Okay. Turn with me, if you will, in your manual to page 60. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on part six of the intensive. We're going to come back to this a little later on, but I just wanted to point you to the chart on page 61, which I think hopefully will be helpful to each of us as we begin to take this teaching to the streets and we start thinking, you know, who has God put into my life that I might, maybe he may be calling me and pursuing a word-based, prayerful, disciple-making relationship. So that might help jog your thinking and be used by the Holy Spirit to show people that you have in your life that you can pursue this with. This will be the last time for a course of your life, but there's going to be another session coming up, continuing on the theme of disciple making. There will be a group that will be, for the next eight weeks or so, will be continuing this theme of how, not only how we can be a disciple-making church, but how we can be, individually, how we can be used by God to make disciples of his. So we'll look forward to more on that. Turn with me, if you would, now to page 63. This is the last seminar in the manual. And before I forget, who, within the last week, has been with another person, word open, reading the Bible, in the last week. Carol's got her hand up. She walks in with her hand up. Not even sure she knows what question I asked, but she had her hand up. She did. All right, so raise your hand if, in the last week, you were with another believer, word open. Sam's got his hand half up. Elisa? Right, very good. Yes, well, yeah, with another, yep, anytime that you're together with another person, word open, reading the word together. Beautiful, beautiful, very good. Now, would anyone like to recite Matthew 28, 18 to 20, our memory verses for, kind of our theme verses for the course? Anybody would like to, would like to show off their memory work? we'll work through it together. Verse 18, go, wait, all authority, Jesus said, all authority, what's that? Jesus came to them saying, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, huge, foundational, Jesus has all authorities, the King of all creation. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." So Jesus is the king of all creation, then he gives us our job description, go make disciples, and then he gives us the comfort and the assurance of his presence throughout. When you really start to connect the dots on how those verses fit together, extraordinarily powerful premise. Jesus Lordship over all things, His great commission to us, our job, and then the assurance of His presence. Just huge when you start thinking through the implications of that. So let's look at page 63. We're going to talk a little bit about the... this is kind of a course in review. is our time together day. There's not going to be a lot of new information, but we're going to kind of take the different pieces of what we've learned together and we're going to tie it all together in a bundle. And let's talk a little bit first. So we're going to go heads, then we're going to go hearts, and then we're going to talk about our hands. So let's talk first about our heads. What are some of the, well, let me read on verse 63. We've covered a lot of Bible material during our time together. We could summarize much of it with the statement of what we've been looking at in Seminar 8 and during the intensive. So here, if you're looking for one paragraph or a couple of bullet points to kind of summarize the course together, because God's agenda is to transfer us into Christ's kingdom and to transform us to be like Christ, then our agenda is to press forward towards maturity in Christ by prayerfully setting our minds on God's word and to move others towards maturity in Christ by prayerfully speaking God's word to them. Powerful, powerful stuff. So looking back over the content of the course, What have you learned that is new or striking? How has your understanding or knowledge grown about God and His plans and about yourself and your life? So think about it again, first of all, kind of from an information standpoint. What is there maybe from that definition of because God's agenda is and our agenda is, is there a new information that God used to supplement your data bank that kind of came out of the course, maybe something that you're aware of, that God has revealed to you throughout the course, that maybe three months ago wasn't quite as firmly shaped. Anybody? Bueller? Bueller? Anybody? No? Because you all have been well-fed from a theology standpoint, there's probably not a lot of new information that came out of it. Hopefully, and when we get down into the next section where we start talking about hearts, hopefully there will be some more good that comes out of that. But by and large, we're all going to at least be aware of God's agenda of pursuing people and how we fit into that. So I don't think there's probably anybody that three months ago wasn't at least intellectually aware, oh yeah, I'm supposed to share the gospel and I'm supposed to be used by God to help others mature in Christ. So let's talk about the next section on page 64 under hearts. This understanding of what God wants us to do with the rest of our lives is very challenging. It confronts and opposes the worldly goals and priorities that most of us have in our hearts. So question one, how has the course challenged your priorities and goals in life? In what ways has your heart been changed? Any comments? Your ears must be clogged. Comments? Yes, Elisa. Yeah, very good, very good. Dovetailing off what Elisa said, I would say that when we first got exposed to the Trellis of the Vine book about a year ago or so, that, and then the course of your life kind of drew this out further, I always had kind of an intellectual awareness that we as the church are supposed to be about the Great Commission, that the church is supposed to be about, you know, finding unreached people groups in third world countries and Bible translation and things like that, that was kind of what I thought of, I thought kind of in a macro sense that yeah, that's all true. Where one of the things that God brought that revealed to me more deeply as we went through the course was that that includes my life. So from a micro standpoint that, um, you know, there, yeah, there are, there are people in third world countries halfway around the world that have never heard of Jesus. But I also live in a subdivision in West County where probably the vast majority of the people are not saved. And so, it started to become a lot more personal from a micro sense for me to think that, you know, it's not just for the Hudson Taylors of the world and people like that who go overseas to share the gospel to an unreached people group, but there are unsafe people surrounding me every day. And so that I have a role in that, it's not just a world missions, it's a St. Louis missions, it's a, anybody, any thoughts on that? Any comments? Yes, Carol. A lot of it is saying about the challenging attitude and maturity and confidence. And I'm just finding out that's where a lot of it is. How so? Because, okay, we'll take what's not mine, and we'll figure it out. We were like, I need to, I need to apologize And so years later, you know, it was his daughter. Yeah. And like, OK, I'm talking to the great Laura. But Laura's lost, so she didn't find out. So now I think, you know, I'll probably be doing a presentation on that, but I can't get into those basic stories. Mm-hmm. So it seems like there is a need to do something Well, it's impossible to do apart from God's intervention, right? Right. But let's use Mike as the example because you know I love your son. You know he's one of my favorite people in the world, right? Look at the fruit that God has borne through that man, through that, I call him a young man because he's younger than me. But so, seeds being planted based on the word over many years and nothing to show for it on the outside, right? But those are seeds being planted. that again, God brings the growth, so we have a responsibility. Let's go back to the three P's. I love some of the simple things about this course. So what are the three P's where we have a role? Because like we say, by ourselves, we can't bring about any growth or any transformation in anyone, right? So what are the three P's? What's our role? Prayer, Diana says prayer, very good. What else? Proclamation, very good. So it's based in the word. And people, right? So there's the three legs to the stool. And so I would argue, Carol, that what we see in Mike's life is evidence of those three coming together. God chose to bless those efforts. Now we can't control how, whether or not he's gonna convert somebody or not, or how much fruit comes out of that. But what I love about it is our role in that is still the same. We pray for that person, we pray that the Holy Spirit's gonna do a work, and we know that God uses his word as the agent of transformation. So it's not my supposed wisdom, or seven steps to a healthy life, or whatever the case may be. It's got to be based in God's word and he promises that he will, his word never returns void. So, he promises that he can and will use that on occasion in the transformation and drawing people out of the darkness into the light and then growing them in maturity. So, the good news is Carol that there's no, there's absolutely no if, what was this lady's name, Barbara? Barbara. If this lady never becomes a Christian and never grows, but yet you've been faithful by praying for her and opening the word with her, you've done your job. And if God decides to move in her heart, praise God. So what I love about it is, again, it just kind of reaffirms what we know to be true from the Bible. I can't save anybody, you can't save anybody, but we can be faithful to what we know God's revealed to us in his word. Okay? That's one of the things I love about this, is that again, to say, you know, go therefore and make disciples. Well, that sounds overwhelming when you think there's seven billion people in the world, but there's, what, 250 houses in our subdivision? We know enough of those people that, or co-workers, or whatever the case may be, so God doesn't have seven billion people in my Rolodex, but he's got enough both saved and unsaved people, that through prayer and with the word, getting together, God uses his word as that agent of transformation. So, thank you for sharing that, Carol. That's great encouragement. Any other thoughts? Let's look at the Let's look at the next one down. If anybody wants to offer up this one, feel free. What are the areas of sin in your life that you've been challenged about during the course, and what do you need to put to death, and what aspects of Christ-likeness do you especially need to adopt? Any thoughts? I'll tell you one from me. I was sharing with Marcus earlier from going down to the parade yesterday. God reminded me through that encounter that these are people who need Jesus. So it's really easy to kind of think of categories of people based on lifestyles, whatever the case may be. But these are people created in the image of God. And if they don't have Jesus, they need Jesus. And so that was one of the things that I thought of is kind of, it's really easy to be kind of Think of people in categories as opposed to thinking of them as sheep without a shepherd, as helpless and harassed, and how Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion. So, anyway, I thought about that. Any other thoughts anybody wants to chat about with that? Anybody? is not having as many superficial conversations, being more thoughtful and more intentional. When I'm with the people reading the scriptures, it's just asking the right questions and probing to the right in the right way. The heart of a man is like a deep well, right? Or it's a well you can draw out. I have found myself, dovetailing off that, Jeff, I have found myself, whether it's a business lunch or whatever the case, I find myself, I mean, I've started keeping an extra Bible in my car, but just bringing a Bible with me to, even if it's a coffee, if it's a lunch or whatever, just having a Bible with me because, not always, but a lot of times, some topic will come up that scripture talks about and being able to talk to it from God's word rather than conventional wisdom or whatever the case may be. It's given me, I think, God's used the Course to give me a higher level of confidence, not only in the power of God's Word, but in the breadth of what God's Word addresses. Okay, let's move on. We're going to have a brief video. It's about three and a half, four minutes long. So we're now at the top of page 65. under input, so feel free to take notes if you would like, and then we're going to talk a little bit more about taking it to the streets, what this is going to look like with skin on. Go ahead, Marcus, thanks. Well, several weeks ago we set out on a search for answers to some massive questions. Why am I here? What is my life really about? Is it going anywhere? Does the God who created me have some sort of purpose for the course of my life? And if so, how does that translate to the next week, the next month, the next years in my life? And I warned you that as a result of what we found, your life might never be the same again. All my prayer and hope and trust is that your life will never be the same again. I hope you've been gripped afresh, or perhaps even for the first time, by the cosmic, history-wide, awe-inspiring plans of God for our world, and for each one of us. I hope you've grasped something of what God has done in Christ, and what His purposes are in Christ, and what that means for every aspect of your life. I hope this has revolutionised your vision of what your life is about. In particular, my prayer is that everyone who does this course, we'll have a clearer grasp of what it means for us to die with Christ, and to be raised up with Him, and now to live a completely new life, a life in which we put to death the sin that still clings to us, and clothe ourselves instead with the character of our Lord. I pray that you will never again be complacent about the sin in your life, but that you will cast it off, all the passionate vehemence with which you might get rid of a disease or a filthy garment. And as you seek to press forward towards maturity in Christ, I pray that part of your growing Christ-likeness will be a shepherd's heart that longs to move others forward as well, to move them one step forwards towards Christ, no matter where they might be on the spectrum. We're often tempted to think that the next thing God wants us to do involves a grand plan of some sort, that if we're going to contribute to the work of his kingdom, it'll mean signing up for something in church that's exciting, or putting on an impressive event that will invite lots of people to. And all these things are good, of course, But truthfully, the next step is a person. Because that's how it happens. One person at a time. That's what we talked about during the intensive. The next step is for you to prayerfully consider who you could shepherd towards maturity in Christ, by prayerfully speaking God's word to them in some way. And then the next step after that is another step forward for that person, or perhaps for another person. Way back in Seminar One, you consider those people who have been most influential of those lives you're going to be influenced. Who are you going to move forward? Who are you going to shepherd towards maturity in Christ? One of the really handy things about this course is that you've already learned how to do this. You've read the Bible with someone nine or ten times using a variety of different methods. And although there are many, many ways in which we can share a word with someone for their benefit, one of the easiest and most effective is simply to open the Bible and read it together. And that's something that you've already been doing in your one-to-one readings. Before we go any further, why don't you pause and talk together about your one-to-one Bible readings that you've been doing. Good prompting. Talk to me a little bit about your one-to-one Bible readings. What's been your experience? Jay. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Very good. Thanks, Jay. Anybody else? Anybody else, some takeaways? Brian, yeah. Yep. Right. Absolutely. Some insights from the other person that the Holy Spirit may have revealed and been a blessing to you. Sure. Very good. Who else? Yes, go ahead. Carol, every week I get to hear, I just love being with Carol. And I love being with James. That has been so much fun. So there's James and Carol. They were friends before, but when we got together and read the Bible together, we really enjoyed being together. So I think we know and enjoy our relationship with James and Carol better than we did three months ago. And that, honestly, Gwen said it before I did, but that's been one of the great blessings of this course for me. It's just, I really feel like I know James and Carol so much better now and enjoy their company. And it was a blessing to be in the Word together. So God used that to cement and broaden our relationship with one another. So there's one of the great side benefits. Again, there's the third P. We got prayer, we got proclamation. And the people piece of it is, Again, so this is, as we begin to broaden our horizons and think about disciple making, really every discipling relationship, it could be, your discipling relationships could be primarily, I mean it could be inside the church, it could be with a coworker, it could be with a neighbor, it could be really with anybody, but what a great blessing it is and an opportunity to get to know other sheep from our fold even better. And so, what a great opportunity. What else? Any thoughts that came out of the video also that you'd like to comment on? Yeah, Diana. I don't know about the video, but getting together with Kathy, reading the Bible, it seemed like both of us could find something that was just so beautiful or so rich, and you'd have somebody right there with you that felt very similar. Right. And it's just such a joy to have somebody Right. Absolutely. Great thought. Anybody here ever been discouraged? I'm the only one here who's ever been discouraged. Thank you, Tia, Jason. Very good. All right. What's one of the great antidotes to discouragement? Because we kind of focus on our circumstance, we focus on ourselves, whatever, but what a blessing it is if that ... I'm not saying that discouragement was the context of that, When I'm discouraged, when somebody has the opportunity to speak truth from God's Word into my life, does that not reverse that discouragement and become encouragement? I mean, that's a powerful, that's a powerful aspect of God's Word. I mean, it's so easy to, it's just so easy to get focused on self, and sometimes we need, as a blessing, a brother or sister to come alongside us and encourage us with a truth about God to remind us, yeah, He is on His throne. He does know everything, and He is all-powerful, and He does love us, and He crushed His Son for that, so. What else? Yeah, Jeff. Yeah, I like the way He used the word, you know, shepherd one another toward Christ's likeness. It's like the Romans 15, 14 idea. You, my brothers, are able to admonish or counsel one another, you know, as we know the word more, as we Very powerful truth. Thank you. And what we're talking about here, and he made the comment in here, I made some notes on it earlier, that we tend to think of ministry as maybe exciting, grand plans, big programs, lots of people showing up or whatever. And what we're talking about here, the Course in Your Life methodology of making disciples is really very mundane. I mean, it's Kathy and Diana getting together at the Bread Co. It's powerful stuff. It's relational. It's growing together. It's incremental growth. But it's not promise keepers or whatever the case may be. It's not 50,000 people showing up for an event. This is very, in a sense, kind of pedestrian, but that's the way Jesus did ministry, right? I mean, he had a small group of people that he poured himself into, and look at the great fruit that, you know, through the Holy Spirit that's come about as part of that. I just think that's hugely encouraging. Yeah, go ahead, Carol. James and I would get done with our lesson about an hour and a half before Carol and Gwen would, just so you know. But quite honestly, a lot of times, again, we'll just say maybe there's an issue or a matter that's become a discouragement or whatever the case may be. A lot of times, we get clouded. We tend to focus on the issue and it's easier for another person to think of where God's word might speak to a certain situation or whatever, and they can then direct us to that passage and hear from God directly, whereas we tend to get clouded in our minds. That's a great blessing for how we meet each other to see God's word and then direct us there and then apply God's word and that's powerful. So that was one of my big takeaways from the video piece of it and then just kind of how this is all played out is that I tend to think in kind of big picture, big event, kind of more flashy kind of stuff, whereas what we're really talking about here is fairly small scale, but doable for everybody, right? I mean, there's not a person here that doesn't own a Bible, can't pray, and doesn't know another person, right? So all hands on deck. Now this is the tricky part, since we're in the last session, is for anybody, like I've been in business for a long time, probably most people here have been to some kind of a seminar, like a one-day seminar or whatever, you're gonna go get a shot in the arm. The tricky thing about that is a lot of times those things, by the time somebody gets back to the office the next morning, it kind of dissipates and never actually gets put into use. So I just want to remind us as we think about what we've learned about here over the last number of months relative to this is we've already been doing everything that the Course is asking us to do, right? So we've already been praying with our Bible reading partner, we've already been reading the Word together, and there's a person on the other side of this. So it's real typical, and Jeff and others will be, in coming weeks, will be talking more about kind of our desire, hopefully collectively and individually, to be used by God to make disciples of Jesus. So it's not complex. We've already been doing it, but it's real easy. It's so tempting to take something like this and kind of put it up on the shelf and not apply it. And so my encouragement and my prayer for each one of us, including me, is that I'm going to be challenged to realize, again, turn with me if you would, to 2 Peter. I'm going to love this verse more and more. 2 Peter chapter 1. Chapter 1 and verse 3. I'll just start at verse 1 and go to the end of verse 3. Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. So key in on verse three there, seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness. So we've already been through our time together, we've already been doing the practices of what the course is calling us to do. Praying about it, being together with another person, word open. So we're talking about, it is evangelism, but it's also growth, right? So it's being with another person, word open. really the challenge, the reason I reinforce it with that verse is God has promised that he's given us everything we need to do this. So we've already been practicing it and so now and in coming months our job is going to be hopefully to be excited about not only what God's great commission is but where we fit into that and to be praying about and then to step out in faith, trusting that God has or will bring people into our lives that we can read the word together with, that we can be used by God, and then trusting that not only is that person gonna possibly come to faith in Christ or grow in Christ-likeness and maturity, but that God's gonna use that to grow us as well. One of the things that I heard from a number in the crowd is that when we were when we were with that other person, God didn't just grow them, He grew me. And so, I think I can speak for James, that when he and I were together, we both grew. And I know Gwen and Carol, same thing. So there's a sense in which, if I want to grow more like Christ, this is also a really healthy thing for me to be involved in. And so, hopefully that'll be the case, that as we go forth from here, that we'll have opportunity, But it's a step out in faith, right? I mean, it's easier to sit on the bench than it is to get in the game. If we stay on the bench, we're not going to get hurt. No cuts, no nicks, no nothing. But to get in the game, certainly there's risk. But what a great opportunity to be used by God in his great commission. Let's see. Any other, any thoughts on, is there anyone that, is there anyone that God has maybe put a person, coworker, neighbor, on your heart that maybe he's brought into your life that he may be, that you're sensing that God may be challenging you to go to that person and ask if they would be willing to be in some kind of a Bible reading discipleship program with you? Anybody? Thoughts? Very, very important that we, again, continue to be prayerful about this, and just continue to be... It's great to think about, this is why I'm here, right? This is why I exist. That's why God, you know, what's it, I've heard it said before, What's the one thing you can do on earth that you can't do in heaven? Evangelize, right? So God's got us here to fulfill the Great Commission. And so I just think it's important to be thoughtful about that and realize that, gosh, if that's why God's got me here, I want to execute on that. And so let me read something to you. We'll close up in prayer here in just a minute, but I was reading a sermon by J.C. Ryle on a plane this past week, and it was a great encouragement to me, so I'll share it with you. This is a paragraph out of a sermon that he wrote on Haggai 1, verse 7. And it says this, and I think it spoke directly to what we're talking about here. J.C. Ryle said the following, let us bring out the Bible more when we get together. We, none of us, know it all yet. Our brother may have found some pearl in it which has escaped our eyes, and we perhaps may show him something in return. It is the common map by which we all journey. Let us not behave as if we had each a private map to be studied in a corner and kept to ourselves. Oh, that the word were like a burning fire shut up in our bones so that we could not forbear speaking of it. There's JC Ryle on the course of your life. So let's close up in prayer. And thank you again all for coming. And again, my prayer is going to continue to be that God's going to make it real obvious to us that God's going to put in each of us a desire to be disciple makers. And then to take this to the streets and to be aware of the people that God's brought into our lives, that we can just do some one-on-one, open Bible, prayerful, and that God's gonna give us great joy in that endeavor. Okay, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time together. Father, we thank you for this course, and we thank you for the privilege of being your children. And Father, we thank you for the privilege of the challenge and the command and the commission that you give us to make disciples of Jesus. Father, how empty our lives would be if it was only about working and playing and eating and sleeping until we go home to be with you. But Father, you've given us a great pursuit to pursue in your strength father you've given us every resource we need to to be faithful in that pursuit father we can we can save no one but we know that you are a great and glorious God and you are all about increasing the fame of your name here on earth father we pray that by your Holy Spirit that you would you would press in on each of us father that we would You would put in each of us a great desire to be used by you. Father, that we would be faithful in using your word and prayer to reach out to people. And Father, we give us a great confidence in your word and a great confidence in your spirit. And Father, I pray that each one of us would be used by you to advance your kingdom here in St. Louis and to the ends of the earth. Father, we ask that you would bless the worship service upcoming. Pray that you would bless Jeff as he preaches. And Father, we come hungry to hear from you. We come needing to hear from you and asking that you would transform our minds and our hearts by your spirit through your word. And Father, we entrust this time upcoming to you. We ask in Jesus' name.