In our Bibles tonight Ephesians chapter 6 for sake of time I will not take Testimonies from outreach Sunday unless someone has one they just have to share We had a good divine appointment today, and it was exciting to be to eat over there and the fellowship hall It was really exciting and how many of you have not been over there yet? How many of you not eaten over there yet? You've not eaten over there yet Well, I had my wife on the way to church to stop and pick up some ice cream sandwiches. And it's going to be raining outside, and it's a little bit colder. And I know people like to hang out and fellowship. And we won't do this every Sunday, but we have to do it for the first one, don't we? And so there'll be some ice cream sandwiches over there for you after the service. And so if we go over a little, people won't care either, right? I want you to imagine with me just a minute this afternoon we went out outreach Sunday. I want you to imagine with me you're out there and you're knocking on doors trying to tell people about Jesus and the police come up and they pull up in their car. and they ask you what you're doing. And the person that you're with says, well, we're just out telling people about Jesus. And you say, yeah, we're just out trying to tell people about Jesus. And they look at you and they say, come with me. and they put you in the back of the car, and they let your partner go. And you say, well, that's not right. Okay. So now you're sitting in the back of a police car, and they drive you to Chester County Prison. And in Chester County Prison, I'm sure, just like every other prison, they have the maximum security. And so they bring you in, they fingerprint you, they put the jumpsuit on you, and they put you in the maximum security prison. Now here you are, maximum security, and you're in prison. And on top of that, they send a guard in there with you. and so now you're in a maximum security cell, and they chain the guard to you, and now you're chained to a guard, and you're chained there, you know, 24-7, right? Now here's my question for you. What might be going through your mind? Okay? You might think, oh, this isn't fair, where's my lawyer? I need to call my lawyer, okay? In Ephesians chapter 6, this is where the Apostle Paul is. And we forget that this is one of the prison epistles. And it's interesting what he says in verse number 19 and 20 of Ephesians 6 when he says this, and for me, pray for me, he's talking about praying in verse 18. And for me that utterance may be given unto me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in bonds that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. So he tells them, first of all, that he's in bonds. Obviously, he's under arrest. The readers of this letter would be scattered throughout Asia Minor, so they would be a distance from him. Not that they can come and visit on Tuesday night. Hey, we'll be there on Tuesday night in our prison ministry. They're distant from him. Being chained to a guard, In his mind was a golden opportunity to influence people in the government, maybe some that were related to Caesar or Nero, you think about that. He also says, I am an ambassador. It's interesting the word used there is a word, the emperor's legate. which means he's saying the Emperor's personal representative. His focus is not, pray that I get out of this prison. I'm not here for good reasons. Could you contact my lawyer? It's interesting, wherever it seemed that the Apostle Paul ended up, he saw that as a platform to preach the gospel. And he says, I'm an ambassador for the real emperor, for the king of kings and lord of lords. And I'm here in bonds and I want you to pray for me. Now I'm gonna very quickly give you four requests that I see in these two verses that the Apostle Paul makes. So we see the statement, pray for me, which is our title of our message for tonight. I'm an ambassador in bonds. I'm in bonds, I'm being bound. And he says this, I need, number one, I need prayer for wisdom. He asks this, he said, pray for me that utterance may be given unto me. The word utterance, the idea there has to do with speech. The idea has to be with what I should say. Pray for wisdom. Pray for me for what I should say. You ever say the wrong thing? More times than we'd like to admit. Sometimes we say the wrong thing when we're trying to tell someone about Jesus. That's not the best thing. When you go out, maybe you find yourself a little nervous to go out or a little nervous to talk to somebody because you say, I don't know what to say. Well, do you know what? When we ask the Lord for wisdom, when we ask the Lord to guide us, He gives us just what to say when we need it. I have found you can memorize all the different soul winning plans and the different verses, but it seems to me when you get to the door and you talk to an individual, it seems to me that the Lord brings verses to mind when we ask. You ever tell somebody, oh, the Bible says, and you quote some verse and you think, where did that come from? Where did that come from in my mind? What a tremendous prayer, being again, as we look at it, being chained to a guard, being put in prison. It wasn't a focus on me and my rights and what I deserve. There was a focus on here I am in this place of witness. I'm an ambassador for the King of Kings. I'm in bonds. Would you pray for me? Would you pray for wisdom? Pray that I know what to say. The Apostle Paul, we know, we don't take time to look at it, tried to follow the leading of the Lord. In Acts 16, he says, hey, I was gonna go to this place and this place that the Spirit said, don't go there. And the Spirit said, go here. The Spirit of God will guide us into truth. And as we think about it, are we not ambassadors here on earth? And when you got saved, God didn't take you right to heaven. He left you here to be an ambassador, which is speaking on behalf of someone else. And we have the opportunity to speak on behalf of our King, and we need wisdom with what to say. Secondly, prayerful obedience. Where do you get this? Well, I think we can see this as we look at verse number 19. Pray for me that utterance may be given unto me that I may open my mouth. We'll look at the word boldly in a minute. That I may open my mouth. Sometimes we open our mouths and insert our foot, right? When it comes to the gospel, when it comes to witnessing, sometimes it's like somebody glues our mouth shut. You ever find yourself there? You ever miss an opportunity when you think, hey, I should have said something about the Lord. I should have had a gospel track. The Apostle Paul was a human being just like we are. I think he was burdened that he would obey what God wanted him to do. We find in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 and verse number 24, Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore, so run. Not as uncertainly, so fight I not as one that beateth the air. And then he says this, but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway or be disapproved. And I think it's important as we think about being an ambassador for the Lord that we pray, Lord, help me to obey you. Help me. He does not overrule human will. We know that. I love the verse, open my mouth wide and I'll fill it. God will give us the words to say, but we have to open our mouth. You will never lead anybody to Jesus Christ unless you open your mouth. We had a great opportunity today. We gave the lady the gospel. And then we just said, do you want to pray? How about you? You can lay your head on your pillow tonight and know you're on your way to heaven. She needed time to process it. I understand. She needed time to think about it. But I made sure that she knew, if she was going to trust Christ as Savior, how to do it. There's a prayer on this pamphlet. But we've got to pray for obedience. Number three, a prayer for boldness. Can you believe the Apostle Paul is asking a prayer for boldness? Absolutely, that I may boldly. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, let me remind you what he writes here. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, right into the church at Corinth, he says, When I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." You ever find yourself there? in weakness, and the knees are knocking, and in fear, and in much trembling, you can identify with the great Apostle Paul. And he said what, in verse four, and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the power of the Spirit. Well, what do we see here? It wasn't my articulation of, I was scared, I was afraid. And it's interesting, to me it's encouraging that he asks in Ephesians that I may boldly proclaim truth. We read in the book of Acts, they recognized when they saw the boldness that they had been with Jesus. Matter of fact, we read in the book of Acts when persecution came. Matter of fact, I'm gonna find it, Acts chapter number four. Persecution comes, the Bible says, in verse 23, they let him go. They arrested him, you can't speak in the name of Jesus. Verse 29, and they asked the Lord, Lord, Acts 4, 29, behold their threatenings and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak the word. They're being told by religious authorities and government officials, you can't do this. They don't say, okay, I guess we can't do it. Let's go back and tell Jesus, Jesus is in heaven. Let's go back and tell the other disciples you can't do this. They didn't ask that. They didn't say, Lord, would you shoot lightning out of heaven and kill them all, Lord? You know, that's what we want to do. We want the wrath, right? And precatory prayers. They didn't answer that. They didn't even say, Lord, would you stop this persecution? Lord, would you keep us from jail? And I don't think some of those things are bad things necessarily, pray. But their emphasis is on boldness. Lord, would you give us boldness to continue to proclaim truth? What do we do when resistance comes? What do we do when someone slams the door? What do we do when someone says, oh, you're a religious, you're a Jesus freak? We need to pray for boldness. We need to ask God to give us boldness. And by the way, God did give them boldness. In verse 31, when they had prayed, the place was shaken together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. Boy, we ought to pray every day. Lord, would you give me boldness. to proclaim truth, to take a stand. Sometimes it's not even talking about giving the gospel. Sometimes it's just about taking a stand for what's right and what's wrong. You're in the workplace and a bunch of unsaved people and they say, here's what you're going to do. You're going to lie on this form and you're going to change the numbers a little. You say, I'm sorry. I'll work as hard as I can for you, but I can't lie, I can't do. It happens all the time in corporate America. We need boldness to take a stand. I don't think we should take our Bible and go into the boss and say, you see this verse here, bucko? We need to be bold in our stance. Say, I can't do that. I serve a higher boss. And then number four, lastly, is prayer. I've got to find Ephesians again, Ephesians 6. The idea is that I might preach the gospel. Then I open my mouth boldly to make known, too boldly there, 19 and 20, the mystery of the gospel. Do you know sometimes it's easy for us, and I want to read a verse, next page over in Philippians. Sometimes it's easy for us to get off track. I remember one time I was out witnessing, knocking on the door, and this lady says to me, now didn't Jesus like kick the devil out of heaven, and where's that in the Bible? And I said this, I was just a young college student, and I didn't really know where that passage was, and so I had to think quick on my feet, because I couldn't have found that passage at all. At that time, I know I was in Bible college. I should have known where that passage was. And so I said, well, we can talk about that after. Let's talk about knowing for sure you're on your way to heaven. Let's stay right on point. And you know what happened after I went through the gospel? They never asked about, no, wait, where's that passage? They never asked me. I got off the hook, right? But there are many, many things that get us off focus, that get us off track. What do we need to do? We need to try to bring the conversation, Lord bring this conversation to the gospel. Isn't it awesome when other people bring it up? Isn't it awesome when other people say, you go to church. What's the difference between a Baptist and a Catholic? Somebody asked me that at Bible school, and I'm like, this is great. This is wonderful. And Jean was there. Jean watched the kids. So it was just neat how the Lord had her there, and she knew what was going on. And I always tell them, what's the difference? Well, as a Baptist, that's what I do, there's a lot of things you could tell. I say, we tell people how they can know for sure they're on their way to heaven, and try to give them the gospel. You know, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. If I can get them saved, I can help them understand the Bible, right, better than I can if they're not saved. But you look at this, and in Philippians chapter number 1, I close with this, Philippians 1, The Apostle Paul says this to the church at Philippi, Philippians is a prison epistle as well. And I'm being told I can't do this, I'm being locked up. He said, but that's okay, it's for the furtherance of the gospel. Verse 13, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places. And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ, even of envy and strife, and some also of goodwill. The one preached Christ of contention, not sincerely supposing to add affliction to my bonds, but the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. What does he say in verse 18? Notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. The gospel is going forward. Here he is in prison epistle, running to the church at Ephesus. And he says, hey, pray for me. Pray that I'll be the witness that God wants me to be right here in this prison. And boy, that's a prayer we could pray for one another, isn't it? But often we don't think that way. We think, pray that I'll get out of this pressure. Pray that I'll get out of this situation. Pray that all the burdens get lifted. Pray that these situations... And we need to say, Lord, would you help me? And again, we can pray that God lifts burdens. But we need to pray through the difficulties and challenges that we face that we'll be the witness that God wants us to be. Let's bow for prayer. Lord, thank you for the privilege to be an ambassador for Jesus Christ. And Lord, sometimes we're not the ambassador that we should be. Lord, I pray that you would help us to pray for one another. Lord, we all need boldness. We all need wisdom in what to say. We all need your power, Lord. We need you to keep us focused and help us to take advantage of the opportunities that you give us. Lord, I do pray that you would help us to see people saved. Lord, thank you for what you did for us on the cross. And Lord, as we think about the Lord's Supper, thank you for my mom that told me about Jesus. And Lord, thank you for every person that told everyone here about Jesus. Would you meet with us now as we think about the Lord's Supper, or as we think about what we've heard?