How is being part of a church different from attending any other club or event?
WATCH
3-2-1: A Call to Prayer, 3 of 4 from September 21, 2025
“Jesus sends us as His body and maturing in Him means caring for our companions.”
Ephesians 4:4-16 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon explores the concept of the church as the body of Christ, emphasizing unity, spiritual maturity, and the importance of mutual care among believers. Pastor Michael discusses how Jesus sees the church as a unified entity despite apparent divisions, and how spiritual growth is a process that requires patience, prayer, and active participation in the body of Christ. The sermon encourages believers to pray for both spiritual wanderers and companions, highlighting the significance of each member in the body of Christ regardless of their current level of spiritual maturity.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 How are we tempted to minimize church?
💬 How would we describe where we are in our spiritual maturity?
💬 Which of our spiritual companions will we start praying for?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
📖 THE FOUNDATION OF JESUS’ WORK (Ephesians 4:4-11a)
📖 THE MYSTERY OF JESUS’ BODY (Ephesians 4:12b)
📖 THE MISSION OF JESUS’ BODY (Ephesians 4:12b-16)
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Well, hello, Good morning church.
Haven't met yet. My name is Michael. I'm one of the pastors here. And if this is kind of your first time, or if you're new to, like, exploring faith, we're in the middle of something that is kind of geared towards folks who are already on, like, the Jesus mission. So just so you know, like, you're welcome here.
I want you to hear our conversation this morning. And if you're skeptical or you're not quite sure, but I'm talking to people who already believe in Jesus specifically. And so you can be like, oh, great, this is nothing for me. Or you can say, oh, I get to hear how the family talks to one another before I decide to be adopted. So you get to hear kind of how Jesus heart and how he would encourage us.
And so that's like my caveat before I get started. We have been. We a couple of weeks ago launched the Grove Initiative for the first time kind of publicly and said, this is the start date for. As we're following Jesus into our neighborhoods, we want to raise up. Follow him in raising up 100 new leaders, planting three new churches, and seeing a thousand new people trust Jesus for the first time over the next 10 years, together with the other neighborhood churches, one in Lakeland and one in Sebring.
And that's big. Like, does anybody else get overwhelmed when you think about that for too long? I really do. And I said, okay, we can talk about that as long as we give something very, very practical that we can step into on a daily basis to start. And so we made this resource called 3 21.
It is literally as simple as I can make praying. And it goes like this. Pray for 3 people at 2pm for one purpose. So pray for 3 people at 2pm for 1 purpose. So if you wanna set an alarm, if you've got the ability to name your alarms, I have an Alarm set at 2:00.
And then when it goes off, it tells me, 3, 2, 1. Pray for three people at 2pm for one purpose. The purpose is that God would be accomplishing his will in the lives of the people that you're praying for. And so, like, we want for everybody to be growing spiritually. And we know that only God facilitates spiritual growth.
I don't know if you've ever thought about that, because there's a whole Market of like, Self help books and ways that people will tell you that you can hack your spiritual life. But just know if anyone ever grows spiritually, it's because God is doing it in them. It's not something that they are generating themselves. And so we want to make sure that we're working together with God as he is helping people to grow. And the three people that we're focusing on are actually three people that are in different relationships with Jesus.
So the first one Pastor Ryan introduced for us last week is we want toa be praying specifically for a spiritual wanderer. Wanna be praying for somebody who does not know Jesus yet. They're spiritually, we might say lost, but they're spiritual wanderer. I love Lord of the Rings, whatever. So it like as soon as I used that word I was like, oh, but not all who wander or lost.
And that's true. Not all who wander or lost, but all who are lost are wandering. They're searching for something, they're looking at their life, they're comparing it with other people's lives. They're trying to figure out how do I fill this hole. And so I want us to think about who are the spiritual wanderers that I know personally and how can I pray for one?
Now I know you know more than one and you can pray for them as the Lord leads you. But let's just make it as simple as we possibly can. Dedicate a season of time to pray for specifically one spiritual wanderer. And we're going toa talk about this passage a little bit more next week if the Lord allows us to. But there's a bunch of people that are coming to Jesus and the disciples are uncomfortable with their religious background.
They're Samaritans and they're coming to Jesus and they're like, jesus, what do we do? We don't usually talk to these people. These people aren't like us. Like what are we supposed to do? And he says look up, to look up.
The field is ripe for harvest, but pray to the Lord of the harvest becausee the laborers. The field is ready, but the laborers are few. And there's times I think where we look at, oh no, there are people who are not like me who are coming to Jesus, or there are people who are not like me that are asking spiritual questions. Are there are people who are not like me that are hostile to what Jesus has done in me. And we mistake the harvest for the enemy.
Where we look at the way that they're acting, we go, that person must be the enemy. And so we don't want to call what Jesus calls the harvest. We're tempted to call the enemy. We want to call the harvest, the harvest and ask that the Lord would bring people who were lost to him. Because the spiritual wanderers are the future found.
The people who are going to take the baton of the gospel into the next generation are currently spiritually dead Today. This morning I had that thought as we were starting this off and I was remembering a year or so ago as I began to these thoughts, put these thoughts down. I said, God, like whoever the future leaders of the church are, I suspect they're lost today. So would you start today so that they learn to trust you? And as I watched some people over the last couple of weeks give their life to Jesus, he reminded me when you asked me, they were lost, they were spiritually dead and now they trust me and I'm go going toa continue to grow them.
So we're goingna need to pray, but we're goingna make it through this. It's our habit together as neighborhood church to pray the disciples prayer. And it's not a magic spell or anything, but it's the way that Jesus told us to pray. And I'm simple enough to just do what Jesus says to do. So if you want to pray this out loud with me, I put the words up on the screen.
I think that's great. But more than the words that we say, it's the heart that we pray with that Jesus is looking at. So let's just take a moment, let's take a deep breath and let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen for our next person. So we're going to pray for spiritual wanderers, pray for one spiritual wanderer.
The next person that we want to pray for is a spiritual companion. A spiritual companion. This is somebody who is already in Jesus family, but somebody who, like I'm in the family with a brother or sister. So I'm gonna invite you, if you'd navigate with me to the book of Ephesians in chapter four. I'm just gonna stay.
I'm only gonna stay in one passage. I'll talk about some other passages, but I'll put those extra verses up on the screen for you. Don't have to navigate. But if you would navigate with me to Ephesians chapter four, that's where we're going to set up camp this morning. And we read some of these verses as earlier on in our worship.
And that was because I knew I wasn't going to doended an extended explanation of these first couple of verses. So I wanted us to be able to have heard them a couple of times. But as we begin, I'm going to pick up reading in Ephesians 4. 1 if you're following along in the blue Bibles is on page 1218 if you're having trouble, 1218 in the blue Bibles, Ephesians 4. I'm reading from the English Standard Version.
It says this. I therefore a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he also descended into the lower regions of the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
Let me pause there because there's a lot of words that are jammed in there. There's a lot of like church words that if you're not familiar with Jesus stuff, like there's just a, like a lot of words that we could have some baggage with. And again, I'm not gonna do an extended explanation of this cause there's stuff later on that we really do need to talk about. But I wanted to make sure that we read this because in our world sometimes we look at the church and what we see is division. But when Jesus looks at the church, he sees unity.
And I can't get into all of the different ways and there's just some stuff that we have to wrestle with. Jesus here is articulating his perspective. And he says, when I look at my people, I see one thing. I see one body and one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all. So he says, when I look at my church, I see one thing.
Now, regardless of how you see it, I think that's what Jesus is kind of saying here. He says, when I see it, I see it differently than you do. Which, I mean, if you've got a God who sees everything the way that you see everything, I don't know that you have a God like you have a mirror, actually. And so God sees things differently than we do. And Jesus s work is singular and unified.
It is undivided. The thing that Jesus did on the earth is singular and unified, and it is undivided. Now, Jesus gives each of us gifts, like as he brings us into this one thing that he's making. He gives each of us gifts and different gifts. But Jesus is the one who is in charge by the nature of his conquering death.
Like, that's what verses 8 through 10 are kind of getting at. Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gift to men. And saying he ascended, what does it mean? He also descended into the lower regions of the earth, like he died. He also, he who descended is also the one who ascended far above all things, that he might fill all things.
So he who died is also the one who came back to life. And the one who said, I'm going to die and I'm going to bring myself back to life, he gets to do what he wants. So in the day that you're like, I don't know, maybe I should negotiate. I don't think that I need to really follow Jesus and say, okay, well, when you die, when you, like, not kill yourself, but when you. You foresee that people are gonna kill you and you know that you're gonna come back to life.
And the day that you come back to life all by yourself, that's when you get to tell Jesus what to do. Okay, deal. Okay. As long as we're on the same page, the one who has conquered death is the one who is in charge. And he gives leaders as gifts to this unified thing that he's doing.
He says he gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry. I'm not talking about them today. I'll talk about them next week if the Lord lets us come back. But he, the one who is in charge, appoints other people to help him navigate St. But we'll Talk about that more next week.
Okay, we good? We're tracking. Let's do some more. All right.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. For building up the body of Christ. Now, there's some times where you come to a passage and it's really, really clear that this passage is dense and there's a lot of things to explain. And so I'm gonna admit that this is probably not the passage that I would go to to talk about the body of Christ. But I came to this text this morning.
As we have been preparing over the last couple of weeks. I came to this text, and I have just been awestruck at this phrase, the body of Christ. It hit me in a way that I had never ever approached it before. And so I just wantna make sure before we go on that when we say that he gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ. Body of Christ is like a word that we might use in church a lot.
And I'm afraid that maybe we haven't thought about it in a minute. So I just want to think about that phrase, body of Christ. Okay? Just body of Christ. What does that mean?
What are we talking about? So Jesus s body is central to his presence on earth. Like, Jesus could not have come and accomplished his purpose if he did not come in a body. In fact, early on, it was necessary for the apostles to clarify that anybody who says that Christ didn't come with a body is lying. If Christ didn't come in a body, then there's a demon that's telling them what they ought to say.
Like, the body of Christ was central to his presence on earth. Now, I don't get it exactly. Cause I'm like, okay, our problem is a spiritual problem. Couldn't Jesus solve that spiritually? Couldn't he just kind of like, come down as a spiritual entity and spiritually die?
And spiritually maybe, I don't know, but he didn't do that. But he does say that because I came in a body, I accomplished something that nobody else could. And that when you take my body out of it, you break the system. It is no longer the good news. Okay?
And I don't know that I understand all the details of why it is that way. I see it in the book. And so I'm simple enough to just be like, oh, that must be important. Jesus body is central to his presence in earth. And Jesus body is central to his completed work of redemption.
Like he says, one of the things that I want you to remember that I did is I want you to remember not just my blood that was poured out for you, but also that my body was broken for you. Jesus says he's leaving, says, I'm gonna give you a symbol so that you can remember two things. A my blood, which gives you forgiveness of sins, atoning, sacrifice, like that all makes sense. But he also says, you need to participate in eating my body, my flesh, My body was broken for you. And, like, I don't know if I think about that a little bit.
I'm like, well, wasn't the blood enough? Don't we sing about nothing but the blood? It's like, yeah, I like that song. But I'm kind of wondering, like, maybe it's something about the body too. Cause he said, remember both.
As often as you do this, remember the two things together. Now, here's the thing that I had never. This is where my head is, right? Because I have that in a category on a shelf in my mind, like, the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, communion. I take it into me as a sign of my fellowship with him, because you are what you eat, right?
But Jesus tells us that we are his body on earth as we trust him for salvation together, and that we are individually members of the body of Jesus. When you trust Jesus, the spirit of God takes you from your spiritual death and puts you into the body of Christ. He puts you into a spiritual family where you now have communion. Not only communion with God, but communion with every other person who is also following Jesus. Now, in my thinking, I don't know about you, but in my thinking, that's on a different shelf.
I've got a shelf that has church stuff and people relationships and gifts of the Spirit and the gifts of the spirit working themselves out together. I've got that on one shelf, and I've got a different shelf that has communion and fellowship with God and the blood and the bodyx. Like, in my thinking, those have been on different shelves. And the reason why I have paused in the middle of Ephesians 4 to tell you about the body of Christis is because those two things I think are on the same shelf. And I'd never considered that before.
Jesus puts the saved into the same body together for the building up. Like he says, I'm gonna put all of y'all together into my body. And so we have mutual Ownership of Christ's body. And we have obligation to his leadership. If he puts us into his body, then he gets to tell us what to do.
And we have a mutual ownership with him. He is our head and we are his body. Like, that's a cool thing. I like that. That makes me feel good, right?
But we are individually members of his body and belong to one another, too.
The only is body sharing. That's weird, right? We're like, I don't know, this feels like a movie or something. We're sharing bodies, we're switching places. Is a parent trap or something.
I don't know. But the only corollary to, like, mutual body sharing, I think, is marriage. Like Jesus says, when you marry somebody, like, you share each other's bodies, your body no longer belongs to you, belongs to your spouse. And that goes both ways. But marriage is a mystery that's supposed to illustrate our collective union in Christ.
Like, later on in Ephesians, Paul's gonna explain. He says, when you get married, there's something that happens that is supernatural. And that supernatural thing that happens in your human relationships is supposed to be an illustration for what Christ is doing in everybody together. Now, that seems big. Doesn't that seem kind of significant?
So, like, I want to ask, like, how are we tempted to minimize church?
Because I was not thinking about, you know, the cosmic body of Christ when I came in this morning. I was thinking, man, I'm really. I really hope I get to see Steve, because Steve is awesome. And if you don't know Steve, you should meet Steve. And Steve's really mad that I told you guys that you should come and introduce yourself to him.
How are we tempted to, like, minimize church? Because this is just, like, a thing we do, right? Like, the chairs are in the same place every week. Like, we talk about the Bible every week. Michael says, the purpose here is to celebrate Jesus every week.
This is the thing that we do, right? But. But what if. What if what God is doing in the world in this room is so much more than what we could see or even really begin to wrap our heads around? Because when I look at you, I don't see the body of Christ.
When I think of the body of Christ, when I think about my approach to communion, there's a distance here. There's a reverence. That thing is holy. I have to think about myself and how I'm approaching communion because I don't want to take it in an unworthy manner that's appropriate. The scriptures tell us to do that.
But do I have the same fear and reverence as I approach the body of Christ as we gather together.
And I'm afraid that for a long time I thought one was holy and the other was common. And he says, no, my beloved, what I am doing in you is holy. You belong to something bigger than yourself. My work in you is not just for your benefit, but for the benefit and blessing of the people who are next to you. Like if you can reach somebody, give a high five.
If we are the body of Christ, there's a sense in which Jesus gave you a high five this morning. There's a sense in which you are a representative of Christ to the other people who were also in his body. That's a high and holy calling. He used to call it. He used to call us a holy priesthood.
And I think we just kind of think like, no, that's not me. I'm just kind of. I'm just kind of Jeff. I'm just kind of Joe. I'm just kind of Bob.
I'm just kind of normal. Right? That's fine. It's okay if you see it that way. But I hear that you might look at the church in the world today and you might see a lot of division and you might see a lot of infight and you might see a lot of hope, hopelessness.
But here that when Jesus sees his church, he sees something unified that he is doing that he's in charge of, and he sees something holy that he is working out together through the hands of some common people.
Supernaturally, the church was founded by Jesus himself, by his death, his resurrection and then his commissioning. He sends us and the church is a holy presence in the world acting under the direction and empowerment of Jesus himself. Jesus entrusts belieververss with mutual ownership of his body. So how are we tempted to kind of minimize church?
Ye I don't know. You could probably just go to the lake.
And I don't say that to be like, oh well, you got to make sure you come on Sunday. Like, this is s not what I'm saying. I'm saying we have the opportunity to be the body of Christ if we will approach it as though that's what he is doing through what we're doing.
Part of our big idea is that Jesus sends us as his body. He calls us together and he sends us as his body. Before we leave, we'll read together Matthew 28. All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Therefore you get out of here.
Go make disciples.
Let's read some more Ephesians 4.
Let me read verse 12 again. It'just so good to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, by deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth, in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, and into Christ from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Jesus sends us as his body, and he calls each of us members of his body. And if we are members of his body, we have a thing to do. We have a role to play.
This is. I don't know if it is weird or not. It's just coming come to my. I was hearing a story about. It was about medical replacements and how the history of medical replacements and stuff like that.
And they were telling a story about a lady who. Her foot wasn't formed properly and she actually wasn't able to walk right. There was nothing wrong with the foot. She just couldn't walk on it, and surgery wasn't gonna fix it or anything like that. And so she was asking, hey, I see all of these people who have prosthetics because they've had diabetes or something like that, and they take off the foot and they give the prosthetic and then they can walk.
And I know there's technically nothing wrong with my foot. There's no danger of my foot whatever, but can I take my foot off so I can get a prosthetic? And the doctors wouldn't do it. Eventually she did get it to the place, but, like, she's like, it's there. It just doesn't work.
It's not gonna kill me. There's not gangrene or anything that's gonna come up my leg and terminate my life. And so that's where the doctor's like, yeah, you just probably just leave it. And she's like, yeah, but I just want to walk. Can I just walk?
And if there were a part of the body that wasn't working properly, like, we would probably sympathize with that perspective, correct? And we can look at the church and say, they aren't Functioning properly. Let's get rid of them. We don't need them. We can get along fine without them.
Problem is they're in prosthetic. There's not a spiritual prosthetic. But as we look at one another and as we begin to say like, ah, we can just kind of nod.
We don't need them over there, right? That's our temptation. But my friends, like, members of the body belong before they function.
Members of the body bel long before they function. As we're hearing that story, we're thinking, oh, this is an adult woman, she can make her own choices. She can like, whatever. But if you were looking at a baby and the baby, like, could somehow communicate telepathically, like, my feet don't work. He's like, buddy, you haven't even learned to crawl yet.
He's like, yeah, but these feet, they're useless. I can't even stand up. It's like, yeah, but you haven't figured out how to crawl. And then you stand up and then you figure out how to like, cruise along and then you walk like you're not mature. You're not going to cut off a baby's foot, right?
But the member of his body that he might look at and say is not functioning, so it should be removed. Like, it's just not mature yet. And parts of our body belong before they mature. And so when God puts us together in his body, the goal of what he's doing is maturity. Did you see that?
Did you see it?
For the building up of the body of Christ until we attain the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God. To mature manhood in the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children. Which means that we start as children, tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, which, when each part is working properly, makes the body growoss that it builds itself up in love. Like the goal is maturity. And we don't start mature.
I don't know why God does that. It's a little bit frustrating.
But members of the body belong even before they function. And we each are at different stages of maturity.
I'm not asking about your age, because I would never do that.
But your spiritual maturity is not as obvious to People as your, your age. Maturity. I've been blown away by some of the spiritual questions that our students ask because they're not just, like, taking it for granted. They're saying, no, no, no. How do I do that?
There's a spiritual maturity in our students that sometimes puts me to shame because they're grappling with, how do I follow Christ where He has placed me? And they've got way more limitations than we do. You remember when you used to have, like, parents who you had to listen to? Wasn't that awful? And they do it every day.
We're each at different stages of spiritual maturity. And so the invitation is to pray for our spiritual companions, pray for the other people in the body of Christ with us, because we haven't arrived yet. We all have need of growth. I don't think there's anybody who could look in the mirror this morning, even if we could look in a spiritual manner and say, oh, of course I have attained the measure of mature manhood to the stature of the fullness of Christ.
If you do, my friend, let's start over.
Be careful that we think we stand, lest we fall in the next step like we haven't made it yet. And so we're in this together. And this is a holy thing that God has put us together in. It deserves reverence, it deserves care. It deserves compassion and thoughtfulness.
We cannot be wanton in how we treat one another. We can't be flippant about how we approach the body of Christ, neither in the bread and the cup nor in the seats beside you.
So what does that look like? It looks like unity in verse 13. Until we all attain unity of the faith. It looks like increased knowledge and understanding of Christ. Until we attain unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.
It looks like discernment in verse 14. So they may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by humans. Cunning and craftiness and deceitful schemes. There's a lot of cunningness and craftiness and deceitful schemes.
It looks like discernment. It looks like true love. Speak rather speaking the truth in love we were to grow in every way into him who is the head. It looks like in verse 16, edifying others from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body growoss so that it builds itself, encourages itself, edifies itself, builds itself up in love. So Jesus sends us as his body and maturing in him means caring for our companions.
The goal is maturity.
And did you notice how we know if we're mature, what the litmus test was, who we're measuring up against?
Maturity is Christ's likeness.
It's to be more like Jesus today than I was yesterday.
So where would we, like, if had if we had a chart? Maybe a chart would have been helpful for me to put up for you. But if we had a chart, we could start the chart with dead. Okay? If I'm spiritually dead, I've rejected Jesus.
I don't think I trust Jesus yet. Like, he says, I'm spiritually dead. I don't know that I believe him. I'm kind of gonna tell him what I want. So spiritually dead.
And then somebody who, like, trusts Jesus. Those first steps, they're like a spiritual infant, okay? They're learning how to walk. They're gonna say stupid things. They're gonna figure, like, I don't know how to read yet.
And so you're gonna have to tell me what it says. Spiritual infant, like, okay? And then you've got, like, a child, somebody who I can read for myself. I don't know that I always get it. I don't always put it together properly.
But I'm trying. I'm trying to walk it out. But sometimes I'm not strong enough to actually, like, twist the jar open or a spiritual parent. Like, I don't get it perfect all the time, but I know some ofhow it ought to go. And I'm now teaching others how they ought to walk.
So if that's our continuum. If we've got dead and infant and child and parent. I think the next step actually is grandparent. But that's more than I can do today. Like, where would you place yourself on the continuum?
You gotta start there. I know the temptation to be like, well, now that you've given me that framework. I know exactly who they are, know exactly where they belong on that chart. Michael, let me tell you where they belong. I don't care where they belong.
I'm asking you where you are.
Because members of the body belong before they function. And so you are in the right place. You belong in the body of Christ whether you do it right or not. Okay? But start by knowing where youre at in the process.
Where would you say how would you describe where you were at in your spiritual maturity?
And remember that while we work, while we labor, while we pray. It is God who gives the growth. And we should be asking for spiritual growth along the way. So that's what we're trying to do.
At 2pm, pray for a spiritual wanderer, somebody who is spiritually dead. At 2pm, pray for a spiritual companion, somebody who's somewhere else on the continuum, somebody who's in the family. But man, they're having a hard time. In fact, if you wanted to, there's a couple of books there on the front. If you not, I put some in the back there.
If you need to grab one, like, take it home. It's our gift to you. But if you look at page six, there's something that I got for you and let me age myself. Does anybody remember your top eight'going? To be a very small percentage of us that remember before Facebook there was MySpace and it was awesome.
And in middle school, the pinnacle of friendship was to make it into somebody else's top eight, where Facebook was great, they had walls and all this kind of stuff. Back in the day, you had to poke people and stuff. It was a weird world. But on my space, on myace, you had the opportunity to put eight other accounts on your profile as like authorized friends, like the people. These are the eight people that I like the most.
And I'll tell you what, if you want to start middle school drama, you limit your friend group to eight people and put everybody on the Internet. It's going toa be promised. Okay, I'm going to ask you to make your top eight on page six. So someone in my church who's somebody that you could pray for in your church. Write a name down.
Who's somebody on your ministry team? Write a name down. Who's a Christian who lives on my street. Write a name down. Who's somebody that I work with?
Write a name down. Who's someone that my ministry team serves regularly? So like, if you're working outside of a church, somebody that you serve regularly, someone in your small group or a Bible study, someone that you know is facing a big challenge. Personally, a friend from my school, like, make your top eight, write some names down. You can write in the book, it's yours.
And I think you can probably make eight at least there might be some people in these categories. You're like, I don't know anybody there, right? And that's okay. But I'm not asking you to pray for eight. I'm asking you to pick one.
Just pick one. Who is the. And don't just pick it, just be like, ah, Susie was the first one I thought of, right? Like, pray about it. God, who would you have me to pray for?
And then Commit, Lord, I'm going toa pray for this person, my spiritual companion, every day at 2pm you don't have to tell them, but they might be encouraged if you did. And you're like, well, I don't even know really what to pray. I've got a chart for that too. Prayer focuses for every day of the week. You look at page nine, there's like, okay, what are you gonna pray on Sunday?
What are you gonna pray on Tuesday? What are you gonna pray? And then there's some verses and you're like, okay, that's cool, but like, I'm not gonna carry this book everywhere. We'll turn to the back and there's replicas of that chart and you can rip them out and you can put them on your dashboard or wherever you already know that you're going to be at 2pm Just put that paper there and then you've got it right when you're ready to go, if you don't want to do that, you can download the phone wallpapers off of the app, you go to More info and tap the button and you can download those because you're always going to have your phone with you. Don't tell me that you don't.
It's okay. Let's just be honest, right? You've got that and you're like, yeah, but what do I say? Well, there are page after page every day of the week. There's.
Not only have I produced the Scriptures for you that I told you you should look up, they are on this page. I've also given you some thoughts about how do I pray these scriptures for that kind of person.
It's as simple as I can make it.
And there's something in me who grew up kind of evangelical and Southern Baptist, and I'm like, don't tell me how to pray. I got to pray the way that God tells me. And it's got to be spontaneous, like, okay, that it's fine. But like, you could use this to start. And praying these words is better than not praying at all.
Jesus tells Peter to watch and to pray so that you may not enter into temptation. The Spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. Life in the Spirit does not automatically quench the conflict with the flesh. Genuine Christian struggle. Authentic Christians fail.
It happens. We should not expect everybody to have achieved mature manhood all the way up to the stature of Christ. We never outgrow our need for forgiveness from our Savior. Did you notice how he taught us how to pray?
Gosh, he's so Sneaky sometimes that Jesus, forgive me as I have already forgiven other people. That's not what I want to pray. I want to pray Jesus, forgive me all the way and help me to forgive other people a little bit. And that's not what he says. He says, you should ask me to forgive you with the measure that you are willing to forgive another human.
We never outgrow the need for forgiveness from our Savior. He says, bear one another's burden and so fulfill the law of Christ. Obedience to Christ includes working with others as they grow in obedience. Another believer's disobedience. So somebody else's disobedience is a burden to you even when you've done nothing wrong.
Jesus sends us as his body, and maturing in him means caring for our companions. Therefore, confess your sins, not to your pastor. I mean, you can do that. I'm willing, if you need somebody to confess to, you don't know where to go. I'm happy to hear your confessions, but you don't need me.
Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The Spirit chooses to work through our horizontal relationships for spiritual purposes. God is pleased to answer our corporate prayers when we agree together that something else he did when he taught us how to pray, he said, you guys should pray. Our Father give us. You can't pray the disciples prayer by yourself.
I mean, you can, but he designed it so that y'all are praying it together for one another. And I think that says something about his heart. So. But I mean, the simple question is like, which of our spiritual companions are we going toa be praying for this week? I want to give you some time because Jesus sends us as his body and maturing in him means caring for our companions.
I want to give you some time to, like, think about that, to write some names down, to pray about how God is meeting with you this morning. And so we're just gonna take a couple minutes. You don't have anywhere else to be? Lunch. Aw, wait.
We're definitely gonna get out before the Methodist, so you don't have to beat them to lunch. Like, just take your time and we'll take some time to pray and meet with God. How is he leading you to be praying for our spiritual companions this morning? We'll just take a couple minutes in silence before we close together and singing.
