Hey, good morning church. We are going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 this morning. 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 1 through 13.

2 Corinthians 6, verses 1 through 13.

The Apostle Paul writes,

Working together with Him then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says, in a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the favorable time.

Behold, now is the day of salvation. We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with us. This is our ministry. But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way. By great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech, and the power of God, with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left, through honor. In dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters and yet are true. As unknown and yet well-known. As dying and behold, we live. As punished and yet not killed. As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. As poor, yet making many rich. As having nothing, yet possessing everything.

We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians. Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return, I speak as to children, widen your hearts also.

We all know dieting is not fun at all. I’m going to be very old in about a month. I’m going to be 30 years old.

But I will say, I can’t lose weight as fast as 20. Now, it might be worse at 40 and 50 and 60, and I’ll know when I get there. But speaking for myself, I can’t lose it like I wish I could. But I’ve been calorie counting for the last month and a half. I’ve got this app, man, and I’m putting in every little single thing I eat. And, you know, it’s gray. You’ve got this. Oh, we’ve got this many calories. And, you know, you’re happy, and they send you little badges and the email. You’ve got the you’ve-been-with-it-for-three-weeks badge, and you get proud of yourself. But I’ve lost about 10 pounds, and so I’m very happy with myself. But here’s what I’ve found about dieting, though, especially on weekends.

It doesn’t work if you don’t do it consistently.

Dieting is not one of those things in life you can do sometimes, and it counts. Or it makes a difference. I think we all wish that healthy living wasn’t a lifestyle, but they call it a lifestyle for a reason. You don’t stop. You’ve got to keep going with it.

And very much so in a spiritual sense, Christian discipleship is not a sometimes kind of thing.

Sometimes I think we wish it was when it gets difficult and when it gets hard. But it’s not intermittent.

Only the Christian life that endures is a genuine one. It’s the one that makes it to the end, that crosses the finish line. And it’s plain enough to say, but the Christian life is easy when it’s easy. But it’s not always easy. If it was easy, then we would all hit 100 every time in the Christian life. Every time. Everyone would be living it, and church would be this happy-go-lucky experience, and there would be no problems. But the Christian life is not easy. I think that if anyone says the Christian life is easy, they’ve lied to you. The Christian life is hard. And the Christian life is one of endurance. And the Apostle Paul uses so much language in the New Testament. Talk about running the race, winning the prize, boxing. He keeps going. He’s fighting to reach a certain… end. And so Paul’s making an appeal for genuine endurance to these Corinthians. That’s what he’s writing to them about. He’s not writing to say, hey, I hope you act like Christians sometimes. Hey, I hope you fight the good fight here and then… No, he’s making an appeal for this kind of enduring Christian discipleship that goes the whole way. If you remember a few weeks ago, Chase walked us through the first bit. Of chapter 5 in 2 Corinthians. And largely, I think if I had to sum it up, it was this. Life is burdensome often. Life is hard. In this tent, we suffer in a great variety of ways. And Richard followed that up the second half of chapter 5, but really talking about ministry and church life and being a Christian and doing what God calls us to do outwardly. That’s oftentimes a burden and it’s a struggle. So Paul’s really made this case in 5. That yes, there may be joy and yes, it may be worth it, but nonetheless, the Christian life, it can often be a heavy burden on our shoulders

within and without.

So his appeal in chapter 6 after saying these things is, don’t stop. Here’s what it looks like to endure. Here’s how you are to endure. And here’s the great end if you do endure. That’s what Paul’s talking about. So he says in verse 1, Working together with Him then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says, in a favorable time, I listen to you. And in a day of salvation, I have helped you. Behold! So this is the great Greek interjection. Pay attention. Catch this. Now is the favorable time.

Now is the day of salvation. He says, behold it. Now why is that significant? Here’s why Paul isn’t just making up this language. Like this is emotional plea on Paul’s part. Paul is quoting the prophet Isaiah in chapter 49. And when Isaiah said this to the southern kingdom of Judah, he was prophesying that they would soon go into Babylonian captivity as the northern kingdom of Israel had already gone into Assyrian captivity. And they were in captivity because, because they had not endured. They had not abided in righteousness. They were a wicked people. They were a sinful people. They did not love God’s ways. They didn’t like God’s ways. They quickly and they often did their own thing. They quickly, they often wanted to imitate the foreign nations around them. And so it came to the point where God’s mercy was absolutely exhausted with these people that did not want God’s mercy. They did not want to endure. And so God says through the prophet Isaiah, you’re going to go. You’re going to go into captivity for this. But here’s how gracious God is. He speaks a word of redemption even before they go.

God gives them hope of salvation and rescue before. He says that they will go, but He says then a favorable time will come. He says a day of salvation will come to them. But when Isaiah is talking about the favorable time, the day of salvation, he’s not talking about just Israel as a nation and someday, they’re going to get out of physical slavery and captivity and go back and be a nation again. Surely that’s what they want and that’s going to come for them to a degree. But that’s not what Isaiah is getting at. The heart of what Isaiah is getting at applies to you, whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile. It applies to you because the human problem is the same. We’re all in a kind of spiritual bondage and in that spiritual bondage to sin, we cannot abide with Christ. We will not endure in God’s righteousness. It’s not in us. We don’t want it. This is our great problem and this is what we need God to favor us somehow. I need God and someday somewhere to save me. So you see, with all that being true, it puts so much more weight behind what Paul’s talking about. Because Paul’s not talking about literally this 24-hour experience. Isaiah is talking about Jesus Christ. He’s talking about the Jesus who will show up. And because of what Jesus did on the cross to save us from our sins, save us from our captivity to evil, to wickedness, to unrighteousness, that will be the day of salvation. That is God favoring us when God did not have to favor us. So Isaiah is saying a good word not just for the Jew, and the Jew in the Old Testament was supposed to be a light to the nations. But where the Jew fell, the Jews fell as a nation, Christ came and He showed God’s favor. Christ came and He brought about the day of salvation. He brought about the day of salvation for us. So you see when Paul’s saying that to them, he’s saying, get the point. Behold. Now is that day. I love to say it when I get an opportunity to share the gospel with someone. The prophet Isaiah says, seek the Lord while He may be found. You can outweigh God.

God says, seek me while I can be found. These are the few moments you have in life to respond to this day, this day of salvation, this favorable time. Don’t let it pass you by. Don’t let it be in vain.

So Paul says, and I think we have to leave the possibility open, that we can come to God and we can know God, but at the end of it all, it’s not simply about tasting. It’s about enduring. It’s about going on. It’s not about, and catch this please, giving the Lord a few moments. It’s about, after we have come to know Christ, it’s giving Him, all the moments. And I want to make a point, a distinction between living in the moment versus living for the moment. I think a lot of times you hear that in culture, live in the moment. And I think what we always mean when you hear that, it means for the moment. Here’s the difference. The person that lives for the moment is really trying to exploit every second of every day to get as much pleasure, as much happiness as I can get now. I’m not living for tomorrow. I’m living for this moment. And how can I make it best suit me? What money do I have? What resources do I have to live my best life now? Live it up. It’s pleasurable. And there’s songs that are written in our culture that attest to this. I think of one that says, we’re going to stay young forever. We’re never going to get older. It’s not true, but we sing things like this because we make ourselves believe that just living in the moment is the greatest good there ever is. Silly little, uh, things like YOLO. You only live once, right? So just live in the moment. Take everything you can out of it. That’s a for the moment kind of life. But the scriptures call us to an in the moment kind of life. And an in the moment kind of life recognizes this. Every moment that you have is linked to and connected to the next moment. And there comes an ending point where there are no more moments. And there comes a point in time in which I must be judged on what I did with my moments when I was in them.

I must be, friends, an in the moment kind of Christian. Hear me say this then.

God doesn’t want some of our lives. He doesn’t want some of our time. God doesn’t want most of our lives. God doesn’t want most of our time. God demands that when we come in the first moment, we surrender all the moments. There are no bargaining chips with God. The day of salvation is the first of many moments where we surrender our lives, we surrender our time, our schedules, our agenda to everything that God wants. And we do it when we truly get a glimpse of God’s grace, that salvation, when you truly grab that. You know, and we talk about this in the deep south. Everybody’s heard the gospel. Everybody knows Jesus died on a cross somewhere. But it’s the difference between knowing that and getting a real vision of it with your heart that Jesus, the King of Heaven, Jesus, who is beautiful, Jesus, who is pure, Jesus, who is precious. He would come and He would die, not for friends, not for good people, but Christ came and He died for the enemies of God. He would provide them with salvation. God would show unmerited favor to His foes. And I think when we really grab that with our soul and you really know what this great God has done for you, it could only leave you saying, Lord, what is your agenda for my life? What do you want these few precious moments I have with now? What do you want them to look like? So there’s a real sense of urgency then. If we’re going to talk about marks of enduring discipleship, the first one has to be a real sense of urgency about what God wants me to do with these few precious moments. Whatever the cost. Whatever the hardship. And I think you have to take a good look at your life often and say, what matters in my life? What do I actually spend my time doing? Who do I actually spend my time with? What do I actually spend my money on? What do I really love? What really entertains? What is my greatest pursuit? What is my highest pleasure? And does it look like God’s agenda for my life? Which He’s made plain, hasn’t He? Chase talked about it and then Richard talked about it. And it’s easily wrapped up in the Great Commission. Chase said we must be disciples. I’m in the tent. I’ve got to grow. I’ve got to rest. I’ve got to have courage. I’ve got to be confident. God’s growing me. He’s going to get me to the end. And Richard said we must then together do the work. The work of making disciples. So that’s the great work that Jesus so succinctly said in the Great Commission. Take your moments that you’ve been given since you belong to me. Grow up in Jesus and help other people grow up in Jesus. That is the very simple mission of the church. And I think the church has lost that mission. Doctors know what doctors do. Lawyers know what lawyers do. Plumbers know what plumbers do. But I’m afraid the church sometimes forgets what it’s supposed to do. It’s not supposed to entertain people. It’s not supposed to make people feel good about themselves. The church is supposed to make disciples. That is Paul’s call to endure in being and making followers of Jesus Christ. So it must burden us then, friends, when you hear people, well-meaning people, who say they are of this genuine, enduring brand of Christians say, I don’t have time for the church.

With great conviction and burden, they don’t have time for this bride of Christ. As if they’re throwing God a bone when they do something or show up or when they play church for a little while. God doesn’t need you to throw Him a bone. We can’t do the bride of Christ a favor. Friends, let me say it to you, and we so often forget it in our individualistic culture, we need the church. We need the church within this living organism that Jesus spilt His blood for. We are taught. We are encouraged. We are trained. We are taught. We are corrected to look like Jesus and know how to help other people look like Jesus. It’s why He spilt His blood for us. So again, with the individualistic thing, Jesus didn’t spill His blood so I can get out of hell and into heaven. That’s such a flat way to read the Scriptures. And, oh, there’s this side effect that I have to go to church and I have to make disciples. No, God graciously says, I’ve saved you out of hell and you’re going to grow up and help other people grow up and be prepared for heaven. So it’s not two different things. My pursuit of Christ, my pursuit of heaven is a pursuit with and for the people that Christ also shed His blood for. There’s an urgency in that because you’re going to expire. Some of us are going to expire sooner than others. Some of us who are young are going to expire and we didn’t expect to expire. So the moments are urgent because the moments must be used up on God’s agenda for our lives.

Which leads me to this question. Question. Have we?

Misunderstood the cross?

Did we mishear Jesus when He said, take up your cross and follow Me daily?

Did we misunderstand the part about the cross or the word daily?

Did you think it was going to be this small little cross you could put in your pocket? Did you think it was going to be really light? Did you think it was going to be pretty and beautiful and everyone around you was going to like it? No. It’s a big, old, ugly, heavy thing. And people are going to be offended by it. Jesus says don’t ever put it down. Daily, with all your moments, carry that cross and pursue Me with the people of God. Friends, have we forgotten that Christ carried His cross for us?

Jesus never had any other agenda but to do the Father’s will by making a way for us to live in the favor of God. To live in the day of salvation forever. Let us not be so ungrateful as to try to keep both lives. No, I can’t have two masters. Christ is my Master. I’m obeying Him. I’m following Him. And with urgency, He gets all my moments.

Jesus on the cross was an in-the-moment decision. And you know it was because He didn’t want it to be. Jesus in the garden said, Father, let this cup pass from Me. Right? And you see the humanity of Jesus. I don’t want a bunch of people to punch Me, spit on Me, rip My beard out, make fun of Me, and nail Me to a cross. Nobody wants that. Jesus being God doesn’t make Him want that anymore. He doesn’t want it. But He says, Father, not My will, but Your will be done. It was an in-the-moment decision that had asked for eternity, not for right now. Now on the opposite side, and we talked about Pilate in Bible study this past Wednesday, Pilate was a for-the-moment kind of person. Jesus was innocent. He knew it. Yet what did he do? He preserved his station as a Roman leader. He knew if he did the right thing, he’d lose his position. And he knew that if the people weren’t happy with him, it could mean his own head. Pilate was a for-the-moment person where Christ has lived in the moment for eternity. Do we live in the moment for Christ? That’s my great question, I think, for you. It’s a good thing that my wife is good with numbers because if it was up to me, none of our bills would get paid and I would miscalculate what we owe this person and it would be a big old mess. College algebra really tested our marriage. Let me just tell you, when they started mixing the numbers and the letters, forget it. Forget it. It was not for me. But it’s the work of, even as simply as paying your bills and doing a budget, it’s the work of, an accountant. You’re accounting for what your budget tells you matters to you. And sometimes she has to say to me, hey, we’ve got to stop spending money on this because we’ve got to pay these bills or hey, we’ve spent too much money here, we can’t go out to eat here. And I say, okay, okay, okay. What are you doing? You’re doing the work of an accountant to make sure you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing with your money, with your life. And friends, the Scriptures don’t tell us to just willy-nilly, willy-nilly live and everything’s fine because Jesus saved us. That’s a for-the-moment mentality. And in-the-moment mentality says, yes, because Jesus saved me, I’m going to see my talents, I’m going to see my time, I’m going to see my money, I’m going to see everything as a tool God’s given me. And I’m going to constantly take into account my life to see what here is fulfilling the mission of being and making disciples, what’s here that’s really selfish and I probably don’t need it, even if it’s a good thing. So we’re constantly doing what Paul said to do. We’re taking, testing ourselves that we’re in the faith. We’re growing up in the faith in maturity and in the sacrificial lifestyle. So I think the in-the-moment Christian, it has to mean sacrificial lifestyle. That’s what it means.

Are we enduring disciples?

The second thing I think an enduring disciple does, an enduring disciple

lives with a sense of the future.

Look at verse 3 in chapter…

Paul goes on to say, we put no obstacle in anyone’s way so that no fault may be found with our ministry. But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech, in the power of God, with weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left, through honor, dishonor, slander, praise. We’re treated as imposters, but we’re true. We’re unknown, well-known, dying. We live, punished, not dead, sorrowful, always rejoicing, poor, yet we’re rich, we got nothing, yet we have everything. So Paul, outside of the person of Jesus, no one backs their words up with their life like Paul does. Paul had a very accomplished life. He had power, he had prestige, he had intellectual accomplishments, Paul had all of it. Yet by grace, Christ called him to lay that down and to follow him. And so you get here in these verses, these sweeping general categories of Paul saying, hey, this is what it looks like to endure and follow Jesus. And it’s hard to preach it, to be honest with you, because the categories are so sweeping. Like are we talking about that time Paul, was beaten almost to death or literally to death and came back to life with the rocks or Paul was beaten by the Roman guards or he was shipwrecked or starved or like what are we talking about about Paul because if you look at Paul, Paul’s saying, look, following Jesus really, it’s like this giant plethora of all that it could mean to suffer and to hurt for Jesus. He said, look at all this in my life. He’s like, all these general categories. Like we’d have books and books and books and Paul’s like, then there’s this time that this happened to me and then that person said that about me and then, these disciples were faithful and they fled. There’s that time John Mark was faithful and John Mark led me. I mean, it would be so wide as to what Paul suffered for the sake of Christ.

And I think you could ask the question on that, well, is Paul, is he an egomaniac? Like look at me, look how awesome I am for Jesus. Not at all. Here’s what Paul’s doing and we should each seek to do this in our life. We should seek to be a great example of what it looks like to follow Jesus. That’s what Paul wants for these Corinthians. He’s saying, hey, look at my life. I’m following Jesus. This is what it looks like and I want you to succeed. Paul desires to be a spitting image of a follower of Jesus Christ. He strived in every situation, every kind of circumstance to be this way. And Paul says, I’ve endured. And then he says all these terrible things he’s endured through. But this, the word endurance I want us to grab, it means an unbreakable patience. I need unbreakable patience in my life. But Paul says, I have this unbreakable patience for Jesus. Paul’s integrity as a follower of Jesus was always intact. Whether it was inner turmoil or outer conflict, he never stopped being a commendable model of the follower of Jesus. And I think when I consider that, part of me just wants to almost say like, so what? What? Like, with irreverence. Like, that’s great. And Christians are just supposed to suffer and life’s horrible. And that’s what it means to be a Christian is life’s terrible. Like, is that the greatest good of being a follower of Jesus for Paul?

Because I mean, if we’re going to suffer and Paul says, it might get real bad. It might get real bad. Like, okay, great. I’m so glad to just hurt for Jesus. Like, is that the end of it? Not at all. And Paul’s very descriptive about why he’s willing to do what he’s doing in the present. He says it is the future. Do you see what he says in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6? He says, so we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light, Paul calls it light. I don’t call shipwrecks light. I don’t call starvation light. Paul does. He says, for this light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal, eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. That’s why Paul does what Paul does. He says, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. I think the greatest definition of glory I’ve ever heard is this. It is the unique weight and worth of something. Like, the unique weight and worth of a horse is its speed, its power, its beauty. It uniquely has that. The unique weight and worth of stars or their brilliance that could be seen from a gazillion light years away. I mean, that’s the glory of the star. And the glory of heaven, the glory of eternity is its Christ.

Paul knows that this Jesus, He has a unique weight and worth in His beauty, in His love, in His tender compassion, in His grace, in how He cares for Paul and loves Paul. And Paul can look back at the cross and it’s a burning, a burning testament of Jesus came and did this for a sinner such as I. What will it be like to be in the presence of this Jesus and to know this Jesus forever? That’s why I can give up the moments. We’re back to the moments. I’ve got to give up the moments for the future glory of knowing Christ. Do we have that same sense of future glory that Paul does? Because I really think that’s what steers Paul to be Paul.

I can’t have a helping of Jesus. I can’t have a helping of Jesus. I can’t have maybe a smidgen of suffering. I must follow Christ and His suffering if I am to have a share in the glory of Christ as He suffered before the Father.

So he says, it’s fine, it’s fine really if the world thinks I’m some joke, if I’m an imposter to the world. It’s fine because I’m known to God and that’s what matters to me. He says, I may be at the point of death here and I may be punished but I’m always experiencing sorrows and I’m impoverished but it’s because I know I’m rich and I have a greater identity and I have a greater purpose and that is safe, it is secure in heaven. Paul’s life is hid with Christ and God.

Friends, do we have that same hope of heaven? And I think that we can be guilty sometimes, of exchanging the weight of glory for a petty, comfortable Christianity.

Is it true that we can sometimes lose our vision of heaven and replace it with a cheap, easy, maintainable reality? I don’t need the Spirit of God if I can manufacture something that looks like Christianity but it feels a little easier. Jesus calls me to do the hard thing. Jesus calls me to forsake my sins. Jesus calls me to do great things with my money. Well, back it off a little bit. No, Christ says it’s all of this life to gain heaven. Paul says it’s all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. Paul says I lose myself to gain Christ. Friends, do we desire to gain Christ?

Dawson,

my three-year-old son, is not half as sneaky as he thinks.

He, I don’t know why they can’t, they can’t figure out that we have a monitor in our room and we can hear every noise you make. Like it’s not, we know you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. But we’ll put them to bed and you know, they share a bedroom and hey, no more talking. Like go to bed. Okay. And you get down there and not 30 seconds later, they’re,

and then it builds up to a roar and next thing you know, they’re bouncing off their beds and getting toys back out and I sneak upstairs and I’m standing there and his eyes get as big as silver dollars. Right? He got caught doing what he knew he wasn’t supposed to do.

I don’t want, whether Jesus comes back or I go home, I don’t want to be caught not living for future glory. I want to live now, not for now, but for eternity. A woman once asked John Wesley, if you knew you were going to die tomorrow at midnight, what would you do different in life? And he said, absolutely nothing. He said, I would live my life and I would then die and go to sleep and wake up in glory. Friends, don’t you want to have a life that’s already set on Christ? That sense of urgency, that sense of the future, of what’s coming, of what’s better, what’s real.

Look at verse 11.

He says, we’ve spoken freely to you Corinthians,

our heart wide open, you are not restrained, restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return, I speak as the children, widen your hearts also.

What is holding these believers back from living with urgency to follow Jesus, to live for the future?

Themselves.

Paul says, you’ve got the cross of Christ, you have the Spirit of God, that Jesus has accomplished all this for you to empower you. Paul says, hey, remember my life? Remember how I’ve suffered all these things and how horrible it’s been and how bad it was? But I came through it, Paul said, because I had the Spirit of God, I had the power of God, I had the fruits of the Spirit, I had the weapons of righteousness in the right hand, in the left, like God gave me everything I need. And so Paul has given these Corinthians everything they need to hold nothing back. It is, it is a decision that we must make that I’m going to hold nothing back. Christ is wonderful enough, beautiful enough to lose it all, and Christ is strong and powerful enough in what He accomplished to enable me for the great work.

Friends, Christ lived with that urgency of glory. Christ lived not for the moment, but He lived in the moment to obey the Father and to make a way for us. Christ did not Himself. And so then, if we’re to follow Christ, we must follow Christ and His endurance. We must follow Christ if we’re going to be enduring disciples in full and complete and total self-denial. I want to deny myself. Jesus says, come after Me, you must die. Take up your cross. Die, and you’ll be born again to new life. And friends, that new life that Christ has won us on the cross,

it’s not good to keep us in moments, it’s not good to keep us from time to time. It’s good and it’s strong and it’s powerful to keep us to the very end. That’s discipleship that counts. That’s discipleship that endures. Church, I want us to be a church that endures together in following Jesus through the highs and through the lows, when it’s difficult, when it’s tough, when it seems like we can’t take one more footstep, ah, we must remember that Christ has completed all things and Christ in His Spirit is empowering us now and Christ will see us through.

Let’s not get in our own way. Christ died to remove those barriers. Let us freely chase after Him and know that He is going to lead us and He’s going to carry us all the way home.

Let’s pray.

Father, I’m probably just out of words this morning.

I don’t think there’s enough words really just to sometimes say how much we need You,

how much we depend on You.

Lord, it’s in precious moments when You deplete us of our pride that we can have a vision of how dependable You are. Of how good You are. Of how able You are to see us through all things. How able You are to fill us with grace and power to live for You. How able You are to teach us how to love You and to love people and make disciples, Lord. So thank You for valleys. And thank You for tough spots because they make us run to the cross and lean on Jesus for everything. For everything.

So Lord, You strengthen us. You strengthen and increase our faith and obedience that we would be enduring discipleship. That with great urgency, with zeal for the future, Lord, we live for Your glory. We make Christ known. Christ would be known in us, through us, and around us, Lord. And it would be

just the humble privilege that it is to know You and make You known. To say the name Jesus and to lean on Him would be a sweet thing. as it actually is and we would know it. So we just thank You for the cross. Jesus, we thank You for Your humility to come to wrap Yourself in flesh to make a way through Your body for us to be in Your presence forever. And we pray that this would be our song, this would be our life. You would constantly be the light that burns before us in all things, Lord.

So we just love You. We just pray Your grace and Your mercy over this church, over these wonderful people. Lord, that You would bind us together in spirit and truth. That there would be no discord or division among us, but we would grow up in Christ together. That we’d fight for one another in holiness. That we’d desire to see the other do better. That we would, with the love of Christ, Lord, sacrifice to help others, Lord. That we would be a burning light to the world of what it means to endure in following Jesus. So we depend on Your provision. We depend on, Your guidance. We depend on You for everything, Lord. And we love You. And it’s in Jesus’ name that we pray these things. Amen.