The Best Use of the Time

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Best Use of the Time

Chet Phillips

Transcript

My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here, excited to be here with y'all this morning. I recently read an article on the Gospel Coalition written by a man named Joe Carter, and he was just reviewing some research that had been done by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, and that's where George Barna works. He's over top of that research center. And they recently did a study, and basically one of the major findings was that of self-reporting Christians, and we're going to get to that in a second, but people who would, if you gave them a little fill-in-the-blank or checkbox and they had to put whether they were Christian or Muslim or nothing, they would check Christian.

Again, 60% of them don't believe that the Holy Spirit is a real being. So the Holy Spirit is not a real person, does not have personhood, is more of a force or some kind of an idea. So that's startling. The Holy Spirit is a real being, but that means 60% of the people who would say they're Christians aren't Trinitarian, so they don't believe some basic doctrine. But the beginning of this article, it kind of goes into understanding what it means to be kind of a self-reporting Christian.

I want to read some of this. It says, determining how many Christians are in America depends on how we limit the term. For example, the vast majority of Americans, right at 70%, still self-identify as Christians. So if you just ask somebody in the U.S., are you a Christian? 70% of them will say yes. And at first, that sounds great.

Sweet. Sweet. 70% of Americans are Christians. But then, if you break this down further, it says, if we consider only those who consider themselves to be born-again Christians, the number drops to about 35%. So being born again means I wasn't a Christian when I was born.

I didn't just get born into this and grow up Christian. I actually had to, at some point, repent of sin, place faith in Jesus. I had to have him change me. That's what a born-again Christian is, that I was at one point dead in my sin, and now I've placed my faith in Jesus. Just so you all know, that's what we believe. That's what we are, is that we've had to be redeemed by Christ, and we had to place our faith in him.

So it's not just, I celebrated Christmas growing up. My favorite movie is Christmas Vacation, so I'm a Christian. That's not what this is. It's, I actually have placed my faith in Jesus. Well, that drops the number to 35%. It keeps going.

It says, it breaks it down further, and they have a category called Integrated Disciples. They hold beliefs like the Bible is accurate and the reliable word of God. They believe that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and just, meaning he's a good creator of the universe, and that he still rules the universe today, and that our choices are moral choices that honor or dishonor God. So, the percentage of Americans that believe the Bible is God's word, that God is good, and he rules over the world, and that our choices are moral choices, is 6% of the population in the United States. That's also what we are.

We believe that the Bible is true. That's why we spend all this time every Sunday opening it. That's why we study it together. That's why we do the things in it that we don't want to do. Y'all know that? That's obedience.

We read parts of the Bible where we go, I wish that wasn't a rule, but okay. I trust that you're good, and you're all-knowing, and you're powerful, and you rule over the universe. That's 6% of the population. The reason I share that is that we're in the third week of our series where we're saying, I am a missionary, and I don't want us to miss the fact that if you are a Christian who believes the Bible and actually seeks to apply it to your life, you are the vast minority in the country that you live in, and that you already live on a mission field. The idea that we're Americans, so we should send missionaries abroad because that's where the pagans are, is incorrect.

That you are surrounded by people who do not know Jesus. Many of whom do not want to know Jesus, or in some ways, worse, already think they're Christians when they aren't. Some of the work we have to do in the South is deconvert people from fake Christianity so that we can convert them to real Christianity. It's 6%. Let's say it's better in the South.

Let's say it's 25%. Let's say it's 30%. That means that on the road you live on, probably 7 out of the 10 houses are filled with people who don't know Jesus. That the job you work, probably 7 out of 10 people who don't know Christ. Of the friends you have, 2 out of the 3. That's just a joke about how well you can make friends.

But there's this reality to, we're surrounded by people. When you're stuck in traffic, 8 out of 10, 7 out of the 10 of the people in traffic with you, when you're in line at the grocery store, we're surrounded by people who don't know Jesus and it matters that they don't know Jesus. We want them to know Christ. And so it matters that we take seriously the call to be missionaries. That's what we've been studying. We're in Colossians chapter 4.

If you want to grab a Bible, go to Colossians chapter 4. We will have this on the screen as well. But we are Christians and we want people to know Christ. And in Colossians 4, Paul's writing. He's in prison. He's writing to them.

The past two weeks we looked at verses 2 through 4. We're going to look at 5 and 6 today, but we're going to pick up in 2 just to kind of walk through and remind us what we've been looking at. He says this, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us. And this is what we looked at the first week was that for us to be effective missionaries, we need the effective work of God. And therefore, we ought to be praying, being watchful in it and steadfast in it.

Spencer pointed out that without prayer, it ain't got no gas in it. That prayer is the fuel for mission. And therefore, if we're not praying, we're not going to see the effective work of God. And so we have to be, if we're going to be a missionary people, we have to be a praying people. Then he says this, he says, at the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.

So second week, we looked at the fact that Paul's in prison and he's not praying that he'd get out. He's not praying that he'd get favor with them, that he'd be released, that they'd know that he was innocent. He's not praying any of that. He's praying, hey, while I'm in prison, pray that the Lord will open some doors for me to share the gospel. And he says, it's a word that I have to declare and pray that I'll make it clear. And so we looked at the fact that as we are people praying for opportunities, that we have to be ready to articulate the gospel.

We have to be ready to tell people the good news about Christ. And then here's what we're going to look at. Paul turns in five and six and begins to give them instruction. He says, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. That's what we're going to study kind of bit by bit as we go through today.

So let's pray and let's study that together. God, we ask for your grace. We ask for your help. We ask for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to understand this, to apply this, and to be effective missionaries to the people around us who don't know you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So let's read that again. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. The first thing I want us to look at is that term outsider. There's one word here that he uses to describe those who don't know Jesus. He says outsiders.

Now we probably don't use that language a lot. Maybe you thought it was a pretty good book that you read in middle school. But Paul says that we ought to understand that those who are inside and those who are outside. This idea that there are those who are in Christ. That's who he wrote this book to. He says to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae.

This idea of being an outsider is a negative term. But Paul's not against outsiders. Christians aren't against outsiders. We actually don't believe that we are better than outsiders. Do you know that about Christians? That we don't believe we're better.

We just believe we're better off. That if I'm in Christ it's not from something I've done. It's from something Christ has done. And therefore I'm better off to have Christ than to not have Christ. That there are those who are in Christ and those who are outside of Christ. And to be outside of Christ is to be outside of the love of God.

To be outside of the grace of Christ that redeems. To be outside of the family of Christ that he's made. And this is extremely helpful that Paul uses this word. Because what he does is he says hey there's two types of people in the world. Those who belong to Jesus and those who don't. And that is the primary way that we ought to as Christians look at the world.

Now. My prayer is that there are some people in this room this morning. Who would be considered outsiders. Who have not yet placed their faith in Jesus. Let me tell you something. You're welcome here.

And we want you to know Jesus. Because we believe he's good. That he saves sinners. We have that little blue screen thing that says we believe that Jesus is better than everything else. We actually believe that. I recently learned how to deep fry Oreos.

Yeah. It's actually a lot easier than you think. I don't mind sharing it with you at some point. If you'd like to gain some weight. I went on vacation with my family. And one of the things I did was I deep fried Oreos for them.

Because deep fried Oreos are delicious. And I love my family. And I want to share good things with them. And the truth is that's how we feel about Christ. But so infinitely more.

That he's good. That he's wonderful. That he redeems. And so we want to share Christ with other people. Not because we think we're better. But because we think he's better.

And that we're better because of him. We're better off because of him. And so this idea that we would look at the world and we would see it as there are those who are outside of Christ. And there are those who are in Christ. And we want everybody to be in Christ. Because he's good.

But this is helpful for us. Because it's quite possible that you use a different gauge. And you probably don't use the language of inside, outside. But you probably have a different gauge of who you think is your club. Maybe it's Americans. Maybe it depends on what the competition is.

But we're for America. Maybe it's who you vote for. So you're an elephant or a donkey. Some of you are like, I'm Green Party. Well, good for you, man. Like, maybe that's your club.

And if people believe these things, then that's who's inside. Maybe it's people who like a certain thing. Ride motorcycles or play board games or whatever. This soccer team, that soccer team. We pick random things to say that this is the main thing that I'm about. This is who I know.

These people are my people. And the reality is, Paul says, no. You have people who are in Christ. And then you have everybody else. And we ought to be mindful of when we're walking in life with people who don't know Christ. That's how we ought to think about the world.

That there are people on the other side of the globe who belong to Christ. And therefore, they belong to you. In a much more real way than people who live across the street. That vote like you. Drive the same kind of vehicle as you. Enjoy the same type of fried chicken as you.

But don't know Christ. And that you ought to consider. When you're interacting with people, whether or not they belong to Jesus. For their good. Not in some sort of elitist way. And we're going to get there.

Not in some sort of, I'm better than you. That's not the reality. That's not what we believe. We believe that we're better off because of Jesus. But that we want everybody to know Jesus.

And so he says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders. That you ought to think, am I going to be interacting with people who don't know Jesus? And you ought to think about how you ought to interact with them. So that's the next thing he says. He says, making the best use of the time. So let's talk about time for a second.

Let's talk about this idea of making the best use of the time. But we're going to talk about time before we talk about using it well. Everybody has a limited amount of time. That's why we talk about spending time or wasting time. It's running out. We don't know how much time we have.

But we know that we're, in any given week, we're all given the same amount of time. But we don't know in our lives how long that's going to be. And one of the things about time is that it speeds up the older you get. It runs by faster. This is why, parents with small children, you can win anything with your children. Because you've got all the time in the world.

Just so you know, when you're facing off with a toddler, if they're sitting in a high chair, 30 minutes in a high chair is like a week to them. 30 minutes is nothing to you. You can win a battle of wills with any toddler you'd like. Because time is slow. At the beginning of my son, it was his second day of kindergarten. We're in the line to go drop him off for his second day of kindergarten.

And he's in the back and he goes, Daddy, I can't wait until I'm six and all of this is over. I thought, ooh, buddy. It's going to take a little longer than that. But guess what? The first day of kindergarten was apparently a really long day. And the second day was daunting.

But if you think about it, elementary school is a really long time because it's twice the length of your life. You enter when you're five. You exit when you're ten. It's half your life was spent in elementary school. It took forever. Middle school was a little faster.

Some people stayed in a little longer than others, but it was a little faster. High school was a little faster than when you went and got your first Job or you went to college. That zipped by pretty quickly. Suddenly you turn around. You've lived in a neighborhood for five, ten years. You've been married for 20 years.

You've got 30-year-old children. You look and you realize you've been in a job for 35 years, 40 years. You start clipping off decades. It feels like 1980 was 10 years ago. And it was 40 years ago. There's a reality to this.

Here's the other thing we believe about time. I didn't invent this illustration, but I think it's helpful. Let's say this is a timeline. This yellow part of the string is your life. You're born here. During your life, you work some jobs, have some friends, have some hobbies.

Maybe you get married. Maybe you have some children. Maybe you work different jobs. Maybe you work one Job for years and years and years. Pretty soon, 60, 70, 80, 90. But at some point, your life ends.

You say, well, that looks pretty short. There's a saying. Life is short. But we're Christians. And we believe there's an eternity. And that when you die, you step into eternity.

Whether you know Christ or don't. So here is your life, and you meet Jesus. Everybody meets Jesus at some point, face to face. For those who know Christ, that's what we've been waiting for. And for those who don't know Christ, that's terrifying. And then we go into eternity.

And pretty quickly, we've been in eternity three, four, five, ten, twenty times longer than we were ever on earth. We sing Amazing Grace, and it says, we've been there for 10,000 years. And we have all the time left. We haven't clipped off any amount of time because it's eternity. If you belong to Jesus, this is joyous. There's peace.

There's family. There's good food. There's delight. There's worship. You're finally at home. And it never ends.

And if you don't belong to Jesus, and you stood in your own righteousness, which the Bible would say is unrighteousness, and you said, I'll bear the penalty for my sin, rather than trusting Christ and His grace, that He would bear the penalty for your sin. And Jesus says, this is a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. That is a place where the worm doesn't die and the fire isn't quenched, meaning internal and external torment. Now, if we're Christians, at some point, we've got to realize we believe this part is more important than this part. At some point, if we really believe what we say we believe, then we've got to acknowledge that this part ought to be lived in light of this part.

We understand this in small ways. You know when you take your kids to like a little fair, or if you go to a fair and you see little kids and they're all running around with like Elsa on their face, or like a tiger face or whatever? There's a reason why that washes off. There's no actual tattoo artists set up at the county fair. Because children shouldn't make decisions like that. Because when you're eight, looking like a tiger is amazing.

Not when you're 38. Makes it harder to get a job. And the reality is, some of us run around making decisions that only make sense here. And if we belong to Jesus and we believe in eternity, we ought to make decisions that make sense here. And we ought to care. We ought to care deeply about our co-workers and our neighbors.

And what this is going to look like for them. That's why Paul says, make the best use. Because you only got a little bit here. The rest of it's here. So he wants us to make the best use of the time.

That we would consider, as we interact with people, do they know Christ? And how do I use that time well? Some of you, you're in school right now. You're in high school. You're about to spend four years. Or you're about to be done spending four years with people.

Four years. That you've known them. That you've connected with them. That you've been their friend. Have you told them about Jesus? Have you prayed for them?

Some of you, you're finishing up your major. You've been in the same classes with the same people. You studied together. Laughed together. High-fived. Cried in the same math classroom together.

Have you prayed for them? Have you cared about their eternity? We'll turn around. And you'll realize, I've lived in the same neighborhood for ten years. Did you spend the time well? Did you pray for your neighbors?

Did you get to know them? Did you go out of your way to be a little weird here? Because you care about something that's way, way more important? Or we'll work a job for twenty years. Twenty years. You'll have had twenty years.

Did we care about our coworkers? Did we plead with God for the sake of their souls? That's what he means by make the best use of the time. Do we actually live as if we believe eternity is real? Brandon Clements, one of the pastors at Midtown in Lexington, is part of the Grassroots Network with us. He helped co-author a book called The Simplest Way to Change the World.

And in it, they're talking about how to use your home. How to use hospitality as a way to try to help share the gospel with people. And they list four things that they think are current in our culture that help fight against us. actually using our homes well. And I would say it's the same for using our time well. But the four they list are, first one is isolation.

That we just isolate ourselves? That it's easy to live by ourselves? That our culture allows us to be isolated from one another? Cambria, if you'll go to the isolation's level. That we would be, we can just work at home. We can work and go home.

We can pick up food. We can cook food for one. We don't live in a village. You don't have to. The truth is, a lot of us don't really like people. And I'm with you.

We're Christians. We believe people are the worst. It's just easier to be. We have this new thing that's consistently growing. But we have social anxiety where it's just hard to be around people.

You talk yourself out of it. It takes energy to do it. It's scary. And so there's this idea that most of my life, I just kind of want to be by myself. It's easier that way. The second one is relaxation.

That a primary goal in our lives as Americans is just to have downtime. That work hard just so that you can rest. That the purpose of your home is for you to get away from everything. The purpose of your home is to just be protected from the world. That it's your oasis. That we somehow deserve the idea that we would work, but then we would just go relax.

And that we just need all this extra relaxation time. And it keeps us from being good missionaries. And it wastes our time. Not to say relaxation is bad, but that we have overdone it. Third one is entertainment. Entertainment.

Once a week, my phone dings and tells me how much time I spent staring at it. Very rudely, I might add. But how much time we spend on social media, how much time we spend watching television, how much time we spend watching TV shows. If you could get a doctorate from watching The Office, I would be Dr. Phillips. We waste our time just being entertained.

Like that's the purpose of life. The fourth one is busyness. We just fill our schedules with things that don't really matter. But our schedules are full. Got too much going on. Got too much on my plate.

Can't participate in that. We live our lives as if this is all that really matters. And honestly, I think the four of those come together to just give us an overall apathetic numbness to the reality of the world. That there are those who are in Christ and those who are outside of Christ and that it matters eternally. I think we have to consider what really matters and are we living our lives as if we actually believe the gospel and are we living our lives in a way that makes the best use of the time. And the way that phrase works to make the best use of the time, it actually means redeeming the time.

Meaning buy it back. Buy up the time. So you're going to have to spend the time. Well, redeem it. Use it for something good. So that we would be wise in our walking with outsiders.

So that we would redeem the time. Now think about this. Some of you are in school. Well, redeem that time. Get to know your classmates. Pray for them.

Share the gospel with them. Go out of your way to be around them. You say, I don't really like being around people. Okay? Love people enough to put up with it. You don't have to be an extrovert to be a good missionary.

You can do this one-on-one. You can do this slowly, but we have to do this. And we have to do this intentionally. Some of you work 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week with the same people. Guess what? God in His grace has infiltrated your workplace with a Christian and held four or five other office mates hostage.

They can't go anywhere. They have to clock in. They have to stay there. Pray for them. Talk to them. Don't just stare at your phone on your lunch break.

Get to know people. I've had people say before, I just don't, it's so hard to work where I work because I'm the only Christian. Thank Jesus that He sent a Christian. Don't retreat from that. Charge into that. Thank God in His mercy.

It's so hard to be in my neighborhood. All my neighbors are pagans. They're up partying at night. Why don't you be up praying? Why don't you go to some of the parties? Why don't you interact with them?

Why don't you love them? Why don't we take seriously the idea that we were missionaries? The reality is that if you were like, okay, I'm going to move to this other country to be a missionary, you would consider how am I going to join and infiltrate the culture and how am I going to be able to get along with the norms of life with them and how am I going to use that for the gospel? And the reality is if you belong to Jesus, you have already done that part of it. You're already in the culture. You already have people around you.

Now begin to be a missionary. Use the time wisely. There are kind of rhythms of life that people go through and we get to join the normal rhythms of life with gospel intentionality. So if you work at a gym, start praying for the people at the gym. Have you ever been at a park? Have you been at the gym and some weirdo comes over and just starts talking to you?

I'm not talking about hitting on you. I'm just like some person who just wants to be your friend for some odd reason. You have this thought, at least I do, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I came to the park because I wanted to be away from humans and this one showed up and wants to be my friend. But what if I thought less about this and more about that and I said, thank you, Jesus.

This person wants to talk and now it's my chance to talk. This person wants a friend. They must be lonely or they have a bunch of friends and this is how they make them. But now they've run into a Christian and so I get to start redeeming this time. If you go to a gym, if you do recreation, if your children play little league sports or you go sign up for an adult kickball league. My children play, my son signed up for t-ball.

And I don't want y'all to feel sorry for me, but it did almost kill me. I don't know much about baseball, but I know about sports and watching them practice was torture. But I realized I'm going to be here, all these other parents are going to be here and I need to just start getting to know these people. So I just started being the person who just went around and started talking to other parents. And guess what? Just let me tell you some things.

They know they're going to have to stay part of the club and be there with their kids. They're not going to be rude to me. They're going to let me, they don't want me to talk to them, but they're going to let me come talk to them. And so I just started going and meeting all the dads and talking to them, trying to get to know them. Thankfully, COVID ended, t-ball, and I didn't have to keep going, but I was going to redeem the time. You eat 21 meals a week.

So do most of the people around you. Some of you are like, no, I do intermittent fasting. Okay. Well, good for you. You're already fasting. Start praying.

So the amount of time you would have been eating in the morning, pray. Pray. And then use your other 14 meals to try to build relationships with people. There's something about inviting people around the same table that signifies we belong to each other. Use your home to invite people to eat a meal. If that's too daunting, start by inviting them to a restaurant you like.

Start going to lunch with coworkers. But you're going to eat, start eating with people to build relationships with them. Start using the normal rhythms of life. There are neighborhoods where you can join Facebook groups, where you can have a bonfire, where you can have a cookout, where you and a group of people can watch the same TV shows. Some of you are moms with little children and you spend all your time at your house with little children. Guess what?

They need to know Jesus and you have hours upon hours to disciple them. Redeem that time. You're teaching them that school's important and that brushing their teeth is important. Have you taught them that Christ is important? It matters. Also, there are other moms potentially in your neighborhood that are also watching their children.

Redeem that time. Start inviting them to watch kids together. Start using your children as a mission opportunity. I use my children all the time as mission opportunities because it makes me less scary to have kids with me. I use them to go talk to other parents. I use them when I go knock on doors in my neighborhood to just tell them a thing or get to know them.

I have my kids with me because they just would assume I'm less likely to attack them. I'm not going to attack them anyway, but they at least get to see, okay, he's got a kid. He probably won't. But we want to redeem the time. We want to find things that our culture's normally doing. The trunk or treat that we're doing for Halloween.

Halloween is not a primary Christian holiday. It's not our favorite, you guys. But guess what? All your neighbors are going to come knock on your door or they're going to let you go knock on their door. Get to know your neighbors. Redeem the time.

They're going to knock on your door. You don't have to get super into Halloween, but to be thankful that all of your pagan neighbors are going to come hang out with you for a minute and you get to be kind and you get to be welcoming and you get to say, hey, we haven't met yet. Where do you live? It's nice to meet you. You get to talk to them. You get to know your neighbors one night of the year where they might all show up.

We're doing trunk or treat because the same thing, this neighborhood's going to show up. We get an opportunity to care about their souls for eternity. We get an opportunity. Christians should join PTA. Christians should join neighborhood watch associations. Christians should join every annoying little club that's offered just so you can redeem the time and be around some people who don't know Jesus.

Could you imagine? You go to meetings as a missionary. You help coach as a missionary. Let's not waste it. But let's buy it back.

So if we're in the right frame of mind, we're intentional, we're praying, and we're redeeming the time, this is what he says next. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. So he says, be intentional about being around non-believers. Then he says, here's how you interact with them. Here's how you talk. Here's how you talk.

Make it Clear

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Make it Clear

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer. I am one of the pastors here. So I don't know if you noticed last week and this week. Bulletins are back, you guys. Yeah, we stopped those before the pandemic.

They're back. So it's an encouragement. If you want to take sermon notes, there's a space in there. If you want prayer, we believe in prayer in our church. And if you want corporate prayer from the rest of your church family, you can reach out to our secretary for that. And it's also got some announcements in the back.

So there you go. They're back. All right. We are in a three-week series called I Am a Missionary. This is a three-week opportunity for us to refocus on what it means to be an everyday missionary here in our city. Last week, I started with what is one of the more important steps in mission and one that is often skipped, including by us, and that is prayer.

That if we aren't praying, if we're not getting on our face and pleading for God to save sinners, pleading for God to bring the revival that we want to see in our city, we are missing out on the power of God. We're missing it. So if you weren't here last week or you didn't listen to that online, I encourage you to go back and listen to that. If we are missing that aspect of mission, we have skipped a step. So we are in Colossians 4, verses 2 through 6.

We spent a lot of time last week in 2 and 3. This week will be more in verses 3 and 4. So you can follow along on the screen behind me. You can go to your Bibles on page 573 in your blue Bibles. But we are going to continue to look at what it looks like to grow as an everyday missionary.

In college, when I was first learning about this idea of being a sent missionary locally, being an everyday missionary, of learning about evangelism, the idea of sharing the gospel with those who may not believe, who do not believe, it was awkward at times. I was learning how to do it. And there were a lot of awkward interactions that I had in college and learning how to do this and sharing the gospel with others. And I remember one in particular. There was a freshman. I was a junior.

He was in my freshman orientation group. And he was in it. Spent some time with them. And as we're getting to know each other, getting to hear a story, it sounds like he doesn't really want anything to do with Jesus. And then we went to Sonic and we're talking. And I remember sharing the gospel with him.

And he was beet red in his face. Like you just tell with everything in him. He didn't want this message. He didn't want anything to do with Jesus. And I shared with him. And that was the last time we really ever talked in college.

Like for the rest of college, he just, every time he saw me, he just kind of looked away and just wouldn't talk to me. And I was like, oh, well, that's awkward. And that happened a little bit. There was moments of rejection where he shared the gospel. Maybe they didn't avoid me for the rest of the college, but they made it abundantly clear I don't want this for me. Quite a bit of that happened.

But I do remember one story in particular where there was a guy that I was getting to know. We were, you know, I go to his freshman hall and we play hacky sack together. You know, what college kids do. I guess they still front row. Do they still do that? No?

Okay. Back then, when hacky sack was a thing, all right, getting to know each other, getting to know his story a little bit, and then slowly started to bring in the gospel and share it with him. And he was resistant, but listening and continued to process. And then he went away for winter break. And when he came back spring semester, he said, I'm in. He said, I've placed my faith in him.

I'm a follower now. And he still is to this day. We keep in touch. He lives in Houston, Texas. He's married. He's part of a local church there.

Still following Jesus. And I love it. And the reality is I would have 30. I will have 100 of those awkward conversations if it means just one of those results and that kind of eternal life change. That's the hope. That's what we're going for.

As we are seeking to grow in being everyday missionaries, we would learn what it looks like to share Christ. And today we're going to get a little bit practical. As we walk through verses 3 and 4. As we seek to grow in being everyday missionaries. So let me pray and then we will jump in.

Lord, we love you. We thank you for your word and what it means to us. God, I pray that you'd help us listen and that we respond. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.

Verses 2 through 4. Mostly being verses 3 and 4. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. All right.

So if we want to grow in everyday missionaries, I want us to see three parts of this passage that I think are important. The first is that we would share the gospel no matter your circumstances. Share the gospel no matter your circumstances. He says, on account of which, I am in prison. Paul is writing this letter from prison. There are four, they're called prison epistles, four prison letters that while Paul was in prison for sharing the gospel, he wrote Colossians, he wrote Ephesians, he wrote Philemon, he wrote Philippians, these letters to these different churches and different people.

And he's writing this from prison. All right. So he's not in a good state. And even the years leading up to this, it hasn't gone well for him. All right.

So he, on one of his missionary journeys, he is praying and God says, I want you to go to Jerusalem and there you're going to be arrested. And he says, okay, he's obedient. And then he goes to Jerusalem. He gets arrested. The Jews there that hate Paul try to have him killed. And then he's transferred as a prisoner to Caesarea, which is near the coast.

Spent a few years there in prison. And then he appeals to Caesar. He wants to appeal his case to Caesar's and Caesar Roman citizens. So he gets on a ship. He's on his way to Rome. And it shipwrecks.

And after he shipwrecks, he ends up on an island. He gets bit by a snake. I mean, it's just not going well. He finally ends up in Rome. And now he's in Rome. And he, as he's writing this letter, is on house arrest.

He's on house arrest. There's one prison guard. He has some visitors who comes to see him. But he's mostly alone. It has been a rough three to five years for Paul leading up to writing this letter. Under the threat of death.

Under the threat of persecution. Imprisoned. And I would argue that probably none of us have had that last three to five years. I don't know all your stories. But I'd be willing to bet that most of you have not been in prison for your faith.

You haven't been shipwrecked. You haven't been under the threat of death from religious political forces. That's not something that we have faced. Right? Maybe you felt like the last couple months, maybe the last year has been really difficult. You know, at the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like we were on house arrest.

You know? Two weeks to slow the spread. And then it kept going. And some of you felt isolated. And you felt alone. And you were in your home trying to do your best.

And you were struggling. Maybe the last year has been hard. Maybe the last two years has been hard. Maybe the last ten years has been difficult. And we talk about being everyday missionaries. And you're like, I don't even know where to start.

My life is a complete mess right now. I don't even know where to begin. But Paul, enduring hardships that are much more than what we've had to face. Enduring those hardships. He's still sharing the gospel. I mean, he's still praying that he might share the gospel.

Possibly with his prison guard. Possibly with people that will come and visit. He still wants to declare the mystery of Christ. How does he do it? I mean, how does Paul do it? He gets stoned in a city.

Outside the city. Then limps back in and starts sharing the gospel. What's his secret? How does he keep going back again and again sharing the gospel? How does he continue to live on mission? I would argue that the difference between us and Paul.

Is that Paul had such an eternal mindset and perspective on his reality. Like he just, he understood. Everything he was facing in light of eternity. In 2 Corinthians 4 he says, For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. And it's like, really? When you hear that, if you're honest, you say light momentary affliction.

Have you, do you remember the last few years as you've been writing these letters? You've been getting stoned and beaten? Whipped? How do you consider this as light and momentary? I mean, I'm in the middle of a bathroom remodel that has just been difficult. And it does not feel light and momentary.

And I mean, I just, I mean, that's what we do. We think about what's right in front of us. What we're facing. What's difficult. And we don't look at it in light of eternity. But he did, what he understood so clearly is that the moments of suffering, really this life as a whole.

He understood it as we, as the Bible teaches it. That it, this life is like a vapor, the Bible says. It is like dew on the grass. It is here and then it is gone. That this life is like a drop of water. All the years of your life is like a drop of water.

And the rest of time, eternity, is all of the oceans and all the waters in them. And he had that perspective. That right now it's just light and momentary. Because what's coming in eternity are the eternal riches and glory. The way of glory that awaits him. He understood that right now, though suffering is hard.

It pales in comparison to what awaits us. And he understood all of it in light of that truth. So that in the midst of hardships, he's, oh, absolutely. I want more people to be a part of this. I want more people to taste and see this Jesus for eternity. I want them to experience the weight of glory that awaits us.

He, he got this. He so, he absolutely understood this. Now, that doesn't mean that our hardships right now don't matter. My hope is, is that you were with us the last month when we did Soul Care as a series. We care very deeply about hardships. We care very deeply about suffering and sin and brokenness.

It absolutely matters. You may be struggling financially. You may be struggling spiritually. Your health may be a mess and in decline. Your emotional stability is just all over the place. You may be enduring actually really tough times.

But, but if we can strive to view this like he did. To view everything that we face. All of the suffering and hardships. In light of eternity. We can absolutely, no matter what your circumstances are. We can actually share the gospel.

We absolutely can share. In spite of our circumstances. And the second thing I want us to see here. Is that we must share words. We must share actual words. He says, at the same time pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word.

To declare the mystery of Christ. On account of which I'm in prison. That I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. The gospel is a message. It is a message. You must share actual words.

We go after this from time to time. But there's that famous Francis of Assisi quote that says, Share the gospel. And if necessary use words. Which we've said before. It's not clear that he actually ever said that. Also, if he did.

It's dumb. That's not. No. No. No. The gospel is a message.

Yes. How you live your life matters. Absolutely. Absolutely. The New Testament is full of that. Like it.

How you live your life matters. First Peter talks about having good conduct towards outsiders. First Timothy 3 says that one of the requirements of being an elder. However. Is that you may be well thought of by outsiders. So yes.

The way you live your life absolutely matters. But it is still a message. It is not a lifestyle. The gospel is a message. Paul did not ask people to pray for him. So that God could open a door.

So that he could be kind. He did not pray for them. Pleading for them. To join him in prayer. That they'd open a door. So that he could be a good neighbor.

Though kindness. And being a good neighbor. Absolutely matter. I mean Jesus goes hard after that. The Bible goes hard after that. But our kindness isn't what saves people.

If you believe that you're good works. If you believe that you're. You're cleaned up personality. The way you display yourself. If you believe. That is what actually leads people to Jesus.

Then by default. You believe that your works. Is what saves people. That your works. Is what leads people to Christ. And that is not true.

The gospel is a message. And the reason that's really important. Is because for a while. Like the last few decades. There's been this whole idea. Of lifestyle evangelism.

It's like I'm just going to live my life. And win people of the kingdom. By my conduct. And it's like. There are aspects of that. I want a yes and an amen.

But at the end of the day. The gospel is still a message. And you still have to share words. And the problem is. That people. People get psyched out by that.

Because if you're not. If you believe that fully. You're not actually living out. The gospel like you should. You're like. Oh.

Then I can't. I have to. My witness has to be in such good shape. Or I can't share. The gospel. I'm going to mess it up.

And it's like. No. Yes. You snapped at your co-worker. Yes. You dropped an F-bomb in the work room.

Okay. But you know. You can still share the gospel. Through that. Right? The reality is.

Is that you can go to your co-worker. And say. Hey listen. I should not have snapped at you. My faith teaches me. That I should be slow to anger.

That I should be kind. And I was none of that with you. And I am sorry. Hope you can forgive me. There are ways. But absolutely.

In spite of our conduct. Where you can come in. And share the gospel. It is a message. It is not just a lifestyle. That we win people over with.

Maybe it's that. That you've fallen to. Maybe it's that you just don't care enough. To risk awkwardness. To risk rejection. Romans 10.

13. A passage. That if you grew up in the church at all. You are probably familiar with. It says. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

Will be saved. We love that. That anyone. Who has encountered Christ. And their heart has been changed. They can call out to God.

And they're saved. That's absolutely true. But then. He goes on to make a little bit of a rhetorical argument. In the verses that follow. He says.

How then will they call on him. And whom. They have not believed. He's like. How are they going to call. On Christ.

If they haven't believed this message. In the first place. Then he goes. And how are they to believe in him. Of whom. They have never heard.

How are they going to believe in Jesus. If they have not. Heard. The message of the gospel. Then he says.

And how are they here. Without someone preaching. How are they going to hear. If someone doesn't share it with them. That's not just preaching. Like what I'm doing now.

That is proclaiming. That is sharing. How are they going to hear the gospel. If someone doesn't preach. And how are they to preach. Unless they are sent.

As it is written. How beautiful. Are the feet of those. Who preach the good news. He's like. How are they going to hear.

If you don't actually share it with them. We got to absorb that. Christians. Brothers and sisters. We got to absorb that. That you may be the only Christian.

In somebody's life. Who can share the gospel. With that person. You may be their best chance. At actually hearing. About how our God.

Is better than everything else. In this world. And if we can't. Let that reality. Impress upon us. We can't let that.

Sit on our hearts. In a way that brings about. Change. Then we need to get on our faces. And pray. And pray that God might.

Soften our hearts. He might break our hearts. He might help us see. Everything. In light of the eternal reality. That's all around us.

That we need to go back to step one. And pray. That God would absolutely. Break our hearts. And motivate us. To actually share words.

Share actual words. And then lastly says. Make it clear. That's the third thing. I want us to see today. Make it clear.

That's where we spend most of our time. He says. At the same time. Pray also for us. That God may open to us. The door for the word.

To declare the mischief of Christ. On account of which. I am in prison. That I may make it clear. Which is how I ought to speak. That putting effort into.

Making it clear. Matters. So. Many of you. May not know this. But I have a mild speech impediment.

I do. Just a mild one. So that when I actually preach on Sunday. I have to really think about how I speak in a way that is clear. But. For those of you that know me best.

If you've ever been in informal conversation with me. You know that every now and then you're going to go. Wait. What? I have an incredible ability to take 20 words and make it 10 syllables. And I don't even know I'm doing it sometimes.

And it's really frustrating for me. Because all of a sudden I'm like. Oh. I got to repeat what I'm going to say. Oh. I got to re-clarify.

Oh. Like there's this. I have to intentionally think about that type of clarity. Now that's not. That may be part of what Paul is saying. But the reality is.

Is that we should have that type of intentionality. In being clear. When it comes to the gospel. That we might think about how we present it. We might think about how we share. That that work matters.

It matters. That you are clear. So. I'm going to make two assumptions here. If you are. Going to take this on.

In trying to be clear. The first is. That you believe in Jesus. That you've been saved by him. That you've been set apart by him. That you have the Holy Spirit in you.

Assumption one. Assumption two. Is that you care enough to share. And that's the second part that we're going to have to work on. We're going to have to pray that God would help us see. The reality that's at hand.

But once you have those in place. Now it is time to work on making it clear. Now it is time for us to grow. In gospel clarity. The reality is. Is that sometimes is the reason.

Why you don't want to share the gospel. It's because you're like. I think I'm going to mess it up. I think I'm not going to be very clear. I don't. I don't want to botch this.

And what's encouraging about this passage. Is that on some level. Paul felt that too. Because he's asking for prayer here. He's asking them to pray. That God would open a door.

So that he can make it clear. So. That's good news. That Paul of all people. Pray for this type of clarity. Alright.

So we should absolutely. Seek to grow in. Gospel clarity. I have some. Practical ways that I want us to. Do this.

And how I want us to grow in this. And the first way we can grow. In making it clear. Is to read. And know. And grow.

Read. Know. And grow. We have to read. We have to grow. We have to learn.

About. Christ. And the scriptures. We've got to. Got to do it. I know some of you have not read a book.

You've not read. A book since the ninth grade. And that was to kill a mockingbird. Okay. And you're like. I don't like to read.

And it's like. Okay. But the Bible's a book. And guess what. We've talked about this over and over again. If you don't like.

Visually reading. Download the Bible app. And start listening. Listen to. The word. Yes.

Learning is difficult. It is. Take it from somebody. Who did the eighth grade twice. Okay. It.

Learning has never come easy for me. I'm. I'm rarely the smartest person. In the room. All right.

A lot of times. Because my wife is in the room with me. But. I'm rarely the smartest person. In the room. I usually am.

One of the most learned people. In the room. Because I. Work. Really hard. To learn.

I work really hard. To know things. And some of that stuff. Is useless knowledge. But sometimes.

It's the Bible. We should seek. To learn. And know. And grow. That's why we emphasize.

Scripture memory. That's why it shows up. And we have one every month. We have 36 verses. Over three years. Memorize one of those.

Every month. And do that again. For three years. And then three years again. And three years again. You're going to have 36 verses.

Locked in your memory bank. That matters. It matters. It matters. That you would know the word. So deeply.

Be so hidden. In your heart. That when it came time. To actually share good news. You could share the word of God. And the reason that matters.

Is because what Hebrews 4.12 teaches us. The word of God is living and active. It's living and active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword. It's piercing the division of soul and spirit. Of bone and marrow.

It discerns the thoughts. And intentions. Of the heart. That when you share God's word. God uses it like a sword. And it pierces the heart.

And it discerns what's going on underneath the surface. So that people might can realize. They deeply need Christ. It matters. That you know God's word. It absolutely matters.

That you might be able to share this. All it takes is a few words. And then God can go to work. So maybe you have a. Maybe you've been really intentional. About being a good co-worker.

You've been working hard. In the workplace. To show good work ethic. You've been. You've been caring about your conduct. Which you should.

You haven't been engaging in office gossip. All right. You're not complaining. You're working hard. And then. You're building a relationship with your co-workers.

You're getting to know them. You're going to some happy hours with them. Spend time with them. And then one day. At the office. Or at the work site.

One of your co-workers just says. They just. That you just see they're down. And they're sad. And you say. Hey.

What's. What's going on? Maybe she says. I just. I mean. I just went through a terrible breakup.

He broke up with me last night. And this is the. I thought he was the one. We were going to spend. Just for lives together. We've been dating for a year and a half.

This is the third terrible breakup I've had. And I just. I'm just having a. I'm sorry. Like I'm trying to work hard. And not be a distraction.

I just had a really difficult day. And in that moment. Armed and ready. You can look at her and say. I'm. I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry. Can I share something that I think is helpful. That I've. That I've found to be helpful. Psalm 34 teaches that the Lord is near to the broken hearted. And he saves the crushed in spirit.

That in the midst of. Of hurt. Like God can be really near to us. And I. I don't know. I feel like I just want to share that with you.

That God can be near to you in the midst of this brokenness. So I'm just. I'm going to go back to my desk. I pray for you and the rest of our coworkers regularly. I want to take some time to just pray for you. I pray that you sense that.

That God is near the broken hearted. I pray that your boyfriend gets hit by a car. Like. I just. But you.

And then you do the actual Christian thing. Not the southern Christian thing. And you actually pray for them. That's all it takes. And then what can happen is. Is that the word is shared.

And all of a sudden it starts to. Work on them. And grate on them. And they start to. Question. And they come back and want to know more later.

That. It's that easy. And it's not that intimidating. We need to. Read. We need to know.

We need to grow. In knowing God and his word and prayer. Second. We need to grow in gospel fluency. We need to grow in gospel fluency. This is something we talk about.

Quite a bit in our church. It's the idea that. You be so fluent in the gospel. Just like you might be fluent in a language. You don't have to think about how you speak. That you be so fluent in the gospel.

That you be able to. Think in it. Process in it. And it would be part of your language. Part of your ethos. Part of who you are.

That when it comes time. You're easily. Sharing the gospel. Applying it to people's lives. Applying it to your own life. Applying it to the people in your group.

We're talking about growing in gospel fluency. That matters. Because if you're a co-worker. Who you just talked to. Says. Okay.

Wait a second. All right. So. That's Psalm 34. That's nice. Tell me.

Why God wants my life to be so miserable. Why is it. That I. Keep. Having these relationships that fall apart. Why is my.

Why am I so unhappy. You. If you think God is near the broken heart. And he's good. And he's loving. Why is my life so.

Bad. That. That if you are fluent in the gospel. You can begin to. In that moment. Apply the gospel.

One of the things we talk about. Is creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration. That understanding the gospel.

And the bible as a whole. Is creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration. That maybe in that moment.

You just. You come alongside her and say. Listen. Listen. The reason why we love relationships. Whether it's friendships.

Whether it's romantic relationships. Is because we're built for that. We're built for relationship. God created us. That when he created Adam in the garden. He said that.

It wasn't good. That he was alone. That we're made for relationship. But the reality is. That when. Sin came into the world.

It broke relationships. It. It. It. It made relationships and friendships. Difficult.

Even more so. What it did. Is that. Because of sin. We seek to find relationship. With everyone else.

As opposed to God. That God actually built us. Ultimately for relationship with him. But because of. Sin. We reject that.

We don't want him. But the good news of the gospel. Is that. God didn't leave us here. In our rejection of him. But that he sent Jesus.

To die for us. To live the life that we could not live. To die the death on the cross. And to conquer the death of the resurrection. So that we can have.

A relationship that is. Better than everything else. With him. And that this isn't the end of it. The pain of your relationship hurts now. But the reality is.

That one day. He's going to restore all things. In all relationships. There will be no more sin. There will be no more brokenness. There will be no more hurt.

That when you're fluent in the gospel like that. You're able to apply something like that. Creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration.

To somebody's life. In a way that helps them see. Their problem. Their struggle. In light of. Eternity.

We need to grow in gospel fluency. But there also may be times. Where they take it even. A little bit deeper. They're like. Okay.

So. But why would God allow for sin to happen in the first place? Right? Why is suffering even a reality? And they might ask some bigger questions. And the third thing.

In making it clear. That we need to grow in. Is that we need to dig deeper. We need to dig deeper. The reality is. Is that.

People have big questions. And we cannot resolve. Every. Mystery of Christ. God is mysterious. But for a lot of people.

God is a complete mystery to them. And it is our opportunity. To clarify. And to give a defense for. So we get the word apologetics.

Which literally just means a defense for. Our faith. That might compel them. To actually. Explore who God is. Hebrews.

Five. Teaches. Four. Though. By this time. You ought to be teachers.

You need someone to teach you again. The basic principles. Of the oracles of God. He says. You need milk. Not salad food.

The writer says. Listen. At this point. In following Jesus. You should be mature enough. That you can teach others.

That you can encourage others. That you can. Disciple others. But it's clear. Right now. He says.

Verse 13. He says. You need milk. Not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk. Is unskilled in the word of righteousness.

Since he is a child. But solid food. Is for the mature. For those who have their powers of discernment. Trained by constant practice. To distinguish good.

From evil. That. He says. You should be able to. To mature past. Just milk.

The elementary doctrines. Right. Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. Is so good.

And so true. But the depths of that actual statement. Going deeper. Into that. We. Some of us are still stuck on wanting milk.

We want it spoon fed. And he's like. At this point. You got to be eating some steak. You. Here. You.

This is California. You. euh. an abundance of resources that help us in this. You could read books like Reason for God by Tim Keller, Mirror Christianity by C.S. Lewis. There's your little starter pack right there.

Boom. Read those. Slowly take them in and start to digest it.

Prayer is the Fuel for Mission

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Prayer is the Fuel for Mission

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning. Like I said, my name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in a series called I'm a Missionary for three weeks. We had planned to jump into 1 John, but we decided to push that off for three weeks. We'll get to that and start that at the end of the month.

So we have four elders. We get away every year for an elder retreat. And it's the four of us pastors. We go and we go to Lake Greenwood and we take some time to pray and process and think through where we need to grow as a church family. At the beginning of August, we went this year and we were praying and thinking through kind of where we are as a church family. Where do we need to grow?

And it did not take very long for us to come to the consensus that one of the areas we need to grow in is being everyday missionaries here. That we had lost a little bit of our missional hustle here. So for the next three weeks, we're going to refocus on what it looks like to be everyday missionaries here in the Columbia area. We want to see Casey in West Columbia, Lexington, Irmo, Chapin, Gaston, even Red Bank. We want to see disciples made all over this city because in the Columbia metro area, there are hundreds of thousands of people that are not part of a gospel-centered church, that do not have a relationship with Jesus, and we don't want to be okay with them.

So that's what we're going to be doing the next three weeks. One of Chet, who's one of the other pastors here, one of his favorite movies, I assume, is Sling Blade. I assume this because he loves to quote it with the voice. So if you want to get awkward for a minute, just get him excited about that movie and let him do some impersonations. But there's a scene in Sling Blade where Billy Bob Thornton, the main character, he's not overly bright.

He gets a job at a service station. And at the service station one day, this guy brings a lawnmower that won't start. And there's some guys outside looking at it, you know, standing around, theorizing about what's wrong with it, as guys do. You know, something wrong with the carburetor, maybe the spark plug, I don't know. Going back and forth, back and forth. And Billy Bob Thornton comes outside, sees them, walks over to the lawnmower, unscrews the gas cap, looks in it, screws it back.

Says, ain't got no gas in it. That'd be a good first place to start is to check if it's got gas in it. Like when I'm doing home projects, it's a good first start to check if there's gas, to check if the batteries are charged. As opposed to tinkering with everything else, theorizing what else could be the problem. And before we tackle mission, we've got to check to see if there's gas in the tank. Because we are so prone to checking everything else.

I mean, we will strategize. We will plan. We will brainstorm about mission. We'll brand. We'll do all sorts of things to kind of help us refocus on being everyday missionaries before we actually do check the gas to see, check the tank to see if there's gas in it. And the first step that we need to have in mission is prayer.

Is prayer. If we're not praying to see Jesus change the city, there ain't no gas in the tank. Prayer is the fuel for mission. And unless we understand that, we will not see the type of revival, the type of change we want to see in this city. So for the next three weeks, we're going to be in Colossians 4, verses 2-6.

Today, we're just going to be in 2-4. And I just want us to see this. I want us to see that prayer is the fuel for mission. And my hope is, is that we actually believe that. So let me pray, and then we'll jump into the text.

Father, we pray that you would soften our hearts to believe what is true. God, I pray that you would speak to us this morning and that we would actually respond. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so verses 2-4.

All right, so I'm going to give some context for this as we're going to be in this passage the next three weeks. I'm going to give some of the history that went into this command. Colossae is a small town. It's a small town in a province called Phrygia in the Roman Empire. It's in present-day Turkey. And Colossae is this town, the Colossians.

That's what the letter is named after. It's written to them. And Colossae, it's a small town. It's not like nearby Ephesus, which is a big city, or Thessalonica, which is a big city. If you look at the book of Acts, God is doing some amazing work in some of these big cities. It's not one of those cities.

It's a small town, rural, in the middle of nowhere. If Ephesus is Columbia, Colossae is Pillion, or North, or Palmyria. It's out in the middle of nowhere. So why is Paul writing a letter to a small town miles away from these big cities where God is saving by the thousands? Better question is how did the gospel actually get to Colossae? So I want to take a quick journey through the book of Acts to help us see how the gospel gets to this small town.

So when Jesus commissions the church and ascends to the right hand of God the Father, He says, wait, because this Holy Spirit is coming. And the early church doesn't wait by sitting on their hands. It says in Acts 1.14, they join together constantly in prayer. They are prayerfully, constantly, steadfastly in prayer, waiting for God to come. And then after that, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church. Pentecost Sunday happens.

Peter steps out, preaches the sermon where 3,000 plus people place their faith in Jesus. And then in one of the more pivotal passages in the entire New Testament for what the church should do, in Acts 2.42-47, at the very beginning of Acts 2.42, it says, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayer. They devoted themselves to prayer. And we're going to see this as a theme that runs throughout the book of Acts. Prayer is all over the book of Acts. Shows up all over the place.

In Acts 6, when the early church is covered up with need, and they're caring for orphans and widows who are in daily need of food, the apostles realized we actually don't have enough time for word and prayer. So they bring about what are the first deacons to be able to oversee the distribution of food so that they can be in a ministry of word and prayer. They valued word and prayer so much because they understood that prayer was essential to seeing the kingdom move forward. And you see it all over the book of Acts. It says that in multiple places they prayed as they commissioned people out for service and permission.

They prayed over people that they might be healed. It is in Acts 10 when Peter is praying. During prayer is when God gives the vision to Peter that extends the gospel past the Jews to include also the Gentiles. That's a pivotal moment. That's important because most of us here are Gentiles. And the gospel came to us through that prayer.

And then in Acts 13, which is one of the more pivotal moments in not just the early church, but in all of history, in the church of Antioch, as they're fasting, as they're praying, God says set apart Barnabas and Paul for mission work that is going to reach the Jews. They pray over them. They send them out. And the world is never the same. They flip Europe and Asia upside down with the gospel. Over and over again we see prayer throughout the book of Acts.

And eventually in their missionary journeys, Paul, they come to a church. They plant it in Ephesus. And then he leaves Priscilla and Aquila, two faithful leaders in the church. And they minister there for years. And that is where scholars think a man named Epaphras who shows up twice in Colossians. See, Ephesus is about the two-day walk from Colossae.

And scholars think that he, that being the closest big city, was there, heard the gospel, was discipled, and sent back to Colossae where he planted the church. We see in Colossians 1.7 that it says he's a fellow. He was the one that they learned the truth about the gospel from him. And then in 4.12 he is of the people of Colossae. So all that history brings Epaphras back to Colossians.

A church is planted. All of that fueled by the prayers of the people of God and the mission going forth. It brings the gospel to this small town, which is all the history that is packed into this passage. When he says, continue steadfastly in prayer, there's history there. There's background there. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on which account I am in prison. Praying that a door might be opened. That is a central idea in the book of Acts. They are praying that doors might be opened so that people would hear the gospel. I want to share a story of what happens when we pray for this type of door to be opened. In the Hebrides Islands in northern Scotland, back in 1949.

So just in context. 1949 is right after World War II. In Europe especially, there's a lot of depression, a lot of darkness, a lot of just apathy after seeing the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. And in this village, in the Hebrides Islands, in northern Scotland, there are these two older women who feel the lostness in their village. Feel it on their island. There's no young people in the churches.

There's this lingering haze from World War II. They feel it. And these two older women, one of them blind, one of them arthritic, not powerful people but believe in a powerful God, they begin to pray. They begin to pray for revival to happen on this island. And they pray. They prayed every Tuesday and Friday, fervently, that God might bring revival to the island, the Hebrides Island.

And then they said, all right, we're going to get our elders involved. So they go to their elders. They bring their elders in to pray with them. They go to a barn on Tuesdays and Fridays. They pray and pray and plead for God to bring revival to their island. And eventually, they decide to reach out.

They want an evangelist to come. So they reach out. They eventually land on a man named Duncan Campbell. They invite him to the island. And then he comes. Now, this is Duncan Campbell's retelling of this.

So he travels all day by rail. Then by ferry to get over to the island. Very tired. Shows up. And they say, we know you're tired. We know you're hungry.

We'll take care of that. We've got a place for you. We're going to feed you. But can you come to the church first? At 9 o'clock, 9 p.m. meeting. We just come.

And he says, I never got that meal. Shows up at 9 o'clock. And he said nothing was really remarkable about the service in and of itself. He said he preached and felt the spirit moving. But, you know, they prayed, sang Psalms together. And then as they're closing out their time, this man who had been praying in the barn with those older women just prayed and called out to God for revival.

Pleading for God to bring revival. And when they ended the service, they stepped out of the church. This is about midnight. They stepped out of the church. And there's 600 people outside the church. Now, 100 of them were young people that were at a dance hall not far away.

And they just all felt in a moment that they just needed to cut the music and to step outside. And when they stepped outside, they saw the lights of the church. And they started walking there. The other 500 of them were people that in the middle of the night just felt compelled to put on their clothes and start walking towards the church. So they invite them in until 4 o'clock.

The people of that town plead for the mercy of God. In repentance, he preaches. And they pray. And they sing Psalms in repentance and faith. And then at 4 o'clock in the morning, they finish. And they step outside.

And there's a man there. He said, you've got to come to the police station. There are 400 people that are around the police station. The police station which happens to be right next to where these women lived. So Don Campbell says he's walking there.

And there's people praying in the ditches. Pleading for the mercies of God. He gets there. He says, I don't even have to preach. Because the people are crying out to God in repentance. He said, there was one man that said, Oh God, hell is too good for me.

He just saw a sin. He's like, hell is too good for me. And this entire town gets swept up in a revival. That's the first night of a revival that lasted for three weeks there. It's incredible. It's one of the last known Western revivals that we know about.

And then Duncan Campbell, in recounting this, he says this, Then I would like to make it perfectly clear what I understand of revival. When I speak of revival, I'm not thinking of high pressure evangelism. I'm not thinking of crusades or of special efforts convened and organized by man. That is not in my mind at all. Revival is something altogether different from evangelism on its highest level. Revival is a moving of God and the community.

And suddenly the community becomes God conscious. Before a word is said by any man representing any special effort. That's what revival is. That kind of revival, that God conscious movement that happens in people, that happens to the power of prayer. When two women got on their knees and pleaded for God to bring revival. Revival.

Now that still happens. You want to know where the biggest revival is happening right now? I give you ten guesses. You probably wouldn't say it. Yes. The biggest right now is in Iran.

In Iran, guys. The church is exploding in Iran. Because people are getting on their faces and they're pleading for God to bring revival. And Duncan, he says, this isn't special efforts convened and organized by man. It is the power of God at work. It is the power of prayer.

I was a part of a church before I was a part of our church here. And I love the church I was a part of. Thankful for it in so many ways. God did some incredible things in that church. It was a huge growing church in the city where I used to live. And I thought about my experiences there.

I thought about the growth they had going from one congregation to four congregations all over the city of Louisville. And a lot of really cool things happened that I'm thankful for. But as I thought about it, we talked a lot about strategy. A lot about, I mean, they wrote books about mission strategy and all kinds of things. But one of the things that did not show up a lot at all was praying and pleading for God to save the lost.

It wasn't an aspect that I saw hardly at all. And as I reflect on my time there, the reality is that one of the reasons that church grew a ton was it was a cool church. It was a cool church that had cool music, had some really good teaching, some really good things going on in it. And it was a transient city. So when you moved to the city, whether it was for seminary like me or for jobs, a lot of people ended up at that church.

It was also near the fifth biggest church in the country, this huge mega church. People got tired of the six flags that were Jesus field there. And they just kind of said, all right, we're done with this. And they came. There's a lot of transfer growth that happened there. And I'm thankful for a lot of the things that I learned there.

But I realized is that one of the things that we hope to see there, it didn't happen on the scale that we wanted. And when I think about our church, I love our church. We planted years ago with the hope to reach outsiders. Being everyday missionaries, sharing the gospel on everyday mission with those who did not know Christ, who didn't want Him, that we might compel them to know who Christ is. I'm thankful for so many of the things that have happened in our church as we sought to be everyday missionaries. I'm thankful for the journey of the past couple of years.

I'm thankful for this incredible building that we have, this incredible church family that we have, the things that we have here. Y'all, the worship at our church, I mean, it's just great. And the teaching is great. Half the time. I'm thankful for a lot of things that are happening in our church. But the reality is, as I think about the last year, two years of our church, church, we're a little bit on a similar trajectory to the one I was a part of.

A lot of really good things going on. We've lost a little bit of our missional hustle. And I don't want us to lose that. I don't want us to lose the heart that says, I want to go to the highways and hedges. I want to find people who need Christ. And part of that is because we're not getting on our faces and pleading for God to open the door.

Verse 3 says, At the same time, Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the Word. You know why Paul says that? You know why he's telling the Colossians to join him in prayer? They got my open a door? It's because he believes it. He believes it.

He believes the only way that God is going to work and bring the dead to life, the only way he's going to open and soften the hearts of those who don't believe, the only way he's going to unstop the ears that people might believe the gospel is that they get on their faces and they plead that he might save sinners. He says, Oh, Colossians, get on your faces. A door needs to be opened that people would hear the gospel and believe. He believes it. And do you know what our lack of prayer reveals about us, what my lack of, what my prayerlessness reveals? It believes that I don't.

It believes that we don't believe this, that we'd rather trust in our own strategies, our own efforts, to see about, to see change happen in this city. And I have all four strategies. We're going to be doing them, right? We're not going to stop plotting. I'm all for strategies. I'm all for the things that are good.

Absolutely. But not if that is all that it is. One of my favorite passages in the Bible is Psalm 20, verse 7. It says, Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord. And as David sang as a king, some people trust in their own efforts, their own chariots, their own horses, but we trust in the power that is bound up in the name of the Lord. And I would rather myself trust in chariots of my own choosing than pleading in the name of the Lord where there is power to actually bring about the change that we desperately need for our dying city.

How faithless am I? That's what I've learned about myself over the last few months. How faithless am I? J.I. Packer, he says, When we are on our knees praying, when we're on our knees, we know that it's not we who control the world. It is the acknowledgement that we can't bring change.

You can't do it. You can't bring change in people's lives. He says, It is not in our power, therefore, to supply our needs by our own independent efforts. Every good thing that we desire for ourselves and for others must be sought from God and will come if it comes at all as a gift from His hands. It is the acknowledgement that we don't have the power in us to bring about change. It comes in pleading in the name of the one who actually can.

And if it's not faithlessness, if it's not a lack of faith in the power of God, it's a general apathy that we just don't care. The reality is that some of us would rather not discomfort ourselves with the reality, the eternal reality that surrounds us, that people that are without Christ are dying and going to an eternity in hell. We'd rather not think about that. We have this general cultural aversion to death. We don't like death. We put death in a corner.

We don't want to think about it. It's sad. It's not positive. And you... That sinks into the church, and it gets applied to hell. We don't want to think about it.

We get uneasy. I feel it. Uneasy. When anyone mentions it, talks about it. I heard a pastor once say that people in hell are no closer to the end of their misery and not one day brings them closer to that. We don't want to think about that.

We don't want to discomfort ourselves with that idea. There used to be a Puritan pastor who when he prepared sermons by candlelight, he would sometimes hover his hand over the flame just to help him understand the reality of what's at stake when he preached. We don't want to think about that. It makes us uncomfortable. We'd rather not discomfort ourselves for the sake of the discomfort of those for eternity. We'd rather not think about it.

We went through the gospel. Remember, we were in the gospel of Matthew for a year and a half. And over and over again, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches on hell over and over and over and over again. And the early church was very okay with talking about it. Are we? Are we okay with that reality?

Do we let that sink in for us? Brothers and sisters, if we want revival to happen in our city, we've got to have revival that happens in our own hearts. We have to understand what's at stake. And we have to get on our faces in desperation and pray. Pray that our friends, that our neighbors, that our coworkers, that people in our lives would be spared the horrors of hell and would taste and see that Christ is good. He says at the same time, pray also that God may open a door for us.

I just want to close with looking at three aspects of prayer. This prayer that he's pleading that might open a door for the word of God, three aspects that we see in verse 2. Steadfast prayer, watchful prayer, thankful prayer. Look at verse 2. Continuing steadfastly in prayer. He says, pray steadfastly.

The Greek word for steadfastly there has the idea of attaching oneself to this idea. Clinging to. Continual, steadfast prayer. That's where we get very similar to 1 Thessalonians 5, 17 when it says, pray unceasingly. Don't stop. We cling to this in prayer.

Pray steadfastly. We're steadfast in quite a few things. Some of those things are very good. You need to steadfastly drink water. Because if you don't, you'll die. You steadfastly will eat food three, sometimes four, maybe even five times a day.

You feel a physical urge in your body that says, eat. Food is a steadfast part of what we do every day. And we do other things steadfastly that we should not. Like me, getting on the internet looking at news ten times a day because I might miss a story. a steadfast routine that I cling to. Those of you that love social media, steadfastly going to the well of social media which makes everybody happy. Over and over again figuring out what's going on in people's lives so that you can post things about ourselves.

I love what John Piper said once. He said, one of the greatest uses of Twitter and Facebook is to reveal on the last day that prayerlessness was not for lack of time. We will be steadfast in so many things and God says, no, steadfastly pray. Pray steadfastly. Cling to this as we cling to food and water as our hope for physical sustaining. Cling to sustain in prayer as if your spiritual power depends upon it.

Years back, I became a Christian. When I became a Christian, my brother Sean, we went from getting high together to me saying, hey, I don't want to do this anymore but I do want to talk to you about Jesus. And we started talking. My brother's smart and he was a skeptic. And he just, I'd share something. He'd say, have you thought about this?

And I'd be like, nope. Run back and think about it and come back to him. I'd say, alright, have you thought about this? And I'd be like, nope. And did this whole thing for years? We'd go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, talking, trying to convince him, trying to compel him.

And in the midst of all of that, there's something I actually did steadfastly. And I would argue that some of us do this type of steadfast prayer. I prayed for him all the time. And we do that sometimes, right? We do that with family, your kids, people that are close to you. Some of us very much are steadfast in that type of prayer.

And we should be. And I prayed over and over and over again. that he might be saved. About three or four years ago, I decided to come one Sunday. He came because I was preaching. And he said, you know what? I want to check out one of these groups that y'all talk about.

I said, cool. Not mine. He said, you heard the gospel from me for years, a decade. I said, I want you to go check out Chet and Anna Phillips' group. So we did.

Started going there. And after about a year, Charlie did finally click. And he finally realized that Jesus is better than everything else. And he placed his faith in Jesus. And in 2019, in an inflatable bathtub, I got to step in the waters with him and baptize him. And it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

But that was a decade of praying. A decade of pleading for God to save my brother. And we do that with the people that are closest to us. And you should. But the reality is that you've got friends and you've got neighbors and you've got coworkers and you've got people in your life that desperately need Christ.

And we need to plead and pray steadfastly. Unceasingly. We need that type of prayer. We need steadfast prayer. We need watchful prayer. Let's continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

He says, be watchful. Watchful means be alert. Stay focused. Stay awake. It's what Jesus says in the garden with His disciples. His watch and pray.

Same word. Be watchful when you pray. There's this need for this strategic alertness in our prayer. That we be alert of the spiritual reality. The spiritual reality that we live in is that we're in a war with the enemy. And there are bullets flying and there's a lot at stake.

And we need to have this watchful alertness when we pray for the mission to go forward. So we've got to start praying intentionally, strategically, with alertness. Because the reality is that most of our prayer, if we're honest, much of our prayer, if we're praying, is a list of sick people and a list of needs. And listen, you should do that. Pray for daily bread. Pray for the sick.

Pray for those who are hurting. Pray for people in you. Absolutely, yes and amen. But in the continual steadfastness of prayer, we've got to add this mission element. We've got to plead for God to save people. And not just generally, right?

Not just say, God, I pray you bring revival. Save Columbia. No, we've got to get strategic. We've got to start naming names and naming streets and classes and people. Right? Like when you're, when we send people off to war, soldiers aren't carrying shotguns.

This is not an effective weapon. It's a shotgun spray. They're carrying rifles for a reason. It's a strategic shot. We've got to have that type of strategic, alert prayer. Start naming names.

Get on Google Maps and print your street that you live on. Or if you're artistic, draw your street. And start writing in names of people that you live by. And get to know your neighbors. Get to write down facts about their life. Pray for them.

Go on prayer walks down your street. And pray for your neighbors. When you go to your soccer game, pray for the names of the people on your soccer team. The guy would open up a door for you to declare the gospel to them. Pray for the people and your classes on your way to work. Pray for the people and your work.

We need to start naming names with a strategic alertness, being watchful, knowing what's at stake. We need to pray watchfully. And if it takes us imagining the horrors of hell that await our friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, do it. We need to understand what's at stake. I'm so tired. This happens to me every few years.

I'm so tired of for myself. When someone dies that I know that they were not a Christian. I go through this thing where I evaluate all the opportunities I had. I could have shared the gospel here. I could have pressed in here. I could have done this.

And I think about it. I'm like, I'm going to grow in this. I'm going to grow in being more strategic in my evangelism. I'm going to grow in not wasting opportunities with people. And then, a couple months go by and it fades. And I'm back into the normal rhythms of life.

And I think the reason why this happens to me is I'm not on my face continually praying. We can go through this series, I'm a missionary, three weeks. And like, for two or three months we'll be killing it. We'll be excited. And we should. But if we don't pray regularly, it'll fade.

It'll fade. It happens. We need to get on our faces. We need to get on our knees. We need to pray continually, watchfully, and thankfully. Thankful prayer.

It says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. The reason it's thankful prayer is it's a miracle that God saves anyone. We are so prone to wander. We will worship anything else. We'll chase after anything else. All the idolatry we talked about in soul care, we'll go headlong after it.

Reject God. Part of the sovereignty and the beauty of the sovereignty of God is that He steps in the middle of all that says, no, I'm saving you. That I'm going to rescue you. We deserve hell, but God comes in and He rescues us. I'm so thankful that our God does this. I was sharing the gospel with a co-worker years ago when I worked at a coffee shop and then we got to the subject of hell and I was kind of expecting normal skepticism that he was going to say.

He said, oh no, people deserve hell. I was like, what? He's like, people are messed up. He didn't say messed up. He said, food absolutely deserves hell. And he caught on to something.

He said, no, we do, but God in His kindness, even though we reject Him, even though that we spit on His commands, even though we don't want any part of Him, He steps in and He saves us. Paul, who wrote this? Paul was a murderous, self-righteous, pharisaical, Pharisee, thug. He was on his way to imprison more Christians, possibly murder some more. And Jesus steps in the road of Damascus and says, no, you're mine. We should be thankful that God saves any of us.

It's the reason why when we have baptisms, we celebrate and cheer when people are baptized. It's the reason why in Luke 15 it says, angels rejoice when people repent. With thanksgiving we pray. Steadfast prayer, watchful prayer, thankful prayer. We need to pray like this. Pray like this that God would open doors because we are too busy trying to pry open doors ourselves.

Trying to pry it open with our own strategies, with our own efforts. We, Paul is just trying to help us see right here. He's like, yeah, you ain't got gas in the tank. You're trying and all these efforts are good but if you're not praying, you ain't got gas in the tank. There's a story of a professor who took some students to England and they were touring different sites in England and they, this is a Bible college and they took them to John Wesley's house. John Wesley, one of the most famous missionaries, pastors, started the Methodist movement, him and his brother Charles.

Go to John Wesley's house and they tour the house and they go up to his bedroom and in John Wesley's bedroom there are divots, holes, impressions where his knees were beside the bed where he was praying. That's how much John Wesley prayed. They see this and then they're done seeing this and they get back on the bus and they realize, they realize that one of the students is not on the bus. The professor gets, goes back in the house and goes upstairs and he finds this, he finds this student and the student says, he says to the student, hey, we got to go and the student's just there praying. He's like, Lord, do it again.

Do it again. Praying for revival. Do it again, Lord, praying that revival would come. He said, Billy, we got to go. And that student was Billy Graham. And Billy prayed that God would do it again and God did it again.

Like two women in a village in Northern Ireland pleading that God would bring revival like Billy Graham on his knees. We got to pray that God would do it again. My hope is that we believe in the power of prayer that we'd see God do it again so that we can be the gospel-centered community on mission that we say we are. Raz and Isaac are going to come up and I just, for a few minutes, I want, I want us to pray. I want us to take a few minutes and just pray. I want us Christians, I want us to pray that God would bring revival to this city.

I want to pray, I want you to think about the people in your life that don't know Christ. I want you to think about your neighbors, I want you to think about your co-workers, I want you to think about your classmates, I want you to think about family members, I want you to think about the people in your life that don't know Christ and I want you to understand what's at stake and I want you to pray. I want you to plead that God might save them. Maybe you're here and all of this is just a lot and you're like, I don't even know where to start, I don't even know if I believe this. I want you right now over the next few minutes, I want you to pray that God will reveal Himself.

I want you to know that God loves you so deeply that He sent Christ to have His blood shed for you, that He might cover your sins and your rebellion, and that is good news. But you've got to believe that your life has to be His. Let's take a few moments we have here and pray. And as we leave here, may we not just be a people that pray for a moment, but pray continuously, pleading to God, but open a door that we might see the gospel go forward and we might see our city be changed.