Ordinary Christians

All right, well, good morning. Glad to open up God's word with you today. You know, a good old-fashioned wooden pencil is probably one of the most ordinary things in the world. Even when I said it, when I just talk about a wooden pencil, you probably pictured it in your mind. All of us at some point in our lives have probably used one. We've probably owned one, and it's something that you might even be using right now. You might have one out so you can take notes while I speak and everything. I don't know. If you don't have one, you can go to the dollar store and you can get a whole pack of 'em for $1. $1,25 actually, let's just go ahead and be honest. $1,25, but still a pretty good deal. A whole pack of wooden pencils for $1,25. If you break it, it's no big deal. You just sharpen it and you keep using it. Or you can just grab another one. They're super cheap, again, $1,25 for a whole pack of 'em. Pencils are kind of a part of everyday life for most of us. A lot of us probably use a pencil at some point in the day, a lot of days, and they've become such a normal part of life that we kind of forget about how just significant they really are. Pencils are pretty significant. Pencils actually have helped things progress in our world in ways that many big things that you think about haven't. It's a pencil that was often used to draw the blueprints for many of the inventions that have revolutionized the world. It's a pencil that often draws the blueprints for a lot of major buildings. It is the pencil when it started becoming mass produced, actually had a mass literacy effect because even though the pen and ink had already been invented, they were expensive and they were hard to keep, but the pencil was cheap and many people can use them. It actually helped push forward public education in our country. It followed with the mass production of the pencil, because even the poorest of students could get access to a pencil to be able to learn how to write. They even helped in space exploration. Might not know this, I just learned this this week, but a lot of pens don't work in outer space. They rely on gravity, and they had to switch to pencils early on before they designed specially-designed pens to be used in outer space. The astronauts had to use pencils early on. It's a pretty ordinary thing, but with an ordinary pencil, you can do some really extraordinary work. Today, we are gonna be beginning a new sermon series that we're calling "Ordinary," "Ordinary." Throughout the series, we're gonna be seeing how one of the most extraordinary things about the work of God is that he uses the ordinary to do his work in the world. And more often than not, he is using ordinary people who are in his church to do his work in the world. We're gonna be looking at 1st Thessalonians Chapter 5, verses 12 through 24 today. 1st Thessalonians Chapter 5, verses 12 through 24. If you've been with us for the last two months, we've been in the book of Colossians. 1st Thessalonians is just one book over, so if you still got your bookmark in there, you can open it up, turn one book over, 1st Thessalonians Chapter 5. Now, for a little context on the book of 1st Thessalonians, it's a letter that was written by the Apostle Paul to the church in Thessaloniki. Now, Paul and his crew had gone to Thessaloniki in Acts Chapter 17, we find the story. He has gone to Thessaloniki after he got kicked out of the city of Philippi. They shared the gospel with the Thessalonians, and many people believed, both Jews and Gentiles, many people believed, but there was still a large number of Jews in the city who did not believe, and they actively opposed Paul and anyone who welcomed him, anyone who listened to him, they actively opposed him. In fact, in the story in Acts 17, we find that they form a mob in the city in order to oppose him. And they actually go to a man named Jason who welcomed Paul and let Paul stay with him while he was in the city, and dragged him and his friends out into the mob to face the mob. They were opposing him. And for the good of the believers there, Paul decided he had to leave. He had to leave in order to keep them safe and move on to the next city. All in all, Paul probably spent two, maybe three weeks in the city of Thessaloniki. Two, maybe three weeks, in order to share the gospel, in order to see people come to faith. In order to establish them in the faith as much as he could in that short time. In order to plant a church that would grow in the gospel even after he was gone, and would see the gospel go out into their city and into their region and into the world from them. Two to three weeks is all he had for all of that, and then he was gone. Now he is writing to them a little while later and he's writing sort of like a father who has been torn away from his children. A spiritual father who has been torn away from those that he brought into the faith. So think about this, he brought them to Christ, formed them as a church, and he's had to leave them with very little instruction from there. His expectation is that they will grow in the gospel and the gospel will go out from them, and now he has the chance to write them this letter and give them whatever instruction the Lord has to give to them. And so what does he do? What does he do with that letter? Just maybe his last chance to give them anything about following the Lord beyond what he's taught them in the two to three weeks. What does he do with it? Does he write to them about different strategies and ideas for ministries that will reach the most amount of people in their city? Does he call out the most gifted among them and make sure that they're put in front of the most people and have the opportunities to reach a lot of the people? Does he write to them and give detailed notes about how the church should be organized and how they should be structured to make sure everything is working well and working in a good flow? He actually doesn't do any of that. Instead, he talks to them about the ordinary, everyday stuff of life. He writes for a bit about discipleship in general. And about how discipleship is just spending time with a another person and talking with them about Jesus, and bringing them closer. It's something that you can do any day of your life that you're around other people. He talks to them about sexual morality and how they should conduct themselves there. And he talks to them about how to live every day in light of the return of Christ. And then he leaves them with the simple instructions that we find today. And I find it so significant that Paul doesn't know if he'll ever speak to the Thessalonians again. And so he gives them these last words in the letter, maybe the last words he'll ever say to them. And the instruction is so simple. They're just simple instructions. I don't mean that they're always simple to carry out. Sometimes they can be really difficult things to carry out, but they're really simply stated, they're not complicated to understand or to put into practice. This, that we look at today, this is what the Christian life looks like on the normal, everyday basis. And this is what God so often uses to do his work in the world. It's that everyday stuff of life. So this is what I want us to see today. Although God does extraordinary things in and through his people, he often does in the regular course of the ordinary lives of ordinary believers. I'm gonna read it again 'cause I know it's a little long. Although God does extraordinary things in and through his people, he often does them in the regular course of the ordinary lives of ordinary believers. If you could just leave that up there for a minute if people wanna write that down. But as we go through the passage, I think we can divide the passage up into a few basic commands, a few basic phrases that we actually say here all the time at The Chapel. It goes like this, "Love God, love the church, and love the world." Love God, love the church, love the world. That's how we say it at The Chapel here very often. It's gonna come a little out of order in the passage. That's okay, it's the apostle Paul, I'll give him a pass, I guess. If he doesn't wanna do things the way we do, that's fine. But let's take a look at what he gives us in 1st Thessalonians Chapter 5, starting at verse 12. First of all, we see that we are called to love the church. Now every believer is called to love the church, to love God's people. In fact, it's one of the most basic parts of the Christian life. In loving the church, we love what God loves because God loves the church. God loves his people. In fact, he sent his one and only son, Jesus in order to lay down his life to purchase the church by his blood. In order to bring each of us into his family, into the body of Christ. And the way we love the church is by the consistent, regular encouraging one another in Christ. We love the church just by consistent, regular encouraging one another in Christ. And so Paul tells us how to do that within the church. First he tells us how to do that in relation to church leaders. Verse 12, "Now we ask you brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other." Now, when he says to acknowledge those who do those things, I think a better translation of that word in the Greek is "respect," or "honor," or "esteem." In other words, Paul says, "Respect those who work hard among you. Respect those who care for you in the Lord. Respect those who admonish you or correct you," we could say. Now, how many of you woke up this morning and jumped out of bed and said, "I'm ready to go be admonished at church today. I'm ready to go be corrected at church today." We don't normally get outta bed thinking about that because we don't like to be admonished. We don't like to be corrected, because to be corrected means that we don't have it all together. And we like to think about ourselves that we have it all together. That we're doing just fine, that we're moving along and everything is just dandy. But the beauty of the gospel is that we can live in the truth that we don't have it all together. We can live in the truth that we don't have it all together. We can live in the truth that we still sin. We can live in the truth that we still make mistakes because the gospel says that we're all sinners, utterly undeserving of the grace of God. The gospel says, "You are more sinful than you ever possibly could have imagined, more than you even know. But in Jesus, you are more loved than you ever possibly could have hoped for." Even when we sin, the grace of God still covers us. We do not lose the love of Christ. That doesn't mean we continue to walk in it carelessly. It doesn't mean we continue to go in it unrepentantly. It means that when we do it, we turn back to Christ who we know loves us and we follow after him, all the more, once again. And so we humble ourselves and we say, "Yes, I am a sinful person. Yes, I am still in need of Jesus on a daily basis. And so yes, I will let others point out things in me. I will let others come alongside of me and show me how I can walk closer with Christ." One of my great privileges in my job is that I get to be a part of welcoming people into membership here at The Chapel. I get to be a big part of the Begin and Belong classes, which bring you further into the life of the church and bring you into membership. And one of the things I always talk about when we talk about church membership is that it's not a country club membership. It's a family membership. And in church membership, what we are doing is we are committing to one another that we will walk alongside one another as we seek to follow the Lord. We will bring others along with us as we follow in the Lord. But the other side of it is also the side of surrender that I will also open myself up to let others speak into my life as well. As a pastor, I tell people, "You're giving me permission to pastor you. You're giving me permission to walk with you and to speak into your life." That's a big part of what church membership is, and that's how we love the church, by walking alongside one another, both when it's easy in encouragement and when it takes difficult conversations in admonishing others. And so an ordinary part of the Christian life is to be taught and corrected for the sake of walking in Christ. It's not something to be mad about, it's something to be thankful for. And it seems like one thing that was happening in the Thessalonian Church was that the leaders were correcting others and some of those others weren't taking very kindly to it. But the whole point is so that we can be pushing one another deeper and deeper into Christ, which is exactly where we want to be. There is no better place to be than moving deeper and deeper into knowing Christ. Verse 13 he says, I'll just read it. "Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with one another. See this as a good thing, something that is for your good, and know that we do it in love." So he tells us how to love the church in relation to the leaders. But then he tells us how to love the church in relation to everyone in the church. Verse 14, "And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone." Because while the pastors and the leaders have the highest charge and responsibility in these things, all church members, all believers are called to hold one another accountable. All church members, all believers are called to encourage one another. All church members, all believers are called to help one another and especially to help the weak. The point is that the ordinary course of the Christian life is to be growing in Christ and helping others grow in Christ as well as you do. God has given us the gift of the church to be able to do that. And so Paul tells them, "Warn those who are idle and disruptive." There were those who were being lazy. We find in the book of 2nd Thessalonians that there were many who were sitting around and they were saying, "Jesus is gonna return any day now, and so I'm just gonna sit right here and I'm gonna watch and wait. I'm not gonna go to work. I'm not gonna do the things that I need to do in order to live. Instead, I'm just going to depend on others. I'll sit and watch others work, and then I will just depend on them." And Paul says, "No, that's not the attitude to have. There are those who legitimately can't work, but if you can, you are called to not be idle. You are called to not be disruptive. You are called to contribute." He says, "Warn those who are idle and disruptive." Second, he says, "Encourage the disheartened." There were those who were on the verge of losing hope, those who were struggling in their faith, and friends, that is the story within every church across the past 2,000 years since Christ walked the earth. There are those within the body who are disheartened, who are having a hard time, whether it's something going on in their life at home, something going on at work, whether it's something within their family or maybe it's doubts that are creeping into their faith and they are losing hope. We're called to encourage one another in Christ. He says to help the weak. There were some who were falling back into old sin. Maybe they were backing down to some of the persecution that was happening. They were falling back into their old life. And Paul is saying, "Don't let them. They don't want that, it's the easy thing to do, but sometimes it's the hard thing to do that's the good thing." And in following Christ, that's where we want to be pushing people. And finally, he says, "Maybe the most difficult of all, for some people, be patient with everyone." How many of us struggle with patience in this room? Anybody? Yeah, a good bit of us, right? Be patient with everyone? I mean, there's some people that like, "Yeah, no problem, I can be patient with them, but them?" I mean, I could be patient with my 9-year-old, but my 4-year-old? That's a different story sometimes. I can be patient with some people, but with everyone, it's difficult. All of these things that Paul says here though, they're very ordinary commands. They're things that you can do in everyday life. They don't take big plans in order to do them. They don't take weeks and weeks of looking forward to the time when you're gonna do it. It's ordinary, everyday stuff. None of these things take a special spiritual gift that some of us have and some of us don't. Some may be more gifted and more inclined in some of those particular things, but any believer in Christ has these things. You know why? Because you've experienced every single one of them with Christ. He has done every single one of these for you. He has warned you in the way that your life was going. He has encouraged you in losing hope. He has helped you by giving you salvation and bringing him to know the Father. And he has shown you the utmost patience. He has shown you more patience than you've ever shown with every person in your life. He has done it for you. You have experienced it if you know him. If you have put your faith in him, you have experienced all of these things from him, and therefore you can turn and you can do them with others. I'm not saying it's always easy, but what I am saying is that Jesus has put his spirit inside of you if you have put your faith in him, and therefore you can take what he has done for you, and you can show it to others as well. These are just the ordinary things that ordinary believers can do on a daily basis. But there are things that can actually turn a neighborhood upside-down. There are things that can turn a city upside-down. There are things that turn the world upside-down. It's when people who don't know Christ experience these things from the body of Christ, and they see these things truly happening. They say, "Something is different here. Something is different here, and we want to pay attention." As the church, we are called to fight for one another, to persevere, to continue to grow in Christ. But sometimes we can get really uncomfortable in doing some of these things. But Jesus says, "That's okay. It's okay to be a little uncomfortable. You are doing this for the good of others." God uses these regular things, regular conversations, regular, everyday stuff in order to bring people to know him and also to help those who know him continue to persevere in him. I've seen this happen so many times. I've had people do it in my own life. Many of the big turning points in my own life didn't come from an amazing sermon or from a big Christian conference or anything like that. A lot of the big turning points in my life happened during regular conversations. When I was sitting across the table from someone. I remember one, I was playing Ping Pong as a teenager with one of the church leaders at my church. And he was just talking to me about what it means to walk in Christ. Those are the things. I remember one time in China, we had a girl named Ma Min, she was one of our leaders, one of our student leaders. We worked with college students. And one of our teammates, Jana, was talking with her, and I happened to be there for it. And I heard Ma Min say, "Things have gotten really hard lately. My family's rejected me 'cause I've come to know Christ. Friendships are hard. Just, life is getting a little hard because of following Christ." And she said, "I don't know if I wanna follow Jesus anymore. I don't know if I want to." And I remember Jana just got in front of her and looked her in the eye and put a hand on her shoulder and just said, "No, no, I'm not gonna let you just walk away from Jesus because it's gotten hard. I'm not gonna just let you walk away from Christ. I'm not gonna let you just walk away from the son of God who came to save you, because of this." And I have that memory forever burned into my mind. And the thing about it was that that was just the beginning. That was just the beginning, she didn't stop there. Jana gave Ma Min her time, more time than she normally did. She listened to her. She walked with her through things over the coming weeks and the coming months until she was saying, "Thank you. Thank you that you did not let me walk away." That was 12 years ago. And the last I heard, about a year or two, Ma Min was still joyfully following the Lord and was instrumental in bringing many people to faith, and encouraging them and their faith as well. That was 12 years ago. And the last I heard about a year or two, Ma Min was still joyfully following the Lord and was instrumental in bringing many people to faith and encouraging them in their faith as well. A simple, ordinary Tuesday afternoon conversation that not only changed the course of Ma Min's life and the way that she was going, but the course of many people's lives who heard of Christ from her as well. It's just an ordinary conversation. See, the best thing about the gospel is that Jesus reconciles us to himself and he never lets go, he holds us fast. It's by his power, it's by his word, but so often he uses ordinary people, his body, his hands, and his feet as the instrument to hold onto us. We are pencils in a pencil bag and we're ordinary. But in the hands of the skillful artist, in the hands of the skillful writer, he can write a story unlike any other, using you and me, ordinary believers doing ordinary things on just an ordinary day. So we are called to love the church and be used by the Lord to love the church. But second of all, God also calls us to love the world. Love the world, love the church, love the world. Look at what he says in verse 15. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else. This is not just a command to be followed within the church. This is for everyone else as well. Now it's simple instruction, right? It's simply written, it's not hard to understand. It's not complex, but it doesn't mean that it's simple to carry out. We can see that. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone just followed this one verse. Nobody paid back anyone wrong for wrong. Everyone always sought to do what was good for others above themself. Pretty much anything that you see on the news, you would not see on the news if everyone followed that simple instruction. But we know that it's not so simple to follow. It seems simple on the surface, but we know that because of sin, it's not. This simple instruction though characterizes the life of Jesus Christ. Everything about the life of Jesus goes by this instruction. And guess what? As Christ is being formed in us, it should characterize the life of believers as well. When Christ came, what did he come for? Did he come in order to be served? No, he came to serve. He came to seek and save the lost. He was doing for the good of others, even those who had sinned against him. Throughout his life, he continued to do what was good for others. He laid himself down every day in order to do what was good for others. In his death, he took on our sin. He who knew no sin, became sin on our behalf in order that we might become the righteousness of God. He did not repay wrong for wrong. He took our wrongs on himself, he absorbed them. He paid the penalty for them, and he did what was good for us, that we may know the Lord. Even in his resurrection, his enemies who nailed him to the cross, who killed him, he did not rise from the dead and come and strike them down. He didn't do it. Remember he said all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. And what did he use it for? Not to strike down his enemies, but in order to reach out to save. Now, there is coming a day, there is coming a day where Christ will return and he will bring all justice with him. He will put away all wrong, he will put away all evil doers. He will put it all away. All those who are not found in him, who have not put their faith in him to experience his grace in mercy, he will bring justice for wrongs. But friends, that's why we don't have to take it upon ourselves. That's how we can know we don't have to take vengeance for ourselves. It belongs to the Lord. Any of it belongs to the Lord. He will deal with it rightly and perfectly. In the meantime, while we wait, we are to show the gospel in the way that we live. We are not to repay wrong for wrong. We are to strive to do what is good for others above what is good for ourselves. We are to show the gospel by putting ourselves aside, dying to self, and striving to do what is good for others, to lay ourselves down the way that Christ has done for us. Now, take the context that Paul is writing into here, into consideration. Remember, Paul is writing to the Thessalonians because he couldn't actually be there with them. He has to write to them. He had been torn away from them after just two or three weeks because a mob had formed around him and was ready to beat him and beat the others who had welcomed him and accepted him. He's writing to the Thessalonians who are still there among the people who formed that mob. It's their neighbors, it's their coworkers. It's the people that they see every day. And Paul is writing to them and saying, "I know how they treat you, don't treat 'em the same way back." Instead, strive to do what's good for them. Strive to to show them and to speak to them the gospel. Strive to lay yourself down for their good. So consider this the next time you find yourself in a situation and you wanna act with a little bit of payback, maybe it's your neighbor next door mistreating you or maybe just annoying you, who knows? Maybe it's your coworker who started rumors about you at the office. Maybe it's a family member who has hurt you. I don't know, it might be something so much more serious than any of those things. So many of us often want to do big things for the Lord, but we forget sometimes that he wants us to do the small, simple, ordinary, everyday stuff as we go on in life. A lot of times the biggest thing we can do is follow the simple command of always striving to do what is for others. We're to love the church, we're to love the world, but most significantly we're called to love God. Now, when we say it at The Chapel, we put this one first because the other two flow out of it. Paul puts it, last year, I think, to put kind of a stamp on the letter. That's what you do with your last words. You want somebody to remember something, you say it last. Paul wants them to remember this, love God. We know we are called to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And we are called to do that every single day. But to live a life of love for God, we need the help of the spirit of God. The good news friends is that when we believe in Jesus, he gives us his spirit inside of us. He puts the spirit within us and he starts transforming us. He starts conforming us into the image of Christ. And so we can break down this section in two parts. First of all, that we live by the spirit. And second of all, we listen to the Spirit. First, we live by the Spirit. Verses 16 through 18. Again, very ordinary instructions. "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances." "Paul, you want us to reach all of Thessaloniki and the surrounding region, how do we do that?" Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. In other words, be worshipers. Be worshipers of God, not just on Sunday morning. Not only when you come together, but every single day, every single moment. In fact, in the Greek, it's the timing that is emphasized here. Always rejoice, continually pray, in all circumstances give thanks. You want to show the world who God is, worship him in all of your life. Let them see the rejoicing. Let them see that you are turning to him in everything. Let them see you giving thanks in all circumstances. God's people are called to live lives of worship. He says it is to be your whole life is a constant state of worship. That doesn't mean that you can never be sad. It doesn't mean that you should never struggle. It doesn't mean any of those things. But it does mean that even through those things we are turning to the Lord in praise. It can be a difficult thing, but those who have experienced the grace of God can look to his grace and can look at it and see that they can still worship even when times are really, really difficult. And so Paul says, do that. Worship him all the time, moment by moment in everything that you do. This is the will of God for you in Jesus. And what he means by that is this is why Jesus died for you, is so that you could be reconciled to God and live and worship to him. So the church is called to worship always. But second, we're called to listen to the Spirit as well. Verses 19 through 22, "Do not quench the spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all. Hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil." It's an ordinary part of the Christian life to listen to the spirit of God. He lives within his people. He guides us in what is good and he should be listened to. Now when he talks about prophecies here, new Testament prophecy is a little different than Old Testament prophecy that we have in scripture. It's not necessarily a, "Thus sayeth the Lord," that gets written down and is on the same level of scripture. That's why he says it has to be tested. What are we testing it by? We're testing it by the word of God, which is the authority in our lives, the scripture. In these verses, he's speaking about prophecy, a gift in which God uses to call someone back to his word and back to himself. Sometimes it might be foretelling, sometimes it might be forthtelling, but it is always to call us back to the word of God. So what he's saying is when someone admonishes you, don't blow it off, let it drive you back to God's word and test it. But in all these things, we are to love God by living in the Spirit and listening to the Spirit. And when we do, we will be sanctified. We will continue to grow in Christ. When you love God, love the church, love the world, you will be growing in Christ. Verse 23, "May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." It's an ordinary part of the Christian life to progressively be growing in Christ for the rest of your life. And what I mean by ordinary is that it's normal. It's not normal to not be growing in Christ. If you know him, your spirit is living or his spirit is living inside of you and he is moving in you, he is growing you closer with him. It is ordinary because God did not give his one and only son in order that you would continue to live in all that you needed rescuing from. He saved you from it. It doesn't mean that we will never sin again, but it does mean that we will not continue to walk openly unrepentantly in our sin. It means that we will continually turn to him and seek his help and seek his guidance to walk closer with him. And the good news is given to us in verse 24, "The one who calls you is faithful, he will do it." That's a verse to memorize right there. The one who called you is faithful, he will do it. It is God's plan to sanctify you. He is faithful, he will do it. It is God's plan to move you closer and closer to Christ every day. He is faithful. He will do it. The question is, will you surrender to him in it? God uses all sorts of things to show who he is to the world. Sometimes he uses great big things, signs, miracles, those things still happen, revivals, those things still happen. But other times he uses the everyday, ordinary things that he calls every believer to do, because the greatest thing that God has ever done to show the world who he is, is send his son into the world. Who is the exact imprint of his very nature. To live as a man, to live a perfect life, to take our sin upon himself, to rise from the dead in order that we may be saved and be conformed to his image. And so as we are being conformed to his image, we live it out before a watching world. We live it together as the church. We live it as individuals wherever we go during the week, it's the regular, every day display of Jesus turning lives upside-down and being all that he made us to be. That is calling out to the world, that Jesus is real, that he is true, that he does save, that he will save anyone who calls on his name in faith, and that he will bring us to know him and to live with him forever. Our God is an ever loving, never changing, abundantly merciful, life transforming God. And he takes people who were dead in their sin and he does the extraordinary work of making us alive in Christ, conforming us from sinners to saints in the image of Christ. That's the extraordinary work of God that is on display in the life of every ordinary believer. The question is, will you live it out every day? It can be easy to always look for the big thing that the Lord wants us to do. And I'm not saying don't look for those big things. He calls us to do big things sometimes, but there's never a day that he doesn't call us to do the little things, to do the everyday things. And it's what he normally uses in order to show the world who he is. You may be here today and you've put your faith in Jesus, but it may be time for you to start taking it seriously, to use all the moments of life, all the things in your life, to follow the Lord in everything, and to put on display to a watching world who he is. To use the ordinary things in your life with gospel intentionality. The Lord has done extraordinary things in you and he calls you to let it out in all the ordinary stuff of life. If that's you today, I wanna invite you, we're gonna pray here in just a minute to go before the Lord and to ask him what that may be and to ask him for his help by his spirit inside of you. Or you may be here today and you've never experienced the life-changing work of Christ. I've talked about ordinary things a lot today. But the life-changing work of Christ, my friend, is extraordinary, and it changes everything. He calls for you to put your faith in him and he will save you and he will change you. He will give you new life. If that's you today, we're gonna have prayer partners up along the stage afterwards. I would love to invite you to come and speak with one of them, and they would love to tell you more about what it means to follow Jesus. But let's take a few moments to go before the Lord and to respond to him in faith from wherever we're at, to respond to him in faith today. Let's bow our heads. Lord God, we are so thankful for the extraordinary work of salvation, the extraordinary work that you put your spirit inside of those of us who are sinners, who were once your enemies, who had walked away from you by our sin. And yet you have stepped in and you have given us new life. God, I pray that you would never let that become ordinary to us. Help us to remember the extraordinary work that you have done, but Lord, help us to show it in all of the ordinary places and all the ordinary things in life. Help us to remember that no matter who we are, if we have your spirit living inside of us, you are calling us, and you are empowering us to show the world who you are. Help us, Lord, to love you, to love your church, and to love the world. And Lord, as we do that, we trust that we will be sanctified because we know that you are faithful and you will do it. We love you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen, amen.