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect than he who either really holds or feigns to hold an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty. And then, with that context, he brings on a string of remarks that are so stirring that it has taken on a life of its own. Perhaps you've heard this. He says this, quote, It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." We are here in a room of average people, given a great task by a victorious Lord. He has not called us to be spectators. He's called us into the arena. He's called each one of us, saints, members of the church of Jesus Christ, being given gifts and grace to accomplish those gifts, to exercise those gifts for the great task of showing our Christ is victorious by expanding His church and building it up. We have been given salvation. We have been given adoption. We have been given the Spirit. We have been given unity. And our task now, with all of those gifts, has now been given to us. No greater task could any human hold than to live out the task Jesus has given us, to build His church by His strength. And every one of us has been given a tool by the Lord for exercising in the arena, not to fight one another, as so often happens in churches, where we use our tools to wield against one another. No, that's not the reason we have any gifts. Why we have them is to build one another up, to see his church expand. This takes us laying aside our fears and throwing ourselves into the midst of the arena, ready to serve our King Jesus. Some of you are in the arena. You've got dust and sweat and blood covering you. And you are straining with the strength that God gives you to build up the body of Christ. Sometimes you're tired. And sometimes the fruit is not always evident, and the efforts that you're putting in aren't recognized. But you serve a King who sees all that you do for Him. And you feel in your heart, even if you had 10,000 lives to give, you'd give them all to King Jesus. And you, in giving your life to King Jesus, would do so not as a repayment to Him, for who can repay what He's given to you? You do it as a simple, humble servant who has a great King, and you do it out of the delight of your heart, an act of faith and dependence on Him. And your efforts unto the Lord Jesus are fraught with imperfections. A string of failed attempts seem to litter the road behind you, but nonetheless you strain forward for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, straining for what lies ahead, forgetting what lies behind. And this work that you are engaged in, you're doing it in your homes. You're doing it in your workplaces. You're doing it in the prayer closet. It's on your knees when you're working before the King. It's in the kitchen, serving. It's in the kitchen at home. It's in the church kitchen. It's in the Sunday school classrooms, teaching and training. It's in those conversations that you have with one another, pointing each other to Christ. It's in the gospel conversations you seek to have with family and neighbors and coworkers. It's in raking the leaves outside of the church building. It's in your generosity in supporting ministries and missionaries for the expanse of the gospel. It's in denying yourself for the preferences of others and showing them love. For those of you who are in the arena, this passage is kind of a excel still more kind of passage. Press on, brothers and sisters. Don't lose heart. Know that your straining for the edification of the church has a very specific goal in mind, and Christ Jesus will accomplish his purposes. And I want to remind you, for those who are in the arena, that your strivings are part of the greatest work that anyone could be a part of. seeing the redeemed people of God built up until that day when King Jesus returns and calls his own to himself. You're in the greatest building project ever, not of a physical structure that's being built, but of the very people of God being built up, who for all eternity will be in God's kingdom. So for those who are in the arena, take this as an encouragement to press on, Some of you are in the seats watching. You are as engaged in the ministry of the body of Christ as a man watching a busy construction site while eating popcorn. You watch while others work. Or like a person who only eats and comments how delicious the food is but never uses the energy that the food creates to work. You eat but do not work. This could be for several reasons. There's really only one reason if you have absolutely no participation in the building of the body of Christ. The one reason that exists is you don't belong to it. If you have absolutely no participation at all, that is pretty much a sure sign that you don't belong. Maybe the case that you attend but are not part It is those who are predestined and adopted and redeemed and forgiven and given the Spirit and an inheritance who belong. And if you don't belong, then you are still in your sins. And I wanted to urge you today, as we sung earlier, come to Jesus. He is a welcoming Savior who welcomes those who are weary and burdened with their sins to lay down their sins before Him. And He takes them up upon Himself. And He carries them to His cross where He carried the wrath of God against your sins. And there at the cross He redeems you, He cleanses you, He forgives you, He makes you new. And from His throne in heaven, now having resurrected, He sends His Spirit to you so that you are regenerated, made new, come to Christ. And as soon as you come to Christ and you have the Spirit, you are put into the church. You don't add yourself to the church. Jesus Christ does that by His Spirit, and as soon as He does, there's something in your heart where you want to serve Him. You want to follow Him. Oh, so far from perfectly, but still, nonetheless, you want to serve Him. So if you have no participation at all, you need to consider, are you even a part of what Christ is doing in this world? Some of you are saved. and you're coming to practice, but you're sitting on the bench. Why aren't you playing? Well, there may be a variety of reasons to that. If you are saved, then you have a gift, you have the Spirit, you have grace, and you have something to do. Maybe you don't know what you should do. Well, if that's the case, come and talk to me. You may know that you have something to do, but you don't know how to do it. Well, come talk to me. Or you may know what you're supposed to do. You may even know how to do it, and you just don't want to. Well, if that's the case, come talk to me. Even better, speak to the Lord. Confess that you have not been serving as you ought. Ask Him for the grace to do what you need to do. That's the basic exhortation to you. I wanna come to this passage now and unpack it a little bit for us so we see what this work of building up the church is meant to go towards. The victorious Christ has given us gifts. He's given individuals, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers who exist to or existed to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ so that every saint is meant to be equipped to do the work that Christ Jesus has for them. The work of the ministry exists to build up the body of Christ that is the church. There are many so-called ministries, lots of things like to put the label ministry on itself, but if a ministry is not building up the body of Christ through the expansion of the gospel, or believers being given the resources to live out the Christian life, then it's not real ministry. It might be nice, but unless it's building up the church or expanding the gospel, It's not the kind of ministry that the Bible has in mind. The work that has been given to Christ's saints is to continue on until we all attain to certain markers. There are three that are here that we'll come to in a moment. But I want you to notice that in verse 13, the work of the ministry for the building up the body of Christ is to continue. It's continue until we all attain to these markers, the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood and the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. The work of the ministry is to continue on basically throughout this age. It's as long as we all who are believers are not yet at this point that the work is to continue. In the time of Paul, Until this very day, new believers are being folded into the church every day, throughout the world. The Spirit is doing the work of regenerating dead sinners and making them alive and putting them into the church. It may not be right here in West Sand Lake today, but it is somewhere else. Maybe in China. Might be in Papua New Guinea. Might even be in North Korea or in Iran. And as long as new believers are being added, then there is work to be done because they need to be equipped, they need to be trained, and so this work of the ministry needs to go on. As long as the expansion work continues, then the ministry work continues. As long as the church exists, this side of glory, there is work to be done. And so Paul says that this work of the ministry for the building up the body of Christ is to continue until, until we all attain. Notice that it's not just as long as there's kind of work to be done, this work is to continue until we all reach this point. Oftentimes, we look at the pursuit of Christian growth as kind of an independent effort, like exercise. You think, I need to really get healthy. I'm going to go to the gym. If other people want to let their bodies go, that's fine. I'm not. I'm going to hit the weights. I'm going to do cardio. I'm going to get it done. I don't care if other people are out of shape. I'm not going to be. And we look at the Christian life as this individualistic kind of effort where it doesn't matter what happens to the other people as long as I'm growing, as long as I'm mature. Or it could be like the pursuit of personal knowledge. I don't care if other people are ignorant. I'm not going to be. I'm going to apply myself to learning. I'm going to know what's going on in the world. I'm going to read. I'm going to know. Other people want to waste their brain cells, that's up to them. But true Christianity and true Christians are not independent, lone wolf Christians. It's until we all attain. This work of the ministry doesn't stop as soon as you get yourself as spiritually buff as you possibly can. You look around and you see what's going on in the people next to you. How are they doing? Are they wasting away spiritually? You have to care about that. If you see a brother or a sister now where they ought to be, then you should rejoice. If you see a brother or sister who is not where they ought to be, then you should long to see them flourish, pray for them, help them. And so the growth continues in the church until we all arrive at certain marks, all of us together. I recall when I played soccer, we did a couple of weeks of just basically training. And we did a lot of running. We went on cross-country trails. And some of the team would have great capacity of running. And they would kind of get out in front. And some of the team had been sitting on the couch and eating Cheetos all summer. and they were in the back. But if we were going to be a successful soccer team, it didn't matter if two or three guys were able to just kill the course. The whole team had to get through it, get trained. And so the guys who could just burst ahead had to stay back. And the guys who were in the back had to push it a little bit harder to get forward. We all have to attain. So the growth continues in the church until we all arrive at certain marks. There are three marks that are listed here. The first mark is that gifted church members are to build toward the body of Christ until unity is experienced. Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. This unity that is to be experienced is to be experienced in two ways, unity of the faith and unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. Unity of the faith is basically telling us that the task of the whole church is to use their gifts toward achieving experiential unity in the common Christian faith. The faith here is not that we all believe, the act of believing, although that of course is important, but it is rather what is believed. That we all attain to the unity of what is believed. And of course we should all believe. This is perhaps one of the legitimate reasons that some churches recite together various creeds to emphasize that we all believe the same thing, that we are all united by the same truth. It is to be the unity of the faith, ensuring that we are all linking arms on believing the same truths. This is why doctrine is so important. and why we must separate from those who do not walk in the truth. We understand, don't we, that as you look around the world, there are a lot of people who say that they believe the Bible, or that they love the name of Jesus, but you have to ask in those questions, in those statements, what Jesus do you love? And what about the Bible do you believe? And what about salvation? What is salvation? How are you saved? And so we define the faith with biblical specificity, and that's what unites us. It's not just any Jesus. It's not the Jesus of the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Jesus of the Mormons. It is the Jesus of truth, of reality that unites us, of the real faith given to the saints. The second person of the Trinity, begotten of the Father, not made true God from true God. That's the Jesus that we follow and worship, the Jesus of the Christian faith. And what about the Holy Spirit? Who is that? Well, not just some non-personal power like some people believe, but the third person of the Trinity, the one who comes and makes us new, the one who indwells his people. Well, what about salvation? Well, the faith that we hold to is justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, revealed in the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone. And every one of these doctrines can be unpacked with greater specificity. It doesn't mean that you have to be some theologian who writes a systematic theology to be united, but you have to know the basics. Who is Christ? What is salvation? Who is the Spirit? Who is the Father? What is the church? The faith, the real faith, the biblical faith. We have to be careful, however, because We can very easily put too many things into the essential circle and very quickly begin saying foolish things about people who believe differently from us on non-essential issues. And we start putting people in heaven or in hell based on tertiary and secondary issues. One person said that liberalism is saying no doctrine really matters and fundamentalism is saying that everything matters. We have to have biblical discernment. Liberalism puts everyone in heaven. Extreme fundamentalism puts everyone not baptized by you personally in hell. We have to have unity in the true faith, biblical faith. You might say, well, don't we already have unity? Weren't we told earlier in Ephesians that Jesus Christ makes us one new man in place of the two? That we are united, it's a gift from Him, and the answer to that is yes, we do have that. There is real unity that's been given to Christ's church. But this is an already not yet issue, as are so many in scripture. There is the present reality in some sense of what we have in unity, and yet there is the expectation that there is going to be a perfect, complete unity yet to come. And while we live in this already not yet time period, we strive to achieve the greatness of the unity that is promised to us. So unity is what we are to strive towards, using our gifts to kind of help pull people together in the faith. That's the work of the ministry, until we all attain this unity. Unity of the faith, but also unity of the knowledge of the Son of God. Unity becomes experienced in the church when we all have a common knowledge of the Son of God. And this is truly knowing Him, not that weakness of just knowing about Jesus where you can recite facts about Him. Truly knowing Him. What would be the result of a church where every saint is helping every other saint know Jesus Christ better? We were going to be knit together. This was Paul's ambition personally. Paul's aim was to know Christ. He wanted to know Christ in his death and to know him in his resurrection. He wanted to know him in the obedience of his death and in the power of his resurrection, in his humility and in his power. He wanted to know him as much as he could know him. And he regarded all things as a loss compared to the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ. This is what Paul says in Philippians 3.8. He says, indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ. That's the heart of every true saint. I want to know him. I want to know Christ. So then it is to be the goal of pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministering to one another in such a way that we all urge one another toward knowing Christ Jesus in unity, that we all make it our ambition to know Him. In our lives, It's often the case that there are many things that we want to know. Many things that we fill our lives with. Sometimes, it seems like what we want to know is pop culture, or sports stats, or housing prices, or the latest political crisis. Sometimes that kind of culture infiltrates the church, and so what becomes the topics of discussion in the church is not the Lord Jesus Christ, but the latest political issue, the latest athletic competition, the latest pop culture reference. Not that those things can never be discussed in the church, but just know that unity is not going to come from a church that is all Republican or Democrat, nor is it at a church that knows everything about the latest films and music. A church that is united is a church that is striving to know together the Lord Jesus Christ. Knowing him in the obedience of his death, knowing him in the power of his resurrection. So how does your ministry, the one that the Lord Jesus has given you, how does it contribute to other saints knowing Jesus Christ better? That's one of the markers of us accomplishing the ministry rightly. The work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity. Does your ministry help others know Christ better? Do others see Christ in you? Do others see your pursuit of Christ? Do you speak truth and love to others about Christ? In some ways, that's how all of our ministries work. different ways, different avenues. At the end, it is to build all of us up into knowing Christ. The second mark of the ministry that we are to work towards, to attain, is maturity, maturity. Gifted church members are to build toward, in the body of Christ, maturity. The work of the ministry is to continue until we all attain to a mature man. It's literally what it says, a mature man. Some ESV says mature manhood. This is to be understood that this maturity is a united maturity. that we are all to attain to this maturity. That is, the whole body of Christ is to be mature. And that was the focus of Paul's ministry. In Colossians 1, verse 28, Paul says, him, that's Christ, him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. He aimed to proclaim Christ, which included warning everyone and teaching everyone, and the purpose or result would be to present everyone mature in Christ. This has a great correspondence to parenting. The aim of a parent always has to be to produce mature adults. That's the aim. You are not aiming for your children to remain children. You are training them to be men and women. You're aiming all the time for them to mature physically. That's why you feed them, bring them to the doctors, try to keep them healthy, try to keep them from killing themselves. You mature them physically. Emotionally, you help them to handle the anger and the sadnesses and sorrows. Relationally, you help them to handle conflict and teach them how to settle disputes. Spiritually, you teach them about the Lord Jesus Christ to follow Him. Teach them about work, how to labor and earn money, how to handle money. And on and on it goes. The aim of parenting is to produce mature adults. And a great failure of our culture is that we do not expect enough of our children. So basically, we now have a generation of people in mature bodies living like children, using their bodies to play. or they can't work a 40-hour job, or hold a job, or pay their bills, or cook their meals, or get married, or raise children, or use their sexuality responsibly, or vote responsibly, or think clearly. I'm not saying that's everyone in the current generation that is in that realm, but many, don't we see it? Don't know how to live. So often it is, likewise in the church, You have people who have been in the church for years, but they can't tell you the difference between justification and sanctification. Regeneration from adoption. They can't reconcile a relationship or evangelize the lost, fight against the flesh, or walk in the spirit, or defend against the attacks of the evil one, or pursue unity, or interpret scripture. They're infants. even though they've been going to church for 30 years sometimes. Where are the Christian adults? The mature adults? Well, you may say, I'm an adult. You may say, I have a quiet time. I read the Bible. I know the difference between justification, sanctification, regeneration from adoption. I fight against the flesh. I walk in the spirit. As I'm able, I repent, put on the armor of God. I pursue unity, I interpret Scripture. Great. Praise God. It's wonderful. What are you doing to help others do the same? Until we all attain, the church is not here only for your individual growth. is that we all reach mature manhood, not mature manhoods, plural, but singular, the whole church together towards maturity. That's the second mark, maturity. The third mark that gifted church members are to build toward in the body of Christ is measuring up to Christ. This really continues the second one and basically explains what the maturity in us is to be measured against. It is against Christ. Measure your maturity and the church's maturity against Christ. In our home, like many others, we have a wall where we mark off at our children's birthdays how tall they are. Priscilla and I are on that wall as well. And so as the birthdays come, we do a little pencil mark to show how much they've grown in the intervening year. And they look at those marks and see how much they've grown, how much have they grown compared to their siblings, how much more do they have to go until they reach Priscilla's height and my height. This is kind of a fun way to chart their physical growth. I'm still the tallest mark on that wall. They're striving to get there. But understand, myself, or John, or Stephen, nor anyone else in this church is the measure to which we compare ourselves. The maturity that we are striving towards is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So basically, you look at Christ in all his fullness, and you measure his stature, and that, brothers and sisters, is what we are striving towards in maturity. That's the mark on the wall. You have to look up really high to see it, but that's the mark. That's who we're going towards. He's the standard. That's who we're to help one another be like and mature towards. You might say, I think our church is pretty mature. We don't have any major division. We hold the scriptures high. We're not following the ways of the world. We generally get along. try to do things biblically, praise God. But is there room in our church to grow a bit more like Christ? I think so. And so the work of the ministry has to continue. Because that's where we're trying to get. And we know we're not going to get there before glory. But Christ wants to display his power in this world through his church. And so we all must help one another grow until we attain that maturity. So we press on. So I wanna ask you again, as you think about these markers of what our ministry is supposed to move towards, Are you contributing towards unity, maturity, growing into the measure of the fullness of Christ? Are you in the arena? Or are you simply a spectator? You may think you're in the arena. It's very easy to be very busy in a church setting. There's lots to do. You can do it. But you have to ask yourself, how is your ministry? contributing toward the growth of brothers and sisters in Christ so that they are more like Christ. It doesn't mean you have to start a Bible study. It doesn't mean you have to preach. You can serve in the kitchen. You can clean the floors. You can clean the bathrooms. You can paint. You can do all those things, but make sure you know it is for Christ and for the good of his church. The result of church members building the body of Christ is described for us in verse 14, and just take very few moments to look at this. The result of this is so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. The result of gifted members building the body of Christ is that the church of Christ will leave behind childishness, Now in the scriptures, sometimes being like a child is a good thing. That's to mimic their humility and their dependence. But sometimes childishness is a bad thing when you mimic their foolishness, their vacillations, their instability. That childishness is to be avoided. And when a church is growing in maturity, we leave childishness behind. Do you remember as you were growing up, all the different fads that come through your childhood. There's a different fad, it seemed like, every week in my school. Wearing your clothes backwards, wearing your hat backwards, juggling sticks one week, spinning tops the next, a quarters game, then the koosh ball, then biking shorts, then T-shirt rings, then side ponytails, then slap bracelets, then hammer pants, and the list goes on. All of these fads that came and went in about a week, And Paul says that the immature Christians are almost like a piece of driftwood on the waves of the world, just kind of getting tossed to and fro. You go up and down with it. Just whatever comes in the world kind of puts you up or it brings you down. And sadly, it's the case with the church that the church often just sucks in the culture, wraps it in a Christian package, and then redistributes it to the church. So that if you go into a Christian bookstore, most of the books that are published have a nice Christian cover, but the content on the inside is no more than secular reasoning with some Christian lingo. The struggle of the church is always wanting to look like the world. We want popularity, we want money, we want technology, we want vengeance, we want power. And it is so very easy for scheming men with lies to take advantage of the gullible, childish church. We soak up. post-modernity and call it the emergent church. We soak up relativism and call it contextualization. We soak up liberalism and call it mercy. We soak up godless scholarship and call it intellectual Christianity. We soak up political power and call it Christian nationalism. We soak up Eastern mysticism and call it communing with God. We soak up self-help and worldly psychology and call it Christian counseling. This happens all the time. We're tossed to and fro by all these human cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes, and we're tossed around. Hence, brothers and sisters, that we need to come alongside one another to help us stabilize so we're not tossed to and fro, so that every member will then be a mature member, becoming like Christ, coming like Christ who submitted it to his Father in all things, who humbled himself in all ways, who entrusted justice into the hands of his Father, who loved his enemies, who spoke the truth in love, who confronted man's lies with God's truth, who actually memorized scripture to combat Satan's lies. Every church member is to strive towards this, and we are to help one another do so. so that the church doesn't become like a piece of driftwood being tossed to and fro, but becomes like an aircraft carrier cutting through the waves. If you are someone who belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, this is an all-hands-on-deck moment. You've been given a tool. Put it to use, not just for your own good, but for the good of your allies in the fight of the faith for the glory of Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Father, we fail in many points, but you are forgiving. And I pray, Father, that our past failures would not keep us from future attempts to serve you Would you give us, please, Lord, the grace and the strength to help one another grow into the maturity of Christ? Father, we need it. I pray that it would not just be the case for the church here in West Sand Lake, but Lord, all across the globe. that you would enable your people to do the work of the ministry so that your church is built until Christ returns. For he deserves a people who are prepared for him. Prepare us, Father. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.