Sharing of the Word

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Well, there have been some great things that have been happening in our church lately. I don't know if you know this, so I thought I would tell you just a few things. Beyond what we just talked about with our VBS Rec Week, where we saw dozens of unchurched kids make personal gospel connections with people who follow Jesus, I've heard story after story of people that have been growing in the Lord as they've been reading our Bible plan, our Bible reading plan for the summer. They've been reading in a new way. I've heard of families that are reading together every night, and it is a huge blessing to their family, to their marriage. I've heard of people that have kind of stumbled into our family here and have found community in a way that is significant, in a way that frankly was unexpected. And the Lord is doing some good things. Good things are happening.

In fact, we're beginning to stretch our legs in ministry. All these things are good. When a good thing happens in a church, often our tendency is to stop with the what. We hear what is happening and we think, great, that's exciting. And the Bible encourages this, right? When you hear good things that are happening, when you are excited about something, the Bible says yes, enjoy it. The Bible says, be thankful. However, the word of God does something a little different. It does something interesting. It presses in further past the what, and it seeks to show us how these things are happening. Not just the what, but the how. So, you know, we look around and we see something that's happening. So we see a couple that's reading scripture every night. They're excited, they're growing, and we are thankful. Yes, and amen, we can be thankful. But what Scripture invites us to do is also ask,

how is that happening? To kind of peel back the layers and understand what's going on inside. Today, we are continuing our series all through the summer on the Word. 2021 is our year of focus. So all year in 2021, we have been focusing on the fundamentals. We've been talking about big things like the gospel or the body of Christ. We've been talking about the passion of the Christ. And right now we're talking about the Word, okay? The Word of God. We've been talking a lot about the Word. And if you're interested in kind of listening to the first couple, they are on our website. In fact, they weren't on our website before. But then one of our Deacons figured out how to rescue a few of them that we thought were lost. And so they are now back up on the website. So I'm excited. I'm thankful.

Today, we're going to continue that series by looking at 1st Thessalonians 2, 8 through 13. And when we read those verses, when we listen to it, we understand that there is a church where good things are happening. Good things are happening at that church. And first we see the what, and then we see the how. And in 1 Thessalonians 2:18, you know, we've already read it, but I just want to hit a few highlights. Okay? In verse eight, it says, we were ready to share the gospel with you. And not only to share the gospel, share our own selves. Verse nine, it talks about how we proclaimed to you the gospel. Verse 13, if you skip down a little bit, says we thank God constantly for this that when you received the word of God which you heard from us. In these verses what you see in the church that is happening is a sharing and a receiving of the Word of God. Sharing the Word of

God and receiving the Word of God. When good things are happening, I tell you very often when good things are happening in a church it's because the word of God is being shared. It's being shared. And this is the what? It's the word of God being shared. It's, it's, that's the title of today's sermon. It's the sharing of the word. And so the, the nature of the word, like we've seen in these verses, is that it is shared and received. And it's, it's here that we need to stop down for just a second and pay attention to how we think about the concept of sharing the word or maybe sharing the gospel.

Oftentimes when we think about sharing the gospel, when we think about evangelists or evangelism, there's a couple of things that come to mind, door to door evangelism, where you're just knocking on somebody's door and you're saying, hey, do you want to know about the Lord? Sometimes it goes to an extreme in our minds. We think of megaphones and street corners. Okay, we think about somebody with a sandwich board that just says turn or burn. Okay? Jesus says from hell repent today. All right

Maybe maybe we even think about when we think about sharing the word we think about maybe asking our waiter or waitress To pray with us as we're gonna pray over our meal Maybe even you think of a special class that you have taken that helps you share the gospel. Okay, and there's plenty of those. Yet, here in these verses 8 through 13, we don't really see any of that. We see a lot about sharing the gospel, sharing the Word, but we don't see any of that. And this is why Scripture takes the time to talk about not just the what, but the how. Because if we're going to be sharing the Word, if we're going to talk about sharing the Word, We're going to understand what 1 Thessalonians 2 is talking about when it's talking about sharing the word, but we don't pay attention to how. Let me just tell you, it's going to be extremely unfruitful.

If you just think, hey, all I have to do is share the word. I was in London one time and we were working with missionaries that were in London. And I don't know if you know this about London, England. It is very unchurched. So only about one to two percent of people claim to follow Christ in London, England, which is a 19 million people population. It's an urban area. Okay. And there's churches everywhere, but people don't go to them. They're like a thousand years old, some of them, but people do not, are not a part of it. These London missionaries were really keen on how, because it wasn't just a what for them. It wasn't just, hey, hey, listen, man, these people don't know the gospel. Well, let's tell them. Well, great. So they had a mission team that came over to help share the gospel with people in London. And one guy was from Texas. And, you know, people in, I don't know if you know this, people in London know about Texas.

They do, and it's none of it's good. They know about New York City and Texas. And neither one are like super glowing stereotypes. Okay. And this guy, this, the guy on the mission team from Texas did nothing to dispel those bad things. So his idea of sharing the gospel was going on the tube, the subway, and sitting down next to somebody and saying, Hey, you know Jesus? And if they said, Yeah, I know Jesus, you love him.

What do you mean? Do you love Jesus? Just repeat the question. Basically, he Texased him into understanding what the gospel was. I don't know if you knew that Texas was a verb, but that guy did. He Texas-ed him and just basically, you know, trying to cowboy up and, you know, I guess that's charm to him. I'm not really sure, but just say, hey, you heard about the gospel? And what the London missionaries were telling us was, that guy is doing more harm than good. That guy's doing more harm than good. Well, why? Well, what he's doing is he's communicating to people in London and the people that they know and the people that they know, that the gospel is just something that you just hit people with in the face, whether they like it or not, wherever they are. But it's a very confrontational evangelism, okay? a very confrontational evangelism. What you had was a missions team from Texas

that spent a week and a half in London very frustrated. They tried that over and over and over and over and it was extremely unfruitful. It was very frustrating for the people of London and it was very frustrating for the team from Texas that tried to Texas them. I was a college student once, it's hard to believe, but I was, I swear. And there was this gentleman that came to our college ministry and he said, and my BCM director, the director of the college ministry said, go follow that guy around as he witnesses to people on campus. And I said, okay, I mean, I was 18. And little did I know that guy was named Bill Bright. Bill Bright, you might not know Bill Bright, you don't have to, that he started a worldwide ministry for college students called Campus Crusade for Christ. For short, it's called CRU. CRU is in 190 countries. It's a worldwide college student ministry.

Bill Bright, I just followed the dude around and I watched him and he would find people that were walking and he'd walk with them. And he was just, hey, do you know about Jesus? And that's it. He would just walk with people and it was kind of this confrontational, this very like, hey, let me have a conversation with you real quick about Jesus. And that was sharing the gospel. And I don't mean to argue with Bill Bright, but I did try to do exactly what he did and it didn't work. Right? I tried to then go and, you know, talk and I had the most awkward, painful conversations that I would never wish on my worst enemy. It was terrible. It was unfruitful. It was frustrating. that's what I thought evangelism, that's what I thought sharing the Word was. And I thought that was my only option. And really, for years, I had given up on sharing the Word. But when I kept going back to Scripture, when I kept reading about sharing the

Word and what it looks like in Scripture, and particularly in 1 Thessalonians 2, 8 through 13, but a lot of other places, I saw a continued emphasis on sharing the Word. Over and over, I saw people sharing and receiving the Word of God. In fact, when you consider it, sharing and receiving the Word of God is the way that people begin to follow Jesus at all. You follow Jesus today because somebody shared the Word of God with you. Or maybe you don't follow Jesus, you're in a church building right now because somebody has shared or demonstrated the Word of God to you in a way that touched you in a way that made sense, in a way that resonated, however you want to say it, but it cleared some confusion for you. It was attractive to you. And so if you and I are unwilling to share the word or if we're unwilling to do the work of learning how to share the word, then great.

But fundamentally, you are not following Jesus at that point. You have now made up your own brand of Christianity, if you can even call it that. And you are not, if you're not willing to share or receive the word, if you're not willing to do that, then you're not following Jesus. You're not his disciple. You're making it up as you go along. It is the fundamental obedience to the mission that Jesus gave us to make disciples. We must figure out not just that we should share the word, But we should also figure out how to do that in a way that is compelling, in a way that is biblical. So to do that, we're going to look at the last part first. We're going to look at verse 13. In fact, we're going to look at the very end of verse 13. But we'll read the whole thing. I just want to emphasize the end. It says, in verse 13, 1 Thessalonians 2, it says, And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God,

which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God. And then here's the emphasis, which is at work among you believers. The first thing, if we're going to be sharing the word, the first and most important thing that we need to understand is that the word of God is at work right now. It's working on people right now, whether you're trying or not, whether you're, you know, whatever's going on, the word of God is the engine that is turning everything. The word of God is going out and convicting people. The word of God is speaking to people's hearts. There are people right now that do not know the Lord, that are, they watch a movie that depicts grace in a really compelling way. They cry and they don't know why. They see a beautiful mountain view, it reminds them of their creator. They see it, they feel it, they are emotionally moved by it,

but they have no clue why. Because the Lord God in heaven, through his word, through the person of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is working in them, convicting them, drawing them to himself. The word of God is at work. even when you're asleep, even when you're not paying attention, even when you're off trying to live your own life and not even following the Lord. The word of God is at work. And it's, look, the word of God is at work. What's happening, what's happening in the Thessalonian church right here is the work of the word of God. It is not Paul's great technique. It is not some eloquent sermon. It's not any of that. In fact, he covers that in verses five through seven. We won't read that, but you can go back and read. in verses five through seven, he's like, it's not because we were persuasive, or it's not because we came with, you know, it wasn't slick production.

You know, it wasn't fog machines. It wasn't any of that stuff. It was just the word of God working. The word of God, the good news of the gospel right now is shaping hearts and minds and is transforming people into a new family. The Word of God is still working on you, on me, on us together as a family. The Word of God is the engine and that is first and foremost. And we must expect this if we're going to share the Word of God. If we don't expect this, then what's the alternative? It's up to us. And I know it's well-meaning, but that old phrase comes out, you know, you're the, you might be the only Jesus that someone sees. I have little patience for that phrase, not because it's, you know, really terrible theologically, but because it really doesn't emphasize what Scripture seems to emphasize, which is that God is at work. You're not the only Jesus that somebody's

ever going to see. God is going to display himself in a thousand different ways. It says in Romans 1 that God displays himself through creation. You're not the only Jesus that somebody's going to see. And if you believe it's all up to you, then it's on you to drum everything up, to have the perfect words. It leads you down a really bad path. But it still leads us with the question, if the Word of God is doing all the heavy lifting and sharing the Word, then what is Paul doing? What is our responsibility? What does he say? Our responsibility then is to work alongside that, to cooperate with the Word of God. And this is really getting into how, right? So good things are happening. What are we seeing in our church body? Okay, these things are good. How is that happening? Well, the first explanation of how it's happening is that the word of God is working. The second explanation of how this is happening

is that we are cooperating with the word of God. And I think we need to understand how to do this. Because sometimes if somebody would tell me, right, oh, oh, so-and-so is doing all the heavy lifting, they're doing all the work. Cool, I'm gonna play games on my phone and chill out over here then. Like I'm not gonna feel the need to go and cooperate with them, right? If they're doing it all, okay. But the word of God working desires, the desire of the Lord is for us to be able to cooperate with him. So how do we do that? Well, that's in verses eight through 12, right? Verse eight, it says, so being affectionately desirous of you, We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us. Sharing the word is always personal. We share the word personally. So impersonal of sharing the word is going to be on a street corner with a megaphone.

And I'm not saying whoever's doing that is totally sinning or anything like that. I'm just saying that it's not really depicted here in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 8, right? But in 2A, what you see is a loving, warm relationship. In fact, it's so warm, it makes us uncomfortable to read that verse that we are so affectionately desirous of you. I mean, that's wording that we typically say for our spouse or people that we are romantically involved with, but not here. I mean, he's going all in, he's saying, look, we love you, we love spending time with you, we wanna be with you, we are in relationship with you, We are yours and you are ours. We are together. We are affectionately desirous of you. In fact, we are so affectionately desirous. We are so in a personal relationship with you that we're not just sharing information. We're not just sharing the truth that saves.

We're not just sharing, we're sharing ourselves. We're sharing our heart. We're sharing our lives. Sharing the word cannot be impersonal. Sharing the word is going to involve people coming over to your house. Sharing the word means that we are investing people in people over time. We are listening to their story. We are hearing what the Lord is doing. We are having conversations with them that are sprinkled with salt. All these other verses about sharing the word really come to light when you realize it's happening in the context of a relationship. To share the Word of God then is to demonstrate the gospel over time personally, where you are investing. Because you're not only sharing the Word of God, you must be prepared to share your own selves along with it. So we show the Word of God personally, but we also share the Word sacrificially. Look at the next

Verse nine, it says, for you remember brothers, our labor and soil, we worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaim to you the gospel of God. In those days when someone would come and teach, a lot of times they would exact a pay, like a fee, right? So someone would go and teach at a church or at a school or to a family with a lot of money, and they were like traveling teachers. And so they went and they would get money for teaching. And what Paul is saying here, he's saying, look, when I came to you and whenever we taught to you, we worked our way through that. We didn't ask you for money. Why? It's because they didn't want to put any barrier. They wanted to sacrifice for them. I'll even go deeper that when you are talking about the gospel truth, The gospel story is a story of perfect sacrifice. That the gospel is a story, it's a display of loving sacrificial action.

That God so loved us that He gave us His Son to die for us. That's sacrifice. And if you are wanting to share the gospel but you're unwilling to sacrifice, It will show and it won't be congruent with the message that you're sharing. If you are not willing to personally sacrifice, we must see our part in that. In other words, we don't, we can't just stop at getting doctrine right. We can't just stop at getting the words right. We have to understand that it is a heart issue. issue, we must be willing to and be readily available to sacrifice our time. The amount of time we binge on Netflix, what else do we need to sacrifice? Our money, the family night that you were going to have, but now somebody's in crisis and they need to come over. It was an odd occurrence. It was a weird story. But my family and I were all at home one night. Everything was pretty normal.

We were just having a normal night. We weren't together. We were just kind of all spread out the house. And somebody's at the door. I'm like, OK. And it was an old friend of mine. And we have kids around the same age. And so she came in, and she's talking, and she's really happy, like really happy. And I start asking questions, and I start smelling her breath, and I realize this lady's drunk. And she drove her by herself.

Well, I'm sure I would have been well within my rights to kick her out or to say, to point my finger wet, You know, yeah, you're drunk. You need to go sober up. Get out of here. I don't want you drunk around my kids. I don't know what you're going to say. And this lady has a reputation of just being real loose with her tongue. So like, when she's drunk, she's going to say things. When she's sober, she's going to say things that are embarrassing. When she's drunk, she's very, it's going to be over the top. What we did instead was sacrifice. We sat there. We gave her things to eat. We gave her other things to drink. We talked to her. While we talked to her, I called her husband. I said, your wife is drunk and over here, you better come pick her up because I'm not letting her leave in her own car. And sure enough, another knock on the door, her husband's at the door and the wife looks

at me and boy, you could have, like I had two holes like right here where she stared She was mad that I called her husband on her. But ultimately, what that has to do, what we have to do as believers, as people that love other people, is we have to sacrifice. We have to be willing to spend the time. You want to talk about sacrifice to Americans. And you say, like, hey, you don't get to spend time however you want. You will hear weeping and gnashing of teeth. People like their calendar. They like spending time the way they want to spend time. And when you go and you knock on somebody's door, it's expecting something of them. And when somebody knocks on your door, it's expecting something of you. And you know what? It's really easy to say, you know what? I'm going to stay away from you. You stay away from me. We're good. That's real easy. It's really easy to do in a church.

This is not the kind of life that we are called to live. We should share the word personally. We should share the word sacrificially. We should also share the word in holiness. Look at verse 10. It says, you are my witnesses and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. Now, look, I can read that just as well as you can.

This is not talking about some sinless perfection, okay? When Paul is writing to this church, he's not saying, look how I never messed up. You never caught me doing anything wrong. That's not what he's talking about. What he's saying is like our conduct toward you was for your benefit and was devoted to the Lord, right? Holiness, righteousness, blamelessness. It's saying, what Paul is saying is not that he, you know, didn't forget something that he should have said or that he didn't take on the perfection of Jesus in that moment whenever he was with the church. What he's saying is when we were among you, our action, our mindset, all of our effort was in sacrifice and devotion to the Lord. It was holy and blameless and righteous before him. We wanted to love you. We wanted to, well, like I said, it's not about perfection, but the motivation here is to magnify Jesus.

It's a desire to please Him above all others. We share the Word in holiness. If you are sharing the Word out of guilt, for example, then that's not sharing the Word out of holiness. If you are sharing the Word to be able to say to me next week, Pastor Drew, I shared the Word. You know, and you're like hoping for some spiritual kudos or something or some extra blessing.

Like, no, we share the Word for the Lord. We share the Word in obedience to Him, to magnify Him, because we love Him. The best thing, the best thing that somebody who does not know the Lord, the best thing that we could ever do for them is introduce them to the Lord. The kind of joy and the kind of hope that people can partake in when they know the Lord is life changing. It is not a small thing. When somebody says, I'm going to follow the Lord, they don't just quit cussing and quit smoking. They are infused. They are born again with a new life where they trust and they hope and there's real joy, they're transformed. The best thing that we can do is help people see the beauty of Jesus and to worship Him with their whole lives, sharing the Word in holiness. So we share it personally, sacrificially, in holiness. And lastly, and this is pretty similar to the first,

but it's a little different, we share the Word through deep, lasting bonds. And then this is verse 11 and 12. It says, for you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. I wanna really just isolate on one phrase there. It says, like a father with his children, do you hear the time spent? Do you hear the deep bonds of love in that phrase? Do you hear the patience and hope in it? I hope you do, because whenever you talk about, I am spending time with you people, like a father with his children.

It means that I'm being patient among you. I am extending trust to you, and I am receiving trust from you. It's fine. It's a little spooky, we're fine. I think we're fine. I think I need to say it a couple more times, and then I'll be okay. All right. Okay, you guys don't know this about me. It's kind of embarrassing. When the noise scares me, I have like 10 seconds of adrenaline where I'm just like, I want to punch something or scream or something. So I just, I had to like breathe, like Le Mans breathe through that whole thing right there. Whoo, okay. I know it didn't sound that loud. It just really, it really scared me. So I'm good. I'm good. I got the woo saw rubbing my earlobes. Okay, I'm all right. Okay, like a father with his children. Where were we? Like a father with his children. This is not some, this isn't a conference speaker, this isn't a guest preacher coming

in and like giving a sermon and leaving. This is somebody bearing their lives, somebody opening up their homes, their hearts, giving and receiving trust, when we share the word, okay, when we share the word personally, sacrificially, when we share it in holiness, when we share it within these deep, celebrated, trusted bonds of relationship, we are working in cooperation with the Spirit, with the word of God that is the engine that is working in other people. Look, if you have not made a disciple in years or ever, it is not your technique. It's not because you didn't try hard enough. It's not a special knowledge that you should have. It's not a testimony style. It's none of that. It is a life that is not dependent upon the word of God working in other people. It's not your technique. It's not your knowledge. life. I remember I was young in ministry, probably 24, and I read this book by a guy

named Erwin McManus, and Erwin, he's written a few, and I read this book called An Unstoppable Force, and it was so good, but it talked a lot about sharing the word, and it made me really nervous, right? I was like, I don't know how to do that. So I went to this conference, I was drugged to it. It's fine. I didn't even know he was going to be there. It turns out he was the speaker of that conference, and he had this signing at this book table. And I thought in my head, like, OK, here's my shot. I'm going to ask him about the thing that I'm afraid of. And so I went up to Erwin Maness, and he's signing books. And I say to him, Erwin, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I see you talking and writing a lot about sharing, essentially sharing the word with people. And I got to be honest, I'm really afraid. And that fear stops me from sharing the word with people.

And then he just calmly and pastorally looks up at me. And he said, well, Drew, thank you, first of all. But if you are afraid, it's because you love people more than God. I mean, that about cut me right in two. But it was such a loving thing to say because it's true. I loved what other people thought of me more than I loved the Lord. I loved my own kind of persona that I had built and more than I had loved the Lord. When we are in cooperation with the word of God and we open our lives and we serve other people and we form deep bonds with other people and we are sharing the gospel. We are seasoning our conversation with Saul. We are listening to their stories. We are telling our own testimony. Then people will hear the word of God clearly. When we do those things, not perfectly now, it's not like you gotta like, hold your leg this way and stick your tongue out.

It's not that it's perfect, it's that you are believing that the word of God the word of God is already at work and you are in cooperation with the word of God. And when you have that mindset and when you understand it's okay, this is going to cost me my life. When you share the word of God that way, people will hear it clearly. They will, that some might even accept it.

And then the last verse, we can read it again. Verse, verse 13, it says, and we, we thank, uh, we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, watch this, look at how they received it, which you heard from us. You accepted it or received it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God. The reason the Thessalonians church accepted the word of God as the word of God, and not just some advice. The reason they did that wasn't because Paul came and was just so eloquent or he was so logical, you know, he had him pinned in a corner and they're like, oh, I guess so. I guess it's all true. I have to believe it. No, no. No, because we're missing verses 8 through 12 if we believe that. What happened, the reason they accepted the word of God as the word of God, is because Paul and everybody that was kind of with them demonstrated the gospel,

this openness, this vulnerability, this trust, this magnification of Jesus. However imperfectly they did it, they did it with their lives. As we close today, I want you to think about these changes to your life. I want you to think about these three things. The first thing I'd like you to consider is for you to update your testimony. Some of you have great testimonies. I've heard them. They're great. They're about 20 years old.

And that was a great thing that happened 20 years ago. But is your testimony current? What's the Lord doing now? What's the Lord doing recently? I'll tell you, my testimony right now, I am gaining wisdom, whether I want it or not. And the Lord is walking me slowly through the book of Proverbs. And it is like a beating every time, every morning when I read through Proverbs, it's a beating. Because like I said last week, like street smarts, that whole winning at life wisdom thing, that's not me. Like, I'm not good at that stuff, okay? I need every, I need all the help I can get, but that's what the Lord is doing in me right now. What's the Lord doing in you? And it doesn't have to be eloquent, it just has to be real. What's the Lord doing in you? That's the first thing I want you to consider. Second, I want you to consider evaluating what you pray for. Evaluating what you pray for.

And specifically, I wanna encourage you toward two things. It's okay to pray for people to not be hurt or for people to have safety as they're traveling. Those things are fine to pray for. If that's the only thing you pray for, I would encourage you, as you read scripture, to follow some of the prayers that are in, for instance, First Thessalonians or other places where the prayers are much more robust and they're praying for the church to grow in holiness. praying for people that do not know the Lord to come to know the Lord. In our life groups that we have at South Burlington, we pray for specific people to come know the Lord. Listen, that is a long and arduous process. I've been praying for the same people for a long time, but I need to keep praying. I need to keep asking the Lord of the harvest to send the harvest. I need to keep doing that. Evaluate what you're praying for.

Are you just praying for bad things to not happen? Or are you praying for the Lord to start some good things up? Lastly, I want you to consider adjusting your schedule to include others. Adjusting your schedule to include other people. Do you invite people into your life? Or are you kind of closed off? And I don't mean are you extroverted or introverted. I mean, do you let people know you? Even just a few, do you let them know you? Do you have anybody that can just walk into your house and you won't be looking for where the gun is? Right? You have anybody that is in your life on that level. Are you sharing your life with other people? When you truly take in the fact that the Word of God is alive, it is working, it is convincing, it is convicting, it is encouraging people to respond, that is the most freeing thing in the world. You are free to share the word of God.

But when we believe it's all up to us, that's the most devastating, the most daunting thing I could think of. Hey, go and convince somebody to be a Christian so that their eternal soul won't go to hell. Have fun. Okay. It kind of makes you nervous, kind of makes you tighten up. What I want to encourage us, and I just want to say it one more time, The word of God is at work. It's the engine that is going. It's something that we as a church need to understand and need to engage in.

During our time of worship, we're also gonna have our time of response. And so when we do and we stand and we sing, I'm gonna be down here. And if you want to respond to whatever the Lord was doing in you, whether you just need prayer, and then you need to go back and sit down, That's cool. If you wanna take a step to join the church, if you wanna do anything like that, then I'm gonna be standing right here and waiting. And if you want, you can just come right on up and receive prayer. Let me pray for us and we'll sing. Jesus, thank you so much. We pray that you would help us to listen to you. We pray that we would live lives of dependence upon you, upon your word of God at work. And it's your name that we pray, amen. Would you please stand? song we could ever sing worthy of all the praise we could ever bring worthy of every breath we could ever give we live for you, we live for you Jesus

Jesus the name above every heavenly name Jesus the only one that could ever sing What if every breath we could ever breathe Will live for you Will live for you When there's no one like you There is none beside you Open up my eyes in wonder And show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me Give every song we could ever sing, the worthy of all the praise we could ever bring Give every breath we could ever breathe, live for you, live for you Jesus the name above every other name

Jesus the only one I could ever say worthy of every breath we could ever breathe live for you Live for you Holy There is no one like you There is none beside you Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are and feel me with your heart and lead me In your love to browse around me and I will build my life upon your love It is a fun foundation that we will put by your trust In you alone is a trust And beside you open up my eyes in wonder Enjoy love to those around me There is no one like you, there is none beside you. Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me.