Acts (Part 2) | The Holy Spirit - Acts 19 | October 12

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Well, let's pray. Father, we thank you that we get to come together.

We get to gather in your name.

We get to gather unafraid and unashamed.

We get to sing loud.

We get to declare with those songs and with our voices and with this just time

together, we get to declare that we are yours,

that we belong to you, that you are the God who created all things.

You're the God who created the universe.

You're the God who loves us. You're the God who holds us. You're the God who keeps and sustains us.

I just pray that we would encounter you this morning,

even if not by feeling or experience God, but we would just live in the awareness,

the reality, the truth that you are here, that you are with us,

that you dwell in us, that you have given us your spirit,

that we might walk with you in truth, that we might walk with you and enjoy you.

And not just here on this earth, but for all eternity, God.

And so we look forward to that. And we also look forward to all the ways that

you bring heaven here to this earth for us to experience and live in your presence, God. Amen.

So we are in Acts chapter 19 as Sandy introduced us to.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

Thank you, Sandy, for that time with the kids. and I must say that Acts 19 has

by far some of my favorite stories in the entirety of the book of Acts.

Some really crazy, wild, unbelievable events that happen in these.

It's quite a long chapter so we're not going to have the whole chapter read

like we normally do for some of the smaller things even though we've done times

where we've read really long chapters.

I thought I might spare us from that this morning and I'll read stuff together

but we're just going to summarize a little bit of it.

There's some crazy, unbelievable events that happen in this particular chapter.

For one, handkerchiefs and aprons that Paul would have worn as he sat,

perhaps even wiped the sweat off of his brow as he made tents,

were taken by individuals and perhaps even stolen. We don't really know.

It just says that individuals would gather these items and they would take them

to loved ones who were sick with the hope that they might be healed.

And the crazy part about that story is that it worked, that these people were

healed as a result of cloth, just simple everyday cloth that had touched Paul's

sweaty, I don't know, forehead, I guess.

But that's the crazy part of the story, that we would see such things as handkerchiefs

and aprons heal the sick.

And Paul's not condoning this. He's not telling people to do this.

He's also not profiting off of it or encouraging people in any way to do this.

It's just a recording of something that was happening in this time.

That people were doing this and it was working.

Just as people in their own ambition and heads would gather,

they would lay themselves on the road as Peter passed by, hoping that his shadow

would fall on them, that they might be healed.

And they would do that as well. And the Bible never says that Peter's shadow healed them.

However, it says that they would do this, that they would lead themselves in

couches as he passed by. And then the very next verse says that all of the who were sick were healed.

So the sick were healed, although there's no direct correlation necessary between

Peter's shadow and that healing.

But just as the dead man who was

thrown into the tomb onto the bones of Elijah stood up and walked and lived

again as these people were fleeing from Midianite raiders and they were trying

to dispose of this young man who had died and they threw him in the tomb and

he landed on Elijah's bones and he was raised to life,

signifying that God's mighty power was not restricted even to the death of the prophet Elisha.

Just as that would happen, just as people would give up everything and they

would push through crowds just to touch the hem of Jesus's robes that they might be healed.

Just like the woman who was suffering bleeding for 12 years gave up everything

just to get to Jesus, just to touch his robe.

And she was healed and power went out from Jesus.

Just as people would gather in hopes that they would be healed by Jesus,

we see a piece of cloth that Paul had touched healing the sick.

And again, this story, as crazy as it is, is just there describing what was going on.

It's not there to encourage us to seek out objects, to chase after these things of power.

Although we have seen that in church history, right?

How relics have existed and people have sought them and battled for them,

believing that there was power in these objects.

This is not for us to seek out objects of power.

People would throw themselves on the graves of past saints and then some hope

of gaining power in their lives as well.

This is not instructing us on what to do, simply describing what was happening.

We are not meant to chase after objects.

We are not meant to chase after shadows.

We are meant to encounter in this crazy story, as Job says, the God who his

voice thunders wondrously and he does great and unimaginable things that we cannot comprehend.

That's the point of this crazy, unbelievable story.

We get to meet. That's not what I want to talk about today though.

We get to meet this another crazy story where these seven sons of Sceva is introduced to them, right?

Who is a Jewish high priest or a priest, I guess.

And they are an itinerant exorcist family. If you didn't know that,

a career path for you in the ancient Jewish world could have been to go around

and cast demons out of people.

So this is a family that that was their business.

And so they hear about Jesus. They're like, I can capitalize on this and I can

get some work done. So these seven boys, however old they were,

traveling around and they try and cast the demon out of this man using the name of Jesus.

And I'm not sure if they had ever successfully cast a demon out before or they were just charlatans.

There's this story in the Old Testament where someone's hired to bring back

Elijah or somebody and she was very surprised when he showed up.

So obviously she was a charlatan in this sort of necromancy or witchcraft or

whatever. So I'm not sure if they had ever experienced this for real,

but they're like, okay, Jesus's name has power. I'm going to start using this.

And the funniest part of the story is if you enter, so there's seven of them

against one man, seven to one, hardly a fair fight.

But if you enter into a fight fully clothed and you leave naked, there is no pretense.

There is no assumption as to who won that fight.

These guys were beaten. I don't even know how that's possible.

You hear about people getting knocked their socks off.

They were knocked so hard that their entire wardrobe count.

I guess back then that was more like togas and stuff. So maybe it was easier,

but still they lost big time.

And that's my favorite part of this story as weirdly as it is.

But the crazy part of this story is the response when they try and cast the

demon out. He says, Jesus, I know.

And Paul, I've heard of. Your translation might say something like, I've recognized Paul.

But then the demon says, who are you?

And so the demon in this man knew about Paul.

And that's so crazy to me. And this whole story kind of illustrates something

in us that the fact that there is a spiritual reality that exists that many

of us have probably tried to ignore.

Most of us have probably successfully suppressed in our lives,

maybe for our entire lives.

But we don't live in that reality very often in our day-to-day lives.

We see the physical and we experience the physical, and we are deluded into

believing that this is all that there is.

But we know as Christians that there is a spiritual reality that exists that

in many ways is more real,

than what we can taste and what we can touch and what we can experience in the

physical world, that the spiritual reality is more real.

And unfortunately, there are people around the world who live in this reality

much more than we in our culture.

I was listening recently to an old sermon from a church that we went to in Columbia,

and Adam, the pastor who's talking, is talking about the first time,

I think it's the first time that he and his wife went to India,

and the church had helped start a recovery center in this city in India.

And so they're visiting and they're experiencing the fruit of their labor as

well and meeting the pastor.

If they didn't know him, I'm not sure if they knew him or not,

but they're hearing all of the stories of what was going on in this recovery

center that they helped start.

And the pastor's introducing them to this woman who he tells them was demon possessed.

And she had made her way to the mosque and the imam said, oh,

no, no, no, I don't deal with spirits. You're going to have to go across the

street to the Christians.

And so she went across the street to the recovery center and the pastor and them prayed for her.

And she was freed from this demon possession that she was experiencing.

And even though as I'm saying this and I heard it and some of y'all are probably

experiencing the same thing, you're just like, I don't know if that's real or not.

But this pastor is just speaking about this experience as if it was a normal

Tuesday for them. This is a reality that other people around the world experience

more concretely than we do. And they understand it more than we in our country.

But it is a reality that exists nonetheless.

And the beautiful thing about it is that God is doing great and wonderful things

in this place and around the world.

And the idols and other religions and other gods that people seek out,

are unable. They have no power. We sing that song, every other God is an idol.

And the words are that they cannot speak, they cannot hear, they cannot save, they cannot heal.

And this is the reality of what we experience with our God.

The reality that we read in James, where it speaks about how demons know and

shudder at the name of Jesus, that Jesus, that God, our God is powerful.

And along with that, and we kind of sang this already this morning,

but that He has no rival and He has no equal.

In our day-to-day lives, we live in such a way sometimes where what we communicate

is that Satan is equal to God.

In the way that we fear and the way that we pull back and the way that we don't

press in and the way that we experience life.

We live in that false assumption, not believing that, but living in that way.

And the reality is, is that Satan is not an equal to God.

He is not omnipresent. He is not omnipowerful, whatever, omniscient,

whatever those words are.

He is not those things. And God is, God alone is all powerful. God alone is great.

And so we, we, we experienced this in this chapter. that's not what I want to talk about today.

The result is that Christians in Ephesus, so we're back in Ephesus,

Christians in Ephesus hear this story about these Jewish boys who get beat naked.

And as a result, what they start doing is bringing all of these books of witchcraft,

these magic books, these things that they've hidden away and held onto,

these secret sins, these secret things that they power sources that they believed

that they could fall back on in case this whole Jesus thing didn't work out for them.

They start bringing these things out and burning them.

And it's this beautiful display of confession and repentance of all of these

secret treasures that they've been holding on, that they've been hoarding on into their tents.

It reminded me of the story of Achan back in Joshua chapter seven,

where he holds on to these treasures that are supposed to be devoted to God.

And he keeps them hidden away in

his tent. And God exposes that sin in his life. But we do the same thing.

We hoard these things that we believe in some way we can fall back on,

just to have a backup plan.

When we fear about what's happening in our culture, when we fear about what's

happening in the world, when we fear about what will happen with our economy,

we build these treasure stores for ourselves.

And sometimes they're sinful, sometimes they're idolatrous. Every time it's us not trusting in God.

In 1 Chronicles 2, it refers to Achan as the troubler of Israel,

And there's this deceptiveness to sin, this deceptiveness that causes us to

hold on to these things and to put our trust and our faith and these other things

and these superstitions and these practices.

In our culture today, we still hold on to them.

Even in the church, people still hold on to this ideas of occultism and spiritism

and magic and astrology and numerology and horoscopes and crystals.

And we build our lives around things so that we can hope to control the circumstances

that we experience in this life, because we all know deeply that all of them are out of our control.

So anyway, we can try and gain control. We build our lives around these things.

But as we established earlier, the spiritual world is real.

And there's a real war going on. And now Satan is a defeated enemy,

but that doesn't mean that the battle is any less real.

And so for me, it's just a case where none of this stuff should be trifled with or messed with.

There's even a chance that it connects us to something demonic or something not of God.

And in my own life, there's a video game that I have watched people play in

the past, because I'm a weirdo who watch people play video games.

But I stopped watching it. It's like a ghost hunting game.

And Kanan has asked me why we stopped watching it several times.

But it's because, yeah, there's demons in it, which is less of the reason.

But it's also because the way that you interact with the game is through these

sort of occult practices.

And I was just like, I don't need to watch this. I don't need to be a part of

this. I don't need to give the devil any opportunity.

It's just not worth the risk in any of these cases.

And besides that, we know something that is even more important.

We as Christians know and have encountered the God who is in control of all things.

So we don't need to seek control in any other way.

As Daniel says in chapter two, that he is the God who works wonders,

that he is the God who controls the times and the seasons, that he is the God

who sets up rulers and removes rulers, that he's the God who gives wisdom and understanding.

We know this God who's in control of all things. That's not what I want to talk about today.

But as we encounter this God in Ephesus.

This is what I want to get to. But Jenny and I had the opportunity to visit Turkey.

We had the opportunity to visit Istanbul and Ephesus before we had kids.

And it was a very spiritually dark experience for us.

Just very heavy being in not just a Muslim country, but a country that,

is oppressive towards Christianity in many ways, that you hear the calls to

prayer going off at the required hours every single time, waking you up at 4

a.m. or whatever that is.

It just felt spiritually oppressive for us.

And we got to visit Ephesus in a place where the amphitheater,

where Paul spoke and proclaimed the gospel to hundreds and thousands.

And we got to stand there and we got to see the temple of Artemis,

what's left of it at least, which is really just one column.

Even though it was one of the seven wonders of the great ancient world,

that's all that's left of it.

And the funny thing is, the ironic thing is that it is said that some of those

stones and columns were taken down when it was destroyed,

and they were brought into Constantinople to Istanbul to build Hagia Sophia,

which is the first kind of like mega church.

And there might be some disagreement as to whether that's true or not,

but it's ironic that we have this experience with Paul where they rioting to defend Artemis.

And then at some point in the future, a church is being built from the ruins

of that temple and potentially even built on the site of an ancient pagan temple in Istanbul itself.

And we got to walk those corridors. We got to walk the halls of this old church

and the stone, which formed the pathways, which formed the...

What's it called when you walk across the door.

What's the bottom part called? Threshold. Thank you.

The thresholds are worn down in these deep use just from generations of people

walking in and worshiping God in a tradition that they didn't invent and giving

their lives to the God that they didn't make, but who made them and who loved them.

The years of worship are worn into the stones of that church.

And it did become a mosque And it's kind of like both at this point, I guess. I don't know.

But you get to see the generations of devotion and you get to experience in

this dark, spiritually heavy country,

the light of what Hebrews 12 talks about, that we live in the presence of the

faithful witnesses who have gone before us.

And since we are in that presence of all of these witnesses,

that we can run this race with endurance that God has set before us.

You get to experience and feel the weight of the presence of God.

And otherwise this dark and captive country that's still captive to idolatry to this day.

And that's what I want to talk about with our remaining time is how this chapter

begins in the first 10 verses. So let me just read those for us.

And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland

country and came to Ephesus.

There he found some disciples and he said to them, did you receive the Holy

Spirit when you believed?

And they said, no, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.

And he said, into what then were you baptized?

They said, into John's baptism. And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism

of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus.

On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And when Paul had laid hands on them and the Holy Spirit came on them,

they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. There were about 12 men in all.

And he entered into the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly,

reasoning, persuading them about the kingdom of God.

But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the

way, before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with

them, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus.

This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word

of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.

We were at that time in the book of Acts where we have turned to the ends of

the earth, that what was said in the beginning is being fulfilled in these moments

as all of those who are in Asia and beyond hear the gospel.

And we have encountered this scene, not once, but three other times in the book of Acts.

This familiar scene that we experienced here, we read in Acts chapter two,

how the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles in a wind, in a whirlwind,

and they began to speak in a powerful way at Pentecost and thousands believed.

And so we see the spirit come In Acts chapter 8, we see the Spirit come again,

Acts 8 · chapter mention

this time on the Samaritans, that they believed the gospel that Philip preached to them.

But then as Peter came along with John, they laid hands on them as a sign to

confirm that the Samaritans were included in God's plan for salvation.

The Spirit came on them in a powerful way as well. We read in Acts chapter 10,

Acts 10 · chapter mention

how the Gentiles, among the Gentiles, the Holy Spirit comes,

starting with Cornelius' family.

When Peter's preaching, the Holy Spirit fell on those who heard the message

and the whole house is included into God's kingdom.

And now we hear, we read here and in Acts 19, after Paul explained the gospel

and baptized them in Jesus name, he laid hands on them and the Holy Spirit came

on them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.

We see four times the Spirit comes in Jerusalem.

In Samaria, and all Judea into the ends of the earth." The book of Acts,

the purpose is being fulfilled as we're hearing it, that the Spirit is coming.

To inaugurate this and to confirm God's plan has always been for all people for all time.

And so we experience this scene of the Holy Spirit coming once again.

And as I've written in my torn up Bible years ago about these verses?

How do we know if we've received the Spirit?

How do we know? And I do want to talk about that, but I first want to just begin

with what is the Holy Spirit so that we can start off on the same foot.

What is the Holy Spirit? It's not a power, although He is great and powerful.

It's not a force, although you will encounter no greater force in all of existence.

It is not a mystery and it's not magic by all accounts and by all truth.

The way that we can understand the spirit more than anything is that this Holy

Spirit of God is a person.

It is a member of the Trinity. It is God himself. The Holy Spirit is above all

things, not a power, not a force, but a person.

The Bible calls him helper because he is with us and walks with us through life.

The Bible calls him an advocate.

Psalm 119, David cries out, argue my case, take my side, God.

We encounter that through the Holy Spirit, the advocate of the Father on our behalf.

The Bible calls him a paraclete, the strengthener, the helper,

the spirit of truth who dwells with and in believers.

He is the personal presence of Jesus, continuing his ministry in us and with us.

He is not an impersonal force, but a person you can know and you can trust and you can walk with.

Scripture describes him in many ways, describes him as a wind,

as breath, as water, as a dove, many, many more.

We get to experience this at the beginning of Acts when the spirit comes in a whirlwind.

We experience him as a wind. The Bible says that the spirit blows where he wants.

We neither know where he comes from or where he's going.

At the very beginning of creation, God breathed life through his spirit into the first humans.

In Ezekiel, God breathes life onto these dry and dead bones.

And in John chapter 20, Jesus says, as he breathes on his disciples,

John 20 · chapter mention

that they would receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says earlier in the book of John that he is pouring out his spirit on

this dry land, and all who are thirsty and all who are dry would receive this spirit of living water.

That would well up within them.

This is the spirit of the living God. And although we have these images that

scripture portrays, these metaphors, we can just think of him as the unseen

vital presence of God who gives life.

He renews creation and he refreshes the soul and guides believers in truth and peace.

He's the giver of life involved in both creation at the beginning and then new

creation as we all are given and walk in this newness of life, which God gives us.

It's God's own presence, living in believers, personal life-giving,

truth-revealing, Christ-exalting.

And before we get to how do we know if we have Him, I just want to talk about

what is the role of the Holy Spirit?

What does the Holy Spirit do? And it's not a sensation that it creates or a

feeling or experience, but in our salvation, He regenerates.

He gives us new life.

He makes his home with us that we would know and walk and trust him.

He guides us in truth. There's a verse in the Bible.

I don't know where it is, so I can't tell you the reference.

But it's a prayer for the Spirit of God to guide our steps and direct our hearts,

strengthen and encourage our hearts.

This is his role. He empowers us for mission. He guides us in truth.

He creates unity and he binds the church together. In our daily life,

the spirit cultivates dependence on God.

He leads us as we rely on Him through discernment,

He confirms that and encourages the church through our gifts, which he empowers.

He doesn't usually speak in audible voice or usually even in extravagant events.

But through the process of a life lived with him and discernment learned over

time to listen to the voice of Jesus, our good shepherd, who says that the sheep

know his voice and He knows theirs,

that we would learn over time to know and follow.

He invites friendships. He invites awareness of God in ordinary life.

He renews. He sanctifies. He empowers.

He reveals Jesus in His Word and in life.

And He shapes us from inside out. This is what the Spirit does in the life of a believer.

And in some ways, it kind of answers the question that we wanted to get to This

question that I wrote however many years ago, how do you know if you've received the Spirit?

And one thing that's important for us to realize as we encounter this in Acts

19 is that Paul's expectation is that those who have believed in Jesus have

already received the Spirit.

He is quite shocked, actually, to encounter these believers in Ephesus who hadn't

even heard of the Holy Spirit.

It is his expectation in the normal experience of a believer that if you believe

in Jesus and you have put your faith and trust in Jesus, that you have been

given the gift of the Spirit.

If you are baptized in the name of Jesus, then you have the Spirit of God.

That is Paul's expectation.

But what should that look like? In that expectation,

one of the main things that we can see is that the Spirit brings within us assurance

of our adoption as sons and daughters and our confidence that we belong to God.

That the spirit brings us a confidence that we are God's children,

that he is our God. We are his people. And we belong to him.

If we live in fear and doubt of our identity in Christ, that is not the work of the spirit.

The work of the spirit is that we would have confidence to stand on that we are God's children.

And he expresses this through many ways, through our own assurance,

as we read the scriptures and we trust to lean on God and not our own pride

and not our own understanding, as we are affirmed by the Spirit's work with

the believers and the family of God around us,

as we express our spiritual gifts and encouraging and building up the family of God,

and as we experience the Spirit together as His family seeking Him.

So He brings that assurance, He brings that confidence and he transforms our

lives as we grow in the fruits of the Spirit,

as we grow in love and joy and peace and patience, as we experience all that

this life has to offer in confidence and in contentment,

knowing that God is in control so that we may grow in peace and we may grow

in patience and we may grow in joy.

The New Testament has so much to do, so much to say about idea of joy and peace,

that we would grow in joy as we live in and with the Spirit of God.

It gives us the conviction to confess our sins, to bring to God all of the ways

that we have failed to measure up, to follow in obedience.

The Spirit convicts us of that, not just in like when our children get in trouble,

not just in the fact that they're in trouble, but in the fact that they did

something to get in trouble in the first place.

Not that any of our children have ever experienced that, of course.

But the confession that not a guilt,

not a shame, and not a fear in the sense of punishment, but a fear in the sense

of not wanting anything in our lives to come between us and the presence of God.

The Holy Spirit brings that conviction and that confession. He brings us and

draws us into the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of God's word.

That we would want to hear a word from the Lord at all times,

at every moment, even more than daily.

He draws us in to the beauty of the gospel.

And as we encounter these stories in Acts 19,

starting off with this idea of the spirit coming upon them and ending in a way with what we discussed,

at least with this idea of confession of believers who bring into the courtyards

their idolatry and their hidden sins.

This is kind of what the entirety of the Bible is about in a way,

how God loved and he created and he sought and he pursued and how we build our

own kingdoms and we try and do it without him.

And we build our idols and we build our comfort and we build our idolatry of

power and influence and success and pleasure and whatever it may be for us.

And it probably differs for each of us.

But we, all sin can be summed up in that word idolatry.

It's not so much about what we do, it's about what we worship.

Sin is when we worship things other than God.

And that brings within us a distrust of whether we have the spirit of God or not.

I had friends in high school who, many of whom came from different backgrounds,

but we found ourselves all collectively in a more charismatic group.

I went to a nerdy school where I didn't live with my parents.

So that gives you context for all those who you didn't realize that.

So I essentially was in a college environment at 16. So that's the context.

And so we are part of this Christian group, and many of these people find themselves

in this more charismatic realm, and some of them begin speaking in tongues and

different things like that.

And what happens when they sin is then they come crying, worried that the gift

is going to leave, because they equate the Holy Spirit with the gift and not the giver.

And they're so afraid of losing this gift, losing this connection,

this experience of the Spirit.

But the Spirit brings confidence and assurance. The Spirit brings trust,

not a sensationalism, not a feeling, not experience, but a power that comes

for us to endure life in all that it has and brings for us.

And a confidence to know we are children of God and not a fear of losing out

on what that might look like.

So just to round off our time, the Holy Spirit is this personal presence of

Jesus in believers. That's who he is.

Not a power, not a force, although there is no greater force,

a personal presence of Jesus in us and with us.

His role is to give life, to transform our hearts, to guide us in truth,

to empower us for mission and to unite the church.

And we've talked about this a lot over the book of Acts, how the beginning sets

it up where we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us to be witnesses.

Living by the Spirit shows up in our faith and our Christ-like fruit that He

bears through us, not that we bear on our own sheer force of will and try hard.

As He empowers our witness, as He guides us in humility and assures us in confidence,

as our life is increasingly marked by love and joy and peace.

And we know when we are living in the presence and by the power of the Spirit,

when our faith deepens, when our character changes, when our love expands,

when our community is strengthened, when Christ is glorified in our lives.

And above all these things, the Spirit confirms that they are true in us.

So, Lord, thank you for your spirit, that your plan for this earth never,

never included you leaving us all alone.

But in your pursuit of us, you came to us when we couldn't come to you.

You made a way for us to come to you when we are dead in our sins and our trespasses,

and we couldn't do anything.

And when Jesus had accomplished that mission and resurrected and lives,

you didn't leave us alone even then, but you sent the spirit to guide us,

to encourage us, to strengthen us, to be with us in all that life has to offer.

Thank you for that, God, that you are not a God who creates and leaves,

but as the Bible says time and time and time again, you will never leave us

and you will never forsake us so that we can have confidence in that.

To say that God, the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear.

And we can stand and live in all that life brings us with endurance,

with joy, with love, and with peace, because you alone are God.

And every other God is an idol that can't do anything.

And Sandy used the word stupid, which I had to tell Canaan to not say that word

over and over again afterwards.

But that's the reality. Deaf, dumb, blind, no power.

You, God, alone have all power and all authority in all things.

And you say that if we love you, we keep, obey your word, then you will love,

your father will love us and you will make a home with us and you have fulfilled that promise.

And that you are faithful even when we are faithless, God. Even when we constantly

fail and break that agreement, you still pursue us in love and are faithful to us.

So I pray that we would have confidence in your spirit and we would live in

that reality to know that you are our God and you are for us.

And you have provided a way for us to be with you.

And you strengthen us and you encourage us and you lead us and you direct us.

You transform us and you bring us new life,

that we might be freed from the bondages of sin and idolatry that keep us captive

for so long, that we might live with you, that we might walk with you,

that we might enjoy and delight in you, that we would be your people and you would be our God.