Prayers to Start Praying Immediately- Colossians 1: 9-12

Yes, Christian said, I'm very thankful for everybody

who could come out and gather this morning.

I really didn't want my preaching calendar to be messed up.

So I'm glad we can meet.

And it's always good to be together.

We're gonna be in Colossians.

And we're in chapter one still.

And for many years, if you don't know this about me,

I was a lifeguard and swim lesson instructor

for the YMCA for probably five or six years.

And it was a really fun job,

but I'll never forget the test that I had to take

in order to become a lifeguard because it was no joke.

And I remember at the time thinking,

this is gonna be no problem,

because at this point in my life,

I was working out seven days a week.

So I was in the best shape I have ever been in

and will ever be in again because I'm getting old now.

So, but I was in the best shape of my life.

If you were to look at me at the time,

you'd say, man, this guy looks like a lifeguard.

Like he looks like this test is gonna be no problem for him.

That's what I thought too.

So first test, you had to swim 100 meters freestyle,

nonstop.

And I thought, that's a cake walk, all right?

100 meters, that's it.

I've been swimming my whole life.

So I jump right in, I start swimming.

And I've been swimming for about five seconds

when the aquatics director,

who's at the side of the pool, starts screaming to me,

put your face in the water.

And I was like, but then I won't be able to breathe.

So clearly I didn't actually know how to swim

like you were supposed to know how to swim.

But I get through that test,

I get through the next couple of ones.

But then came a test that still scares me to this day.

And it was called the 300.

Okay, and what you had to do was basically

you had to swim 100 meters freestyle,

100 meters breaststroke.

And then you got to pick your last 100 meters.

It could be either freestyle, backstroke,

or butterfly.

And you had to do this nonstop.

And you couldn't hold on to the side of the pool.

You had to do a flip underwater and keep going.

Now, I see a lot of faces that are like,

okay, I don't know if that sounds bad.

I encourage you to try it, okay?

Go to the indoor pool and try to swim 300 meters nonstop.

I thought it was gonna be no problem,

but I nearly died in that water

and barely made it back to the side.

And then I had to go to the bathroom

where I found my breakfast again.

So it was a really hard test, right?

But all of that is to say that even though

I had the look of a lifeguard,

I didn't necessarily have the skills to back up that look.

And if you were to look at me back then,

you would think, oh yeah, he's gonna get a free pass

because he looks like he's a lifeguard,

but that's not how it worked out for me.

And I'm concerned that in the same way,

just because you have the look of a Christian,

just because your life has the appearance

of a Christian life does not mean

that you are necessarily pleasing to God.

In fact, I'm concerned that we have too many people today

who merely have the appearance of the Christian life,

but do not actually have the life of a Christian life

to back that up.

We have a lot of people today

who look the part of a mature Christian,

a lot of people who call themselves Christians,

who come to church,

a lot of people who look like they can handle

just about anything that comes their way.

We've got a lot of people

that you could probably even point to in this room this morning

and say, that person is living a life

that is pleasing to God.

And yet for many of these people,

they lack the walk to back up their talk.

There's a difference between being able to talk

like a Christian and actually live like a Christian.

And in the same way,

my appearance didn't enable me to perform well

on my lifeguard test,

your Christian appearance will not actually enable you

or equip you to live a life that is pleasing to God.

And yet that's exactly what Jesus wants from all of us.

Is it not?

I mean, Paul even says so in these verses here.

He says that he wants us to live lives

that are worthy of the gospel.

He wants us to be found pleasing in the sight of the Lord.

And so what he's trying to get to here in these verses

is that unequipped disciples are unpleasing disciples.

Meaning if all you have is the facade of Christianity,

without actually having the substance of Christianity,

God is not actually pleased with you.

If you're lacking in certain areas,

it means that you're not equipped in those areas spiritually.

And if you're not equipped spiritually,

it means that you're not gonna walk in a manner

where you're not actually pleased with you.

And so what he's trying to do is he's trying to get you

to live a life that is pleasing to God.

You're gonna walk in a manner worthy of the gospel

and you're not gonna be found pleasing

in the sight of the Lord.

And so one of the best things that you can do,

and I have found through studying this passage,

is one of the best things you can do

is you can begin to pray for all the areas

where you're lacking and ask God to equip you

to better be able to walk and step with him.

So here's what I wanna do this morning.

I'm gonna do something a little different.

I wanna give you four prayers

that you should start praying immediately

for yourself and for others, especially for our church.

These are four prayers that you should start praying

immediately if you want to begin to live a life

that is worthy of the gospel

and be found pleasing in the sight of God.

So does that sound good with everybody?

Good?

Good?

All right, here's the point where we talk, all right?

So yeah, introductions out,

and now we're gonna get in the sermon.

All right, so everybody, let's let out a sigh of relief

or give me an amen or something.

I just wanna know you're alive.

Everybody?

Yeah?

All right, there we go, man.

I was real concerned there for a second.

The eyes froze everybody's voices.

All right, verse nine.

First prayer is a prayer for spiritual wisdom.

Look at what he says.

And so from the day we heard,

we have not ceased to pray for you,

asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will

in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

Now I want you to notice this.

Paul's gonna use three words here,

and it's three words that we typically lump together

as being synonymous.

He uses the words knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.

And we tend to lump those together,

but the thing is there are some important differences

between them.

For instance, knowledge is just brute facts.

It's just the content of what you know.

Understanding is the comprehension of those facts,

and then wisdom is the right application of those facts.

And I can show you what this looks like practically.

So here's some knowledge for you if you did not know this.

Studies have shown that when a father is the first

in the family to come to faith in Christ,

there's a, do you know what the percentage chance is

that the rest of the family comes to Christ?

Anybody?

90.

If a father is the first one in the family

to come to Christ, there is a 90% chance

the rest of the family will come to Christ.

If only the mother is a Christian,

the likelihood of the rest of the family coming to Christ

is between 17 and 20%.

Now that's knowledge.

Those are just brute facts, okay?

Understanding then is realizing how essential

the father is, not only for the sake of his own soul,

but for the sake of the souls of his family.

How important and essential the father is

for the spiritual wellbeing of his family.

And then wisdom then is a call, men.

Wisdom here is a call for every single man

to begin to get right with Christ immediately

and to step up and be the spiritual leader of his household

that God has called him to be, because your family

and your family's souls are depending on it.

So that's knowledge and understanding

and wisdom, and Paul is saying that Christians need

all three of these when it comes to God's will

and spiritual matters.

In other words, listen to me, it's not enough

to just know a lot of stuff about God.

I think everybody in here knows a lot of stuff about God.

Do we not?

We can give you facts, we can talk theology,

we can quote the Bible to you.

We have a lot of content, and the Bible is saying here,

the content isn't enough.

You need to understand it and you need to live it out.

If it only ever stays in your head

and it never moves to your hands and your feet,

you've got a problem.

In fact, Paul says he wants us to be filled

with these things.

Notice that word there, filled.

You can circle it, underline it.

It's a really important word, because when Paul says filled

here, he doesn't mean that he wants Christians

simply to possess a lot of this stuff.

Now, obviously he does want that.

But he's not saying, I want you to be filled

so that you can just be full of this stuff.

The word filled here has the idea in Greek

of being controlled by something.

To be so full of something that you're actually

controlled by it.

We still use it in this way today.

Think about if you say a person is filled with rage.

What are we saying?

We're not just saying that they're really angry.

We're saying that they're so angry that they've lost

all sense of common sense and now their anger

is literally controlling them.

It's determining what they say, what they do, how they act.

That's what it means to be filled with something.

It means to be controlled.

The same thing is true if we say a person is filled

with lust.

What are we saying?

We're not just saying they have a lot of lust.

We're saying they've lost the ability

to make good decisions and now that lust

is controlling them in what they do.

And so in the same way Paul's prayer is that Christians

would be so filled with the knowledge and wisdom

and understanding of God's will that they would begin

to be controlled by it.

And so here's a prayer that you should start

praying immediately for yourself and for the church.

Here's what you say.

You say, Lord, fill me with spiritual wisdom

so that it controls my thoughts, attitudes, motivations,

and actions today.

Lord, fill me with spiritual wisdom so that it controls

my thoughts, attitudes, motivations, and actions today.

I think one of the biggest problems we have

in the church today is that we have a lot of people

who are desiring to be wise in the Lord

and live lives that are pleasing to God

and yet they never actually pray for God

to make that a reality.

The Bible tells us in James chapter one

that you can pray and ask God for wisdom

and the Bible says that he will give generously

to those who ask for it.

In fact, as far as I know, it is the only thing

in the Bible that if you pray for it,

you are guaranteed to get it.

If you ask God for wisdom, he will give you wisdom.

The problem is we're not asking for it.

We rarely take time to pray for it.

And so we're going, God, why am I not wise?

Why am I not living a life that is showing

that I have spiritual maturity and wisdom?

It's because we're not praying for it.

We're completely neglecting it.

But let me ask you a question, church.

Can you imagine how different our church would be

and how different the world would be

if we started to pray something like this every single day?

If we no longer let our feelings control how we speak

or act in any given situation.

If we were no longer motivated by selfish ambition,

but instead we are motivated by living

in accordance with God's will.

What if we were no longer acting towards

our own selfish ends, but we were acting

and doing everything for the glory of God alone?

What if we stopped letting our thoughts control us

and instead we took every thought captive

and made it submissive to Christ

and we were controlled by the knowledge of God and His will.

I think the world would look drastically different.

I think the church would look different.

And listen, I guarantee you that your life

would look different.

And so we need to start praying this prayer immediately

because we want to be a people

who are pleasing in the sight of God.

We want to live lives that are worthy of the gospel

and we're not gonna do that if we're not controlled

by the knowledge, understanding and wisdom of God's will.

But I want you to notice what he says next.

It's a prayer for obedient lives.

There in verse 10,

he says, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,

fully pleasing to Him.

Now here again is interesting

because if I were to take a poll of the room

and I'm tempted to have you raise your hands,

but I'm not gonna do that.

But if I were, and I said,

how many Christians in here want to live a life

that is pleasing to God?

I think we'd see everybody's hands go up, right?

Yes, amen.

I think we'd all raise our hands.

We all want to live a life that is pleasing to God.

But here's where the problem comes in.

I think that we all have different definitions

of what that actually looks like.

I'm convinced that most Christians

are subconsciously thinking or hoping

that God is gonna grade on a curve.

If you remember back to school,

I doubt Lorraine ever did this,

but there were some teachers, okay?

Yeah, no, she's saying, no, she never did this, all right?

This doesn't apply to her.

But there were some teachers

where if every student did poorly enough,

what would they do?

They would grade on a curve.

So now even those who did really bad have a passing grade.

What did the teacher do?

The teacher lowered the standard.

And they said, okay, since everybody's doing bad,

the standard's now gonna be lowered,

so everybody is looking pretty good now,

according to the state.

Well, I think a lot of Christians

think that way about God.

There are many Christians who are looking around going,

hey, listen, God, if I'm just judging myself here,

everybody's doing pretty badly down here, okay?

Like with a few exceptions or a couple of exceptional people,

but pretty much everybody's doing bad.

So God's probably gonna lower the standard, right?

That's not how it works.

God doesn't change his standard based on human performance.

So we understand that church.

God's not gonna lower his standard

because most people on earth are doing poorly.

In fact, the Bible says in Matthew chapter five,

Jesus tells us that we must be perfect

as our heavenly father is perfect.

That is God's standard, and God's not changing that standard.

Now, you can never reach that standard on your own.

It is only by being justified,

declared right on the side of God,

that you can actually obtain the perfection of Christ

that he earned for us through his life.

But listen to me, God's standard does not change.

He does not grade on a curve.

And so what you need to understand

is that partial obedience

will never be fully pleasing to God.

I know a lot of us here this morning are thinking,

I'm probably good in the eyes of God, right?

I'm probably good in the eyes of God.

If I'm looking around, I'm doing better than most people.

I come to church when I can.

I try to be nice to others.

I try not to cuss or do horrible things.

I try to help out and be a friendly person.

So I'm pretty sure God is pleased with me.

And I wanna suggest to you this morning

that maybe the reason that you think

God is pleased with your life

is because there's actually too much distance

between you and Jesus.

There's this artist that I like.

And he does this thing where sometimes

he will try to paint a famous painting from memory

without any reference.

And it's really cool.

And so he posted a video recently

where he posted a video of him painting

the Mona Lisa from memory.

And when he got done with it, I was looking at it

and I was like, yeah, that's the Mona Lisa.

If anybody was going to walk by, they would see that

and they'd clearly go, yeah, that's absolutely

the Mona Lisa.

In fact, when I was looking at it,

I couldn't even really tell you what was wrong.

I could tell something was off,

but I couldn't even pinpoint it.

And so at the end of the video,

what he did is he got a picture of the actual Mona Lisa

and he put it next to the one he painted.

And then I was like, buddy.

Like, I don't even know that I could say

the first one's the Mona Lisa anymore.

But once you put the real thing next to his imitation,

you could see all the ways that his fell short.

It was very clear where all the flaws were

and where all the areas where he messed up.

And so I tell you that to tell you

that maybe the reason that you think your life is so good

in the eyes of God is because you're spending a lot of time

looking at just your life

and you don't really want to hold it up

next to the life of Jesus.

Because let me ask you, what happens

when you put the life of Jesus next to your life?

Does your life look so good anymore?

No.

When you do that, when you put the life of Jesus

next to yours, all of a sudden,

all of your flaws are very obvious.

All of the ways you fall short, they are very obvious.

And all the ways that you need God's help,

they are very obvious.

In fact, I want to tell you one of the most humbling things

you can do, open up your Bibles

and go read one of the Gospels,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John

and just read any story about Jesus.

And when you do that, here's what I want you to do.

Read any story about Jesus and ask yourself,

how would I have responded in this situation?

What would I have said if I were Jesus in this situation?

What would I have done?

And if you're honest in this exercise,

you're gonna see just how different you are from Jesus.

I mean, there are a lot of times

where I would have lost my patience on the Pharisees,

the Sadducees, and Peter, bless his heart,

and Peter, I would have lost my patience.

And yet you see Jesus, and he is just so loving

and kind and patient and merciful and gracious.

And when I see that, I go, God, that is not what I am.

I am so far from your standard.

I'm so far from where you need me to be.

But the point is this church,

the further away we are from Jesus,

the more likely we are going to be

to think we're doing okay.

But the closer you are to Jesus,

the more likely you are to realize

how much you need God's help.

In fact, that is true of all the best Christians I know.

There's some Christians in my life,

and I look up to them, they are mentors to me,

I respect them, and I would say they are so close to God.

But if you were to ask any one of them,

they would tell you, I love the Lord, but man,

I'm just a sinner saved by grace.

I'm just a sinner in desperate need of God's grace daily.

And yet it's these other Christians,

the ones that I know are not walking with the Lord daily.

The ones that I know are entertaining sin in their lives.

They're the ones who tell me, Pastor, I'm good.

God's happy with me.

It's because there's too much distance

between us and Jesus.

If we're not close to Him,

we're gonna be tempted to think

God's pretty pleased with what we're doing.

And so here's the prayer

that I want you to start praying immediately.

You say, Lord, draw me closer to Jesus

so that my flaws are exposed

and I may walk more in step with Him.

Pray this prayer every day, Lord, draw me closer to Jesus

so that my flaws are exposed

and I may walk more in step with Him.

In other words, church,

we do not want to settle for partial obedience anymore.

We don't wanna just keep patting ourselves on the back

because we're mostly obedient

because being mostly obedient, being partially obedient,

it will never be fully pleasing to God.

And we need Jesus to expose our sins

because here's something I know about everybody in here.

Most of us are pretty blind to our flaws most of the time.

Are we not?

I mean, we might think you're doing great

and then someone comes right alongside of you

and they go, hey, have you noticed

you've got a problem with patience?

You're like, no, I did not notice that.

I can't believe anybody did.

We're pretty blind to our flaws most of the time, right?

We need someone to come and expose that

and the best person to expose that would be Jesus.

And so your prayer every day should be,

Lord, I don't want sin in my life.

I want it to be exposed so that I can repent of that sin

and so that I can start living a life

that is more pleasing to you.

So draw me closer to Jesus so that I can see those flaws,

repent of them and then keep me close

so that I can walk more in step with Jesus every day.

Listen, I would love it if you would start praying this

for other Christians too.

Because here's another tendency we have in the church today

is we have a tendency to get frustrated more than we pray.

And so what we'll do is we'll see Christians

who are struggling in sin

or we'll see Christians who are getting lax in their walk

and we go, what is wrong with them?

Like, I thought they were so on fire for the Lord

for a time and they were coming to church

and I saw them here on Sunday morning

and they were getting active

and they were doing all these things

and now I don't know the last time I've seen them.

They're not reading their Bible, they're not praying.

Like they're drifting from God

and we have a tendency to get frustrated then.

But what if instead of getting frustrated,

we started praying for them?

And we started saying, Lord, draw them back to you.

Show them how much they need you in their lives

on a daily basis, expose their sins

and then keep them close to you

so that they will live a life that is pleasing to you.

What would the change look like, church,

if we stopped getting frustrated

and actually got down on our knees

and started praying for our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Do you think there'd be a noticeable difference

in the church?

I do.

And so I think you should start praying this prayer immediately

and then Paul says we should pray for a fruitful ministry.

Look at verse 10.

In the last part of verse 10,

he says, bearing fruit in every good work

and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Now, I don't know if you've ever worked

on a job site with someone.

Could be an actual job site.

Greg Berryhill's done this a lot.

Or if you're working on a project with someone

or a group project or any environment

where you have to work with other people.

But if you've done this,

you'll notice there are typically

about three kinds of people, maybe more,

but here are my general three categories.

You've got your leaders and they plan everything.

They oversee the project, they help out.

Then you've got your laborers.

And as you can imagine,

they're the ones who do the majority of the work

and heavy lifting.

And then you got the people that I call the lookers.

Why do you call them the lookers, pastor?

I'm glad you asked.

It's because these people always look

like they're busy with something,

but they never actually do a thing.

You know people like this?

Yeah, don't look around.

But okay, you've met a couple of these.

No matter what, they always have their hand on something.

They always are running around looking busy

and looking like they're working.

But then if you're close to it,

you're like, hold on a second, he didn't do a thing.

He was just standing there the whole time.

This also applies to mission trips.

Anybody who's been on a mission trip knows this.

You're going and you're doing a bunch of work.

And then there's a group of people who never do any work,

but the camera comes out and all of a sudden,

they're carrying two by fours and a drill,

has no bid in it, but they've got the drill in there.

And they're like, we're doing this for Jesus.

And again, there's no bid, but it's for Jesus.

And they're in every single picture.

So that's the lookers.

My point is there's a big difference

between being busy and looking busy and being productive.

There's a big difference.

And my concern for Christians today

is that a lot of us are really good at looking busy

and being busy, but not a lot of us are very productive.

I think we've got a lot of Martha's and not a lot of Mary's.

You remember the story of Mary and Martha?

That's one of my favorite in the Bible.

Jesus comes to the house of the two sisters

and Martha's like, I know what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna start serving.

I'm gonna start doing everything.

I'm gonna start cooking and cleaning and tidying up

and getting everything ready.

And the Bible even says she distracted herself,

and she's busy herself with much serving.

And so she's doing all this, and the problem is what?

Her sister is not helping her.

And she's like, well, this isn't fair.

I'm doing all this work.

And she even goes to Jesus.

She's like, hey, I don't know if you've noticed this.

I've done everything.

She hasn't done a thing.

But where was Mary?

She was sitting at the feet of Jesus.

And Jesus tells Martha, I'm not gonna scold her

because Mary has chosen the better portion.

She's chosen the good portion.

And I think a lot of people today,

you know, look at our church,

and something that's true about our church

is pretty much everyone in here

is wearing 10 different hats.

And that's great.

I appreciate that.

I'm wearing about 15 or so myself.

So I love you and I appreciate you doing that.

But one of the problems is people get so busy

that they end up burning out.

And I think one of the reasons

that so many people burn out in church

is because we've got a lot of people today

who are much more eager and willing to serve Jesus

than they are to simply sit with Jesus.

And if you never take the time to sit with Jesus

and all you ever do is serve Jesus,

you're gonna end up burning out real quick.

Because it's no longer gonna be about serving a living savior.

It's gonna be about making sure you do

as much as you possibly can.

And you're gonna end up doing it

in your own strength and power,

which is absolutely pointless.

Because we can do nothing in our own power.

The Bible tells us that we can either plant a seed

or we can water a plant.

But who is it that gives the growth, church?

God, that's an easy answer.

You could have said Jesus is the Sunday school answer.

Who gives the growth, church?

Jesus, God, okay.

Again, not a lot of response there.

We'll chalk it up to cold weather, but it'll be all right.

God is the one who gives the growth.

God is the one who causes something to bear fruit.

The Bible says unless the Lord builds the house,

those who labor do so in vain.

And so if you want your life in ministry to be fruitful,

you need to remember who it is

that actually brings forth the fruit in the first place.

And so here's the prayer.

You should start praying immediately.

Lord, remind me to sit with you before I serve you.

So that I will depend on you for a fruitful life in ministry.

Lord, remind me to sit with you before I serve you

so that I will depend on you for a fruitful life in ministry.

Church, we need to be praying this for each other

on a daily basis.

We need to be praying this for our church on a daily basis

because I am praying that the Lord will continue

to produce and bear much fruit in this church.

We want to have a fruitful ministry here at George's Creek.

And I want to just take this opportunity to remind you

that we have seen a lot of fruit over the past five years.

Have we not, church?

We've seen some wonderful blessings over the past five years.

We've seen tons of fruit here in this church.

So let me remind you,

I am not the one who is responsible for the fruit

that we have seen in this church.

I am not the one who made this church grow.

I am not the one who made this church effective.

I am not the one who made this church produce fruit.

It was all God and God alone.

Are we all clear on that?

It was not Alex, it was God.

To God alone belongs the glory.

And we want to continue to see this fruit.

And so we need to pray that we would be a people

who are not just busy, but bountiful,

making sure that we never disconnect our service to God.

And we need to be a people who are not just busy,

but are busy with our service to the Lord

from our relationship with the Lord.

Because if you start removing Jesus from that relationship,

you're just going to turn into a bunch of Pharisees.

And this church will die out quickly.

We need to be like Mary and not like Martha.

So notice this final thing that Paul says

we should be praying for.

And it is joyful perseverance in verses 11 through 12.

According to his glorious might for all endurance

and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father

who has qualified you to share in the inheritance

of the saints in light.

Now as Paul's talking about perseverance here

and having joy, he's alluding to the fact

that the Christian life is not a sprint.

It is a marathon and it is grueling.

You don't just come to faith

and then you're immediately perfected and that's it.

You just sit around and wait.

You come to faith in Christ, God saves you,

and then he puts you on this journey

of getting to walk with Christ throughout all of your life

and having the Holy Spirit slowly make you more and more

like Christ.

And Paul is saying God wants you to enjoy that journey.

I think I've told you all before

that I am absolutely no fun to hike with whatsoever.

And I don't think I can overstate that enough.

I mean, you don't want me on a hike with you, okay?

Because if you tell me we're gonna go hike to a waterfall,

I'm gonna get us to that waterfall, okay?

And we're gonna be going like left, right, left, right,

drill sergeant type stuff out there.

Let's get going and get to that waterfall.

Anna and Judah are not like that, however.

And that's because they actually know how to hike.

So that's not on them, but they move at a snail's pace

or a little slower than a snail,

but they move there about at a snail's pace.

Oh, I got to look there, okay?

But here's what they do.

When they're hiking, they're gonna stop and look

at every snail, every tree, every branch, every leaf,

every rock, every body of water,

every little critter they can find.

They're gonna be stopping constantly.

And the whole point is, oh, we'll get to the waterfall

when we get there.

It's not moving.

It's still gonna be there by the time we get there.

And I'm like, well, then what's the point of even going?

But anyways, the whole point is that the purpose of hiking

is not to get to the destination.

The whole point of hiking is to enjoy the journey

to that destination.

And I think if we're not careful,

we can make this same mistake

when it comes to our spiritual lives.

We can get so called up in reaching that end goal

of perfection that we fail to appreciate

that the journey the Lord has us on right now.

But I want you to understand something this morning.

The Lord actually does care about that journey.

And I can prove it to you too.

Because as I said, God is all powerful, yes?

So when he saved you, he could have just made you perfect

at that time, yes?

He could have removed all the sin,

made it to where you were never tempted again,

made it to where you never walked in disobedience again.

He could have said they're perfect right now,

but he didn't do that.

Instead, he chose to allow you to start on this journey

of walking with Christ and slowly learn obedience,

slowly learn to turn away from sin more and more,

slowly learn to enjoy the Lord more and more and more.

And this journey just gets sweeter the longer you're on it.

Does it not?

I mean, the more you walk with the Lord,

the sweeter that walk gets.

And so I need you to understand

that God actually does care about that journey.

God doesn't want you to view your spiritual growth

like I view hiking.

He doesn't want you to just white knuckle your way

to perfection.

He wants you to enjoy the journey of growing in him

and walking with him.

And it's beautiful.

I mean, there are gonna be some bumps along the road,

but few things are more satisfying

than embracing that journey and seeing the progress

and change that God brings about in your life.

And I love witnessing this journey.

One of my favorite examples is Kaylee.

I got her permission before service to mention her.

Kaylee is a horrible no-goods.

No, can you imagine?

No, I love seeing what the Lord has done in Kaylee's life.

And she posted recently on Facebook

and it really just, it made me so proud

as her pastor is one of my proudest moments

because she said in this post

that before she came to George's Creek,

she had never read a full chapter of the Bible

before she came to this church.

But she said last year by God's grace,

she read through the entire Bible for the very first time,

every single word of the Bible and she read through it.

And now, listen, again,

Kaylee would be the first one to tell you this.

If you were in my gospel group,

she would be the one to tell you this, okay?

Kaylee's not perfect.

She is far from perfect.

She still has her problems and her difficulties

and her challenges that she's working through,

but you can look at where she was

and where God has brought her

and see the change that he has brought about in her life

in such a short amount of time.

And she even said in her post

that she was eternally grateful to God

for giving her a desire, not obligation,

a desire to be closer to him every day.

And she said, I'm finally learning to hear his voice

and to recognize it above all the noise.

And church, that's what God does.

That's what God can do.

He can take any person on earth,

he can save them and then he can put them

on a spiritual journey to transform their life.

And notice what she did there.

She didn't focus on where she wasn't,

she focused on where she had been.

I just want to tell you this morning,

if you will stop focusing solely on the destination

and learn to appreciate the change

and how far God has brought you,

you're gonna start enjoying walking with him

a whole lot more.

And so here's what I want you to pray.

This prayer you should pray immediately.

Lord, help me to have joy in my walk with Christ

and give thanks for becoming more like Christ.

Lord, help me to have joy in my walk with Christ

and give thanks for becoming more like Christ.

In other words, church,

I want you to start learning to celebrate small victories.

I want you to learn to celebrate the progress

and not just the perfection.

And so if you're here this morning, listen to me,

if you were praying more now than you were a year ago,

then that has changed, that has progressed

and you should take time to praise God

because he's the one who made that a reality in your life.

If you're studying the Bible more than you were a year ago,

then praise God because that's progress.

And that's something that God has done in your life.

If you're learning more, growing more, trusting more,

if you're walking with God more closely

than you were a year ago,

then you need to take time to praise God for that change

and for that progress that he's brought about in your life.

So don't get so focused on the destination

that you fail to appreciate the journey

and what God is doing all around you.

And I'm just gonna tell you this joy,

it doesn't come naturally to us,

which is why Paul says we need to be praying for this joy.

God, give me joy in my walk with Christ

so that I'll learn to appreciate it

and give thanks for what you're doing in my life.

And so if you want to live lives that are pleasing to God

and be found worthy in his sight,

then we need to be equipped to live those kind of lives,

do we not?

And one of the best ways that you can be equipped

for that kind of life is to start praying for it

and praying for all the areas where you were lacking

and needing help.

One of the best things you can do

for your spiritual life here in 2025,

the sermon insert that you normally throw away

on your way out the door, do me a favor, keep that one, okay?

I want you to keep that one, put it on your fridge,

keep it in your Bible, add it to your daily prayer list

and start praying these prayers every single day

for yourself and for this church,

because only through this will God begin

to make us live lives that are worthy

of the gospel of Christ and pleasing in his sight.

And that's exactly what we want.

Is it not church?

Amen.

All right, let's pray.