Battle Ready: :Pray for Everything Ephesians 6:18-20 Pastor Daniel Reese

We're also praying for Andrew and Elle on Wednesday night.

So if you want to pray for them again,

then we invite you to do that.

If you have your Bible's,

Ephesians chapter six is where we're going to be this morning.

We're almost done, almost done with it.

You coming up already?

Okay.

Savannah's going to read our passage this morning.

I would encourage you to stand as we do this together.

It says,

praying at all times in the spirit

with all prayer and supplication.

To that end, keep alert with all perseverance,

making supplication for all the saints.

And also for me,

that words may be given to me

and opening my mouth boldly

to proclaim the mystery of the gospel.

For which I'm an ambassador in chains

that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

Amen, let's pray.

Father God, thank you for your word

and I pray that you will open our ears and hearts

to hear from you this morning.

We give you praise for Savannah

and the walk that she is walking.

I pray, Father, that you will bless her

as she continues to dive into your word

and proclaim it boldly.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

Thank you, Savannah.

Thanks for standing on that other step too.

Pfft.

Pfft.

Pfft.

Let me tell you about my first memory as a prayer.

Pfft.

When I was a kid growing up in church,

we would pray a couple times during a church service

and that was about it.

I never prayed on my own

because I didn't see the importance of it

until one day I needed the Lord to hear my prayer

and answer it immediately.

I was in this stage of writing my initials

on anything that I could.

So it started off with my notebooks at school,

then it escalated to writing my initials on walls

in the house, doors in the house.

I didn't think anybody noticed

until recently my parents repainted their home

and all that was gone, but they noticed it then,

so I can't get in trouble for that.

But at the time, my dad had a brand new car.

It was a 1989 Red Hyundai Excel.

And I figured that would be a good place

to put my initials so that if it ever got stolen,

we would be able to identify it by my initials on it.

The problem is the pen wasn't working.

It kept rubbing off.

So I did what any six-year-old would do

and I grabbed a flathead screwdriver

and got up on the trunk and I carved DJR

into the center of the trunk.

It didn't take long for them to notice that one though, did it?

And I remember getting sent to my room

and told to wait on my dad.

You ever been there?

I probably wasn't in there very long,

but it felt like eternity.

And that whole time I was praying to God

with everything that I could,

with everything in me that I wouldn't get punished.

God, if you love me like I keep hearing like you love me,

you know it would not be good for me to have to suffer.

God, I won't do it again.

I promise I've learned my lesson.

Give my dad some compassion for his baby boy.

I mean, I prayed sincerely that God would hear my prayers

and answer them the way that I wanted him to, but he didn't.

And I don't remember exactly how I got punished,

but I remember that God did not answer my prayer

the way I wanted him to and I was disappointed.

In my six year old little mind,

I remember feeling that God didn't care about me

and it took me a long time to get over it.

So if you've ever felt that way, maybe this morning,

we'll help bring some clarification on how prayer works

because I didn't understand it.

And so this morning we're gonna look at the verses

that Savannah read and as always,

we need to begin by putting this passage

in its proper context in verses 10 through 17.

Paul has encouraged his readers,

he's encouraged us to stand firm against the evil one

and then he has described six pieces of armor

that every believer has been given by God

in order to be able to do so.

Paul is not in any way indicating in these verses

that there's an addition to the six pieces of armor

that prayer is the seventh piece of armor.

But the point he is making is that prayer

is woven throughout the armor.

When we put on the armor, we must at the same time

also be engaged in prayer

if we're going to be successful in the battle.

It's quite instructive that as Paul comes

to the end of his letter,

his final thoughts here deal with prayer.

If you or I were to write a letter

to try to convince someone to take some action,

we would make sure that our most significant arguments

were at the end of the letter

because that would be what would most likely end up

in the reader's mind.

I believe he closes his letter with this emphasis on prayer

because there's a danger that we need to be aware of.

Christians who have knowledge of sound doctrine

and at least some success with putting that practice,

that doctrine into spiritual practice from God's work

can easily come to a point

where they figure they can live their lives

with their own power

and they lose their dependence on God.

We can do this Christian thing long enough

and realize we have it down,

but if we don't understand that we need communication

with our Father, that's a real danger.

According to Paul, prayer requires us to be all in.

He instructs us to pray at all times in the spirit.

Now we're gonna come back to that phrase

in the spirit here in a minute,

but right now let's just focus on that phrase at all times.

That phrase means a period of opportunity.

So Paul is instructing his readers

to pray every single time there is an opportunity for prayer.

I like the translation of Romans 12, one,

because maybe you're like me like,

well, how do I pray at all times?

Maybe you were like me when I was six-year-olds.

How do I pray at every opportunity?

But I love this translation of Romans 12, one,

from the message because prayer does not have to be

sitting in a quiet place with your eyes closed

and no distractions around you.

It reads, so here's what I want you to do.

God helping you, take your every day ordinary life.

You're sleeping, eating, going to work,

and walking around life and place it before God

as an offering.

My kids are not real talkative in the morning.

In fact, they're usually pretty moody,

which I understand, I've been there.

But I want to take advantage of that time in the car with them

when I'm taking them to school.

I learned last year, and last year was the first year

actually I had to take them to school.

But I learned last year that I actually,

I have to be careful with what I say in the car

to a moody teenager because it can ruin their day

or their response to me could ruin my day.

So I had to change how that ride went

for that 10 minutes or so.

The best way I knew to take advantage of that time

was to just silently pray for them.

So when I'm taking them to school in the morning,

I'm just aware that their day is not in my hands.

So I ask God to guide them throughout the day,

trying to take advantage of that opportunity.

As I prepare for a meeting, I'm asking God,

you might disagree with this,

but I'm asking God to protect my mouth

and give me wisdom, to guard me.

We need to understand that every day we have opportunities

to let the Lord guide us.

And as we do that more often,

we will find that prayer is pivotal to protecting our minds.

Then he tells us to have all kinds of prayer

and supplications.

As Paul often does, he uses two related words, right?

For emphasis, he writes that we are to pray

with all kinds of prayers and supplications.

So we're translated prayers is the general word for prayer.

It conveys a sense of being in the presence

of God and therefore it includes ideas of adoration

and devotion and worship and not just making requests to God.

The word translated supplications comes from a word

that means to want or to beg.

It refers to making known specific needs

and even it conveys a sense of urgency.

Prayer is so essential that we need to employ

every kind of prayer imaginable.

Group prayer, individual prayer, silent prayer,

shouting prayer, walking prayer, kneeling prayer,

angry prayer, you ever had those?

Thankful prayers, confessing prayers, exalting prayers,

rehearsed prayers, spontaneous prayers, groaning prayers.

You can find all those examples

and more all throughout the Bible.

The idea here is that there is an appropriate kind of prayer

for whatever you are facing in life.

So there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever not to pray.

Then he tells us to have all the perseverance.

He tells us to be alert.

Jesus had previously connected the need

to be watchful with prayer as he spoke

with his disciples in Mark 14.

He says watch and pray so that you will not

fall into temptation.

The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

Now in that context, Jesus used the idea

of being watchful in a very individual context.

He was encouraging his disciples to be on guard

for those things that might tempt them to sin

so that they could be ready to pray about them

and we certainly would be wise to do the same.

But in this context, I'm convinced

that Paul is encouraging his readers.

He's encouraging us as a church to be watchful

of what is going on with the people around us.

He's encouraging us to be mindful of the needs of others.

And he's not just talking about the superficial

and the physical here.

That is clearly evident when we look

at how Paul prays for others.

He doesn't focus on their physical and emotional needs,

but rather for their deep spiritual needs.

Then he tells us to pray for all the saints.

I want you to picture the armor of a soldier for a second.

We've gone over all of it.

Every important piece of him is covered

as he goes into battle, except for one, his back.

The armor leaves your back exposed.

As fellow brothers and sisters in Christ,

it is imperative that we cover each other's backs.

Now, in order to understand this better,

we have to know the common creed

amongst those involved in combat situations,

both past and present, but mainly in the past.

Those who have done any study whatsoever on this topic

know that it was shameful conduct

to stab or shoot someone in the back.

If you've ever watched one of those old Western movies,

if you shot someone in the back,

you were perpetually labeled as a coward.

And no one wanted that reputation,

so they took great care to make sure

that whatever enemy was coming their way was facing them

when they went to battle, even in those shootouts.

Have you ever seen some of the old war movies

that illustrate the concept of a battle line?

When two armies were in battle, they would face each other

and you'd have 50 men, 100 men, 200 men,

lined up ready to face the other army

and then behind them, people would fall in line.

In other words, everyone else had someone else's back,

except for those that were on the front line.

There is even in ancient Roman times,

there's even a battle formation called the tortoise.

And it's named that way because men,

they would take their shields, their shields of faith,

and they would lift them over their heads

and they would form this one big impenetrable shell,

kind of like a turtle.

And a group of 20 men or 50 men or whatever,

they would each form this shell to protect one another.

Everyone was expected to have everyone else's back.

This gave them a great advantage.

And I think about that, I'm like, wow,

what if Christians could get that revelation?

This is not corporate America where you expect

to get stabbed in the back for a promotion.

Or thrown under the bus so that someone else

doesn't get in trouble.

We as a church, we as a body of believers,

we as Christians need to be aware that all of us

will fall at some point.

And it is our responsibility to pray for them,

but it's also our responsibility

to help them get back on their feet.

It's our responsibility to let them know

when the enemy is attacking

and they're completely oblivious to it.

We shouldn't be the ones to continually

kick someone when they're down,

by piling on them, by gossiping about them,

or taking joy in their failure.

We need to form a tortoise so that we are always covered.

And as we pray for all the saints,

it's important that we pray in the spirit.

Now the concept of praying in the spirit is another,

this verse is another one of those places in scripture

where passage at times has been taken out of context,

have been completely misunderstood and completely misused.

Paul is not writing here about

some emotional ecstatic experience.

He is not describing in this passage,

praying in tongues or some other language.

In fact, if taken in its proper context,

it's pretty easy to determine what Paul means here.

To pray in the spirit simply means to pray in a way

that is consistent with the sword of the spirit,

which is God's revelation of himself and his word.

So praying in the spirit is praying in a manner

that is consistent with the nature and the will of God.

Maybe Romans eight will help us understand

how this works a little better.

Paul writes in the same way,

the spirit helps us in our weakness.

We do not know what we ought to pray for,

but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groans

that words cannot express.

And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit

because the spirit intercedes for the saints

in accordance with God's will.

I mean, isn't that exciting?

Even when we don't know what to pray for someone,

God's Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf

and prays for us.

And because the Holy Spirit is God,

those prayers are always in accordance with God's will.

A few years ago, I was at my last church

and I had a good friend of mine

and he sent me the song as a joke.

I hope it was a joke.

Because we just wrapped up a series on prayer

and he came up to me afterwards

and says, I'm gonna be praying for you.

That means a lot to me.

When you all come up to me and say,

I've just been praying for you this week.

That means a lot to me.

So he sent me the song, it's titled, Pray for You.

So initially I thought it was going to be encouraging.

The chorus goes, maybe you've heard it.

I pray your breaks go out running down a hill.

I pray a flower pot falls from a window seal

and knocks you in the head like I'd like to.

I pray your birthday comes and nobody calls.

I pray you're flying high when your engine stalls.

I pray all your dreams never come true.

Just know wherever you are, I pray for you.

Now that is not a song that depicts

what it means to pray in the spirit.

There's this book called The Weapon of Prayer,

which I found to be very convicting this week.

In it there's this quote that I thought was appropriate.

He writes, not to pray is a denial of God,

a denial of his existence, a denial of his nature,

and denial of his purposes towards mankind.

Praying men and women are the only people

in which the Holy Spirit dwells.

For the Holy Spirit and prayer go hand in hand.

The Holy Spirit never descends upon prayerless men.

He never fills them, he never empowers them.

There is nothing whatever in common

between the Spirit of God and men and women

who do not pray.

How many times have we all experienced

a nudge from the Holy Spirit to pray for someone else?

Similarly, I don't know where we get the sense

that we are to pray for someone.

Many times not even knowing why they need our prayers.

And I'm convinced that the more we live a life

that is consistent with God's word,

the more the Holy Spirit can lead us to pray in that way.

And when we do that, we can be assured

that we are praying in the Spirit according to God's will.

If praying in the Spirit means

praying according to the will of God,

as he reveals it in his word,

then it seems to me that the subject of those prayers

ought to be consistent with the depth

of the prayers that we find in scripture.

That there is no doubt that God is concerned

with our physical needs.

Jesus fed people, he healed people,

but he had a far greater purpose in mind

than just meeting their physical needs in that moment.

I think that Paul certainly recognized

that in that's why his prayers dealt

with deep spiritual issues of life.

We rarely find Paul praying for his own needs

or asking others to do the same.

We need to pray for others with God's perspective,

with God's purpose and God's power.

So let's take a moment real quick

to consider Paul's circumstances.

We get a couple clues from the letter itself

at the beginning of chapter three.

Paul described himself as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.

And here in verse 20,

he writes that he is in chains.

Now from the accounts of the book of Acts,

we know that Paul was awaiting trial before the emperor.

He had been allowed to arrange

some private lodging for himself.

And the common practice in that situation

was that the prisoner would be bound to his guard

by a short length of chain in order to prevent escape.

Suppose that Paul lived in our day,

and he heard that a local church like ours

was having a prayer meeting,

and that church had asked Paul to write them a letter

to communicate his prayer requests.

Now if you were a part of that prayer meeting,

what would you expect Paul to ask you to pray for?

If we're really honest,

given the kinds of prayer requests

that we generally share with each other,

I think we would all expect Paul to ask us

to pray for his release from prison,

or at a minimum that we would pray for his comfort,

or maybe to heal the sores on his wrists

and legs from the shackles.

And there certainly would have not been anything

inherently wrong had Paul asked for those kinds of prayers,

just as there's nothing wrong with us

asking for people to pray for our physical needs.

But Paul recognized that there is

a much bigger picture involved here.

He seemed to have this unique ability that I wish I had.

He had this unique ability to lurk at his circumstances

and see them from God's perspective.

That's why he writes that he is an ambassador in chains

on behalf of the gospel.

In Paul's day, the same word translated chains there

was also used to describe the gold adornment worn

around the necks and wrists of the wealthy and powerful.

On many occasions, an ambassador would wear such chains

in order to show off his power and his riches

of the government that he represented.

So for Paul, his chains represented the power

and the riches for the one that he was an ambassador for,

that he was an ambassador for the Lord.

And see, he wore them boldly.

The nature of Paul's prayers is deeply rooted

in his understanding of how his life fit into God's

overall plan of taking the gospel,

the good news to the world around him.

We need to have God's perspective.

Perhaps the most striking characteristic

of Paul's request for prayer is that he is much more concerned

about making sure that he is carrying out God's purpose

than he is about his own needs and desires.

His main concern is that he would fearlessly make known

the mystery of the gospel.

So when at the end of this letter,

he asks his readers to pray that he might fearlessly

make known the mystery of the gospel.

He is in essence asking them to pray

that he will carry out God's purposes for his life.

First John 5 reads, this is the confidence

we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything

according to his will, he hears us.

And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask,

we know that we have what we ask of him.

God never promised to answer my prayers

when I was begging him in my bedroom

for my dad not to with me.

Well, that sounds bad nowadays, but I got spanked.

Is that fair?

He didn't answer those prayers,

but he never promised to answer those types of prayers, did he?

Even though we have ample biblical evidence

that Paul was a very effective communicator,

he still asks his readers to pray

that he would be given exactly the right words

to speak every time that he opened his mouth

to proclaim the gospel.

And even though we have no evidence

that Paul ever lacked boldness in his ministry,

we have no evidence that Paul was ever fearful,

we have no evidence that Paul got all tongue twisted

or any of that.

Paul twice in two verses asked for prayer

that he would proclaim the gospel fearlessly

in asking for that kind of prayer.

Paul is making it quite evident to us

that he recognizes that his ministry is totally

and completely dependent on God's power at work in his life.

Paul was probably gifted.

He probably had a lot of things that we wish we had,

but he understood that all the giftings that I have

don't matter if I don't have God's power.

If I don't have God's power.

His own eloquence and his own boldness are inadequate

to be effective in declaring the mystery of the gospel

if it's separated from God's power.

We need to pray like Paul

and we need to pray with God's perspective.

God, I'm in this situation.

I don't know what your plan is,

but if it fits as it fits into your will

for the plan of redemption, help me find joy in it.

God, how can I be effective in sharing the gospel

through my circumstances?

As people look at me and what I'm facing,

how can you be glorified in it?

God, help me understand that salvation belongs to you.

And even when I don't have all the answers,

even though they might ask me a question,

I don't know, your power in me will trump my own abilities.

It will trump my own abilities to be effective

for your kingdom.

God, give me your power.

This week was ironic for me.

I'm preparing a message on prayer in God's power

and I get sick this week.

Not bad, but I couldn't.

Got flim.

A lot of flim.

And I'm sure you know this,

but if you try to talk and you have a lot of flim,

you don't sound your best.

I probably still sound a little nasally.

And so I had to gut check myself

because I'm like, Drew, I need you to tap in here, right?

Because my own abilities are not going to be able

to get me through two services on Sunday.

But then I was reminded, it's not about me.

It's about what God can do through me.

Gotta tap into that power.

And so that's why I'm able to sleep at night.

Years ago, I wasn't able to sleep at night

because I'm like, I should have said that different.

I should have said that different.

I should have phrased that in a different way.

And what I realized was I was relying

on my own abilities to get the job done.

I sleep well now because I'm gonna give you my best

every single week.

This week might not be my best,

but it's the best I could do this week.

And I'm just gonna trust

that God's power will be seen.

Because I can't change your life.

I can't put words in the right order

to convince you of the joy and the glory of the gospel.

But his spirit moving in this place, sure can.

And so my hope that as we start beginning

to prepare our hearts for communion,

that you will understand what we're about to remember

and what we're about to celebrate.

And I'm gonna tell you this, it's not something

you can just mentally grasp.

We can understand the facts about it.

But we have to understand that Jesus came

and lived and died.

And as horrific as that is,

to make your own son go through that.

As horrific as that is,

Jesus still had God's perspective

because he saw what the end was gonna do.

And that's what we remember this morning.

So I'm gonna invite our elders and deacons to come forward

as we get ready to pass out these elements.

And here's my challenge to you.

It's not just to sit there and say,

okay God, I have all these sins, let me confess these to you.

But more importantly, God,

am I living with your perspective?

Am I living my life with your purpose?

Am I living my life in your power or my own?

Because if you're relying on your own power,

you're gonna be disappointed.

And so as we pray in the spirit,

we pray according to God's will.

God's will is that all men may know him,

that all men may be saved.

And so if you don't know him,

my prayer is that his spirit will just fall on you this morning.

If you just know how to do church,

you know how to make the outward appearance look good,

but inside you're wasting away,

my prayer is that he would reveal that to you

so that you will call upon the name of the Lord.

And you can boldly declare like we did earlier,

hallelujah, hallelujah.

And so we're gonna pass out these elements to you.

I encourage you to,

this is your first time with us doing communion.

Here's how we usually do it,

is you'll get a tray passed in front of you

and you'll grab one and usually has two cups.

And I'm just asking you to hold on to those.

We'll take those together here in a second.

But as you hold that piece of bread and that cup of juice,

you will understand the broken body

and spilled blood of Jesus on your behalf,

the greatest story ever told.

And you will prepare your hearts

and you will lay all these things before him

so that we don't take it in another worthy way.

If you're a believer in Jesus,

we invite you to the table as we remember this.

You haven't accepted that, that's fine.

This isn't a sales pitch,

but we just ask you to maybe let it pass in front of you.

And maybe you have the prayer like the father

that came to Jesus and says,

I believe but still help my unbelief.

Maybe that's you, I believe intellectually,

but something in my heart still hasn't grasped.

Maybe that's your prayer today as it's going to be.

So we'll pass these out and we'll come back

and we'll take it together.

music

I was buried beneath my rebellion, lost without hope of redemption.

Blind to my need for the Savior, oh, but God.

Crushed by the weight of my failures, living like I created.

Digging my grave without no hope but God.

Rich in mercy, how you loan me to my sin, let me stay lost.

My salvation sent from heaven, healing my sin to a cross, oh, but God.

You gave me a truth worth believing, I traded my chance for your freedom,

because you were the one that I needed, oh, but God.

Now this is my surest test, oh, but God, oh, but God.

Rich in mercy, how you loan me to my sin, let me stay lost.

My salvation sent from heaven, healing my sin to a cross, oh, but God.

Rich in mercy, how you loan me to my sin, let me stay lost.

My salvation sent from heaven, healing my sin to a cross, oh, but God.

No more wreckage of my choices, you have turned to life from ashes,

lifted from death with the beating.

Now I stand in God's hands, and no more wreckage of my choices.

You have turned to life from ashes, lifted from death with the beating.

Now I stand in God's hands, you have turned to life from ashes,

how you loan me to my sin, let me stay lost.

My salvation sent from heaven, healing my sin to a cross, oh, but God.

Rich in mercy, how you loan me to my sin, let me stay lost.

My salvation sent from heaven, healing my sin to a cross, oh, but God.

Oh, but God.

Oh, but God.

Oh, but God.

Friend, you want to pray for the blood?

Father, we just come to you with grateful hearts.

Father God, you know our hearts, Father, and we don't deserve your taking the abuse,

the bleeding on the cross, and Father God, giving up your life.

But as you look through our hearts, we can't lie to you in our hearts.

And hopefully that you can come through and check and identify where we need to improve, Father God.

Before we take this blood and this bread, Father God, we ask that you purify us and make us holy.

Scripture says, though not he was betrayed, Jesus was with his disciples.

He took bread and he broke it.

He said, this is my body broken for you every time you were to do this in remembrance of me.

Thank you.

Pray for the Jews.

Glory to God, Almighty.

Father, we thank you for the ability to be here today, Father, and to commune with one another and with you.

Father, we gather not for anything that we did, but it all has been done for us.

All that you suffered, Jesus, is a gift to us.

You call us to remember your gift.

Yours is the gift that keeps on giving.

And even this morning you give to us, Father.

If it's peace we need, you give us peace.

If it's health we need, you give us health.

If it's direction we need, you give us direction.

If it's wisdom we need, you give us wisdom.

All things come from you, Lord.

Everything that we have, all that we own, all that we can even think or imagine comes from you, Lord.

We thank you for your grace this morning in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

He then took the cup and he says, this is a new covenant in my blood.

Which means when we look at the blood we do think of all the wreckage that our choices have led us to.

And he turns it to life.

And this blood is the new covenant.

Every time he drinks he does this and remembers it.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, it's the end of the month or it's the beginning of the month.

Forgive me.

And every beginning of the month we take an offering.

And all the money that's collected in this offering is to be used for our church in the sense of helping meet needs of people in our church.

And sometimes there's a lot of needs, sometimes there's not very many, but we want to be faithful in collecting money so that as needs come up we can help as a church take care of those needs.

And so you might not be in a position right now where you can give and there's absolutely no obligation whatsoever.

But maybe you're in a season of plenty and you want to help be a blessing to others.

This is that time.

And so we're going to pass out these baskets as we sing one more song together.

Let me pray for this offering and then we'll worship one more time.

Father God, thank you for this day.

Thank you for our church.

Thank you for the time we've had to worship.

I pray Father that as we take this offering that you will bless every giver.

I pray that you will bless every receiver that's on the receiving end of this money.

We pray God that we will always be good stewards of the resources that you give us and help us honor you with everything we do with this money.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

I love you Lord.

I love you Lord.

Oh you mercy never fails me.

And all my tears I've been held in your hands.

For the moment that I wake up.

Until I lay my hand.

For I will see of the goodness of God.

And all my life you have been faithful.

And all my life you have been so, so good.

With every breath that I am able.

I will see of the goodness of God.

I love your voice.

You have led me through the fire.

You have brought me through the struggle.

You are close like no other.

I've known you as a father.

I've known you as a friend.

And all my life you have been faithful.

And all my life you have been so, so good.

With every breath that I am able.

I will see of the goodness of God.

Your goodness is running after me.

Your goodness is running after me.

But I am laid down.

I surrender now.

I give you everything.

Your goodness is running after me.

Your goodness is running after me.

Your goodness is running after me.

With my life laid down.

I surrender now.

I give you everything.

Your goodness is running after me.

It's running after me.

And all my life you have been faithful.

And all my life you have been so, so good.

With every breath that I am able.

I will see of the goodness of God.

Sing of a church this morning.

And all my life you have been faithful.

And all my life you have been so, so good.

With every breath that I am able.

I will see of the goodness of God.

I will see of the goodness of God.

I will see of the goodness of God.

Amen. You can be seated for a minute.

We are in a bittersweet season in our church.

It's exciting but also a little hard, right?

So I'm going to invite Drew and Louvi up to the stage.

No tears.

So Drew and Louvi have been in our church for over 13 years now.

They have served our church faithfully.

And so grateful for both of them in the two years that I've known them.

But our church has a need and that need is associate pastor.

And I've asked, well, not really.

Drew has this, these giftings inside of him.

And he feels like the Lord is leading him to be church planter, lead pastor one day.

And we want to help equip that and support that in every way we can.

And so our church has a need in associate pastor.

And so what the Lord is doing in Drew's life and what the Lord is doing here,

we've asked Drew to step into that role to serve as our associate pastor.

Which is exciting.

That's it.

That's the fun part.

But the hard part is he can't do both.

He's going to be stepping out as our worship pastor.

Still going to be a part of our team, still fill in when needed.

And this isn't going to, this is going to be transitioned.

We're going to transition him over the next several weeks or months or however long it takes.

But we are so grateful for Drew and Louvi.

And so we wanted you to be aware that Drew is going to be transitioning offices and his role here.

So he's going to have all kinds of things.

So we're going to ask for your patience.

As we do that, there might be some things that get dropped as we figure out and navigate this whole process.

But I hope that you will just pray for Drew and Louvi as they train.

This is hard. It's hard.

It's what he's known for his whole, all of his ministry.

And so just please, please, please be praying for them and be excited for them

and be excited for our church and what the Lord is doing in this place.

And another sweet thing is that Mr. Simmons over here is going to kind of step into the role of worship leader for a season.

We're proud of you.

He's not going to say it, but that second song we sang on Indian praise was written by this guy right here.

So I'm very, I'm very, very, very excited about what the future looks like for our church.

And I hope you are too.

And so as we leave, I'm going to encourage you to stand as we say our communion saying together.

I'm going to ask Pastor Drew to lead us in that.

I'm totally accepted, fully pleasing, deeply loved, completely forgiven and empowered to live a new life in Christ because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

And I'll have a good week.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.