Devote Your Life to Prayer and the Ministry of the Word

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Devote Your Life to Prayer and the Ministry of the Word

I love being at Southeastern Seminary. It’s such a happy place and it’s a happy place because it’s focused in the right place. Thank you, Danny Aiken, not just for leading this seminary around the great commission, but for organizing your life around the great commission and praising God for you and Charlotte and your family.

Their influence in my life and family really can’t be estimated and the influence of others in this room. I was having dinner with Jim Shaddock last night. I’m indebted to him for his investment in my life over 20 years.

I look at this faculty, I could spend the rest of this time talking about different ones of them. I think about Southeastern Seminary. This is like the Warriors used to be like with Steph Clay, Draymond, Iguala, and Katie.

This seminary is stacked with leaders who love God, his word, his church, and the lost around the world, by the way, side note real quick, Clint Clifton, who’s with me today, leads our church planting network around metro DC and he’s meeting today with anybody who’s interested and learning more about how you can be a part of gospel work in DC spring break, April 3rd through sixth road trips. So if you want more info, you can meet Clint and the missions building right after chapel.

Lemme invite you if you have a Bible to open me, a Psalm eight and to pull out so you hopefully received a copy of Soulmate when you came in. Lemme encourage you to pull that out as well. And if you have something to write with or can borrow something from someone, let me encourage you to do that.

So I have one aim in my time with you today, and that aim is to encourage you to devote your life to prayer and the ministry of the word as a student, as a teacher, as a pastor, as a church leader, as a missionary, to devote your life to prayer and the ministry of the word exactly what Acts six, how Acts six puts it. Maybe another way to put it, I want to exhort you today to devote your life to intercession for God’s power and meditation on God’s word.

Or maybe if I were to ask this as a question, I would ask you in your life, in ministry right now, in your home, in your church, in the seminary. Is your life and ministry right now marked by intercession, God’s power and is your life and ministry right now marked by meditation on God’s word?

And I ask these questions even with those words because, in my life and the church, I have the privilege of pastoring string. I’m seeing things happen right now that I can only attribute to intercession for God’s power and meditation on God’s word.

About a year ago in our church, we began having all-night or late-night prayer gatherings either from eight to midnight or 12: 30 on Friday nights or some Friday nights from 8:00 PM to 6:00 AM Saturday morning. And these have quickly become my favorite times as a pastor.

So I’m ashamed to say up until a year ago, I had never been a part of an all-night prayer gathering. But now I’m wondering why in the world I’ve not led the church in this way before. I’ve totally missed it.

And since we started praying like this, we have seen more people come to know Christ and be baptized In the last year than I’ve ever seen before in a church I’ve been a part of, and I’m not going to share numbers. I know how infatuated people can be with numbers.

I’ll just say it has been awesome and clear. It’s been clear. The only explanation behind why is that we’ve been praying and God has been answering. We’ve been praying and more recently simply just meditating on God’s words.

We began 2020 with 40 days of prayer and fasting together as a church. Not necessarily everybody fasting every day during that time but encouraging the church to fast and pray intentionally during the first 40 days of the year.

And then as a church during that time, we read through just a psalm each day together. Then that Sunday I would take one of those psalms and I would just try to model meditation on God’s word in such a way that our people would learn how to meditate on God’s word all week long.

And it’s been awesome. I just feel like I’m seeing the Bible come alive in people’s lives like I’ve not seen before as a pastor and more people come to know Christ in the process from all kinds of backgrounds.

Secular Jewish, Greek Orthodox, Muslim, nominal, Christian, atheist, agnostic. I think about the first week of this year, our first Sunday in these 40 days, we just opened up Psalm one.

We just meditated on it, just really simply together. I’m just trying to show them how to soak in the Bible. And I think one woman, her second time ever in church, she comes, she’s alone with her two kids, hurt in so many ways by this world, won’t go into all the details, but basically thinking about ending her life.

And she sits down and we just walk through Psalm one and she is floored and she comes and says, I need Jesus in my life. And she gets baptized along with 16 others that day. It was just Psalm one, I think about Martin Luther.

I remember when he was asked about what he did to see such massive reformation in the church and he said, I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s word, otherwise I did nothing. And then while I slept or drank Den Berg beer with my Philip Malton and Nicholas von rf, the word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it.

I did nothing. The word did it all. Now I want to be clear, I’m not drinking a lot of beer. I’m actually not drinking any beer, but I am just seeing the word do the work.

So here’s what I want to do today, much like we’ve been doing in our church just Sunday after Sunday, I want to just lead you for the next few minutes to meditate on God’s word with me. So hopefully you’ve got this picture soulmate and you see at the bottom of that sheet you see this is an acrostic.

We use maps in our church just to describe how we encourage people to experience intimacy with God on a daily basis through his words. So we have a Bible reading plan. We walk through together and we’ll just take, so we’d split up into different readings each day.

We just encourage people, okay, take today’s reading first, meditate, and memorize. So read God’s word slowly. Let it soak in like circle words, underline phrases, and make notes like connections.

Just devour God’s word like every word, like your life depends on it because it does. And then we encourage them to write down the point of the passage in a sentence and then maybe write down or circle a verse they could memorize.

I would argue memorization is one of the most practical ways we can meditate on scripture. Just soaking it into it literally becomes a part of you. So we meditate and memorize, and then we apply. So write down at least one way you can apply this passage to your life.

Think head, heart, hands where we just, how does this passage change the way you think, how you desire, how you act? Then leading into pray. So write down a prayer based on this passage.

Think, and we use this acrostic, PRAY, praise, repent, ask yield. So how does this word lead you to do that? So trying to teach people just to pray the word, which leads finally to S, which is just writing down a specific way you can share any of the above with someone else.

So what I want to do today and our few minutes is just lead us to do this first part to meditate. So in just a minute, I want us to read this text out loud together. And then I want to give you, so what we’ve been kind of doing on Sundays is just giving a little bit of space.

I’m going to give you about three minutes on your own where you’re sitting just to soak in this passage, just you, the Holy Spirit, and the word of God. So do not pull out your study bibles and your logos.

That is not what we’re doing right now. This is just, you just read it, maybe circle words, phrases that seem important, look at how the psalm flows. Note anything that repeats that might clue you into the meaning of the Psalm.

So I’ll stop there. That’s more than enough for three minutes. So I want to give you a couple minutes on your own and then I want us to think about it together, like what is God saying to us and this gathering right now through his word.

So let’s start by reading it out loud together and I think we’ll have it up here on the screen as well. There we go. Alright, let’s read it out loud altogether. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth you have set your glory above the heavens, out of the mouth of babies and infants.

God’s Strength is Evident

You have established strength because of your foes to still be the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him, yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas, oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth?

Let’s pray. God, we pray that in the next few minutes, we will experience you through your word. We pray that you would speak to us, we soak in every word that we just read and we know that we’re dependent on your Holy Spirit for this and you’ve promised your Holy Spirit for this.

So open our eyes, open our eyes in fresh ways to what you are saying to us here in Jesus’ name, amen. All right, take just a couple there on your own maybe. I don’t know if we can put a little music on in the background or something, kind of set the mood.

If we can’t, it’s fine. It just makes it a little less awkward. Totally silent. I forgot to ask you about that. Alright, take a couple of minutes, just make some notes, little circle words, and underlined phrases.

Just how does the Psalm flow you do it? Follow the leadership of the spirit. Go for it In and I’ll my eyes and I’ll my eyes heaven, father. All right, let me start to bring us back together.

I know that’s a woefully insufficient amount of time, but this is one of the things I love. Just, we’ve just been given folks a little bit of space in our Sunday gatherings and just seeing them just really look at the word. I got to show you this.

These are notes from an 8-year-old boy in our church from a sermon a couple of weeks ago in Psalm 23. So I want you to see, do you see all that He’s circling in there, all these notes he’s making in there? And then now you’ll also notice there’s some Star Wars or like a T-fighter that had nothing to do with the sermon.

I have not watched Star Wars I don’t know anything about it, but well look where it all ends up. I’m the good shepherd as long as it lands on Jesus. We are good. So anyway, his parents just sent me this to say how encouraged they were to see their 8-year-old just engaging with God’s word in worship.

So anyway, alright, let’s look at Psalm eight. So did you notice anything that this Psalm repeats that might clue us into the meaning of the Psalm’s first verse and last verse, right?

So there’s obvious repetition there. So, oh Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth? That seems to be a pretty primary theme in this psalm.

So let’s just camp out on this verse for a moment. So, oh Lord our Lord. Now you put those two names for God next to each other. Do you notice a difference between the two? Right?

One is small capital L, and then it’s actually small caps, ORD, and the other one’s capital L, lowercase ORD. This is where it’s helpful to remember that whenever we see the small caps, ORD translated in English that way that we’re looking at Yahweh in the original language, the name God revealed himself to Moses as when he was delivering them out of Egypt.

Moses said, who will I tell them sent me to you? Tell them I am Yahweh sent me to you that I am who I am, meaning I’m the one who was and is to come and is here to help deliver you from your slavery and your suffering.

So that’s the name for God, that’s translated with capital L. Then small cups, ORD. But then the second time we see it, capital L, lowercase ORD. Usually, when we see a Lord like this in the Old Testament, it’s usually the word Adonai, which is more like a title for God like a king.

So we got Yahweh the first time, and then Adam Anai the second time more like a title for God, the sovereign ones. If you put those two together, think of a king, King Edward. So Edward would be his name, and King would be his title.

So the picture here, the psalmist is saying, oh, Yahweh, the Lord who was and is to come who has the power to deliver us by his love. And then he says, oh Lord our Lord. So there’s a personal relationship here.

It’s not just you the Lord, it’s you our Lord. You’re our king, God, you are Yahweh, you’re the one who was and is to come. Throughout all history, you’ve seen your people and their suffering and by your power, you have been their help.

So even just that, I was thinking about it this morning, I know in a room this size, there are people walking through struggle and suffering in different ways. I mentioned some of the awesome things we’re seeing in our church right now.

I would also add that there’s been a variety of sleepless nights recently because of the struggles we’re walking through as a church. And I just share that to encourage you, when you see this picture here in the middle of challenges that you walk through right now in your life, your ministry, your church, maybe your family, you can look up and know that the Lord God is your helper.

That Yahweh, he is your Lord. He’s yours. Maybe that’s the word to encourage many hearts, just the fact that this is your God, that the one whose name is majestic in all the earth is your God.

He’s your Lord. He’s the one we’re meeting with right now. So this is where I would just be encouraging our church. If you and I are alone right now, just meditating on this, we’re four words in and we are on our knees just realizing we are meeting with even right now in this gathering.

We are meeting with the Lord King over all whose majesty is over all the earth and we have the privilege of gathering together before him in his presence right now and he’s speaking to us. Don’t get over that. I think I met my quiet time this morning.

I was meeting with God he was upholding Mars at the same time as 7 billion other people in the world, but he was listening to me as I was pouring out my heart to him, pleading for his help, he was listening to me and he was speaking to me. It’s an awesome thought.

And we want to exalt his majesty and we want his majesty in all the earth, right? This is how Jesus taught us to pray and our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your what? Your name in all the earth. This is where we encourage our folks when it comes to this map’s acrostic.

It’s not just step one, step two, step three, you start to meditate. It’ll lead you to pray. You’re not even a verse N, and you’re on your face before God, but we got to move on. Alright? You have to get through at least one verse.

So you have set your glory above the heavens. So God’s glory is above the heavens beyond what we can see or imagine. Now, did anybody notice this word? Glory is repeated another time in the psalm.

What verse five over in verse five it says, you have made him a little lower than the hell beings and crowned him with glory. Now that’s interesting because that’s not talking about God right there, but we’ll get back to that when we get to verse five.

Let’s just kind of hold onto that for a minute. So circle glory in both those places now let’s keep going. Let’s keep going. In verse two, out of the mouth of babies and infants, you’ve established strength because of your foes, distill the enemy and the avenger.

So what does that say? What does that mean? I’ll go and tell you. There’s a lot of difficulty in understanding this particular verse, and a few different ideas about how it fits into the overall point of the psalm.

But instead of getting caught up on what’s maybe less clear, let’s think about what is clear. What do we know we can learn from this first? Well one, God’s strength, right? God’s strength and his power are evident in the mouths of babies and infants.

So God’s strength is evident. Even little babies who can do nothing but babble are in some sense a picture of God’s strength and power. And anyone who’s ever seen a baby born like the miracle of birth knows that is a picture of the power of God who formed that baby inside that womb.

And then so another thing that’s clear in this verse is that God has foes, he has enemies who are against him, people who oppose God. And this verse says, these people will be stilled, so foes enemies, Avengers will be still.

God’s Enemies Will be Stilled

So these things, we know God’s strength, and power are evident in babies and infants, God’s enemies will be stilled. So some think the picture here is how the strength and power of God is evident in something as simple as a little baby and greater than the strength and power that God’s enemies could ever portray In all their might.

You can’t help but think about Jesus being born as a baby in a stable King Herod with all the power of the Roman empire at his disposal, cowering in fear. But let’s keep moving on, and see if we get any more clues as to behind what this means.

Verse three says, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, that is an awesome verse when I look at your heavens, which he then describes as the moon and the stars. So when I look at the moon and the stars, I realize they are the work.

Listen to this. Just think about this phrase, the work of your fingers, the heavens, the moon and the stars are the work of your fingerprint. They’re like your artwork.

Lemme show you my artwork. Here’s a person how the house that’s really not to scale. Here’s the sun also not to scale trees. So alright, so I’m guessing you could maybe do a little better artwork than that, but well lemme show you what God can do.

So on a recent trip up in the Himalayas, these are pictures that we took. That’s the work of his fingers. How about this one? Watch this. This is a time-lapse through the night that happened right above us.

Watch this. Did you see that one? In the end, I’m going to show it to you one more time. You cannot miss this. Watch this, this really happened. Watch this. It’s going to happen right over here, somewhere there

I smoked, and I dropped a mic. This is what happened. That was the moment. That is not a doctorate picture like that happened above us. This is the work of God’s fingers. It’s just his artwork.

He set all those stars in place. You see scientists tell us there are like a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of about a million galaxies that we can see with our best telescopes.

Every one of them is filled with billions upon billions of other stars. What does Isaiah 40 say? Our God brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name, by his great power and mighty strength.

Not one of them is missing by name. Bob, there’s Mary. There’s oh, this one right here. That’s Q1, 4, 3 6 niner. I don’t know what their names are, but our God knows their names. He’s got ’em all named.

He has set them in place. This is not just to lead your soul to worship. When I look at it, so now just come back. When I look at your heavens, like dare yours, they belong to you.

They’re the work of your fingers. You have set them in place, the repetition, they’re you’ve done this. This is your artwork. So now we get to verse four. In light of this awe.

Now feel the wonder of this verse in light of the glory of God, in and above the heavens, what is the man that you the same, you are mindful of him, parallel like the son of man that you care for him. Now this makes sense to all of us.

Doesn’t like when you see scenes like I just showed from the sky, you stand underneath the night sky like that, don’t you think? Who am I? You think about the globe, you think about 7 billion people on it, and billions and billions of stars above.

It’s just so vast, so big. You feel so small, you don’t stand on one of those mountains and the Himalayas look up and think, I feel so huge right now. No, you’re like, I feel so tiny.

I feel so small, so even insignificant. But this is where I want us to see the wonder of the psalm. That’s not the conclusion of God’s word. The conclusion here is not the heavens are so majestic and that makes me so insignificant.

No, the conclusion of this psalm is actually the opposite. What is man? Who am I that you the same you who this is the work of your fingers all belongs to you and you are mindful of me, the son of man that you care for me this, this is what blows the psalmist away here, not ultimately the work of the heavens, god’s fingers, as astounding as that is?

What’s astonishing is that God is mindful of man, like man is on his mind. You and I are what’s on God’s mind. He’s always thinking about us, you and me not just thinking about us mindfulness, but cares for us.

He’s concerned for us such that he provides for us. So the picture is what the Psalm is teaching about who God is. He is majestical over all the earth. His glory is above the heavens.

The work of his fingers is all over the heavens and all his glory. You know what he thinks about, he thinks about you and me. He desires to care for you and me. This is astounding.

We are Crowned with Glory and Honor by God

Don’t read fast through the Bible. Read slowly through the Bible and let this soak in and it gets even more astounding. So you go to verse five, yet you have made him a little lower than heavenly beings and crowned him with the glory and honor.

Now we won’t spend a ton of time on heavenly beings. We can talk about that. There’s some debate about exactly what that’s referenced to. So obviously God is a heavenly being, but there’s only one of him or angels are heavenly beings.

So we know this is a picture of you and me. Men and women made just a little lower than angels or even God himself, which sounds like an overstatement. Wait, did you mean to say that until you read this next phrase?

You have crowned him with glory. So there it is again. The same word we saw back up in verse one when the psalmist said, you said your glory above the heavens. So God’s glory is above the heavens, but now we see that God’s glory is also on the earth in man and you and me.

And this is truly breathtaking and life-changing. Do you want to see the glory of God on display? Yes. Go outside at night, look up at the stars, and stand in awe. What’s even easier?

Look at the person sitting next to you. They are God’s glory on display. Look at the people in your home. They’re God’s glory on display. Look at the people where you work.

They’re God’s glory on display all over this campus. God’s glory is on display. Look at the people in that store or that restaurant today, the gas station, or the gym this week you will see God’s glory on display in all of them.

The Bible teaches. God has made men and women in his image as a reflection of his glory. This is why I say this truth is not just breathtaking, it’s life-changing. Because when you realize all people are made in God’s image and crowned with glory and honor, then racism is detestable to you.

You work to honor all people no matter what they look like or where they have immigrated from. Now, abortion is abhorrent to you because a little baby in a mother’s womb is crowned with glory and honor.

Now injustice of all kinds is intolerable to you because you actually believe that every person around you and every person in the world is crowned with glory and honor. And that totally changes the way you live and not just when you think about other people.

So now this is where things go a step deeper, get really breathtaking, life-changing. You want to see the glory of God on display. Look in the mirror, some in this room, look in the mirror.

And one of your first thoughts is disappointment in what you see or at the very least faults in what you see. And I want to remind you today straight from the word of God himself, that you look in the mirror and see you are crowned with glory and honor by God.

God the God of the universe is mindful of you and he cares for you. He crowns you with glory and honor. You do not need this man or that woman, this person or that person to accept or acknowledge you in this way or that because you are crowned with glory and honor by God.

So contrary to what science would tell us, we are not created a little higher than the animals. We’re created a little lower than angels, a little lower than God himself. In this way, we have inherent divine glory honor, and responsibility.

We got to move on. There’s so much here. Verse six goes on to say you’ve given him dominions, dominion over the works of your hands. You’ve put all things under his feet. So dominion like authority under his feet, there’s things under.

So this is a picture we have from the very beginning of the Bible, right? That God has entrusted responsibility in the world to his divine image bearers you and me to live and lead in such a way that we display his honor and glory in the world around us.

So God has given us the responsibility to reflect his goodness, his honor, his love, his justice, his character, and his glory to the world around us. That whole nother life-changing. We could dive in more there, but you and I are called to reflect the glory of God to the creation around us all creation verses seven and eight.

So bring it back around verse nine, oh Lord our Lord, here it is again. How majestic is your name in all the earth? See the picture through our lives created, your life created. This should give you an extra skip in your step.

We are Commissioned by God

When you walk out of chapel today, you’re walking out crowned with the glory and honor of God and commissioned to reflect his character, his love, his compassion, his justice, his goodness, and his glory in all the earth. So that we might go to Nepal, the coal people of India, 1.7 million of them, 0.0% followers of Jesus.

We might make his majesty known among them. At which point you might say Plat, why do you have to make everything a mission sermon? My answer is that this is a mission book.

This is a book about a God whose name is majestic on all the earth. And if there’s 6,000 people groups who still don’t know his name, then our responsibility on this earth is to change that and to make the majesty of his name known among them, which by the way is what the gospel is all about.

The nations might know the majesty of the God who is mindful of them. It’s not just mindful of you, it’s mindful of the coal people. So don’t miss the big picture here. Everyone in the world, including us, was created by God, crowned with glory and honor made in his image.

Yet we’ve all sinned against God, rebelled against God, God’s image in us marred by sin. This is the beauty of the gospel, the good news that God has not left us alone in our sins.

God has come to us in the flesh, in the person of Jesus. He lived as a man, a life among us with no sin. Then even though he had no sin to die for, he chose to die on the cross to suffer on the cross for our sin.

You say, where do you get that in Psalm eight? Well, I take you to Hebrews 2, a chapter that quotes straight from Psalm Mate, Hebrews two verse six. It has been testified somewhere.

What is man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You’ve crowned him with the glory and honor putting everything in subjection under his feet. Sound familiar?

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death. So that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone.

Jesus God, in the flesh of man who lived a life we could not live and died the death we deserve to die for us. I have to tell you this story. Two weeks ago I was flying out of town. I had to change my flight around the last minute.

The only flight I could get was a 5:00 AM out of the airport in Baltimore, which is about an hour’s drive from my house in metro DC. That meant I needed to get in an Uber at three in the morning, which I was not thrilled about.

So I googly got into this car within about five minutes of conversation with the driver from the Middle East, he asked me what I do, tell him I’m a pastor. He says I need to tell you a story.

He starts telling me, now this man’s Muslim. Muslims believe Jesus was a good man, a prophet, but not God in the flesh. They think it’s preposterous that God would be born as a baby. Well, he started telling me that he had a vision one night of a little baby who was talking as clearly as an adult.

And the baby said to him, looked him in the eye, and said to him, do not question or underestimate what God can do. And he basically says to me, do you know what this vision means? As a side note, my middle name is Joseph, but I said, yeah, I know what that means.

Here’s what it means. God loves you and God has done the unthinkable. He has come to you and me to pay the price for our sins by dying on the cross. So keep in mind, that Muslims don’t believe Jesus died on the cross.

I said, Jesus is God in the flesh and he’s died on the cross for you, for your sin so you can have a relationship with God. He’s like crying in the front there he is like apologizing. He’s wiping tears.

I’m like, you don’t have to apologize as long as you keep your eyes on the road. Don’t apologize because I’m in the back here crying too. He’s like, this is unreal. I’m like, this is unreal.

I don’t feel like I’m an Uber anymore. I’m in the Ethiopian chariot. Where’s the river that we’re going to ride by in a second? We get to the airport. I just said, do you believe this?

Do you believe Jesus, God in the flesh who came to die for your sins? Are you willing to follow him like starting today in your life? He said, yes, I believe this. I want to follow Jesus. Is that not

Is that on him? Amazing. And here’s the deal, who gets the credit for that story? I certainly don’t. I didn’t even want to be in the car. And that’s not the only story like it. I heard two stories this last week of Muslims showing up at our church saying, I had a dream and I’m here because I want to follow Jesus.

One woman, I’ll close with this, the Sunday that I preached, Psalm eight, I was out in the lobby after one of the services. She comes up to me with tears in her eyes. She’s from the Middle East and tells me she’s Muslim.

She says, I don’t know why I’m even here, but God told me I needed to come here. I’ve never been here before. God told me, just come to this church and I don’t know why I’m here, but I just listened to what you said from the Bible.

And I think I need Jesus in my life. So I connected with one of our staff members whose family is also from the Middle East and they talked for the next hour. And this Muslim woman was baptized as a follower of Jesus.

So I share these stories. Don’t miss the point. Who gets the credit for these things? God told her to come here, and she sat down and just listened to a simple walkthrough. Psalm eight. And the word does the work.

And she comes to salvation in Christ. That’s what I mean when I say I have one aim today to exhort you, to devote yourselves to prayer. And the ministry of the Word. Devote yourselves to intercession for God’s power and devote yourselves to meditation on God’s Word and see what God does for his glory.

So God, I pray, I pray this over even my own life and church and I pray this over every life, family, church, and ministry represented in this room to help us. And it’s all the things we are prone to devote ourselves to help us, to devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of your word.

And we pray that you will work. And through I just pray that your work in and through lives, all across this room, churches all across this room in ways that only you can receive the glory for.

Oh God, use our lives, use our leadership in your church to make your majesty known in all the earth we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.