Division
From the Series: Sabotage
Speaker: Heather Zempel
Date: June 6, 2010
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Transcript
Well church is great, and then the people show up! I love the idea of church but it always includes people, and when people show up, they bring their mess into it and all of a sudden, it changes things. One of my favorite passages in all of Scripture is found in Paul’s letter to the Church at Corinth. I’m going to read this to you, you don’t have to look it up, I just want you to listen. He says
I have worked much harder, been imprisoned more frequently, been flogged more severely and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the 40 lashes minus 1. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. I have been constantly on the move. [Now here is where it begins to sound a little bit like Dr. Seuss wrote this book.] I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep. I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food. I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
It is as though Paul is saying, ‘If the shipwrecking and the flogging and all that nakedness and thirst and hunger wasn’t bad enough, I’ve got all you church people to deal with!’
Welcome to the second week of our ‘Sabotage’ series where we talk about the threats against the church. My name is Heather Zempel, I serve as the Discipleship Pastor here. We are going to talk this weekend about the danger of division. What is what I just read in is Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Well, actually it was his third letter. We don’t have a copy of the first letter he wrote, what we have in our Bibles today that we know as I Corinthians is actually the second one he wrote and that’s where we’ve been reading over the past week, for those of you that might be new to National Community Church, we are reading through the Bible together this year, and this week, we have been reading through the Book of I Corinthians. We are going through the Book of Acts, with all the epistles wedged in where they were go in the story. So, if you want to turn over to I Corinthians, that’s where I’m going to be hanging out today. We will also have those Scriptures on the screen for you.
The church is birthed in the beginning of Acts and there are all kinds of threats that are coming against it. There is legalism, there is heresy, there is persecution, there is laziness and what we find over and over again in the Book of I Corinthians is Paul talking to them about this idea of division and the idea that division is a very dangerous thing to the church. Division will destroy the church and it will damage the reputation of Christ to the world.
Let me give you a little background on I Corinthians. This book was written primarily to address some questions that the Church at Corinth had posed to Paul. They had questions about how to do certain things and how to practice certain spiritual gifts, so Paul wrote this letter primarily to answer those questions. Corinth was a very prominent city. It was an important seaport. There was a lot of trade happening there and so it drew a lot of really interesting and diverse people. It was full of traders and sailors and prostitutes and athletes and businessmen and merchants. It served as a primary link of commerce between Rome and the East. Corinth was also a very philosophical city and a wealthy city. There were speakers and philosophers and self-help gurus that would come through Corinth to speak and to lay their philosophies and their ideas out to people and they would do this for the entertainment of the masses. Corinth was not known for being the most moral city. Sexual immorality ran rampant. At one point, there were about 1,000 temple prostitutes that existed to serve worshippers coming to the temple. To be called a Corinthian at this time was to receive about the lowest possible commentary on your character because of the lifestyle of the people that lived there. So where this fits into the story, Paul came to Corinth at about A.D. 50 to plant a church, and this church most likely met in the home of a man by the name of Hideous Justice, a very unfortunate name, but Paul was living with this guy at the time and the church was probably held there and Paul stayed there for about a year and a half to lead and to teach and to disciple. You can read about this in Acts 18. After that time, he moved on and a guy by the name of Apollos followed up Paul and the people at Corinth looked at people like Paul and Apollos and Peter as people that led them and discipled them and taught them. This book of I Corinthians was written later during Paul’s third missionary journey. It was written from Ephesus where Paul was ministering at the time and it was probably about A.D. 57 when it was written.
There were lots and lots of problems in this church. There were at least four different factions in the church arguing over who the true leader was and who the best teacher was. They were suing one another. Sexual immorality even within the church ran rampant. There was a man who was sleeping with is stepmother. There were people still going to the temple and practicing sexual immorality. Communion had become a time not for the church to come together as one, but for people to branch off into their own little clicks. And it was a place where social stratification and injustice was happening. People were cutting in front of each other in line to get communion. It even says that they were getting drunk in communion. Now, you know you’ve got a problem in your church when you are getting drunk during communion! I don’t think they were using those little bity plastic glasses of grape juice! They were arguing over whether or not you should be single or get married. They were arguing over whether or not you should practice certain spiritual gifts and which ones were more important. They were arguing over whether you should eat meat sacrificed to idols. They were arguing over the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. They were messed up as a church! There was a lot of division and a lot of quarreling. Church is messy. It has always been messy because church is composed of messy people.
I have a disclaimer to make at the beginning today, or maybe a confession, if you will. I just feel like you need to know where I’m coming from. I’ve always loved the church. I love the Church with a C and love this church in particular. I love the church, always have. I was a very weird kid. Here’s an example, when most kids were playing superheroes, I was playing Dukes of Hazard, and when most kids played house and school and things like that, my sister and I would come home after we had been at a church gathering and we would play church. WE would line our stuffed animals up on the sofa, and my sister, who actually has some musical giftings would play the organ, which was a little keyboard we had and she would lead worship and I would preach! I have no idea what I said, but we played church. I’ve always loved church and all the goofiness about it. I have been known to go flying off at an interstate exit ramp to go see some crazy little grotto with the Stations of the Cross tucked away somewhere. I love the church. Most of you here this weekend don’t share that love, and for very good reason. Not only looking at the Church of Corinth, like it is easy to look at them and wonder how in the world they were so messed up, but if we look at our history as the people of God, it is littered with ugly craziness. We go back to 1054 and we see the East and the West splitting apart. We go to 1095 and we see the church going on crusades. We get to the 12th Century through the 16th Century and we see the Inquisition putting heretics on trial and executing them. We get to 1517 and we see the Protestant Reformation where Protestants and Catholics split apart. Now, if you are going to have division in the church, let’s have division over doctrine, let’s have division over substance and not style. Here’s the problem, when Catholics and Protestants start killing each other, that’s a problem. We look at our own history as a nation in the 1600s; we were putting people on trial for witchcraft and killing them. When I look at my own tradition, I grew up in s Southern Baptist church and I love that church, but there came a day when I realized that the reason that denomination existed was over a disagreement with the National Baptist on the issue of slavery. That was a heartbreaking moment. The church has been full of messiness and division.
We look at the church today and we are still facing problems today. We still argue over stuff today. We argue over politics. We argue over the right way to do church. We argue over spiritual gifts. We confuse who the real enemy is and think that churches are in competition with one another. We let Jeremy Sexton write blog posts! I’m going to come back to that one later.
I think Augustus summed it up pretty well, he said the church is a whore but she is also my mother. Despite all of her flaws and imperfections and warts, the church is still the family of God. Ephesians 5:25 says that Jesus loved the church and gave his life for her. Now, I know it is trendy these days to love Jesus, we are all about Jesus but we really don’t like the church. The problem is, that’s not biblical. Jesus gave his life for the church. We have a tendency to think about redemption as Jesus sacrificing his life for us as individuals, and that is true to an extent. But a more robust understanding of the theology of redemption is to recognize that Christ gave his life for his church, He gave his life to redeem a bride, to have the family of God so that the body of Christ would exist. If we love Jesus, we have to love the things He loves and He love his church.
How do we love the church? What we see in I Corinthians is Paul loving this crazy messed up, divided, arguing, quarreling church, but writing correction to them from a place of love and grace and honor. We see in the very beginning, I Corinthians 1, verse 10, I think this is Paul’s thesis statement. He says
Now dear brothers and sisters, I appeal to you by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ to stop arguing among yourselves. Let there be real harmony so there won’t be divisions in the church. I plead with you to be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.
And then the rest of the book is about unpacking this in different scenarios. This is what the gospel is all about, how we relate to one another. And how we relate to one another has everything to do with the gospel. He goes on to say that if we misunderstand the gospel, we will mistreat one another. And if we mistreat one another, we will misrepresent the gospel.
Flip over to I Corinthians 3 and he begins to get very pointed and direct and he writes this. I Corinthians 3:1
Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you, I couldn’t talk to you as I would to mature Christians, I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. I had to feed you with milk and not with solid food because you couldn’t handle anything stronger, and you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your own sinful desires. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your own desires. You are acting like people who don’t belong to the Lord.
Thank you Paul for your kind letter. He basically tells them they are a bunch of babies. They are immature and need to grow up. He says, ‘You are jealous with one another and you quarrel with another.’ Paul is well aware of the fact that division will destroy the church and will damage the reputation of the body of Christ to the world.
The problem I have when I read I Corinthians is that I see just how immature and wicked my own heart is. I realize all the areas in my own life where I struggle with entitlement and I struggle with jealousy. One of the things Paul does is he praises the Corinthians for what they do well and you can read that in that first chapter.
So I want to tell you some things that I think we at NCC are doing well. I think we serve our community well. We serve the church well. We serve the world well. I think we give abundantly. The amount that you guys give is overwhelming. I think we are very creative in the way we do this thing called church and the way we share our things with other people. I think we are well educated. I think we are people of great influence. I love National Community Church. I love the people I work with. I love our small group leaders. I think we have the best small group leaders of any church in the world. I love this church!! But I think the problem comes when we start to focus on what we do well and we don’t ever pay any attention to what we are not doing as well.
So with your permission, or not, here are some areas where I think we could grow. I don’t think we always find our worth in the right things. I don’t think we always live lives that are set apart and distinct. Here’s what I mean by that. I don’t know if we can look at all of us and realize that there has been a change in our lives from the time we came to know Christ to now. The other way to look at that is I don’t know if you can look at us and then look at the people who are sitting at Ebenezers who don’t know Christ and see any difference in the way we act. Are we gentler and kinder and more full of patience and joy? Is there any distinction between our lives and the lives of the other people we interact with on a daily basis?
I don’t think we do a good job at honoring one another. In short, what I’m saying is, like Paul said to the Corinthians, I think there are some places where we are immature and we need to grow up.
Now, some of you are here this weekend, brand new to NCC, this is your first weekend, and some of you don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ yet, you are checking things out. You know what? You are off the hook! You get to listen in to everything I’m going to say to those who identify themselves with being part of NCC and identify themselves with the name of Jesus Christ.
Now, if I’m going to talk about immaturity, I’m going to throw myself under the bus first. I am a shining example of immaturity on most days at most moments. Here is one of my new favorite stories. I work with a group of amazing people and this story is about me and a guy I work with named John Hasler. I got John’s permission to share this, because while it is an example of my immaturity, he wasn’t exactly a basket of maturity in this either. So we are both under the bus, but I was definitely more at fault than he was. So John and I had been off-site, this was back in December, we were developing the Garden to City reading plan, we were coming up with how we were going to divide books and where we were going to put things, and I would love to tell you that every time we met, it was a holy moment, that we were guided in our Garden to City reading plan like the writers of Scripture were inspired to write it, that the presence of God was full and complete. I’d love to tell you that we were hearing the inaudible but unmistakable voice of our Lord every time we sat down. And sometimes that happened. But on most days, it was just us with coffee trying to figure out where to put stuff on what days. And on some days, it was actually pretty grueling and intense and frustrating, and it was on one of these days in particular, we were driving back from Bear Rock Café where we had spent a couple of hours desperately trying to carve out the Psalms, and I don’t even know how this argument got started, this is how silly it was, but at some point along the drive back, for those of you who know John and I, we have some differences, philosophically, politically, pretty much in any area you can think of, we have differences, so John makes some comment about wondering if good old Christian Abe Lincoln, like how he felt about being placed in a pagan temple in perpetuity. I said, “John, I don’t think he has been placed in a pagan temple!” John said, “Of course he is, the Lincoln Memorial is modeled after the Parthenon.” I said, “I know, I get that, it was an architectural decision, everything in D.C. is modeled after pagan Greek temples!” So we argued about this for a little while and I said, “John, I don’t think anybody is going in there to worship.” At which point, we get this little comment from John, “Huh, I’m not so sure about that.” Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous and we are going at it, and I said, “John,” I felt like this was it, I had the zinger, I mean we were arguing over the Lincoln Memorial, after developing your Garden to City reading plan, and I finally got real calm and collected and diplomatic, and I said, “John, I don’t think anybody ever intended for this to be a temple.” Then John reminded me of the inscription above the Lincoln Memorial, I think we’ve got that on the screen, can you see it? [Note for readers, the inscription reads: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”] This didn’t stop the argument though! This argument occurred all the way back to D.C. and throughout the rest of the afternoon. Poor Chris is in the back seat, hunkered down wondering what in the world he is doing at this crazy church. It is one of our favorite stories now, we laugh about it all the time. But the reality is, in that moment, we were not honoring one another. There was very little that was distinct about our lives as Christ followers. We were laying down our rights for one another. That’s where I’m immature.
So let’s go back to what Paul was saying. He says, ‘Guys you are immature and you’ve got a lot of problems in your church.’ And it is interesting to me that of all the problems Paul could have pointed to in the Church of Corinth, the one he points to is that you are quarreling and you’ve got divisions and you need to fix that. He brings it back to two things. He says, ‘One, you are controlled by your own sinful desires, and also you are quarreling and having problems because you are acting like people who don’t even belong to the Lord.’ So that’s the first thing I want to hit on. Before we deal with division of the church, we have to deal with our own divided hearts. We have to deal with our hearts that are sometimes divided between who we say we follow and how we act. We have to deal with hearts that say this is who we are as a follower of Christ but then what we do doesn’t back that up. And Paul addresses this very early on in I Corinthians, in the first chapter, in verse, he says
We are writing to the Church of Corinth, you who have been called by God to be his own holy people. He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus.
He says you are called to be a different kind of people. You are called to be set apart. The theological word for this is sanctification. It means that we should be in the process of becoming more and more like Jesus. Before we can deal with division and how we relate to one another, we have to figure out who we are, who we were created to be, who we were called to be and how we are to behave as a result of that.
The phrase ‘in Christ’ shows up 75 times in the writings of Paul. It shows up 12 times in this particular book. This phrase ‘in Christ’ has two meanings that are associated with it. One is that we are covered by the righteousness of Christ; that when we come into relationship with Him, his righteousness covers our unrighteousness. But it also carried with it the idea of abiding in Christ; that we are in Christ, which means that we are in Him, we are abiding with Him and in him. So one of the first quarrels that Paul talks about is when these people say, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Peter.’ Well, I just follow Jesus. They are fighting over who their leader is going to be. Paul writes to them and says, ‘Guys, that’s not the issue, we are servants, you are in Christ, why are you fighting over this? You are in Christ and Christ is not divided. You need to live in a way that is different. You are sanctified. You are set apart. You should be growing as people who are more gentle than you were yesterday and kinder and more full of peace and patience and joy and love than you were yesterday, because you are in Christ and Christ isn’t divided, so why do you divide yourselves along your personal preferences and opinions?’
Then he starts talking about the sexual immorality in the church, and it was bad. He says, ‘Guys, you are called to live to a higher standard. Yes, you have freedom in Christ, but when your freedom leads you to do things that make you no different from anybody else, there is a problem.’ See, I think that if we claim the name of Christ and we don’t look any different than we did before, we are not following Christ, we are practicing moral deism. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus takes us just as we are. We do not have to get cleaned up to come to Him. But once we are following Him, our lives should start to look a little different. If they don’t, are we really following Christ? This isn’t about legalism, it is about freedom. It is about living as the people God designed us and created us and intended us to live. Before we can deal with division in the church, we have to deal with our own divided hearts. Are we following Christ fully and completely?
One question that I asked myself this week is – I challenged myself to find and list discernable differences in my life as a result of following Christ. What discernable differences do I see in my life over the past five years as a result of following Jesus? Until we’ve got that right, then how we relate to one another will be a hopeless cause. Paul says, ‘You are quarrelling and you are jealous and it is because you are controlled by your own sinful desires and it is because you act like you don’t belong to Jesus.’
The next thing Paul starts to talk about is honoring one another. He covers a number of difference issues. He covers the issue of communion and the issue of spiritual gifts and believing that certain ones were better than others. He talks about the fact that they were suing one another. Then he gets to the idea of meat sacrificed to idols, and in all of those situations, he is saying, ‘Hey, what is the way to respond that is most honoring to the other person?’ So, turn over to I Corinthians 8, it is the section where he talks about meat sacrificed to idols, and these are all similar. In every scenario and every topic he covers, his basic concern is how they are treating other people. I want to look at this one in particular because I think there are some principles that we can draw from it and apply to our lives today. Let me set this up a little bit first.
There were two places to get meat in Corinth, you could get meat at the market, which was more expensive, or you could get meat at the temple that came from the pagan sacrifices and it was cheaper. There were people in the church who were followers of Christ that believed it was totally ok to eat that meat in the temple, that there was nothing wrong with that. There were other people in the church that thought there were very bad things wrong with that. One of which is the fact that in Acts 15, they were instructed as Gentiles that they weren’t to eat meat offered to idols. But that’s a different sermon. But there was a division over is it ok to eat meat sacrificed to idols, so this is what Paul says in I Corinthians 8, he says
1Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 3But the man who loves God is known by God.
So the first thing he says here is that it doesn’t matter how enlightened you think you are, it doesn’t matter how much you think you know, how you love people is more important than what you know. There was a division in the church and some people felt like they had the right answer and everybody else was not right, but what Paul says is how you treat one another, your love for one another is what’s most important here, not how enlightened or how smart you think you are.
4So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one. 5For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"), 6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. 7But not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. 8But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. 9Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. 10For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? 11So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. 12When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. 13Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.
There are areas in the Bible that are gray, that we will experience differences with one another about what is right and what is wrong, and the real issue is not what’s right and what is wrong in these instances, but how we relate to one another in them. How do we honor one another in them?
As I’ve already mentioned, love is more important than knowledge. The way we love one another is what God cares about way more than what we think we know.
The second thing I would say is that people should always come before personal preference. People should always come before personal preference. Here’s an example, if you are having people over for dinner and you know someone is coming to dinner that, one, comes from a background of alcoholism, let’s just talk about alcohol since that’s an easy one for us, you know that they don’t agree with it or they think it’s wrong for a Christian to drink or they come from a background of alcoholism, out of care and concern and honor for that person, you don’t serve it. People come before personal preference.
Another thing that we are instructed to do in gray areas is to never violate our own conscience. Let’s just stay on the alcohol train for a minute. There are those of us who think it is not right for a Christian to drink. There are others of us who don’t have a problem with Christians drinking. There are others of us who think there are certain times and places that are appropriate for it and other times and places that are inappropriate for it. Some of us feel like there are certain seasons of our lives when we should and certain seasons of our lives when we shouldn’t. The real issue is – are we violating our conscience? Are we doing what we feel is right and believe is right biblically and according to what we hear from God.
The fourth thing is this – don’t violate someone else’s conscience. That’s the one I want to really challenge us in. Paul says don’t violate someone else’s conscience. It goes along with people before personal preferences. Here’s another example, I’ll go back to John Hasler. John has a concern with eating certain kinds of meat. It doesn’t have anything to do with meat being sacrificed to idols, it has to do with whether or not that meat was raised organically and slaughtered in a humane way. The problem is, that deletes most of my favorite places to eat! So when the discipleship team wants to go eat together, there is a tendency for me to forget John’s conviction on this and my response is, ‘C’mon John, really, just overlook it this time, it’s not a big deal. Can’t you find something there to eat?’ That is sinful! I’m encouraging John to violate his conscience. Now, we can have a discussion and we can have a disagreement over who is right and who is wrong, but that is not the issue. The issue, according to Paul, is how are we honoring one another. Am I putting people before my personal preferences? Am I honoring John by not seeking to violate his personal convictions?
So, before we deal with divisions in the church, we have to deal with our divided hearts and we need to live as people who are set apart and sanctified. Then we have to honor one another by laying down our rights for the sake of another person; by realizing that love is more important than knowledge and people come before our personal preferences and that we have to be guided by our conscience in the Holy Spirit and that we shouldn’t violate the conscience of another person.
Finally, this might be the most important thing of all, we’ve got to remember that this is all about advancing the gospel. At the end of the day, that’s what it is all about, advancing the gospel. When the Corinthian church writes to Paul, he sends back to them, ‘I will put up with anything before putting an obstacle in the place of the good news of Jesus Christ. I’ll put up with anything, I’ll never eat meat again if it puts an obstacle in the way of somebody that’s trying to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.’ It is all about the gospel. Who do we follow? Paul, Apollos, Peter? That is not the issue, the issue is not whether the best teachers and leaders and disciplers are at National Community Church or Capitol Hill Baptist or Church of the Resurrection. That is not the issue, the issue is – is the gospel being advanced in our city? Do we sue one another? What does it show publicly about the name of Jesus Christ? Do we practice spiritual gifts? Absolutely! But we remember that spiritual gifts are about advancing the gospel and not about advancing us. Do we eat meat that’s been sacrificed to idols? Whatever we eat or drink, Paul says whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. Is the decision you are making advancing the gospel in someone’s life or hindering the gospel in someone’s life? Is it better to remain single or to be married? Jeremy Sexton told us! For those of us who might not know, we have a daily devotional blog that we are doing with Garden to City. Go to www.gardentocity.com and every day, a member of our team writes a devotional thought based on that day’s reading. So if you want to know whether to be single or get married, you can go read it. There were a lot of opinions about that. What I would say is – whether you are single or you get married is not the issue. The issue is - how does the gospel best advance in your life during the season you are in? And whatever season you are in, is the gospel advancing? It is all about the gospel. That’s what it is about.
Let me close with this. I want us to just imagine for a moment a church where we live lives with hearts that are undivided, with hearts that are solely focused on Christ that are set apart, that are distinct, that are difference, that we love people and serve people better, and we have joy and we are patient and we are kind and we are gentle. Imagine a church full of people like that and a church full of people who seek to honor one another and lay our rights down for one another; a church where, when we hear gossip, we confront it; a church where when we hear someone saying something dishonoring about someone else, we confront that; that when we see someone at a party who has been drinking too much, we gently correct that; when we get into an argument about the Lincoln Memorial, we lean in closer to one another to be able to hear what the other person is saying as opposed to shoving our own viewpoint down their throat. Imagine what God could do with a church like that. Division will destroy the church and it will damage the name of Christ to the world we live in. If we misunderstand the gospel, we will mistreat people; and if we mistreat people, we will misrepresent the gospel. That’s what it is all about, and it is too important to get that messed up. If we can live differently and treat one another differently, than we will make a difference in the world we live in. It will alter our culture and our city and our lives and the lives of the people we come into contact with. Paul said,
Dear brothers and sisters, I appeal to you by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ to stop arguing among yourselves. Let there be real harmony so there won’t be divisions in the church. I plead with you to be of one mind, united in thought and purpose.
God I thank You tonight that we are in You. What an amazing miracle to be in You. Thank You for your righteousness given to us. Thank You for our ability to be in communion and community with You and Father I pray that we would love your church as You love your church. God that we would love it enough to live differently and we would love it enough to treat one another as a member of your family, to treat one another as children of God. God, that we would honor one another, that we would lay our own rights down for the sake of another person. God, that the most important goal, the most important target we seek is the gospel, to go forward in our generation, in this city, that your name would be glorified, that your sacrifice would be honored and accepted. Father for those tonight that don’t have relationship with You, I pray that You would woo them with your love. God I pray that your Holy Spirit would move on them to come and that they would be captivated and captured by your grace. God I pray that we would all look a little bit differently tomorrow than we did today, for your glory. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
