Missional Living

Alright, good morning. Glad to be here with you this morning at The Chapel, whether you're here at Crosspoint or one of the other campuses, glad that you are joining in with us as we continue in our sermon series that we've been in lately that we're calling Habits of Grace. And today we're gonna be looking in Colossians 4:2-6, Colossians 4:2-6. We're gonna be continuing in this Habits of Grace series where we're talking about some different habits that we need to build into our lives in order to be close, in order to walk closely with Jesus, and in order to live in the ways that He has called us to live. And so we're continuing in that series today. You know, sometimes we use phrases that end up being a little bit repetitive. You know, they have some kind of descriptor in the phrase that isn't really necessary. A couple of examples might be an added bonus, like what other kind of bonus could you have other than an added one? That's what a bonus is, right? You can't have a subtracted bonus. That's what it is. Another one would be, people say the end result. I don't know when else the result would come other than the end. It doesn't come at the beginning, it always comes at the end. How about advanced planning? Anybody plan any other time other than in advance? Like you don't do hindsight planning, right? You, it's always advanced planning. Back when Krista and I lived in China, if we wanted to go to a restaurant, we didn't say, hey, let's go get Chinese food or go to a Chinese restaurant. We just said, let's go get food. Because Chinese food is what they have in China, right? Like here in America, you wouldn't say, hey, let's go to an American restaurant. It's just assumed. You're in America, you're going to an American restaurant. You don't have to specify it because there's nothing unique there. It's just normal. And today, as we continue in our Habits of Grace series, I've been tasked with talking about missional living, missional living, that is living a life on mission, on the mission that God has given to us, on the mission that God has given to His people. But I think the phrase missional living is actually one of those phrases that has an unnecessary descriptor in front of it. Or at least it should be unnecessary, right? Because by its very nature of what life is, God created people and He gave us a mission. At the very same time He gave us life, He gave us a mission, He gave us life and He gave it to us for a reason. And He told us what it was. In Genesis chapter one, it says, "So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Life as God gave it to us is missional. We shouldn't have to say it, it's what God intended it to be. He made us in His image in order to glorify Him. And He intended us to further glorify Him by spreading His image all over the earth, by going out and multiplying, multiplying His image, multiplying His glory all throughout the Earth. But of course, when people sinned and sin entered into the world, things got distorted right? Our priorities began getting distorted. We started making other things important. We started looking to other things to be our Gods. We started getting our priorities all distorted and the image of God in us got distorted. We are still made in the image of God, but in our sin it gets distorted. It gets distorted. Now, the mission isn't only to physically multiply through having kids, but it is to spiritually multiply by making disciples. You see, Jesus came in order to fully restore the image of God in us. At the very moment that we put our faith in Jesus, He begins restoring the image of God in us. And on the day when we stand before Him, we will be restored in full. Scripture tells us that Jesus through His spirit, living within us is conforming us into His image as we walk in this world. Our mission is to spiritually multiply. It's to make disciples. So as we receive new life in Christ, that life is missional in its very essence. It's the normal way of the Christian life. And that's what Paul is talking about here. Alright, so we're looking at chapter four, but back in chapter three, he's been talking about new life in Christ. He's been talking about the ordinary Christian life and what he says is that you have come into Christ, you have been made new. So put to death the old self and walk in the newness of life that Jesus has given to you. And now we look today at chapter four in verses two through six, and we see the missional life that God has called us to. But because of our sin, it's no longer something we just naturally walk in. It's something that we have to be intentional to walk in. It's something that we have to make a habit of. And what I want us to see today is that this passage teaches us that the normal Christian life is living missionally in every aspect of life. The normal Christian life is living missionally in every aspect of life. But even though it's normal, we still have to make a habit of it. And so in Colossians 4:2-6 Paul is wrapping up this letter to the Colossians. And he gives us just a couple of ways to live a missional life. The first way that we are to live a missional life is that we must be in prayer. We must be in prayer. Prayer is an essential part of the Christian life, and Paul calls us to be devoted to it here. That means it's not just something that we do, that means that prayer is the kind of life that we live. We don't just do it, we live it. It's a life of prayer. And we already talked at length about prayer and fasting just a couple weeks ago, so I won't get into the details here. But we do need to come back and just talk about how prayer needs to be from beginning to end in the missional life. In the normal Christian life, prayer is from the beginning to the end. Missional life always begins with prayer. It always ends with prayer, and it has prayer all throughout. When Jesus gave His disciples the mission that He was sending them out on at the beginning of the book of Acts, he told them to wait for power from the mission or for the mission from the Holy Spirit. He said, wait, don't go and do it yet, I'm sending you My Spirit to empower you. And so what did they do? They went and they prayed. They prayed. When Jesus tells us at the end of the book of Matthew, "Go make disciples of all nations," He ends it by saying, "And I'll be with you always even to the end of the age." In other words, you can't do this without me. You need me inside of you. You need me with you in order to live out the mission, and fulfill the mission that I'm sending you on. And so if we want to do that, if we want to fulfill the mission God has given us, if we want to live that out, we can only do it as a prayerful people. We can only do it if we pray. And so Paul begins this passage by reminding them to be devoted to prayer. Verse two, "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful." Specifically what Paul is talking about here is proactive prayer all right. I call it proactive prayer because a lot of times we get stuck in reactive prayer. That is something happens to us, or something happens to someone we love or just something happens and we pray reactively. That's how we react is by going to prayer. But Paul is encouraging us to be proactive in prayer. Not to wait till some circumstance happens and then pray, but to be praying for certain circumstances, to be praying that God would be opening the ears and the minds and the hearts of people around us, to be praying that God would give us opportunities to meet new people or even just the people we already know to speak Jesus to them. Like we just saying a few minutes ago, it's proactive prayer. We're praying for these things. We're praying for the gospel to go forward in the world. We're praying for the gospel to go to places it's never been before. We're praying for the gospel to be heard and believed by people who have never heard it or believed it before. We are praying forward. You know, even Jesus prayed, when He came to this earth on His mission to seek and to save the lost, He spent significant time in prayer. I think if God the Son in the flesh needed to go to the Father in prayer, in fulfilling His mission, then probably we do too. We must be in prayer. The missional life begins with prayer, it ends with prayer and it's full of prayer, all between. A missional life begins and ends with prayer. But Paul says, "Don't only pray for yourself. Don't only pray for those around you, but pray for us also, even as we're far away." Paul had never even met the believers in the Colossian church. And he's saying, I want you to pray for me as I am far away. And what he's doing here is he's getting at the second aspect of the missional life. We must be in prayer, but we must also be in partnership. We must be in partnership as we live this missional life. A life to give every man, every woman, every child repeated opportunities to see and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. A life that is to work toward making disciples of all nations. As we think about living out that mission, it should be obvious that we can't do that alone, right? No individual in this room can do it. Not even we as a church of all the people who are in this church, even we as a church can't completely fulfill that mission. Make disciples of all nations, every man, woman, and child, we can't do that on our own. But we can partner with people, we can partner with other churches, we can partner with missionaries, we can partner with other believers and other ministries. And Paul sees the Colossians as being his partners in the gospel work as well. Verses three and four, "And pray for us too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should." The idea of partnership, it comes because none of us can be at all places at all times, right? It's called being omnipresent. Only God is omnipresent. He is the only one who can be everywhere at all times. Partnership is saying, I still care, and I still take some responsibility for the gospel going out into all of our city. The gospel going out into all of our nation, the gospel going out into all of the world. It's a worldwide mission y'all because it's God's world. He created the whole thing and He desires to see people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation come and worship Him. He desires to see His image being restored in people from all over the world. He desires to hear His praises being sung in every single language on this Earth. He desires to have a people for Himself that comes from all over the world, and will one day gather around the throne of Jesus, singing His praises, falling on their face, knowing that we are the redeemed, that we are the ones who have been saved. We have experienced new life in Him. It's a worldwide mission that none of us can fulfill on our own. That no one church, no one local church can fulfill on its own. But as part of the global church, as part of the church worldwide, the universal church, we partner with one another as we do that. Sometimes partnership is coming alongside people who live in other places, people who have other circles of accountability. We talk about circles of accountability here, that's your neighbors, your coworkers, the people who your kids play soccer with, their families, whoever, whoever the Lord has put you in the midst of, whoever the Lord has put in your life. We say that's your circle of accountability, to live missionally among them. But we partner with people who have other circles of accountability. Partnership is coming alongside of them, or, or it means sending people from this church into new circles of accountability. It includes sending people into new circles of accountability. And so you partner with others who are in other places. You invest in the work that they are doing for the kingdom in other places other than where you are. A few weeks ago I went with Michael Ramos who's in charge of our partnerships here at The Chapel. We had the opportunity to go and work with one of our partners in Kenya who is working in several ways to reach people in Kenya. And what that partner had come to realize is that there are so many believers in Kenya who have never owned a Bible before, never owned a Bible before. And we were able to go out and pass out 2000 Bibles to 2000 different believers to be able to hold the word of God in their hand for the first time ever. And the cool thing about that, we told them, we said, hey, it's a great privilege. Yeah. We said it's a great privilege to have the word of God, but with great privilege comes great responsibility, to not only take the word of God for yourself, but to share it with others as well. We were able to give 2000 Bibles away. And by the way, we as a church paid for those bibles. In your giving, some of that went toward buying 2000 Bibles for people in Kenya. Even more than giving out Bibles, we built relationships with pastors and believers in churches out there who are seeking to reach their communities, but are also seeking to reach all of East Africa, 17 other nations beyond Kenya. They want to be sending people out into new circles of accountability, into new places where the gospel has not reached before, into new people groups so that they can for the very first time have a witness of the gospel. They want to send their people out into those places. And we were able to encourage them, and be encouraged by them. We were able to teach them, envision to them and train them in how they can get after that work. Now, I don't live in Kenya, but I was able to partner with people who do and see the work continue to go out from there. Partnership is a beautiful thing about the universal church. Partnership is a beautiful thing that God has given to us to be able to partner with others, to be able to see the kingdom of God further advance all throughout the world. It's through partnership that we can take part in what God is doing all over this world. 'Cause friends, I got news for you. God's not just working right here, He is doing that. He's working right here in the city of Buffalo. He's working in and through this church. But God, He's the God of heaven and Earth. He's the God of all the world. And Jesus has all authority in Heaven and on Earth. And He is working in all of this world. And it's a privilege when we get to partner with people who are working in other places. If we're gonna partner with people though, it means that we have to be good stewards and we don't have to just be good stewards of certain things, we have to be good stewards of our entire lives. We have to invest our entire lives into the mission. We invest our entire lives into what God has called us to do. And there's a few ways that we can do that. First of all, we can partner with people through prayer. We already said this one, but we need to steward our prayers. We can let our prayers get taken up all the time, taken up by praying for me, by praying for ourselves, right? But we're called to steward our prayers and pray outward as well, to not only pray reactive prayers, but also to pray proactive prayers. And here's the beautiful thing about this one is no matter who you are, no matter what resources you have, no matter where you are, you can partner with people like this. You can pray, we all can pray. Maybe you don't know what to pray for though, when you're on your way out the doors of the worship center today, on the other side of this outer wall back here, if you just go out the doors and you make a U-turn and walk back toward the wall, you'll find our on mission magazines that are laid out out there and it tells you who our partners are at this church. You can grab one of the magazines, and you can begin praying for some of our partners. It's a great way to take part in partnerships. But there's a few other aspects of stewarding our lives well also. The second one is we have to steward our time. To be in partnership, we have to steward our time. This is something I have to watch with myself all the time. I'm kind of like a fly by the seat of your pants kind of guy, right? I just go with the flow. I don't do a lot of advanced planning, if you will. I just kind of go with it. But I have learned that if I don't plan, if I don't budget my time well, then I can give it all in one place. And I forget in how I can use my time to partner with others, to pray, to not only build good community inward within the church, but also to reach outside of the church to those who don't yet know Jesus. We steward our lives in prayer. We steward our lives with our time. But third, we steward our lives in our finances, in our finances. When we think about our finances, we shouldn't be just thinking about the things we need. We shouldn't just be thinking about the things we want. We should be thinking about how we are living, and how we are stewarding our finances, to see the kingdom of God advance in the world, to see the kingdom of God go out further, to see the gospel reach further into the world and bring people in as worshipers of the one true living God. Again, that includes work within our own circles of accountability, but it's also utilizing our finances to support partners. Partners, whether it's partners that we as a church partner with or maybe you as an individual have some people that you partner with. We utilize our finances to support partners as well. And we use our finances sometimes to send partners in the first place. Even members of this church, I believe that God has probably has some of you who He would call out to go and enter into new circles of accountability in order to reach new people. He may be doing that in your heart. He may be doing that in your life, calling you out to go and work elsewhere. We have a couple at this church, at the Cheektowaga campus who is recently committed giving their whole lives to an unreached people group in Tanzania, a Muslim majority group, a place where there is little to no gospel witness. There are little to no churches in this area. Joel and Katie Gerbrick out at the Cheektowaga campus, they're looking to leave and go out next year to enter into a new circle of accountability that God has called them to. And they're gonna need partners in order to get there, and there will be opportunities to partner with them in that work in several ways. It's a way that even as we might stay here, we can take part in what God is doing in the world. And here as a church, we have partners all over the place in Buffalo, in the nation, all over the world, that we are able to see the gospel go out. We are able to see the gospel go out as we invest our lives, we invest our finances into those partners. The last way that we steward our lives for partnerships is we have to steward our hearts. I don't know if you've ever thought about this before, but you know you have to actually steward your heart. It's so easy to give our hearts to other things. It's so easy to give our hearts to the temporary things of this world, to the things that are nice and shiny that are right in front of our face, but we are called to steward our hearts. We are called to steward what we love, what we give our hearts to. Because here's the thing is what you love is what you're gonna invest in. What you love is you're gonna invest in. We're called to not only think about what's right in front of us, but we're called to live in partnership as well. To see the gospel go out, to see the mission be fulfilled all over the world, all over the city, all over this nation, all over the world. So to live missional lives, we must be in prayer. And to live missional lives, we must be in partnership. But to live missional lives, we also must proclaim the gospel. We must proclaim the gospel. The mission that Jesus gave is to make disciples. You cannot make disciples without proclaiming the gospel. That's how people become disciples. That's how people grow as disciples. And no matter where a person is at in relation to Jesus, whether they've never heard His name before, Aand there are billions of people in this world, billions who have never heard the name of Jesus before, they've never heard the gospel before, whether they've never heard, whether they've heard and rejected, whether they've heard and accepted, wherever they may be we are called to make disciples. We are called to bring them closer to Christ by speaking the word of God to them, by speaking the gospel to them and to one another. Our mission is to be His witnesses he says. You can't be a witness without giving testimony. You can't do it without communicating, without giving words. And this is what we're told to pray for, is for opportunities for this and to be able to do this clearly. We start with prayer. Prayer that God would open doors for us, and speak the gospel clearly. That's what he said in verse four. "Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should." Y'all, we have to proclaim the gospel in order for people to hear it, and they have to hear it in order to believe it. But how are they going to hear it unless somebody proclaims it, unless somebody speaks it to them. Unless somebody lets them know what the gospel is and why they need it. 

Our mission is to be His witnesses He says. You can't be a witness without giving testimony. You can't do it without communicating, without giving words. And this is what we're told to pray for, is for opportunities for this and to be able to do this clearly. We start with prayer, prayer that God would open doors for us and speak the gospel clearly. That's what He said in verse four. "Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should." Y'all we have to proclaim the gospel in order for people to hear it and they have to hear it in order to believe it. But how are they going to hear it unless somebody proclaims it, unless somebody speaks it to them. Unless somebody lets them know what the gospel is and why they need it. I don't know if you've ever been in one of those situations before where somebody in the group didn't get the memo. You know what I'm talking about? Like somebody in the group didn't get the memo. Back when I was in high school, my group of friends and I went to a high school football game one night and you know, we're down in New Orleans, this is where I'm from and in New Orleans, thunderstorms come in quickly, all right. Heavy lightning thunderstorms, they just roll in unexpected, last for 20 minutes and then it goes away. All right, so we're at this football game and this thunderstorm comes in, it's lightning, it's pouring rain and everything, and they pause the game for a little bit. They send the teams in into these overhangs that are on the side of the field. And me and my friends naturally just ask, okay, what stupid thing can we do here, right? Because that's the question we always ask ourselves. And we said, well you know, the teams have been entertaining us for a while. Let's go entertain the teams for a little bit. And we decided we were gonna go out on the field, and we were gonna do something stupid. And as we were talking about it, we said, hey, let's steal one of the footballs and we'll just go and play our own football game in the middle of the rain and the middle of the lightning. Which is pretty stupid, but that's what we did. But somebody before we went out said, hey, let's streak across the field and if I'm not here next week, you know why, I got fired for talking about this. But somebody said, let's go streak across the field. And you know, we're like, yeah, yeah, you know. But here's the thing is that there was four of us that hung out all the time that knew that we were just joking. There was one guy who was new to the group, and he didn't get the memo. He didn't get the memo. And so we go running out onto the field and Brandon, the new guy, blows past us and before any of us can say anything, we just see clothes flying in the air. And he didn't get all the way there, all right? He just got down to his drawers. But by the time he got out there, and turned around and noticed that all of us were fully clothed still, that we were just going to play football, he just embraced it and he went with us. You see, here's the thing, Brandon didn't get the memo. Brandon got arrested that night. The rest of us did not. The rest of us were okay. I know that that is a really, really bizarre and weird illustration about sharing the gospel, but you're gonna remember it. Oh man, see Brandon, to bring it back in here, Brandon got in trouble for the night. He had consequences that lasted for the night 'cause he didn't get the memo. But there's a lot of people who are gonna have consequences for eternity because they didn't get the memo, because nobody went to them 'cause nobody spoke the gospel to them. Because they lived their whole lives never hearing the name of Jesus. When I was in China, we went backpacking one time and we were going out and we were trying to locate some unreached people groups. And me and a friend, we went to an unreached people group in the mountains at one point. And we met this guy and he saw us, and he brought us into his home and you know, we start talking with him and everything and he said, hold on, hold on just a minute. And he runs to the back and he comes back with a picture of Jesus. It's like Mary holding little baby Jesus, shining face, all that kind of stuff, you know? And he said, do you know who this is? And we were like, yeah, this is Jesus. He's like, man, I've had this picture for 20 years. 20 years ago I found this picture, and I knew that there was something special about this baby, but I couldn't find anyone who could tell me who He was. 20 years, that a man waited. Never met anyone who knew the name of Jesus, who knew who He was or what He did. Again, there are billions of people, literally billions of people, three and a half billion people who live in unreached people groups in this world where there is little to no access to the gospel. We are called to send partners, and we are called here in our own circles of accountability to make sure people get the memo, to make sure people hear the gospel, have opportunities to respond to the gospel 'cause otherwise there are eternal consequences. But we also see that the result of the gospel, it has fruit that goes out into the world. Look at what Paul says at the beginning of the book of Colossians 1:6-7. "In the same way the gospel is bearing fruit, and growing throughout the whole world, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace. You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant who is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf." You see, Epaphras took the gospel to some Colossian believers and a few Colossian believers went and spoke to more Colossians so that more Colossians became believers. And as more Colossians became believers, people went out from the Colossians into the world, and the gospel was bearing fruit all around them in other parts of the world as well as right within their midst because that's what the gospel does. The gospel changes lives, the gospel doesn't just change lives, the gospel makes life new, it gives us eternal life. From the moment we believe, we have this new life in Jesus Christ, we are reconciled to God. We are made new. We begin being conformed into the image of Christ in which one day we will stand before Him completely restored in His image. That's a day I'm looking forward to. And that's a day that as I stand around the throne, I wanna look across the circle and see other people that I shared the gospel with. I wanna see the faces of other people that came to know Christ because I spoke the gospel to them or that somebody spoke the gospel to them. That's what we wanna see. That's what we have our minds and our hearts set on. That's what we are intentional to make our lives about, intentionally living missional lives. The gospel bears fruit. It should never stay with us, we should proclaim it and let it bear fruit wherever we go. And of course, as we go on in this passage, we see that we don't only proclaim the gospel, but lastly, we must practice godliness in all of life. Now here's the thing. I've given you three specific parts of missional living. Three specific things that we need to do to be intentional about living missionally. But really missional living, it flows through all of life. It should be a part of every aspect of our lives, including just your everyday regular living and your everyday regular speech. It's being intentional to show who Jesus is, to show what Jesus does in a life, and to speak about who Jesus is and what He has done. Look at what Paul says in verses five and six. He says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone." When he says make the most of every opportunity, what he's saying is, no matter where you are, if you're around people, make the most of the opportunity. Make sure your life is a gracious life. Make sure your speech is a gracious speech, whether you're talking about politics, whether you have somebody who cuts in front of you in line at the grocery store or cuts you off when you're driving, whether the ref is making a bad call with your kid in his football or soccer game, no matter where you are or you're just talking to one of your neighbors, no matter where you are, is your speech seasoned with salt? Is it full of grace? Are your actions full of grace? We work, we live in order to live out godliness in our lives. So he says, "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders." Let your conversations be always full of grace. And if your regular speech is gracious, people are gonna take notice of that. People are gonna take notice of that. And when you are living a life of love toward people, no matter who they are, it's not just your friends, it's anyone, people take notice of that. A great way by the way that we can take part in that, not this week, but the next July 20 through 27th, we're gonna have eight days of hope like we talked about in the announcements this morning. It's a way where we can put on display to our city the love of Christ. It comes with opportunities to speak Christ as well. But as people see believers descending on a city and loving the city, people start to take notice. People start to take notice that there's something different about people who worship Jesus. And I would encourage you come and be a part of that with us, not this week but the next. And you can find that sign up on the website like we talked about earlier. But let me ask you, no matter what situation you find yourself in, no matter who you're around, do your actions and your words make people wonder about who Jesus is and what He's done? Do your actions and words make people wonder is this Jesus thing for real? Does it really change people? Is this something that I should really look into? And as you do that you'll have those opportunities to speak the gospel to them. In all things, in all speech, in all of life, we are to practice godliness. Now, all these four things we've talked about already, these are ways that we are to practice or to live out a missional life. But even before we get into living out a missional life, even before we get into practicing living a missional life, we have to find the foundation of a missional life. And that's what I want us to close with. The foundation of a missional life or missional living is a life of worship. In the end, the foundation of missional living is that you must be in awe of Christ. You must be in awe of who Jesus is and what He has done. The foundation of missional living must be worship. You have to know Jesus and seek to be close to Him, you have to truly love Him and treasure Him and that will sustain you in living a missional life. The temptation when we talk about living missionally is to turn Jesus into your job. Friends, Jesus is not your job, Jesus is your love. Jesus is your love. And so we live for Him and we speak about Him, and we show and tell people who He is. That's why worship must be the foundation of your life, not just the mission. The mission is how we live, it's what we do. But worship is why we live and it's why we do what we do. In his book, "Let the Nations be Glad," John Piper says, and we have this book back in store, I highly recommend it. The opening lines of the book on missions is this, "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church, worship is. Missions exist because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate not missions because God is ultimate not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeem fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It's a temporary necessity, but worship abides forever.' Worship therefore is both the fuel and worship is the goal of missions. Worship sends us out into the world in order to bring others in to be worshipers of God and friends, why do we worship? It's because we have a good and powerful God. Why do we worship? It's because we have a Savior who has loved us enough to come and rescue us. We have Jesus who has come on a mission to save us, to reconcile us to this living God, and to give us eternal life and friends because of that, missional living is the normal course of a Christian life, but it takes giving yourself up. Jesus Christ has given Himself up for us by taking our sin on Himself, paying the penalty for that sin on the cross, rising from the dead in order to give us new life. And He has done that for you and He has done that for others who haven't yet come to know Him yet. And He has done it for people all over the world. And so we give ourselves up in order to intentionally live this Christian life. I'm gonna ask the band to come on back up right now. And this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna do something a little different today. I've asked the band to close this out in a song before I come back and pray, and they're gonna sing this song and I'm gonna ask you to just stay in your seat. I'm gonna ask you to go before the Lord. Let the words, let them speak or sing the words over you and take them in and give them back to the Lord yourself. So just stay in your seat while they sing this over you, and go before the Lord to respond to Him today. ♪ If it's bandaging the broken ♪ ♪ Or washing filthy feet ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ If it's loving one another ♪ ♪ Even when we don't agree ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ If I'm poor or if I'm wealthy ♪ ♪ I'll serve You just the same ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ On the mountain or the valley ♪ ♪ I will choose to praise ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ If I'm known by how I love ♪ ♪ Let my life reflect how much I love You ♪ ♪ I love You ♪ ♪ And before You even ask ♪ ♪ Oh, my answer will be yes 'cause I love You ♪ ♪ I love You ♪ ♪ If the truth cuts like an arrow ♪ ♪ I will say it anyway ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ And if it's means that they'll reject me ♪ ♪ Lord, I will still obey ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ If I'm known by how I love ♪ ♪ Let my life reflect how much I love You ♪ ♪ I love You ♪ ♪ And before You even ask ♪ ♪ Oh, my answer will be yes 'cause I love You ♪ ♪ Oh, I love You ♪ ♪ When I'm standing in Your glory ♪ ♪ I'll be glad I chose to say ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ Well done, good and faithful ♪ ♪ I live to hear You say ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ Here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ 'Cause here I am, Lord, send me ♪ ♪ Oh, if I'm known by how I love ♪ ♪ Let my life reflect how much I love You ♪ ♪ I love You ♪ ♪ And before You even ask ♪ ♪ Oh, my answer will be yes 'cause I love You ♪ ♪ I love You ♪ ♪ If I'm known by how I love ♪ ♪ Let my life reflect how much I love You ♪ ♪ I love You ♪ ♪ And before You even ask ♪ ♪ Oh, my answer will be yes 'cause I love You ♪ ♪ I love You ♪

- As we close up today, I wanna take... I wanna take just a few minutes to go before the Lord in prayer altogether as a church. I'm gonna ask that you bow your heads and if the prayer partners would come up across the front of the stage. Maybe you're here today and you are a believer in Jesus, but the Lord has been showing you that maybe you haven't been very intentional about living out what He has called us to live out, about living a missional life. The place to begin today is to just submit your heart to Him in worship, to make sure you are looking to Him and seeing the goodness of what He has done for you and the goodness of who He is. And just submitting your heart to Him and then asking Him, how can I be intentional in this? Seek out others in the church, in your community group, whatever it may be, and ask them to walk alongside of you, help you to grow in these areas. Maybe you're here today and you're not a believer, you've never trusted in Jesus. Maybe you came in today feeling like your life doesn't really have a mission. It doesn't really have a goal. You've been wondering what is life really about? Or maybe you came in with the purpose of your life and it's something else. But if it's anything other than Jesus, then one day it's all gonna fade away and it's all gonna be for nothing. But Jesus has come in order to bring you into true life, into new life, into eternal life. And so you can know Him today by trusting in Him, by trusting in His salvation, and He will make you new. If that's you today, these prayer partners would love to pray with you afterwards. You can come and talk with one of them about more about what that means. But for us today, let's take a few minutes to just pray to the Lord. God, thank You that You love us, Jesus, thank You that You have come on the mission to seek and save the lost. And any of us who knows You, Lord, we can only know You because You have done the work. There's no work that we can do. There's no thing that we can do in order to set ourselves right with You, but You have come and done the work. Lord, I pray for any who are here today who have never trusted in You. I pray that You would be speaking to their hearts right now, that You would be at work within their hearts, drawing them to know You, showing them your goodness that they could come into new life. Lord, for those of us who are believers, help us to see You in Your glory in a way that sends us out to tell other people about You. Lord, would You work mightily in us? Would You encourage us? Would You empower us by Your spirit to go out and to live for You? We love You. It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen, amen.