Prayer is the Fuel for Mission
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
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.