but here we go. I want to start with prayer this morning, and I just want to ask you to join me as we pray together, and as we engage in a spiritual battle today, as we gather around the word, and we want to hear from the Lord. So will you pray with me? Lord God, we come before you thanking you that you are our rock and our redeemer. Oh, if that doesn't resonate in our souls today, Father, I pray that you will just prick our hearts and you will turn us to you with fresh and a new view in you and your glory for who you are. And we pause in this moment to thank you that you're the one who sustains us. You're the one who helps us. You are the one who gives us the grace we need in our time of need. And I ask for your help in this moment as we take just a few minutes this morning to open up your word and consider some things in the scripture that you have provided for us to help us in this life. And I pray you will be glorified and honored through it all. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to ask you a question as we start this morning, and I want you to think back in your mind when the first time you realize that God hears your prayer and answers your prayer. Now I think one answer to that would be when he redeemed me, when I called out to him for salvation and he heard me and he rescued me. But when did it really take hold in your life that God cares about you, your struggles, what you're going through, how you need him and you cried out to him and called upon him for something, for him to do something on your behalf or in the life of someone else. And you can probably think about that for a few minutes and work through that and say, yeah, this is the day that I remember that becoming a reality for me. I want to tell you a story very briefly here for me when that became a true thing, a reality. It was in 1981. As a junior high boy, my mom and my sister and I were attending a small church in Macon, Georgia. If you've never been to Macon, you should visit sometime. It's a beautiful place. But we were attending that church without my dad. My dad, who was pursuing other things, and he was in desperate need of Christ. Now my dad's probably gonna watch this a little bit later today, and he's gonna hear this story, and I did not get his permission to tell this. So dad, forgive me, I love you, and I'm glad you're watching. But at this small church, what I now realize was a faithful deacon who would find me in the hallway every week. It would be on a Sunday, it could be on a Wednesday night prayer meeting, but he would find me, And he would say to me, hey, Jerry, let's go into this room and let's go pray for your dad. Let's go pray for your dad. And this had to go on for a better part of a year or more. I'm sure it was a long time. And in that, to be honest with you, I have my doubts. I have my doubts that this was actually going to happen, that God was actually going to do this. But Andy Asbell had his faith and he used that to strengthen me. His faith strengthened me. So week after week, we would pray, and we would call out to God, and we would say, Lord, will you rescue my dad? And then every time Andy Asbill would see my dad, what do you think he did? He would say, Gerald, let me tell you about who Jesus is and what he's done for you. And he would share the gospel with him every time, faithfully every time. And then it happened. One day, I was at my grandmother's house late one night. I was asleep, staying with her. There were some things going on, just a series of events in our family that were hard and difficult. But my dad called me. My dad called me in the middle of the night. And his words were, I'm done. I've stopped fighting. I've stopped running. And I've given my life to Christ and I've trusted him. And that's the moment. That's the moment that I realized that God cares about our prayers. He wants to hear our prayers. He wants to rescue people. He wants to change lives. He wants to strengthen our faith. God used a man who's with the Lord now, and he died last December at the age of 97, and he spent his entire adult life practically sharing the gospel. And he's with the Lord now. But this is the moment where my desire And my request to the Lord intersected with his will to rescue my dad. And I'll be eternally grateful for that. So if you are like me, and you truly believe that God will hear, and God wants to hear and answer prayers, I think we can say we're in good company. Because this is what the Apostle Paul believed. This is what he spent his life doing, sharing the gospel and taking things to the Lord on behalf of people, praying. Now I want you to hear this verse from, this is not our text this morning, but in second Corinthians chapter eight, one verses eight through 11, he gives an interesting picture, an interesting picture of how he talks to the Corinthian believers there. And he says about all about his hardships in advancing the gospel. And we know from our study of the scripture that Paul, it was not an easy task for him to advance the gospel of Christ. He faced much persecution, much affliction. But he says to the believers there, I don't want you to be unaware brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia for we are so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. It was hard. And indeed we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but to rely on God who raises the dead." There's a faith in God that he was going to, even if they died, he was going to raise them back up. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us. So they apparently thought that death was very close. And then he goes on to say, on him, On God, we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. And then he implores, he asked the people, he says, you also must help us by what? Come along beside us and walk with us and go to these places. No, he says, you must help us by prayer. You need to engage in this battle with us so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many. Paul is not giving a casual report to the church that says, hey, things are going pretty well. Sometimes there's some rough spots and you know, but hey, we're planting some churches and thanks for the support. He's actually telling them there's a battle going on. There's a spiritual warfare and I need your help. I need you to go to the Lord and pray for me. Pray for us. He required some intense intercession before the throne. He goes on in Romans 15 to write, I'm urging you to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. He knew this was work. This is not just some flippant words that we're passing on to the Lord. It's work. We're in the struggle with him. But the amazing thing about Paul is when he's asking for prayer for what he is going through and all the work that God has called him to do, He's taking time to pray for those churches. He's taking time to say, I'm also praying for you. And we're going to look today at some prayers that Paul practiced for the church. In Colossians 4, he said that, you all know about Epaphras there in Colossae. You know about him because I sent him from Ephesus up to you. Here's what Epaphras is doing for you. He's always wrestling in prayer for you. That you may stand firm in the will of God and that you may be fully assured. If we were wanting to have someone pray for us and you were out in the atrium and you said, I want you to pray for me today. Probably the words we're not going to use is, hey, can you join me in this struggle? Can you wrestle with me? Can you wrestle with me in this moment? we're probably going to be praying some other things, asking for prayer. And one person calls it that prayers that we often offer are the little answerables, the little things that we just want to have an answer to. And that's so easy for us in the Western church to get caught up in, that we just want things fixed. We just want things to be better. We're praying for ourselves this, we're praying it for other people. Let's just get this turned around. You know, that's kind of our mentality. Let's fix this. Let's change this situation so we can be free of that pain. Let's pray that they will get over their sickness so they don't have to struggle through that sickness anymore. You know, I have a financial need. Will you pray for me that God will meet that need or that I can get this? Now, don't hear me say these are bad prayers to pray, because God is willing and able and ready to hear those prayers. But it seems like so often we just fall into that, those simplistic, those simple things of just fixing the problem. I would say probably one of the most awkward situations you will find yourself in is someone's telling you something like that, and they say, will you pray for me? And you kind of say, to end the conversation, yeah, sure, I'll pray for you. And then you walk away and maybe you forget it, or maybe you do pray for them. You pray for that, provide this situation, heal them, restore that relationship. And we are instructed in scripture to bear burdens, right? That's what God wants. We bear one another's burdens. But what I want to look at today, I want to look at not these horizontal prayers that we pray for each other, that things will just be better, that things will just be fixed. But I want us to think about kingdom prayers today. Going before the throne of God and praying kingdom prayers that are more vertical. We pray things such as that one who's far away from God would be reconciled, would either be restored back into fellowship with the family of God or would just be adopted for the first time into the family of God. That's a kingdom prayer. We want God to change their life. We pray for gospel advance in a country that is just so hostile and so opposed to even the name Jesus or anybody who even actually is associated with him. So we pray a kingdom prayer that says, God, would you put your gospel forefront in that place? Will you change lives in that place? You can do it. We have faith and we want to pray for that. Or maybe it's this, we pray for spiritual maturity in our life or in another believer's life so that the trial, the test that they're enduring, even if it's not fixed, even if it's not turned around, even if the circumstances don't change, They see God in a different way. They learn him. They know him better. They are caught up in the fact that they are just glorifying God through that trial. These are the type of kingdom prayers that we should be praying. And I would say that I think if we take a few moments and examine some of Paul's prayers for the church, that's what he prayed. Now, at the outset here, I want to say, I don't want you to read into anything that we're going to work through today. It's just, these are prayers that Paul had for the church. And I think they're very appropriate for us to think about these. As we look around this room and we see people that we know and we love and we care for, And you look and you know some of the things they're facing. You know some of the trials they're going through. You know some of the heartaches they have. And maybe you know some that are struggling in their faith and they need to turn and they need to embrace God. And so as we go through these, I want you to have that in mind as we think about what we're called to do as believers in praying for one another. Just like Paul prayed for the church, we can practice this today. So we're going to look at three brief passages this morning. And we're going to work through these. We will not dig into every minutia detail of these passages, but we're going to draw out some principles from them. And then maybe it's a good place for you to say, for further study, I want to go back and look at the surrounding passage and understand this in a better way. So we're going to start in Romans chapter 15 this morning, Romans chapter 15 verses five and six. Romans chapter 15, five and six. And it says, may the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, time doesn't allow us to go back to the previous chapter, chapter 14, to say, what was he talking about here as he's praying this prayer? But I'll give you a brief synopsis, a brief thing. He, in chapter 14, laid out for us a direct and strong doctrinal teaching on the right response to others within the body as it relates to differences. Specifically, differences related to what we call disputable matters. And it's laid out there in that passage. And this most certainly was a disagreement between Jewish and Gentile believers within the church. What they brought within to the church and how they would honor God with their lives, living out their faith within the church body. So there was a discussion taking place. There was clear teaching by Paul on this in chapter 14. And so when we get here today in our terminology, we might say disputable matters might be preferences. And I know that word can sometimes cause angst for people. And so I don't want you to, we're not going to delve into what those are, but we're just going to look at the principles here behind it. What was Paul praying for them when it comes to that disputable matters? I came across one commentator who wrote this, that genuine disputable matters usually tend to relate to tradition or culture. And the danger for the church today is that we become flexible on the indisputable gospel issues, but totally intractable or stubborn when it comes to matters in which the scripture allows total freedom. So let's define our term here for disputable matters today. We're talking about a behavior or practice, not a doctrine. And with that behavior or practice, it is not a violation of clear and concise and relevant command of scripture. So that's why it's disputable because it's not violating scripture and it's a behavior of practice. It is practice within the church walls, within the church body, I should say. And so Paul says here, I'm praying for you as related to this. What is he not praying in this prayer? He is not praying that they would all move to agreement on those disputable matters because if he was praying that it would be clear in the text. But what he is praying for them is some key words in this passage and I want to highlight those for you so you can see them. Harmony. Harmony or unity. He's praying that with one voice, they can glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. One mind, one voice, harmony, unity within the church. This is Paul's prayer when he hits a difficult subject. I want the church, you people in the church in Rome, I want you to be unified together through this. I want you to live in harmony with one another. Give them unity, Lord, so that people can be attracted to the gospel. And I think that's true. When the church lives in harmony with each other, in unity, it is an attractive thing because the gospel becomes preeminent. The truth about Jesus who changes lives becomes the main point. This is what Paul's praying here. Pray for harmony and unity. So Paul urges and implores the believers to pursue loving relationships, not through their unanimous beliefs, not through that. but even through their differences on these preferences. And in a church like ours, you know, we've got close to 900 people that are here on any given point. When you think about the kids, the people who attend, our members, just all the folks here, that's a lot of differences. It's a lot of ways to approach things in life. But our job, our goal is to live in harmony with one another as we're all guided by the spirit of God, to live out our faith, in the best way that God leads us and directs us. And so this pursuit of harmony will be evidenced in a couple of ways. Right thinking, because we're going to be thinking right about each other. We're going to be thinking the best about each other. We're going to be thinking good thoughts toward one another. And then it's also gonna be evident in praise, what we just did. We lifted our voices in praise to our God in song, right? So we gather around and we sing our praise to God with one voice, we glorify him. And we do that through singing, we do that through our time together as we're rehearsing what God is teaching us, we're glorifying and praising God. And we do that in our small groups, multiple ways that we do that. And then when we pray together, our hearts are united in faith. So we have a purpose here of right thinking and praising to our God. So in summary for this prayer here, I think Paul's prayer is really a prayer of harmony and unity for the glory of God. This is an important prayer for the church. And this is one you can pray. This is one that I can pray. This is one that when we think about our brothers and sisters in this place, We can pray, God, will you unite our hearts together in harmony for one purpose, for your glory in this place so that people are attracted to the gospel. Let's go to 1 Thessalonians chapter 3. We're going to look at this prayer for Paul and I'm going to have to work through these pretty quickly today because we have things to do at the end here. First Thessalonians chapter three, verses nine through 13, prayer number two. For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you? For all the joy we feel for your sake before God. As we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith. Let me pause here for just a moment. Paul at Thessalonica was abruptly run out of town. The people in the city pushed him out. He went up to Berea, ended up in Athens. So he's riding from Athens here. And can you just sense the urgency he has? He wants to be with the people. He wants to get back to them. Why does he want to get back to them? Because he wants to see them face to face. And he knows there's still pastoral work to do. There's still equipping to do. And while these are believers there, their faith needs to be strengthened and he wants to go teach them and strengthen their faith, but he's been hindered. So he tells them as we continue the verse, now may our God and father himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way to you. We want to come to you. And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you so that he may establish your hearts blameless and holiness before our God and father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. And so some key words here in these verses that you can pick out or increase and abound in love for one another, for all holiness, hearts blameless and holiness. Let's look at these for just, just a moment here. Paul's prayer for the church. tends to be more about process than results. When you read through all of his prayers, you realize that he's praying that God's going to do something in the people's life, that he's going to, in the believer's life, that he's going to work in their heart. And I think that's what we find here too. We heard last week, Dustin talk about the journey versus the destination, right? Which one are you? And sometimes the journey is hard and it's difficult. But what he's saying here is that our posture towards one another, both believers and non-believers alike, for one another and for all, ought to be a heart of just genuine Christ-like love for each other. He wants it to be more than a thought. He wants it to be more than a statement. He's saying, God, will you impress their hearts to love one another and not just say, I love you, man. but they actually wanted to overflow and spill out onto other people, everyone around them. The same commentator I read earlier said, this genuine Christian love is the one thing in Christ's life that cannot be carried to an excess. You can't love too much. You can't love people too much. And Paul is praying this for the church. And he's saying, I want you to grow in this. I want this to change you so that you can impact other people by the love of Christ in your hearts. And isn't that a great prayer for us? That as we bear burdens for one another, as we come before the Lord on each other's behalf, that God will just grow in us a heart of love for one another. That he will change our perspective about people. and that he will change our perspective about people that are not part of our church family, that we just run into every day in the store, that we don't view them as a nuisance or in the way, but we love them, that we grow in our love for them. He prays this, and I think that if this is where our hearts go, if we begin to grow in love and God helps us to grow in our love for people, we would care for each other more and we would care for each other better. Now, Calvary does a wonderful job of caring for one another, but we can grow, we can improve, we can love each other, and we can care for each other better. Petty annoyances wouldn't cause us so much grief. We wouldn't get so upset about little things. Gossip would be squelched. Manipulation of others for personal benefit would stop. Forgiveness would abound and spiritual care would flourish because the love of Christ is being put in our hearts and it's overflowing. This is the prayer Paul had for the church at Thessalonica. He said, I want you to grow in your love for one another. He also says there at the end that you will have hearts blameless in holiness before God. Now, he's not praying for sinlessness. It's impossible. He's not praying for that. But he is praying that their hearts, that they would be holy and separated to God in their heart and in their habits. Nothing that can take a hold of them and pull them down. It's a great illustration, like pulling a cup off a counter. It's got a little hook. You can stick your finger in there and pull it down. But when you're blameless, there's no hook to grab a hold to. And this is what he's praying here. I don't want anybody to be able to blame you that you don't love each other. That you don't care for one another. I want you to be blameless before God in this matter. Holy in your hearts and in your habits. This is a prayer for Paul, for the church. And I would submit to you, this is a wonderful prayer that you can pray on behalf of your brothers and sisters here. And that you can pray for yourself. That in this place, that we will have a heart of love for one another that just abounds in so many different ways. And we would be blameless of this. Holy in our habits and in our heart. So the summary of this would be that not only do we pray for harmony and unity, one voice to glorify God, but we have growth in love and holiness. This is a prayer. We need this. We need to grow in our holiness and in our love. The last prayer this morning to look at will be Colossians chapter one. Would you go there with me? Colossians chapter one. Again, right off the bat, we're gonna see how important prayer was for Paul. He says, I've not ceased to pray for you night and day. Does this mean he prayed all day long, every day? No, but when God brought this church to mind, in the morning, during the day, in the afternoon, in the middle of the night, Paul prayed for them. He went before the Lord and he prayed for them. And what did he pray? He prayed by asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light." Now truthfully, we could have spent all of our time right here in this passage, but I wanted to give you a snapshot of several prayers that Paul had prayed for the church. And this is an amazing prayer that's loaded with some very specific things to pray. So what are the key words in here? Spiritual wisdom and understanding. Seeing beyond the here and now. Seeing beyond what's in front of us. Spiritual wisdom and understanding. Walking worthy. Walking worthy. pleasing God in this life. This is what we're called to do. We're called to be Christ followers. And it ought to be evidence in how we walk this life, how we live here. So a worthy walk, being fruitful in all good works, bearing good fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. This ought to be our life. that we might have our good works that will point to Jesus and glorify him, point others to Christ because of how we're living and grow it in the knowledge of God, learning afresh who God is. When you think you've learned God and you think you've got it all, then you open up your Bible and you find a whole new idea about God because he's inexhaustible and you learn something fresh and new. And when you pour your heart out to Him and He shows you who He really is and what He really wants to do in your life, you realize you don't know anything. So we're growing in the knowledge of God. And here's a hard one to pray. Endurance and patience with joy. So rewind back to the beginning. We want these things to be fixed. We want these trials to stop. We want these heartaches, the balm to come and just heal those wounds of our heart. But sometimes we go through that process and the prayer becomes, God, give me endurance. Give me faith to walk through this. And not only that, walk through it with joy because I trust you. because I'm holding onto you, because you've got me in your hand." This is the prayer Paul had for the church. He was not praying that it would be fixed. He said, give them endurance, give them patience and give them joy in the trial, give them joy in the hardship. Paul's kingdom prayers for the church were not centered around the outreach program or the lack of one. It was not centered around the financial needs of the organization. It was not centered around the music ministry, the service schedule, the youth ministry, whatever you want to put in there. It was not centered around those things. Are those things important? Of course they are. Does he care about those? Yes, he does. But rather his prayers for the church were all about the spiritual implications for this life and a life that was focused on journeying together to be with the Lord as we're walking along this life with each other. that we would have patience, that we would have endurance, that we will walk this life with endurance in the face of our trials and our struggles and our hardships. Not view it as this is impossible to get through, but know that God, all things are possible. Excelling in good works that point to Jesus, making the gospel attractive to other people because we're different, because we're walking worthy and we're excelling in these good works and we're growing in the knowledge of God and being fruitful believers in ministry. Now, is this an indictment against the church praying and requesting that daily deeds be met? Absolutely not. No. As we said earlier, he wants to come, but there's a much deeper need that we have in this place, and that's to be fully dependent upon God for every need, for every need of our heart, and we pray In this battle, this spiritual battle that we face every day, our prayer is that we pray for spiritual wisdom and perseverance and endurance, patience, and affliction. Affliction will come. Hardships will come. We have to be prepared for that and we don't run. We bear under, James tells us that we bear under that pressure because God is faithful, because God cares, because God will carry you through that. He holds you in his hand and he will walk you through that. And we want to get out from under that so quickly that we fail to see God in all his glory and what he wants to do in our life. So my challenge to you is to pray this, God, Make me faithful. Help me to be faithful. Help me to trust you. Help me to endure with patience and joy, and joy because you are in control. And help my brother and sister who are facing this hardship today, this sickness, this broken relationship. Fill in the blank. Help them today to endure with patience and joy because you are worth it and you can sustain them. So I want to give you three principles to guide us here as we close out. What will bring glory to God? How do we pray for each other in the church? Well, what will bring glory to God? in that situation that the person is sharing with you? What will bring glory to God? And you may not know the answer to that question, but you can pray for that. God, you be glorified in this situation, in this heartache, in this difficulty. You be glorified. Pray for a heart of harmony in your unity, not your own way. God, open my heart to the believers in this place. Help me to be in harmony with them. Help me to be in unity with them, not preferring myself. Ask God to reveal what needs to change in your own heart. I'm thinking, ask for grace to help you change. We were very, very quick probably to pray for someone else to change. It's easy to pray that prayer. God, will you do whatever it takes to change that heart? We are less likely to pray that often for ourselves because we're afraid of what that might mean. And I think that what God wants us to do is come before him in a posture of prayer and say, God, you change me first. You grab my heart. That's all I want is to know you. And if that desire is not in your heart, pray that God would give you that desire to know him more and drive you to your knees, calling out to him, change me. And then the last thing, I would say, don't be so quick to pray for the result that you want. You can ask God for sure. God, will you take this away? Will you change this? But more importantly, is praying about the process through which you're going there. That God, in the previous point, will change the way you think. So I'll leave that with you today. These principles to guide you as we pray. Now, I believe that over the past year, we have learned a lot about our God, and we have learned a lot about how to trust Him. We started this year, back in March, I was able to speak to you out of Psalm 33, and I said, per the scripture, we wait, and we hope, and we trust in God. That's who we have to trust in. That's our only hope. He's our only hope, not our wisdom. And so we've learned a lot about God and about ourselves and about prayer. In fact, I heard Jeremy Ray say, maybe part of our delay in this whole process was to teach us to pray. And I believe that because I know you prayed. And I want to finish out with some things here that God taught us, I believe, as I reflect on this past year. I believe God taught us that he is faithful. Would you agree with that? That God is faithful? That God is trustworthy? Yeah? God is trustworthy? That God knows what is best? That we can trust Him and rely on Him and hope in Him? I am so thankful for the things that God has taught us as a church family. And I think we did learn to pray. And I asked us to focus last March on some very specific things to pray. Now, Shai Lin is a pastor and a musical artist. And I heard him say one time this, pray specifically. So when the prayer is answered, you can say, and you can know that God did that. God did it. You didn't do it. God did it. So pray specifically. And so here's a few things that we prayed last year. And I want you to rehearse these in your mind and see if you saw God do some things through our prayers. Pray that we will thrive as a church during this transition for the glory of God. I am so thankful that for your faithfulness and enduring, and I believe the church, I can say yes, I believe the church thrived during this. And by your help and your support and your prayers, pray that we will wait, trust, and hope in God. I think we grew in that, waiting in God, trusting in Him, hoping in Him. We ask to pray for the Pastoral Search Committee as they work on our behalf, because we prayed for wisdom, clarity, patience in the process. As a firsthand participant in that, I know you prayed for us in that regard, and I know we experienced that. Even in those moments where we didn't know what to do, God gave clarity. So thank you, God, for answering our prayers. Pray for your pastoral team, as some of our responsibilities will get adjusted for a period. Yeah, and that happened. And I, boy, you folks prayed for your pastors. You told us, you sent us notes, you gave just such good support for us, and we are so thankful for that. You sustained us through your prayers. Thank you. Pray for unity of the spirit and the bond of peace that we will endure together. Pray that we will all grow closer to Jesus. Pray that personal desires will go to the background and God's will will be done. And pray for the man who will be our next lead pastor. It's likely he's preaching somewhere today to a congregation that he loves and cares for and that love and care for him. Pray for his family. Pray for his congregation. And we faithfully prayed for these things. We brought them before you. And I know many of you prayed and prayed and prayed throughout the whole year, these last 16 months. And we prayed specifically. And I thank you. And I submit to you that I believe God has done so much in the last 16 months to change us, to grow us, to help us through the prayers of his people. And I say all praise to him, all praise to him. And we thank you, Lord. Now, how is this all even possible? How is it possible? Let's go back to Colossians chapter one, where we just finished, and we're gonna look at the next few verses here. Giving thanks to the Father. Well, let me say this. How is it all possible? How could people so diverse, so different, come together in unity? How can we make the gospel, live out the gospel here in this place so that folks see that and say, hey, that's something. I need to go check out what that is, and it's different. How is it even possible? How do we live in harmony with one another? How do we love one another? How do we bear one another's burdens? How do we be united for the glory of God? It's in these verses here. We give thanks to the Father. He's qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light. He's delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved son. in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent, for in him all the fullness of God pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." This is how it's possible because if you're a follower of Jesus, He's rescued you. He's changed you. He's reconciled you. He's made you his own. And you're in a room full of brothers and sisters. That's how it's possible, because we are in Christ. He's changed us. And right now, we're going into a part of our service where we're going to celebrate that change. We're going to celebrate and thank God for the wonderful gift the gift of how he's changed us, he's changed you, he's reconciled you, as we reflect on his death and his burial and his resurrection in what we call the Lord's Table. And I invite you, if you're a follower of Jesus, this is for you. Anyone who's put their faith and trust in Christ, this is for you to celebrate and to say thank you, Jesus. If this is something you've not done, you've not given your life to Christ, And you don't know. I would suggest you just let it pass by. Don't participate, but reflect on the truths you've heard today. How God can change your life. Stephanie Buda wrote a song that's gonna help us focus our hearts and our minds on the Lord's table as we get ready to partake. So as she comes and prepares, I'm gonna pray for us. And I'm actually gonna close with a prayer, another prayer of Paul. One that we worked through earlier this year, in Ephesians chapter three. So I'm gonna ask you to join me as we pray together. Father, we come to you in desperate need of your grace. The things we've talked about today of how we can live out our life in this body together are impossible without you. left to our own selves, we would be so selfish and so prideful. But by your grace, you can change us. And so we thank you for the work that you've done. And so, Lord, I ask that you will strengthen us with power through you, Holy Spirit, in our inner being. Oh, Spirit, when you work in our life, will you change our hearts Lord, help us to become kingdom-minded people. And may Christ dwell in our hearts through faith so we can be rooted and grounded in love and have strength to comprehend with all the saints, all the saints before us, all the saints to come. The breadth, the length, the height, and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. And Father, in our finite minds, that seems impossible. How does that really happen? Well, Lord, thank you for telling us that you can do it, that you are able to do far more abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power at work within us. And we say to you, be glory, In the church, universal. And in the church at Simpsonville. In Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.