[Generated Transcript]

As we come to Philippians, I’m taking this opportunity, since I have 10 weeks, to work through a book. And so I’ve chosen my wife’s favorite book. But it’s one that we’ve spent a good amount of time in. And it’s one that I find especially interesting.

We just read in the New Testament reading about Paul first coming to Philippi. And what he comes to is bringing the gospel to a completely new place. And he comes, and as we continue reading the next few weeks, we’ll see that this was a place of difficulty. He gets there, he meets Lydia, she comes to faith, but then shortly after that he actually gets thrown in prison. converts a jailer, but then pretty immediately is kicked out of Philippi. So we have a small little church, possibly only two people, the jailer and Lydia, but probably a few more, that Paul has only had a very little amount of time in. And what we can see from scripture is that this was gonna be a very difficult place for a church to be. He says when he writes to the Corinthians that he came to them after being shamefully treated at Philippi.

But he left the city. And as he leaves, he actually says, no, you can’t send me straight out of the city. You got to escort me out. And he stops by the church that he’s left behind. And he brings all of the governors of the city to this church. And then he leaves the city. Because it almost seems like what he’s doing is he’s saying, I need to sort of give some level of protection to this church. The whole city sees, oh these governors have been brought through here and they didn’t do anything and somehow trying to give a little bit of protection because this is a city that does not want the gospel preached in it. It doesn’t want God there. But then Paul has to leave. And you have very, very young Christians. And he just has to leave them. And that’s where, this is the church that he’s then writing to.

But what’s interesting about the letter is now he’s in prison, but probably in prison in a very different place. The most likely place, it’s interesting because he doesn’t ever say, but the Philippians would have known where he was in jail. We aren’t quite certain. It seems pretty clear that it would be Rome, but people will say other places. If it’s Rome, this is a long ways away, like almost 2,000 miles away. A very long journey if you’re traveling by boat.

But you’ll see the connection that he has to this church. This is the church he wrote to from there and you’ll see the love and affection he has for them. I want to point out a few things before I read it just so we can read it well. Philippians is a difficult book. It’s not like Romans where you can just follow the logic kind of all the way through it. It kind of weaves a little bit, and especially this opening section. So I want to just point to a couple of themes to hold your attention through the reading.

One, you see that he really desires to know this church. He wants to be as close to them as possible. Just looking in verse one, he doesn’t write to the elders, or overseers as it says, but he writes directly to the saints. I’m writing directly to you, the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi. with the overseers and deacons. He wants to be right there with them as one of the people.

And over and over again, he’s trying to get them to see his love and affection. Verse 3, all of his prayers for all of them, all the time, you see all of the, every single time I pray, I pray for all of you with all of this. His heart is, as you’ll see in verse eight, he yearns for them with the affection of Christ Jesus. So he’s just overcome with love for this church. And that’s what I think is kind of carrying through this section. His love as he’s greeting the church, he’s trying to express to them how much he loves them in Christ Jesus. Okay?

So as we come to God’s word and we read it, you can hear now sort of Paul’s emotions for the church. Let’s come to the word of God now. Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always, in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.

He sends the reading of God’s word. As we come to this section, I think what God wants us to see here, and what Paul is communicating in writing it, is rejoicing in secure fellowship with Christ. Paul is showing this to them, that he is rejoicing in them, and the reason he’s rejoicing with them is because of their shared faith in Christ. Paul has found a true companion in his work.

I was talking to my wife on the way here and was asking her, we watched a movie of Anne of Green Gables a while ago. And there’s this line that Anne has, what she really wants is a bosom friend. She’s looking for a bosom friend. Someone who she can share all of her thoughts with, that she can go through life with, that she can have complete confidence in. that she knows this person’s always going to be with me. This person is going to care about me. That their affection for me is going to be more than just a selfish desire for my attention, but they actually care for me and I actually care for them. That’s what Paul sees in the Philippian church.

Now I was thinking that it sort of seems different for men and women. Women often think of a bosom friend as I can share all of my thoughts with. Men often think of, like, who would go into battle with me? Or if I was in a Western shootout, who would step up to the plate and say, oh, yeah, I’ll be right next to him with that, right? Someone told me this last week, well, women want to die peacefully in their bed, and men want to go out in glory.

And that’s generally how it works. But it’s the same when we think about companionship. Well, who would be willing to go through all of my hardship with me, hear all of my thoughts and cares, and care as much about me as I care about me? or who would be willing to lay down their life alongside me or with me.

That’s what a true companion looks like. And when we see Paul talking to the church here, he’s writing to them as a true companion, someone who he has complete security in. But you’ll also see woven through this that it’s all because of what Christ has done. Christ is what’s actually securing this friendship that they have.

You remember that I just was talking about the history. Well, he was only there for a very short amount of time. He was at other churches for much longer, but this is the church that he writes with such heartfelt desire for, such great affection for. And so I want to explore sort of Paul’s, first look at Paul’s feelings.

What is, see him rejoicing in them and their companionship. But then we’re going to re-look at that and see how Christ pervades all of it. Okay? So in two parts. First, Paul’s emotions towards them. Him rejoicing in this church. And then see how Christ is the reason that he can rejoice and have such confidence. As we look first at the rejoicing, I want you to see the emotions that Paul is expressing. I pointed it out first with verse 3, but can you see the expansive language that he has? As he starts off the letter, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you. Always, in every prayer of mine, for you all, making my prayer with joy.

This has been talked about as a letter of joy because the Philippians are in great trouble and you’ll see it under the surface. But Paul’s letter is not about their suffering. Paul’s letter is about their rejoicing. And even as he’s writing this letter, that’s the emotion he’s feeling towards them, just this great joy that he has for them.

He’s not contemplating and dwelling on, here are all the problems that you have, or here are the things that I want to correct about your church life. What he’s focusing in on is, oh, I have so much joy just knowing that you’re with me. Why does he have so much joy? Verse five, because of your partnership in the gospel from this day until now. He’s so joyful to have a companion with him. There’s sort of three things that come out of his rejoicing, despite all of the obstacles that they could have to Paul’s joy.

You’re 2,000 miles away. We’re only communicating through letters. You have such difficulty in your own church life. Paul’s just writing about joy. And then he kind of hits on three main points about that he finds joy in. The three things are, he finds joy in their partnership.

Verse five, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, What it’s trying to communicate here in partnership is not just, oh, we’re on the same team. We agree with the same things. Or some sort of, well, we have fellowship. We’re friends. But the idea is something actually tighter than that. It’s sort of like a, almost like an economic binding. Like we are business partners in something. We’re not just living in the same community, but we have ties together.

If you think of in ancient times in Israel, Solomon wanted to make a treaty with Egypt. So he married the Egyptian pharaoh’s daughter. This is how things were often done. Kings would give their daughter to a nation that they wanted to make a treaty with.

Well, what did that do? You can sign a treaty, but it’s just words. But you send your daughter to that nation, well, now you can’t go to war because you’re going to war against your own flesh and blood. And they can’t war against you because, well, you don’t want to have to face your mother-in-law, right?

There’s something about lives are actually intertwined. This isn’t just like, oh, we are friendly, like I’m friendly with my neighbor. But when Paul talks about our partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, he’s speaking about them being bound up in the gospel work. Skip down to verse seven. He says, you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and the defense and confirmation of the gospel. So Paul is 2,000 miles away, but he says, and this is coming from the same word as the partnership in verse five.

But he says, we are in complete partnership in this work of grace. We are separated by 2,000 miles, and we don’t have email. We don’t have phones. It’s months to send letters, but we are bound up in this. I’m sitting in prison and I know you’re sitting in prison with me.

I’m going out and I’m preaching the gospel and defending Christ. I know I go out and I’m confirming who Christ is to those in my proclamation and I know that you’re standing right beside me in that work. That’s the language that Paul is using. His work in the gospel, he says, is completely bound up with the Philippians. Part of that is, we’ll see, is an economic. They have been the church that supported him. He’s turned down support from other churches, but he’s kept getting support from Philippi, from Macedon.

And so they have skin in the game in some way. But they also have actually sent someone to them, which we’ll see later in the letter. They have skin and game because they’ve sent Epaphras, one of their own people, to take that long journey and then go and encourage Paul. See, they’re not just bound up in the work because, well, we think kind thoughts of him, once a month we pray for him, but because they are completely invested in his work. If something happens to Paul or Paul’s work, it’s like it happened to them.

It’s like if, for you women, your husband has to travel for work and then he gets caught in a storm or crashes his car, something in your heart is anxious. It’s like that happened to you. Well, nothing, you get stressed because nothing can happen to him because that’s, I’m so bound up with who he is that I’m constantly calling, are you okay? Are things all right? That’s how the Philippians are treating Paul. They’re bound up in his work. There’s a partnership.

So my question out of that is, what are you invested in? What would you say, oh, yeah, I have that sort of partnership with people. Hopefully, if you’re married, it’s with your spouse. But is that sort of the partnership you feel with Christ’s work, the people that you are in church with? You might send a little bit of money to a missionary, but have you invested enough of what God has given you that you actually feel, oh, that’s my work, too? If something’s going on, you feel, something bad happens, you feel a loss. If they write back about a convert, you feel like, wow, we have won someone to Christ. Have you sort of invested enough in Christ’s work that you have skin in the game? that you would say, oh yes, I am a full partner with what’s going on out there. There’s something beautiful about the church that actually lets you do that.

I don’t know how many of you have sort of been out of the country or in a place where you can’t speak the language, and then maybe you’re traveling for a little while and you just feel lonely, and then you get to Christians, and you still can’t speak their language, but you know that you’re both Christians. And then you just feel like, wow, I’m at home. Like, I could rest here and stay here with them, because it feels like we’re on the same team. And I can’t even talk to them very much, right? There’s something beautiful in Christ about partnership, investing in the work of Christ. And that binds you together.

And Paul feels the weight of that. That’s underlying everything that he’s going to say about them. The second thing he points to is his confidence. He says in verse 6, after he’s talking about prayer and then he cuts off and he has these things he wants to communicate to them before he revisits prayer in verse 9. He says, I need to tell you about this. First thing he wants to tell them about is his confidence he has in them. Verse 6, I am sure of this. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ.

So Paul has been with them for a short amount of time. He’s left. He’s only had infrequent communication at best. But what does he write to them? I am sure of this. I have complete confidence in you. Paul’s bound up with these people so much that he knows them. And what does he know? That Christ will bring it to completion in his day. Isn’t that wonderful to have a friend that you know, I have complete confidence in that person.

I had a friend in middle school who, he was known for being a liar. He would just play loose with the truth. He wasn’t a believer. He would just say things here or there. When in fifth grade, he found me and befriended me. And I didn’t have many friends. And he made an effort to do that. And years down the road, two or three years down the road, I had other friends saying, like, you can’t trust this guy. But I said, no, he’s honest with me.

Like, we’re friends. We know each other. And I was right. There’s something about our friendship that I had confidence in who he was, because of how we were bound together, how our lives were intertwined. Even though to the rest of the world he had these flaws and things like that, well, in our friendship there was something sort of sacred about that.

And that’s the sort of feeling that Paul, he’s not going to look at this church and say, they have no issues, that’s why I have confidence in this church. But he knows them. And more than that, he trusts the Lord’s work in them, which we’ll get to later. He knows who they’re pursuing and who has them. And so he writes, I am sure of this. I’m sure of this.

You see how it’s fronted at the beginning of the sentence? It’s going a little bit of grammar. But he could have just said, I am sure that he who began a good work in you. But he sort of pauses it. I’m sure of this. And you wonder, well, what’s this? And then you get delayed to the rest of the sentence. What Paul’s doing is he’s trying to draw emphasis. I’m really certain of this one thing. I want you to listen to this.

This is what’s so important, Philippians, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. I’m sure that God has you secure. And he knows how extreme this confidence is, because he immediately, in verse 7, has to fill it up with a reason. Look, it’s right for me to feel this way about you. He knows that you’re hearing all of this emotion.

You see me as such extreme partners. You have great confidence in me. And Philippi is just going to be thinking, or Paul’s worried that what they’re going to think is, this is just emotionalism. You’re just kind of throwing out glad tidings. I want you to feel good. I’m going to say really nice things about you.” But Paul wants to make sure that they don’t know that, that they don’t think that.

No, everything I’m saying is grounded in something. I give you thanks because of your partnership in the gospel. There’s a tangible thing. You have sent me financial support. You have sent me a minister to my needs. There’s something tangible that I can point to and say, look at this thing that binds us together.

Same way with his confidence. Look, my confidence isn’t just an emotionalism. It’s not just because I really want to believe in you, I really like you and hope that this is true. He says, no, this is confidence, and it’s right for me to have this confidence. It’s right for me to have this confidence. Why?

Because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and the defense and confirmation of the gospel. You see him go back to their partnership. because I’ve seen how much you desire Christ’s work. I have confidence in who you are because I know how you’ve interacted with me. I know how I’ve seen Christ’s love in you.

Paul has confidence in them. Are we able to act in such a way that someone would look at us and say, oh, I can see what Christ’s doing. Yes, you may have flaws. You may have really serious flaws. But they can say, oh, I’ve seen their work and labor for Christ.

As someone says in Hebrews, I don’t think it’s Paul, but as someone says in Hebrews, God will not forsake your labor of love, all the things that you’ve given up for Christ. Paul looks at this and says, I’ve seen your striving for Christ, and I have confidence in where you stand before God. Paul has confidence in their relationship.

The third thing he wants to bring out is in verse 8. For God is my witness. See how he introduces it with an oath. Look, I am calling God as my witness in what I write. Now, Paul would not use this lightly. We live in an age where people call down oaths on themselves all the time. God does not use the Lord’s name in vain. But he says, God is my witness in what I’m going to say. You see, he’s trying to ground it. This isn’t emotionalism. This isn’t just my heart getting carried away. God is my witness. This is what’s going on in my heart.

And what does he then have to say? How I yearn for you with all the affection of Christ Jesus. Underlying all of this, it’s not just that, well, you’ve given me money, so I care about you. Or, I’ve seen that you’re a faithful person, so I have confidence in your character. It goes deeper than that. Paul has affection for them.

He has a desire and a yearning for them that’s actually then separated out. It’s not based on what they’ve done for him. And why do I say that? This is the only thing that he brings out and it doesn’t have justification. The other ones, he wants to make sure that it’s secure in something.

Look. Give God thanks because you’re a partner with me. And I’m always remembering you because you’ve been a partner with me. I’m confident in you because I’ve seen your labors for me and you’ve joined in with me in suffering and in the work of the gospel. But here, there’s no justification. He’s just telling them, look, my affection for you has now become separate from sort of anything that you’ve done for me.

And he gets that through with the language. I yearn for you all with the affection, or sort of like the bowels and the heart of Christ Jesus. Well, what’s the inner affection of Jesus? Well, it’s selfless love, right? He didn’t look on us and say, oh, there are some pretty beautiful people. I’m going to go and help them out a little bit further. No, he saw us when we hated and despised him. But his affections were for us. His heart was not because of anything that we had earned. And that’s what Paul references.

His affection, his yearning for them is just a selfless love. I want your good. And then that comes out in his prayer. Hear the prayer. Is any of this at all connected with Paul’s work? No, it’s all gonna be pointed at their growth in Christ. It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. He’s praying very specifically because he knows them, but he’s walking them towards full maturity in Christ. I want God to be praised and glorified in you. I want you to bear fruit of Christ.

Not at all connected to Paul’s ministry or that, I pray that our partnership grows, but he just has a loving longing for them. That’s Paul’s affection. And if we think about, well, what are we looking for in companionship? I want a true friend. What we’re looking for is someone who we can say that about. That, well, their affection for me is actually not because I give them anything, but they actually just really care about me regardless. But how many friendships do we have like that here on Earth? We might have something you think, ah, that’s similar. But then there’s always that moment where you’re like, yeah, it might break down somewhere. It’s almost like what Paul is feeling towards this church is idealized.

Well, what if they stop supporting his ministry? What if they’re no longer partners? Or what if people start sliding away? Paul doesn’t have any caveats in any of this. What he’s expressing is true companionship. There’s a deep, a deep longing, a depth of joy in them and a depth of his relationship to them that you really can’t find a parallel here on earth. Proverbs 18 says, there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

But it doesn’t say there are friends who do this. It’s just kind of telling you there may be one. Look out there, there is one. And we all hear that and we think, I would love to have that friend, right? And there’s something beautiful about that Paul has found that friend in his ministry. 2,000 miles away.

But he can write to them, and he knows they’re walking step by step with me. They are like Timothy in my ministry, right beside me. I have complete confidence in them. And it’s to the point that I have affection for them, even if they were not involved in my ministry. I just love them, and I’m bound to them. I have the yearnings of Christ for them.

Now, the reason that Paul can have this sort of thing when we know that we live in a world of all sorts of betrayal, and Paul’s well aware of that, is because what has been pervasive through all of this is the work of Christ. It’s sort of strange that I’ve gotten the majority of the way through this sermon, and I’ve only kind of briefly touched on Christ, because he is all over the place. We talk in PCA circles about preaching Christ. This is one of the easiest passages to do that, because over and over and over again, everything for Paul in his relationship with the church is bound up in Christ’s work. Let me just run over those same three things, the partnership, his confidence and his affection, and see how Christ is just pervading all of it. Christ is underlying it.

That what Paul’s looking at and taking joy in is not first and foremost, oh good, I found a friend here on earth. But that’s just sort of a side blessing for Paul. A side blessing coming out of everything that he’s found in Christ. And so if you’re hearing me preach and you think, oh good, I need to go out there and find a friend like that, you’re not going to find that friend except through Christ. OK? And let me show you why. Let me read through verses 3 to 11 one more time.

And listen for all of the things I pointed to, but how they’re all connected through Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. When Paul is thinking about his partnership, the only reason he has a partnership with them is because they have joined together in Christ’s work. Your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

You see, someone might be a business partner with you. That, okay, you hear bad news. You’ve lost a million dollars in your business. And then they feel struck to the heart because they’ve also lost a million dollars. You disagree about something in business, and you just go part your own ways. We split the company in two, and we’re going to do our own thing.

But this is something that’s bound tighter than that. You can’t separate it. Because maybe Paul and the Philippians disagree about something in ministry. Oh, I’m going to do this, and the Philippians think that’s a bad idea. Can they split ways? No, they can’t split ways.

Because they’re both serving Christ. That’s still binding them together. Ask your elders about that. What binds them together is not that they agree on everything. What binds them together is that even when they disagree, they know that the other elders are all pursuing the glory of Christ. And think, well, we might have a different opinion on this, but we’re striving towards the same thing. We are completely bound up in this work because it’s not our work, it’s Christ’s work. That’s taking forefront.

So the partnership has something that you can’t find here on earth, where everything’s kind of based on people. But if it’s based on serving Christ and His work, then you’re bound to people who you’ve never met. You go and visit a country and you can’t even speak to them and you know we’re bound up in the same work. Because the gospel I’m hearing from you is the same gospel that I hear from my church back home. We might do things a little differently, but we’re aimed towards the same God. We have a partnership that transcends anything you can find here on earth, because our partnership is first with Christ.

Look at the confidence that he has. I’m sure of this. Does he say, I’m sure of this, that you will make it to the end? No, I’m sure of this, that he who began a good work in you, he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Can you look to someone and say, oh, I know that you are strong enough to be faithful?

How many of you who are older than high school can look back and point to high school or college friends that you had, and you thought, they were so firm in the faith. If I would have guessed, they would have made it to the end. And then they just walked away. You go to a class reunion, and you think, what happened to you? You see, our assessment of things isn’t always right. But Paul’s confidence is not in, well, they look like really good people.

But Paul’s confidence is in Christ, who is able to secure, who is able to give confidence. That he’s able to say, oh, I am sure of this about you, because I know the one who’s going to bring you through to the day of Christ. The only reason that Paul can even have such confidence when he has seen so much betrayal and so many people turning against him is because he knows his Savior and the one who binds him to the people that he’s partners with.

Your confidence is not just in your own eyes and your own assessment, but your confidence is in your Savior. What can you do when people you love turn against you? Well, you still trust your Savior. Your Savior can bring you through that. And your Savior can actually bring them back and bring them through it. Because you know the power of Christ. Finally, looking at the affection. The affection that Paul feels. Verse 8, God is my witness. I yearn for you with such strong affection.

No, it’s the affection of Christ Jesus. You see, the love that Paul feels is not something you can just muster by sort of elevating human emotions. You can feel really strong things humanly, but the love that we see in Christ is something outside of this world. It does not make sense that God himself would come and die for creatures who were wicked. That does not make sense, but that’s the heart of God. And so the only way that you can have such affection for people around you, that you can actually have that same sort of affection for someone, is if you know Christ. Is if Christ is the one planting that into your heart.

Do you want to be, do you look at your life and say, yeah, I don’t love my wife enough. I really care more about myself and how she’s going to serve me. Or, yeah, I was walking with my friend through something hard and then I just gave up because it was just too hard for me. Do you see your lack of affection? You can’t just muster that up. You can’t just say, well, I’m going to do better the next time. Because there are people who are just not going to be able to be loved. You think, they have hurt me too much.

But you need Christ’s love. The affections of Christ isn’t something that you can just say, OK, I’d like to do that. You watch an amazing basketball player and think, maybe I can eventually dunk a ball like him if I try hard enough. Maybe, but the affection of Christ is not something like that. You can’t just train yourself to do it enough. You actually have to have Christ’s heart, because it’s not something in this world. So if you, if you see Paul’s heart for the Philippians, and you think, I want to be the sort of friend that the Philippians were.

I want to be that sort of companion. Someone who’s bound up with someone who they can confide in and trust to the ends of the earth. Who really loves them and cares for them apart from any selfishness. I want to be that sort of person. You need to first know Christ as that person for you. There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. And if you want to be that friend, you first need to know Christ as that friend for you.

Have you seen how Christ has stuck with you through all of the difficulties? In all of your walks in life that he’s been walking alongside you and he’s been hand in hand with you. Do you see how he has over and over been faithful to his word when you thought, I’m not hearing prayers answered, I’m not listening, I’m not hearing God, do what he should be doing for me. And then maybe years later you see, oh, he was faithful through all of it. Wow, I can have confidence in him.

Do you see how unloving you have been? How sinful you have been? How many times that you have seen God’s word tell me I should do this, and then you just walk the other way and spit in God’s face. And then Christ has been there the next Sunday and said, if you confess your sins, I am faithful and just to forgive your sins and purify you of all unrighteousness.

You see, that’s the affection of Christ. It’s most important that we see that in Christ. And that’s how our lives are transformed. Let’s pray that that’s the case. Lord, we come to you and we pray that you would be showing us Christ, showing us the faithfulness of Christ. the faithfulness to walk beside us, the faithfulness to his word, that he is always trustworthy, and the heart of Christ for us. Through all that we have done and all that’s happened to us, that he has loved us, he has sought us out and pursued us at such great cost to himself.

Would you open our eyes to that? Now I turn and I pray for this congregation that you would be blessing us, that you would be walking with those who are doubting and show Christ in your word. Answer their prayers as they pray to you, that they may see your faithfulness. Would you surround them with those who can come alongside them and show them the hands and feet of Christ that they would pull into the church? We pray for those who are suffering in various ways. Maybe they work in a difficult environment or they have physical afflictions or emotional struggles.

May they find their comfort and rest in you. May they find their hope in the day of Christ when you will bring it to completion. May they find their hope day to day in you who brings your work to completion. And may you be working to implant in them the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.

We pray that in every moment of our lives that we would be seeking to praise and glorify you and that if there are those of us who are caught in sins or who are about to face great temptations, as sneaky as Satan can be, would you alert us to that? Bring your word to mind and give us strength to fight against the evil one. that our lives themselves would bring glory and praise to you. Pray this in Christ’s name, amen.