Kingdom Prayers

Man, it’s great to see everybody. Thank you all so much for being here. Truly, if you if you are a guest with us, we really do want to celebrate with you and just thank you personally for coming. So yeah, if you if you would please do put a little bit of your information on the connect card, you could drop it in the plates in the four corners of the sanctuary. Be more than happy to reach back out to you later this week and treat you to a cup of ice cream or some coffee or whatever it is that you like.

We come to this part of our service every single Sunday. So we have a a growing burden here at Sauldam not just to be a church that prays but to be a praying church. So we take a time out of every single Sunday morning service for what we just call congregational prayer. I’ve got a few prompts on the screen for you. If you saw it a few minutes ago, there’s a video about a couple named Oswaldo and Vanessa Lettermo. They are church planters that minister in Laredo, Texas. That’s a border town, and they provide help and ultimately share the gospel with folks that are coming into our country legally, and they just are a resource to them and making sure that the very first people that some folks from below our country are Christians who love them, they and that will know that there’s a God that loves them.

So we want to pray for them and pray for this Annie Armstrong Easter Offering. If that’s new language to you, don’t worry. Annie Armstrong is not in the room. You can’t meet her right now. She is a lady that rallied a bunch of churches in the Southern Baptist Convention for the sake of church planting and church health here in our nation. And she passed, and she’s with the Lord. But we, as part of a Southern Baptist denomination, we take up offering every March in her honor that goes toward that. So our denomination’s national goal is $78 million. And man, to the Lord, man, 78 million might as well be front pocket change. It doesn’t matter. What what matters is the hearts of the givers that give toward that. So, let’s pray both for this national goal, but also specifically for Oswaldo and Vanessa Lmo who are sin relief missionaries in Laredo, Texas. Y’all take it away. Grab a neighbor, pray for those needs, and then I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment.

Thank you, guys. Heavenly Father, oh God, I love to listen to that sound, sound of your people praying, calling on You, recognizing our deep need for You. Lord, Your word says that the prayers of the saints are like good smelling incense. Lord, I think about the candle that Becca bought me that I I light whenever I’m doing the sermon prep, and it just kind of fills the room with this sweet aroma. And I h have to imagine that Your throne right now has been filled with the sweet aroma as we’ve offered our prayers to You. Holy Spirit, please manifest Your presence with us this morning. There. God, there’s a million different stories of the people sitting in the pews here at Sauldam. God, I can’t possibly know all the all the baggage folks might be walking in here with, the frustrations or the hopes or the fears, the things they’re proud about, the things they’re ashamed of. I can’t know all those things, but I thank You that You see and You know. And I pray, God, that as I open Your word and as I just try to share with others what You’ve shared with me, I pray that You, Holy Spirit, You would touch them in their soul and that You would meet them where they’re at.

God, I pray for the Lamos this morning. I trust they’re doing services as well. And I I pray that You would do the same thing there that we’ve asked for here. That You would be with them. You would show Yourself to them. You would You’d give them baptisms to celebrate, God. You’d give them their own successes. Lord, thank You for the generosity of Southern Baptist Churches, Lord, to raise funds, God. 78 million is nothing to You. We pray that You would give that abundantly, please. Lord, we love You, and it’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, I’ve got a question for you. Have you ever experienced a moment where someone’s prayer for you changed everything? I’ll ask that again. Have you ever experienced a moment where someone’s prayer for you changed everything? Maybe it gave you unexpected peace in a storm. Maybe it renewed your strength when you felt weak. Maybe it deepened your sense and your awareness of God’s presence in a way that you’ve never known before. That’s exactly what Paul is going to do in our passage this morning. If you will go ahead and open up to Ephesians chapter 1, 15-19.

You see, after unpacking some pretty incredible spiritual blessings that all believers have in Jesus Christ, Paul shifts from teaching the Ephesians to praying for the Ephesians. And this is not just any prayer. This is what I would call a kingdom prayer. This is a prayer that Paul is going to ask that God would deepen the Ephesians’ understanding of who God is and what He desires for them.

You see, here’s the deal. When we truly know God, not just facts about Him, but when we have a personal, life-altering relationship with Him, just like Lauren and Ley just demonstrated, everything in our lives changes. Our hope shifts. Our identity becomes secure in something that can never be taken away from us, and we get to walk in God’s power, not in our own.

So today, as we look at Ephesians 1:15-19, as we look at this prayer, let’s ask this: Am I praying the kinds of prayers that transform lives? Are my prayers moving the kingdom forward? Let’s dive in.

This is Ephesians 1:15-19. Follow along on the screen if you don’t have it in your lap. “This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, I pray that He would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what is the wealth of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the mighty working of His strength.”

Man, this is a kingdom prayer. Sometimes in the Bible, you’d get the recorded prayers of God’s people before us. I wonder what it would look like if God captured a log of all the prayers we prayed last week and recorded them for thousands of years, distributed those prayers around the world multiple times, and taught other people to live and to pray according to the prayers we live and pray by. That’s a sobering thought, and that’s what we have right here. This is the prayer that the Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians.

It’s not even the only one in this book. We will read two or three of these prayers that Paul, as he is just so joyfully talking to this group of believers over in Asia, he is just going to erupt in joy and prayer for them. And this is just the first one we have.

If you are a notetaker, then this is where I really want you to key in. If you are looking for a truth to hang the hat of your life on, then please tune in. Kingdom prayers deepen our grasp of God’s person and God’s priorities. Kingdom prayers, they deepen our grasp of God’s person and His priorities.

John Piper, he is a pastor up in Minneapolis. He said it this way: the deepest need of every person is to know God. Not just to know about Him, but to know Him as your personal creator, redeemer, judge, and friend. Do you know God? Do you know some things about Him? Would someone say that you have a relationship with the almighty creator of the universe? If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Do you know God?

Paul here prays that the people of Ephesus, these Christians living in the city of Ephesus for whom the book of Ephesians is named, he’s praying that God would give them a Spirit of wisdom and revelation to know God. Man, Paul could have prayed anything. He could have prayed that God would show them information about what to do next week. He could have prayed that God would give them the wisdom to navigate cultural moments they were going through. He could have prayed that God would give them the specific knowledge of how to go through certain situations as a church. That’s not what Paul prayed. What Paul prayed was that the people would have wisdom and revelation.

and knowledge of God. Paul knew that knowing God is more important than knowing the next part of God’s plan for your life. Having a relationship with God is paramount. Everything else is secondary. You see, one of God’s main desires for His people is that they would have a deep knowledge of Him.

So, I’ve got to ask myself, and I hope you ask yourself, do your prayers for others deepen their understanding of God and their relationship with Him? Or do your prayers for others just intend to move their behavior a little bit to make life a little more comfortable for you? What’s the what’s the motivation of your prayer?

You see, here’s the deal. If you don’t know God correctly, you cannot experience Him deeply. If someone else does not know God correctly, they cannot experience Him deeply. So Paul prayed that these Ephesians would see God correctly and out of that they would experience Him deeply.

You all know what I’m talking about. Let’s just shift the context. 10 years ago, this August, Becca and I will celebrate, or this August 10, whatever. We’ll celebrate 10 years of being married. All right, I know the date. Okay, I’ve got that going for Him. Here’s the thing. After 10 years, I’ve come to recognize that I know Becca better now than I used to know her then. And when we got married then, I thought that I had Becca Rush mastered. I thought I knew every facet of her that I could always guess whatever she would want to drink at Chick-fil-A. I’m pretty good at that one because it doesn’t deviate too much. But 10 years in, I’m coming to recognize there are depths to her soul and to the way she works that I’m still discovering. But my marriage with her, if I’m not getting to know her correctly, I will not get to experience her presence very well.

What if I treated Becca as if she were you? There might be some similarities. There might be some common affections, but I’ve got to know Becca for who Becca is. And our relationship with God works the same way. You got to know God for who God is. And we don’t get to impose our thoughts or our views of God onto Him. We’ve got to let Him define who He is for us. You see, we cannot walk deeply with the God we don’t know correctly.

And there are so many lies about who God is out there these days like like this: that God is only loving, not just. That God will allow you to do anything that you want. That you can carry on however you care, however you feel. It doesn’t matter. Say what you want to say, do what you want to do. God loves you. It’s all fine. God’s kind of got like this this eraser and He could just erase anything you do. But God’s also just. His Word says, “I am love.” It also says, “I am just.” We’ve got to take God at His Word. We’ve got to let Him define Himself for who He is.

Or there’s this other one I hear all the time. All roads can lead to God. Man, you’ve got your way of following Him. I’ve got my way. Man, in the end, as long as we don’t bump up against each other in the highway of life, I think we’re both going to the same spot, right? That’s also wrong. Jesus said, “I am the way. I’m not a way. I’m not one of three ways. I am the way and I’m the truth and I’m the life.” All roads don’t lead to God. That’s not how this works. God is exclusive.

Or even this, man, you see this all the time. And you you experience this because of our just our lives. It’s just this lie that earthly happiness is God’s goal for you. That what God wants most for you is for you to get all the things on your bucket list, for you to have all the toys you could ever want, that your life would always be comfortable and you always be in control of things. And if somehow for some reason life feels a little uncomfortable, He must be making some mistakes. Man, that’s wrong. Your earthly happiness can be a byproduct of God’s plan in your life. But if your earthly happiness was God’s highest goal for you, then we wouldn’t have prayed for the families of the 70 martyred Christians from the DRC last month. If God’s earthly happiness was His goal for you, then there would not be millions of believers in China who have to meet in secret in groups of five to 10 because the government’s persecuting them. If God’s ultimate goal was your happiness, then there’d be no martyrs. No one would ever lose their lives for the sake of the gospel. But that’s not the case. God’s ultimate goal for you is that you would glorify Him as you enjoy Him. God is God, and He gets to define who He is, and we have to relate to Him on His terms.

So our prayers for other people must deepen their grasp of God’s person for them to know God deeply. Not only that, though, our prayers for other people need to deepen our grasp of His priorities. Remember, look at the passage again. Look at verse 15. “This is why, since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints.” All right. So these people have faith in Jesus. They love the saints. Those are other Christians. Verse 19. “What is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe?” Faith, belief, saints. Who’s Paul praying for here? Say it again. He’s praying for Christians. He’s not just praying for anybody. He’s praying for Christians. He is praying specifically for people that associate with Jesus, people that have given their lives to Jesus, people that believe the hope of the resurrection as contained in the good news of Jesus Christ, the gospel. Paul is praying for Christians.

So, we’ve got to recognize when we pray for people, we’ve got to recognize that every single person you and I ever interact with, either in this life or through our prayers, every single person is either pursuing God or they are resisting God. Everyone is either spiritually dead and headed for an eternity of separation and punishment, or they are spiritually alive and they are headed for an eternity of joy and wholeness in God’s presence. Man, when you sit down to pray, and I trust that you do that, when you sit down to pray, you got to recognize, does this person know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior or not? And that changes everything about how you pray for them.

Paul, he’s writing to these Ephesians. These are believers in Jesus Christ. These are young Christians in the city of Ephesus. He knows that they love God. He knows that they know God deeply. He’s praying they would know God even more deeply. So then he prays that they would know God’s priorities for them. Verse 17: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, He would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of His calling.”

That’s the first priority that Paul prays for these Christians. If you’re a notetaker, it’s on the little sheet. The first priority that Paul prays for these Christians is that they would know the hope of God’s calling. Calling is an interesting word that we toss around a little bit. Calling, it’s like your purpose in life. It is this higher purpose. It is this mandate you feel like you’ve received either from God or like kind of from the universe. People say they have a calling toward things. Well, as Christians, you have a calling. Whether you get to be the guy that opens God’s Word on Sunday mornings or not, you have a calling. You have a calling. And our calling as Christians is to live for and with God starting now and into eternity. It’s as simple as that.

Your calling, if you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you’ve given yourself to Jesus, your calling is to live for Him. That means every decision you make ought to go through a filter of, is this what God wants me to do? Every conversation you have ought to go through the filter, does this encourage and uplift or does this tear down? Everything you watch, everything you scroll past or you sit on, it ought to work that way. I wish it worked that way in my life. It doesn’t. But our purpose as Christians is to live for God, to prioritize the things He prioritizes for us. We have a calling.

The good news is the hope of that calling is not a passing desire for a better future with less pain. It’s not even an insistence to return to some glory days. It is a sure confidence that life is going to get better on the other side. That one day we will be reunited with God. We know how the story ends. One day, at a day that Christ chooses, He will come back and He will make all things right. But before He inaugurates a new heavens and a new earth, everybody will go before Him and will give a defense of their lives. And God will look at everybody and God will say, “What did you do with my son Jesus? Did you submit to Him or did you reject Him? Did you embrace the salvation He can offer or did you say no at every turn?” In fact, if you’re here this morning and you have not yet given your life to Jesus Christ, I would encourage you, please don’t leave here without doing a little business with the one that drew you here this morning. The single greatest decision you could ever make is to accept the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And the worst thing you could ever do would be to leave this place saying, “I will decide later.” Man, you never know if later’s coming. There is a later that is coming. A later that is eternal. A later that you cannot change. A later that will either be spent in eternal bliss with God or eternal punishment away from Him. And later is longer than right now. Don’t leave right now thinking you got time later to make a decision about later.

You see, the assurance of our calling, the assurance that God has made us His own, that ought to fuel a distinct way of life as gospel people. Put it this way. If you believe Ephesians 2:8-9 that you are saved by grace through faith, and that’s not from yourselves, it’s a gift of God, not from works that no one can boast, then you ought to obey Ephesians 4:17-24. Therefore, I say and testify in the Lord. You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and they gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with the desire for more and more. But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about Him and were taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that’s corrupted by deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in the righteousness and purity of the truth. If you believe that you’ve been saved by the grace of God, then you would be actively waging war against the old things God had to save you from. If you have been called to live for God and that hope has been placed inside of you, then why in the world would we continue to dabble in the things that made Jesus have to go to the cross for us?

You see, the sure hope of heaven ought to fuel a distinct new way of life that ought to be different from the world. When people interact with us, they ought to say, “Man, that guy’s different. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but he didn’t lash out back at me. Man, that lady is she’s odd. I cut her off in traffic and she didn’t give me any signs or signals or nothing. She just kind of waved at me and even smiled. Man, that guy, he he’s not out to get his own. He’s not just trying to get more and more. What’s the deal with that, man? That lady is going through some really hard stuff, but she’s not like complaining about it. Where’s that come from, man?” When people brush up against us, they ought to they ought to feel something different. They ought to see something different in us. The hope of the gospel ought to inspire this this lifestyle that’s just different.

Paul prays that for these people, but He also prays another priority for them. It’ll be on the screen. He prays that they would know the wealth of God’s glorious inheritance in them. We’ve tackled that word inheritance a couple times over this series. You see, the inheritance is not just things you get from God. The inheritance is the fact that God has claimed you. You see, God places incredible value on you. Think about it. The message of the gospel is that God so loved the world, who the Bible says actively opposes and runs against Him at every turn. God so loves the world that He gave His one and only son, Jesus Christ. Now, maybe for a good person, someone would die. For a really good person, someone might might scarcely consider dying. But God showed His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, God died for us.

God gave you His very best. He places incredible value on the souls of every single person sitting in here and all of your family members and all of your neighbors and your co-workers, even the ones you don’t like. God loves us with a love that is beyond our calculation or our assessment. God gave His very best, Jesus Christ, to get you.

God is after you, not to condemn. Jesus Christ came to the world not to condemn the world because the world’s already condemned. Jesus Christ came to the world to set set it free, to liberate it, to bring life to the world. Jesus Christ came to rescue you from you.

As well-meaning as you might be, God, when He places you in His family, when He claims you as His inheritance, He is ultimately declaring your identity. That person is my son. They are my daughter.

What what what is it that you find your identity in? Man, it’s so easy for us to find our identity in our family, right? Or the idea of what our family might be. It’s the the last name that’s on your driver’s license. It’s the name you could kind of pull out at a police station perhaps to get out of a speeding ticket or something like that. Or maybe it’s the heritage you come from.

Or maybe you find your identity in your kids and like their accomplishments and their activities and their sports. Or maybe you find your identity in the hope that maybe one day you’ll have a family. So like everything about you is oriented around trying to get a spouse and trying to have kids.

Or maybe your identity might be wrapped up in your successes. Hey, at my company I achieved X, Y, and Z. I moved up the ladder this fast. I make this much money. Or I’ve got these toys. I live in this neighborhood. My family has this much land. I drive this kind of vehicle. These are my successes. And when I think about me, I think about this stuff. When people think about you, they also think about that stuff because that’s the stuff you talk about.

Maybe your identity is in approval. And whatever it takes for people to like you, you’re going to do that thing because you’re just trying to get on everybody’s good graces.

Maybe your identity is even in your skills. Hey, I can do this. I can do that. I have figured out how to do these things. This is the value that I bring to my family or to my friends.

Guess what, guys? Aside from Jesus Christ, everything you find your identity in today will be gone at some point. It will. And man, when you hold on to your identity that’s bound up here like this, man, God wants to give you something so much better, but your hands are full with this stuff.

It’s like God this morning might even be saying, “Hey, man, just open up your hands. You might even get to keep this for a while. But the identity that I have for you is eternal. It’s forever. It can never be taken from you because you are in my hands.”

Actually, God places incredible value on you and He wants to change your identity. The only reliable identity you can have is the one that God gives you because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Man, we studied this over the past five weeks. So, let me just go right back through it. If you are a son of God, then man, you are a son of God. Verse five, you have been predestined before time to be adopted as God’s son through Jesus Christ. No matter what anybody has done to you or said about you, you are God’s son or His daughter.

Verse seven, you can have full redemption of all your mess your mess ups and your failures in the past. There is no sin or mistake you have ever committed that can’t be washed clean by the perfect blood of Jesus Christ. You can be totally forgiven.

Verse nine, you can know God’s good plan for you in Jesus Christ. A plan to bring everything together so that the confusing can make so much sense in Jesus because you see that He has a good purpose for you.

Verse 11, you can know that you are part of God’s inheritance. You have been chosen before time to become God’s family members that you might bring praise to God. You don’t have to scratch and claw and fight to make a name for yourself. But because before you could ever do anything for God, God already said that person right there is mine and no one can change that. That’s who you could be in Jesus Christ. You could become the possession of God. Your life could be marked by the Holy Spirit.

What we looked at last week, God taking His signet ring, His little seal, putting the wax of the Spirit on it, and signing the letter of your life with the Holy Spirit, so that you could be filled with God, and you can know God personally. Your identity could be totally changed if you would only let go of the things that you’re clinging to and you would claim what God has for you in Jesus Christ. You would recognize that you are a sinner that needs to be forgiven. You would release the lordship of your life over to God and you would accept what God has for you.

Man, if you are here this morning and you are still not sure about Jesus Christ or man, how’s the Trinity work? Or if I want to get baptized, do I have to read my story in front of everybody? We can settle those things later. What you need to settle right now: Do you know God loves you? And He gave His very best for you to change you from the inside out because God wants you in heaven with Him. If that sounds too good to be true, then man, like it’s true. And God wants you to personally deal with that this morning.

I encourage you if this is sounding new to you, if you’re just not about this, that you would close your eyes and that you would just talk with God about this. Say, “God, I don’t know what it looks like. I don’t know what it means to walk with You. I’m still figuring all this stuff out, but I want to have what Lauren and Ley have.” That you would embrace that for yourself.

The final priority that God wants you to know is this: the immeasurable greatness of God’s power toward you who believe. Man, can you believe that God’s incredible and immeasurable power is available to you? The power of God to create everything with the sound of His voice. God said, “Let there be stars.” There were stars. God said, “Let there be trees.” There were trees. God said, “Let’s make people in our image.” And Adam and Eve, they were just created. The power to create everything.

The power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead to conquer sin and death and darkness on your behalf. That power is available to you, man. So, there’s no relationship challenge that you will ever walk through that is powerless to the almighty God of the universe. God can step into that broken relationship and He can totally mend that thing. There is no temptation you will face that God cannot give you the strength to flee from or to conquer in the name of Jesus Christ. You do not have to submit to sin or the wiles of the devil. You do not have to because God who is the one that is in you is greater than the one that’s in the world. And in Him you’re an overcomer in Christ.

There is no trauma or sudden loss you will ever go through where God cannot meet you personally right then and there. Man, we are weak and we are prone to failure. And if we’re being honest, we can barely see past our noses. But the God who is strong, who has never lost a battle, who sees all things past, present, and future perfectly, He can infuse your life with power.

Why do we need God’s power? Ephesians 6 says this, “Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength.” Verse 11, “Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of culture, schemes of your neighbor, schemes of somebody else at church that you’re not seeing eye to eye with right now. Nah, put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Nah, our struggle is against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens.” You are in the midst of a battle that is bigger than you. We cannot go through life thinking that we can wage the warfare that is Actively against us. Satan is real. He’s got demons and he is waging war against you and your soul. We cannot go through life thinking that we have the power to wrestle this on our own. We need God’s power. You need God’s power to take your next breath. You need God’s power to lead somebody else to the Lord. You need God’s power to take the next big faith step that’s God’s that God is going to have for you. You need God’s power.

So the question is, are you ready to impact the kingdom? Do you want your prayers to make a difference in this world? Man, I’d encourage you then pray according to correct views about God’s person. You got to pray according to correct views about God’s person. Your assumptions of and thoughts about God must be regularly challenged through a healthy and well-balanced diet of God’s word, prayer, and other spiritual disciplines.

Here’s the thing. If you do not go, if you do not know God correctly, you cannot experience Him deeply. And if you are relating to God in prayer in ways that aren’t true about Him, He will not hear those prayers. See, it’s not just about knowing correct facts about God. There are plenty of lost people that get PhDs in the Bible and they know the Gospel of Matthew. They know the storyline of the Old Testament way better than I’ll ever know it. But they do not know God. They know a lot of facts about God. They know a lot of facts about God’s word, but they do not know Him perfectly or personally. You see, it’s not just about knowing facts. It’s about knowing God Himself. It’s about an intimate soul level relationship with the one that has done everything necessary to save you.

Man, you got to know God’s person. If you want your prayers to make an impact, they’ve got to be prayed according to God’s person. But not only that, they’ve got to be prayed according to God’s priorities, man. Like, what are you hoping for in life? Is your big hope just to get to your next success? Is your big hope just to avoid the next diagnosis? Is your next hope just to make the financial ends meet month to month? These things matter. God’s ultimate priority for your hope is that you would know that Jesus Christ has secured your future. Even if today looks pretty murky, where do you find your identity? Are your prayers constantly wrapped up in a false identity of who you are in Jesus Christ? Are your prayers for other people totally consumed with things they can do for God instead of them knowing God? Thank you.

And then finally, by whose strength do you live and pray? Is it God’s or yours? We have untapped resources of God’s infinite strength at your disposal to pray according to. But I don’t think God is going to move heaven and earth according to preferences. I think He’s going to do those things in line with His own priorities and His own mission in this world to seek and to save the lost.

There’s two opportunities coming up that you’ve already heard about to impact the kingdom with your prayer and with your actions this Saturday morning. Carter, me, and I trust about a hundred of our closest friends. Now, we’re going to meet here at 10:30. 10:30. We’re going to meet here at 10:30 for a quick rally in Rah. And then we’re going to disperse on our town and we’re going to take the good news of the gospel to folks. I don’t have the power to save anybody. But the message of the gospel is God’s power to save. So, we’re going to go and we’re just going to distribute God’s power all over to whomever we can get to. I invite you to be here with us. Got to be here at 10:30 sharp because when we’re ready to have some wheels on the ground to go somewhere, we’re going to go and we’re just going to see what God does.

And then Sunday night or Sunday mornings, we have a group meets at 9:15. It’s called the boiler room. It’s just a time where me and a couple of us, we just get together in the oil church and we just pray. We pray about how we’re doing. We pray about needs at the church. We pray about things we’re confused about or things that we’re concerned about. And man, I’d encourage you just come just try it with us. All we’re doing is we’re just kind of priming the pump of church gatherings on Sunday mornings. We’re just trying to heat up the place.

with some prayer. And I encourage you come and join us. It’s not a lifelong commitment you sign in a blood covenant or something like that. You don’t even have to pray out loud. I would prefer you to do it. But you just come just pray silently and just be with us. We meet every Sunday morning 9:15 over in the old church. You may or may not come to the deeper weekend and come to the boiler room. But I want to give you another opportunity to pray right now.

I want to invite you to pray a kingdom prayer. This is the text of verses 17-19. And where you see a blank is where I want you to put a name. And I just want you to pray a kingdom prayer for somebody else that’s not sitting beside you right now. And you just take a moment. You do that silently. And then Pete will call us to attention for the final song of worship. Y’all take it away.