the book of Acts Week 22 | August 17, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, good morning everyone. As we just saw in the
video here in chapter thirteen, what we find as we've
been studying the Book of Acts chapter by chapter, verse
by verse, here we find a turning point in the
Book of Acts. Up until now, we've learned that the
good news of Jesus has been spreading largely through the

(00:20):
regions immediately surrounding Jerusalem, like Judea Samaria, and this has
occurred mostly in a reactive way. We saw in chapter seven,
after the murder of Stephen, a wave of persecution fell
on the church there in Jerusalem, and as a result,
the believers just scattered. They fled to nearby cities, to

(00:42):
nearby towns, and wherever they ended up, they told people
about the finished work of Jesus Christ. And one of
the places that some of the disciples fled was to
a city called Antioch, and following that same pattern, the
disciples shared the gospel with the people of the city.
They believed a church was planted there, And as we
saw just a few weeks ago, there was this curious

(01:05):
and noticeable difference about the church. It was the first
church in the history of the world that reached out
to and welcomed the gentiles into the life of the Church,
the gentiles, these non Jewish people. This is a radically
new work fueled by the Holy Spirit. And from this
posture here in our texts this morning, what we're going

(01:28):
to discover is another first. We see the Church at
Antioch choosing to proactively send out people on mission into
the gentile world for the very first time. Instead of
the Gospel spreading reactively from people fleeing persecution, from them
sharing the good News of Jesus wherever they ended up,

(01:50):
instead of them being reactively sharing the gospel for the
first time, we now see a picture of the Gospel
being shared proactively. And this wasn't just to the surrounding region.
This was to far reaches of the world. The map
of the screen gives a good illustration of what I'm
talking about. The first half of Acts takes place in
the blue circle. That's the first half. The second half

(02:12):
that we're starting today is the green circle. There our
time together this morning, we're not simply learning an interesting
history lesson through this text. We're invited to look into
the mirror to see how God wants us to live
as His people here in our city. I firmly believe

(02:34):
that it's the calling of God on my pastoral life
for me to shepherd this church to be a sending church,
not necessarily to foreign countries, but into the pockets of
each and every one of our everyday lives, into your neighborhoods,
into your communities, into your workplaces, into your friendships, into
your family, to be faithfully present in these areas. I

(03:00):
shared this diagram in the past, but I believe it's
a helpful picture of who I am trying to lead
us to be as a community of christ followers. Many
church models have this as a picture, right, this idea
that the church is in the middle and all these
arrows are coming into it. Like your whole point is, Hey,
during the week, you need to invite people to come
to church with you, and that's how they're gonna hear
about the good news of Jesus. You're gonna bring people

(03:21):
to church and they're gonna hear about Jesus. So is
this idea of all the outside world coming in here?
But I really believe it should be the opposite way.
I believe what we do here on Sunday mornings, as
we encourage each other, we equip each other, we remind
each other of the good news of who we are,
of who Jesus says that we are to be, and

(03:44):
we take that good news out into our everyday lives.
I want us to think about Mitchell living like that, like,
what if I just reimagined the way that I'm already
showing up in the spaces that I inhabit. If I'm
just intentional, I'm not reactive, I'm proactive. These are the things.

(04:05):
These are the spaces I already have at the interests
I already have. What if I reimagine these to be
sensitive to what God is doing in the spaces that
I exist as your pastor. This is something I'm passionate about,
something that the Holy Spirit continues to confirm to me
that I train and equip us to do. That's why
this semester in the missional Communities, which are starting this week,

(04:28):
I'm supplying each person a copy of this book so
you can work through some of the practical ways that
you can just live faithfully present. It's a short book,
rich with all kinds of discussion to say, well, how
do I reimagine how I'm living? So said simply, I
want us to learn to be like the church in Antioch.

(04:50):
I want us to be like Antioch. I want to
learn how to be a church that sins, not sins
like s I n s sins with a d sin.
So through that lens I want us to see in
our text today we find three marks of a sending church.
Three marks. First, a sending church is unified in its diversity. Second,

(05:14):
ascending church is rooted in worship and prayer. Lastly, ascending
church must navigate opposition. If we are to live missionally,
then we have to be unified with each other in
all the various ways that we're different. We have to
be rooted together in worship and in prayer, and we

(05:37):
have to we have to expect that things aren't gonna
work out all the time, that we we're gonna have
to navigate unforeseen problems. So that's what we're exploring together
this morning, as we're preparing to do that, as we're
preparing to just allow the God, allow God to search

(05:58):
our heart and to point out in what can we
continue to grow? Can we continue to just understand the
family that we've been adopted into to empower the gospel conversations.
That's that He's ordained that we are to have let's
first pause and pray, Sony Father, thank you for this morning,
Thank you for every person in this room, and just
as importantly, thank you for every relationship represented in this room,

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every person that every person in this room knows that
they interact with and pray for this city. Lord Lord,
we desperately need your healing, your reconciliation, your redemption. We
need Heaven to break in on earth here in this city.
So God be at work, use us as your handed

(06:44):
feet to be busy about that work. Send you precious
and holy name, that I pray these things. Amen, So
first sending churches unified in this diversity verse one of
our texts. Now, in the Church of Antioch, there were
prophets and teachers Barnabas Simeon called Niger, Lucius of psych Manayan,
who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul.

(07:05):
As we learned a few weeks back, antioqu was an
extremely important city. It was extremely important politically, It was
extremely important economically. At this time in the Roman world.
It was the third largest city. This was the third
largest city in the Roman world, only behind Rome and Alexandria.
Antioch was a city with a ton of political significance

(07:27):
because it was the capital of the region of Syria.
On top of that, because of its location just inland
off the Mediterranean Sea, on the bank of the Orontas River,
it was also had a great deal of economic significance.
This was the intersection of the land and sea trade
routes of that of that place, of that region. So

(07:48):
it's this diverse, bustling, multicultural hub, a city of commerce,
of art, of politics, religion. We learned in Acts eleven
that the people were first called Christians and at Antioch,
and the reason for that was because the known language
at that time did not know how to describe these people.

(08:09):
This was so different, these people at Antioch. What do
you do describe this mish mask these people who come
from different cultures, different backgrounds, so different socioeconomic statuses, different ethnicities.
What do we call these Jesus obsessed people, these christ
centered people, these Christians. So what I need is to

(08:33):
understand from the get go is that this is a
diverse church. And in our text, Luke emphasizes that fact
by describing the leaders of the church there at Antioch.
First there was Barnabas. Barnabas was a Hellenistic Jew. If
you remember what we learned about what a Hellenistic Jew was,
it was someone who was Jewish religiously, but not necessarily culturally.
Barnabas actually came from the Greek Isle of Cyprus. Next

(08:58):
with Simeon called Niger. The word Niger literally means black,
so seeing those African likely from the region around modern
day Nigeria, a very dark complexed man. Then there was
Lucius of Syrene. Syrene was in northern Africa and modern
day Libya, so he would have been Arabic. The next
leader was Manahan, where told that Hugh was raised in

(09:20):
the household of Herod Meeting. He had connections to political
power and prestige. He was well off economically. He was
a person of status politically. And then lastly there's Saul,
who Luke will now start referring to as Paul. He
was a highly educated Jewish Pharisee trained under the famous
Rabbi Gamaliel, an expert in the Jewish law, an academic.

(09:46):
We see in the subscription a leadership team that crossed ethnic, cultural,
social and economic boundaries. We see a huge amount of
diversity in the giftedness in their perspectives on life. Yet
they were unified in the Gospel. And I want you
to understand that they weren't unified in spite of their differences.

(10:07):
Their unity was strengthened because of them. Their unity in
the Gospel was strengthened because of their differences through their
various experiences, their various backgrounds, their sensitivities. By learning to
submit all of these things over to the lordship of
Jesus Christ, by learning to listen, to consider the points
of view of each other. Through this, they learned what

(10:28):
it meant to be a church, a collective who was
surrendered to God's will together, not just surrendered to God's
will as individuals, but surrendered to God's will as a group.
Those aren't the same thing, right. It's one thing for
me to be surrendered over to God's will as a person.
It's another thing for me to actively participate and a
group of people who are learning to submit themselves to God.

(10:53):
You see Luke's description of these men. This is not
just an interesting historical footnote. This is a necessary ingredient
in his mind for them to be the type of
church who sent people. Why Because when a church learns
to be unified in diversity, it has the ability to
hear the Holy Spirits call more clearly. A monocultural church

(11:16):
of gathering people who all sort of like, look, act
think the same way, they might unknowingly start to believe
that God only works in one particular way, that he
only communicates through one method, that he only sends in
a single direction. In other words, there will necessarily be
blind spots when there's homogeneous spiritual communities. But in Antioch,

(11:42):
because of their unity rooted in diversity, this allowed them
to discern the Holy Spirit's call with a more complete
picture of God's Kingdom in mind. It gave them the
ability to understand the truth that the Gentiles were fully
welcomed into God's kingdom. This realizing this fact would have
been extremely difficult for a bunch of Jews to do

(12:02):
by themselves. That the Gentiles are welcomed into the Kingdom.
We saw this already. They struggled with the Samaritans, they
struggled with the Ethiopian eunuch. This is gonna blow the
doors off like gentiles. Pauld later rite in Ephesian three
ten that through the Church, the manifold wism of God

(12:23):
has made known and the original language, this verse literally
reads the multi colored wism of God has made known.
In other words, the church's unity within diversity is itself
a proclamation of the redeeming power of the Lord. When
we live united with each other, like when we look

(12:43):
at each other eyed eye and say, I just don't
agree with you on that, or like I my perspective
is a bit different. When we learn how to live
in unity, that's the proclamation of the Gospel. Think about it,
the mission that Paul and Barbus they're being sent on.
This is going to cross boundaries jew and gentile, rich
and poor, socially connected with those who are pushed aside.

(13:06):
Who better to recognize the Holy Spirit's call to cross
cultural boundaries than a church already living out that at home.
We sees our unity in diversity. It's us not dividing,
even though we don't see eye to eye on every detail.
It's this picture that offers a testimony that the Gospel

(13:26):
really is intended for all people. We embody this time
of reconciliation within ourselves. When we embody that reconciliation with
each other, we are better equipped to proclaim the good
news of reconciliation to the world. How in the world
can we announce the reconciliation of God with man that
God is drawing near to us so he can redeem

(13:48):
us if we don't live reconciled lives with each other.
In Revelation seventy nine, we see a heavenly vision of
God's kingdom. The apostle John writes this, there before me
was a great multitude no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people,
and language, standing before the throne and before the lamb.
This is so a church is unified in its differences,

(14:11):
even among its differences. This is not only a foretaste
of heaven, it's an effective witness of what God's kingdom
is actually like. When we walk in unity, we display
the reconciling power of the Gospel. For Leo's to be honest,
there's a lot of differences in this room. There's differences politically.

(14:33):
There's differences socioeconomically. There are differences culturally. There are differences
from how we grew up. There's differences theologically. We have
people that come from all kinds of backgrounds sitting in
this room. People who raise like a in sort of
a Baptist tradition. Other people who came from Methodists. We

(14:53):
have people who came from Lutheran, people who came from
a Catholic background. We even have people who came like
with no sort of spiritual rooting growing up at all.
And yet here we are all together as a collective
try to say, so, what's it mean for us to
display the reconciling and power of God with each other
as we submit who we are over to Jesus. For

(15:15):
the past year, the leadership team here at any Metro,
we've been clarifying what the church values like, what our
church values are. We've been digging hard at this for
almost a year, and through these discussions we've pinpointed that
one of the six core values of our church is
we are better together. This is what we think a
core value of our churches. We are better together. We

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are committed to building strong, Christ centered relationships with each other,
and we believe our love for one another serves as
a powerful testimony to the world. While we seek unity
and essential beliefs, we also embrace our differences, trusting that
they enrich our collective understanding of the Gospel. In other words,
there are some things that we say we have to
agree on. This we have to agree that Jesus is

(15:59):
the Son of God. But there's gonna be other times
that you your perspective on something even aid and alluditude before,
Like we could have a theological discussion like are there
people actually in heaven right now? Or is it like
when Jesus comes again? Like we could have a discussion
about that, But is that something we're gonna divide over,
Like if you and I don't see eye to eye
on that sub point of theology, do we divide over
that or do we consider the other person's point of

(16:20):
view and we think about, like, well, why do you
believe that I see things differently? Like that's really hard.
It's a lot easier just to find a group of
people that all say, hey, subpoint by subpoint by subpoint
by subpoint, we all shake our head at the same thing.
That's just not our reality here. Friends. Of beauty of

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our church is that we don't have to agree on
everything to agree on the one thing. In fact, are
different points of view often caused us to wrestle with
the Lord, to wrestle with the truth, so that we
end up saying, well, I think I have a richer
understanding of who I believe God is is because of
this push and pull. You see, when a church like

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ours embraces this type of spirit filled unity, it becomes
both courageous and discerning. Like it's courageous because we allow
the Holy Spirit to push us out of our comfort zones,
but it's discerning because we have multiple perspectives on which
to confirm the Holy Spirit's call. So the question today

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is are we actually living out that core value of
we are better together? Does that describe us well as
a church? Because some ways yeah, and in some ways
it's an aspirational value. We need to continue to strive
for that. So do you and I do we value
diversity only as this like branding opportunity as a cool
picture to put on a brochure, or do we view

(17:47):
our differences as God's strategic design for us being on
mission together? Like I will learn what it needs to
be faithfully present without there, because I'm learning to be
faithfully present here because it's so much easier sometimes just
to avoid the conflict, just to leave instead of dig
in and say, I do not know why you think
that Ascending Church is unified in this diversity. Second, Ascending

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Church is rooted in worship in prayer Verse two. While
they were worshiping the Lord, and while they were fasting,
the Holy Spirit said to them, set apart from the
Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have
called them. Then, after fasting and praying, they laid their
hands on them, and they sent them off. I want
us to see that the church in Antioch, they didn't
start like. They didn't approach missional living by starting with
like a strategic planning session. They didn't have a workshop

(18:37):
about apologetics and evangelism. They didn't start even with a
book like this. You know this book's good. This is
not a good starting place. Where they started was having
a sold out posture of worship in prayer with the
Lord saying, by my strength, I will mess this up.
By your leading, by your empowering, I can join with
you in your mission. They started with worship and prayer.

(19:00):
This missionary journey was not born out of ambition, their
own ideas, their own wisdom. It was born out of
their focused time with the Lord friends worship in prayer.
I want you to hear me on this. Worship in
prayer is not the things that we do before we
get to the real work like. It's not like the

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introduction to the real work, the prologue. Worship in prayer
is not what we do before we get to the
real work. Worship in prayer is the real work from
which everything else comes. I struggle with that. Maybe you
do too. Worship in prayer isn't what we do before

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the real work begins. It is the real work. Without
worship and prayer, what we often find ourselves is just
building our own kingdoms and then asking God to put
a stamp of approval on it, instead of joining with
the Lord as he's building his own. If we want

(20:03):
to be a missional church sending people to gospel work,
we must first prioritize being a people who worship and
pray together. We can't be we can't expect to hear
God's calling clearly if we are living so noisy and
such a self consumed life that we can't just slow
down and take time to be with God. You've heard
me talk about this explicitly in our back to school son,
and we're talking about Mary and Martha. We have to

(20:28):
be a people who linger in God's presence, as a
Psalma says in Psalm thirty seven to seven, be still
before the Lord and wait patiently for him, like that's
the real work. And by willing to be still before
God and wait patiently for him, you see it's in
this deliberate, God focused spiritual rhythm that we hear the

(20:50):
Holy Spirit's leading. At Antioch, the picture we see as
a church who didn't rush past that before doing anything else.
They pause, They worshiped, they prayed, they faceted, they labored
to be in tune with God's voice. And from that
posture they clearly heard the Holy Spirit say, now is
the time. These are the people? Send them, friends of

(21:15):
we to be a missional church. Then, before we rush
to do something for God, we have to take time
to be with God. Missional living is never born out
of frantic activity or your human cleverness. It has and
will always flow out of worship. As the sixteenth century
German monk Martin Luther famously said, I have so much
to you today that I have to spend the first

(21:36):
three hours in prayer. That is such a backwards picture
to our world today. To friends, what about us? Do
you believe that God has a calling on your life,
the calling that in many cases lines up with the
spaces that you already inhabit. You believe that His calling

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is clarified and empowered from intimacy with him. You believe
that prayer and worship are the foundations for the type
of service that are rooted in God's kingdom. This is importantly.
Are you willing to follow the Lord wherever he tells
you to go in those moments? Are you listening to

(22:19):
the Lord's leading in those moments? Or if you're honest,
are you just trying to do the religious thing and
check the box. So I feel good about myself because
I spent time in worship and prayer today. There's a
huge difference, Like we just spoke about during the back
to school Sunday, before we rush off to serve God,
we have to take time to be with God. This
is what we saw in the life of Mary and Martha.

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A sending church is rooted in worship, in prayer. Thirdly,
a sending church must navigate opposition verse six. They traveled
through the whole island until they came to Pathos. There
they met a Jewish sorcer and false prophet named bar Jesus,
who was an attendant of the pro council Sergius Paulis
the pro Counsul, an intelligent man sent for Barnabas and
solved because he wanted to hear the word of God.

(23:01):
But Elemis, the sorcerer, for that's what his name meant,
opposed them and tried to turn the procounsul from the
faith right. So barbas, it's all they hear the Lord's
call in their life. They obeyed, they went, and as
they're like journeying off like the almost from the start,
they experience frustration and resistance. Elemis is a false prophet,

(23:22):
a Jew who basically dabbled in sorcery. That's what this means.
Like a false prophet means that he's of Jewish origin,
but he's dabbling with sorcery. This charlatan who's basically worried
about losing his cash cow, he tries to derail their mission.
He's anything but receptive to the good news of Jesus
Christ because he's so self consumed. I want you to
understand that the ultimate end of sin is self absorption.

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Like when I give myself over to sin, the ultimate
end of that is I am so self absorbed that
I cannot hear God's voice, I cannot consider other people's
points of view. So that's this is here. He is
right here. He's so concerned about just keeping his money
train rolling that he's anything but receptive to the good
news of Jesus Christ. So, friends, is something we have

(24:08):
to realize. When you join with God and announcing his kingdom,
spiritual opposition will always occur. It will always follow when
you obey the Lord and you step into his mission,
whether that's practicing faithful presence, serving in a ministry like
we have on the upcoming things on your table like
with Elevate or the Friday night thing or family four twelve,

(24:28):
if it's matters of social justice, laboring to make a
difference in the lives of the underserved and the under
resourced here in our city, or if it's simply just
living purposely in your neighborhood, at your workplace, at home.
When you join God and making his kingdom known, you
should expect pushback that might come from people who mock
you and think that you're naive, that could come from
your own voicing side of your head. That's just sort

(24:50):
of like despairing, saying like why bother, what difference can
I even make It could come from the systems and
destructions structures of this world that are so anti God's
kingdom that it's hard to make any progress at all.
It could be spiritual forces of darkness at work resisting
the rule and reign of Jesus. I want you to

(25:12):
know that the presence of opposition doesn't mean that you're
in the wrong place. If anything, it's a confirmation that
you're exactly where God wants you to be. I would
actually argue that generally the only time that you and
I don't experience frustration, that we don't experience opposition is
when we're just sort of on the sidelines, like when
we're not engaged in obediently following the Lord. C. S.

(25:35):
Lewis wrote a really famous book called The Screwtape Letters
that was like a picture of this. The premise of
this book, it's a fictional book, is that there's this
senior demon named Screwtape, and he's writing a series of
letters to like this rookie demon so he knows how
to tempt the person he's been assigned. The book calls
this person his patient, and in one of these letters

(25:56):
that Screwtape writes to his like the guy he's training.
He says this, Indeed, the safest road to Hell is
the gradual one, the gentle slope, the soft underfoot, without
sudden turnings. In other words, the easiest way to keep
people from experiencing intimacy with the Lord, from living intentionally
for God's kingdom. The best way to do that is

(26:17):
just keep people comfortable, Just keep things going well in
their life. Just give them distraction, give them ease, opposition, resistance, setbacks,
those are good indicators you're on the path of Jesus,
because what did Jesus experience opposition, resistance, setbacks. First nine

(26:40):
of our text continues. Then Saul, who is also called
Paul filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elements
and said, you are a child of the devil and
an enemy of everything. That's right. An interesting footnote, the
word are the name barred Jesus. That was this guy's
official name. That means son of Jesus. And so Paul's
basically saying nope, like you're a child of the devil,
Like you're a son of the Satan. You're not a
son of Jesus. You're so full of kind of all

(27:02):
kinds of deceit and trickery. You will you never stop
perverting the right ways of the Lord. Now the hand
of the Lord is against you. You're gonna be blind
for a time, not able to see the light of
the sun immediately missed and darkness came over him. He
groped about seeking someone to lead him by the hand.
When the pro consul saw what had happened, he believed,
for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.
So fascinating detail that we can't rush by that Alemis

(27:24):
goes temporary, temporarily blind, because that should be reminiscent of Paul.
This is like Paul's own story, Like when he was
brought to repentance, it was he was stricken with temporary blindness.
And so what we can kind of read between the
lines here is like the same God who's who wooed
Paul to himself is also at work in this moment
in Elemis's life. He's wooing Elemis like sing like you're welcome, repent.

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Yet we're never told what he believed. Like if we're
just left hanging in this tension of Elemis, we don't know,
but we do know that something happened in the heart
of Sergeia's Paulus the Roman pro Council, that he did
believe in and become a follower of Jesus. Friends, it's

(28:11):
so it's been so true in my own life, Like
when I'm trying to join with God and what I
think He's doing and I'm faithfully there, like that doesn't happen,
But something else over here does something where I'm like, Lord,
I didn't even know that you were at work in
this way, So can I just give you the permission, Like,

(28:31):
don't try to do the Holy Spirit's job. Don't feel
like that it's your responsibility to bear the fruit. As
Paul would later write, like some people plant, some people water.
Like our job is just to be faithful, just to
be obedient, just to be present, and then we trust God. Like, hey,
you can do whatever you want with this worship. If
you want to grow it in the way that I'm imagining, awesome.

(28:54):
If you want to do something completely different with it,
I'm okay. When we face opposition, when we receive pushback
and frustration, I think my first instinct and maybe yours
is as well, it's just to try harder, to like
think well, how do I out argue or out explain
or outthink this person. How do I be more clever,

(29:15):
how do I be more competent? But I think in
those moments, the real invitation is like just return once
again to worship and prayer. Like my tendency is, Hey,
things aren't going well. God give me the reins for
a second. I'll fix this. And really I think the
invitation is just like, Lord, I'm seeing that this is

(29:35):
the truth, and I'm acknowledging that this isn't of your kingdom,
and I'm offering it to you. I'm asking you for
a move in this space. Zach Rayah four to six
says not by might, not by power, but by my spirit,
says the Lord of the hosts. May we remember that right.
It's not by your might, it's not by your power,
it's not by your cleverness. It's not by how good
of a job that you are having that conversation, or

(29:56):
how convincing your argument was. The whole thing is just
a submission to the Lord. So your role in the
middle of step back and opposition is just to be faithful,
just to stay anchored in the character of the Lord,
trying to reflect that character the best that you can,
saying God, I'm doing this to worship you. Please accept
my worship. I want your power and your love to

(30:20):
break through, not my own. Ascending church must navigate opposition.
So as we start to close, the question for us
is not do we want to be a part of
God's mission? If your follower, Jesus, you already are. The
question is, well, will I take the necessary steps of
my life so that I'm attentive to the Lord's voice? Like,

(30:41):
will I take the necessary steps so that I can
hear God's voice? Will I do that not just as
an individual, but as a collective. Will I humble myself
and stand firm when the resistance does come? See some
of us here today, you're sort of in this sending stage.
You know exactly what God is stirring in your heart.

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You know exactly the invitation He's laid at your doorstep.
Perhaps getting involved in one of the upcoming ways to
serve at your table. Maybe it's practicing faithful presence at
a place in your neighborhood, like a restaurant, a bar,
a fitness club. Maybe it's having that gospel conversation that
you honestly you've just been avoiding. Maybe it's that radical
act of generosity that just feels too costly, Like you
already know, like where the where God is inviting you

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to do? You already know that. Maybe you're in the
sending stage. Will you obey? Will you respond? Some of
us here today are in the standing firm stage. You've obeyed,
and now you're in the middle of all the discouragement
and the pushback, the confusion, like it's just kind of
throwing your hands up in the air, like does this
even matter? Like does it even make a difference? I

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wonder if I should keep going. If that's you can,
I encourage you turn to worship and prayer, Ask God,
give me the strength, give me the strength to obey,
stay the course, turn back to focus time with prayer
and worship, asking for God's power and love to break through. See,
it's my great hope that we learn to be a

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church on mission, that we strive to be ascending church.
That we we take the heart the picture from before,
this picture of all the arrows pointing out, that we
join together in moments like right now, that we come
together for these moments so that we can be reminded
of the truth of who Jesus says that you are,
of who Jesus says that he is. That you're reminded

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of the absolute, like unquenchable truth, that the love of
God will keep you, that you have been adopted as
His child, that you are firmly in in as part
of His kingdom. And it's from that that you have
all of the power in the perspective, through the power
through the Holy Spirit, to just go ascending. Church is

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unified in this diversity. It's rooted in worship of prayer
that it has to navigate opposition. Let's pray, Heavenly Father,
I pray for those who know that they're in descending
stage of life, that they can clearly hear your voice.
They know what you've been asking them to do, and
they're just hesitant. Lord. I pray for strength, for courage.

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I pray that you use your church to rally around
them so that they could be sent I pray for
the people who are on mission, who are trying to
stand firm, but man, it just feels like they're white knuckling.
I feel I pray that you would help us as
a church to rally around them as well, help help
them to continue to turn to your power, to your
love for their source of strength. So God, we love you,

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we need you. We know on our own we can't
do anything that amounts to anything. We need you, Lord,
So teach us to long for intimacy with you, so
we bempowered to be about your work, to see your
precious and holy name. I pray, maymen