Thank you worship team for getting up early, battling that snowstorm and being here today. You know, I don’t know about you, but last Sunday, as Pastor Bill concluded his remarks and let us in singing that that was a very emotional time.
And I hope that you will be back here today if you’re not staying for the luncheon. I hope that you’ll be back here today at 2:00 to to celebrate him and for us to do the passing of the baton. But as you saw from the title today, we’re where are we? Where are we going and how do you fit in?
It’s kind of like a State of the Union address. It’s kind of the thing that they do, politicians do this time of year, State of the Union address, but it’s going to be for our church. So if you want to stand clap at random points throughout the sermon, you’re surely welcome to. But it will prolong an already long message.
We’re thinking about this morning the trajectory of our congregation this year. And so if you do have your Bibles, I’d invite you to open up to Romans Chapter 12 beginning in verse one, And we’re going to go all the way through verse eight this morning as we answer the question, where are we? Where are we going and how do you fit in?
This is the word of the Lord from Paul. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly unacceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but betray formed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Verse three four By the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned for. As in one body, we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function.
So we though many are one body in Christ and individual members of one another having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. Let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service and our serving the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.
We’re answering the question, Where are we? Where are we going? And how do you fit in and in order to do that, we first see from our text that we’re called to cultivate a heart of worship. This year, verse one opens this way I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Now, our passage here starts with a personal appeal from the Apostle Paul that was not only fairly normal for Paul, but but for others at his time. For example, we can see in the opening the First Corinthians, Paul writes, I appeal to you brothers or in the next recorded letter that we have, we appeal to you. Or in Ephesians, he writes, Therefore a prisoner of the Lord urge you same word there.
So while it might be just a bit uncomfortable for us today, if we carefully read through the Bible over and over, you’re going to see our regular practice of Paul and of others that they’re trying to shepherd, that there is an appeal being made, a case that is being presented so that you might take at the urging of the shepherd some steps.
That is by nature what the Sunday morning sermon is often about. It’s not primarily about learning little tidbits about the Bible, although I do hope in a sermon you are learning about the Bible. It’s primarily about feeling warm and ooey gooey on the inside, like you got a spiritual hug. Although I do hope that you will find encouragement from the Lord when it comes to the preaching of the word.
Many times at the preaching of the word, there’s spent appealing and urging because. That’s how God designed the church to function, with the pastor studying the word and then appealing and urging the congregation and what that urging and appealing starts with is a cultivation of the right heart of worship. And our text puts it this way. It begins a right understanding of the gospel, the gospel to the good news of Jesus Christ, of his his death, his burial, and his resurrect.
And I want to encourage you this morning is as you consider how will I start off my year, Right. And how will we as a church start our year off right, that everything that we do and everything that we say would be grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ? There are so false gospels out there in the world, ranging from the prosperity gospel that the God’ll give you everything you want.
He’ll bless you. Just got to name it and claim it all the way to a complete denial of God and secularization. But can I encourage you that as you consider how are you going to make this year one that is an act of spiritual worship, that everything start with and be grounded in a right understanding of the gospel?
Milton Vincent puts it this way in his book, The Gospel Primer God did not give us his gospel just so that we could embrace it and be converted. Actually, he offers it to us each day as the gift that keeps giving to us everything we need for life and godliness. The wise believer learns this truth early and becomes proficient in extracting the available benefits from the gospel each day.
So As we set out as a new year, as a church family here, we must start and ground everything that we do in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that starts by if you’re here today, if you don’t know Christ as your Lord and Savior, meaning that there is not a point in your life or you have confessed your sin, ask for the forgiveness of your sin and trust it in the death and resurrection of Christ.
Be the only thing that will save you that today the message for you is clear to turn to Jesus. See, it’s not going to be your good deeds that will get you into heaven. Although I hope that everybody here is filled with good deeds. It’s not going to be your your knowledge of the scriptures although I hope that we would have a robust knowledge of the scriptures.
It’s not going to be that you’re more moral than your neighbor, although I hope that you do live an ethical life. It will be based solely on the shed blood of Christ applied to your life that you will be saved. And so as we consider what does it look like to start off this year to cultivate our right heart of worship, It begins with making sure that everything we do and say is grounded in and flows from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And this year, as we consider how will we grow and and how do you fit in by grace of God? And I say by the grace of God, because we all know that the Lord can change the best laid plans. And if He carries His coming by the grace of God this year, we’re going to be growing in our faithfulness.
Berean has a rich heritage, as I’ve mentioned here before, and we want to continue to build on that heritage to be faithful. But we be growing. We dare not believe that we have arrived and that we no longer as an individual and no longer as a church need to be concerned with growing. We all need progressive sanctify creation at a personal level.
Can I get an amen on that? 9:00 was louder, but do we all agree with progressive sanctification at the institutional level that the church needs to be growing and this year we’re going to be growing in our faithfulness. And as we try to do that and root this in the gospel, we’re going to study the of Galatians and our series will be about faithfully following the true gospel.
I’m looking forward to that study for so many reasons because I think it will have so much to say to us here today. For example, in the opening of that book, Paul would write in verse four describing of Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. I don’t think it takes a cynic to conclude that we’re living in an evil age.
Just look at the news. Look at your Facebook feed or whatever. You and I, we live in an evil age and the gospel is relevant for that today. So. So we’re going to look at and we’re going to study verse by verse, the book of Galatians. Now, if you’re following the the logic in our text this morning, as we try to cultivate the right heart of worship, you’ll notice that it tells us we will need purposed action on our part.
It puts it this way in verse one that we’re trying to present our bodies as living sacrifices. The word their present is it’s pretty clear. It’s something that you have to volitional and willingly do. The metaphor there. It’s trying to invoke the traditions where persons brought a sacrifice to the temple. The Romans would have been very familiar with this.
They brought a sacrifice, vice of an animal or or something of great value. That’s key there. There it has to have some sort of value. And they they offered it up to the deity in order to appease them, in order to get on their good side. So if you brought a goat into the temple, they slaughtered the goat.
And and the hope, the belief was that you would somehow earn the favor of that God. Now we live in the New Covenant, where we’re no longer bringing goats into the church house to sacrifice on Sunday morning to appease God. We’re glad for that. Most of you don’t have goats. Rather, we know that Christ, in his death on the cross, he satisfied God’s wrath for us, and it’s his good merits for those who’ve trusted in his death, burial and resurrection.
It’s his good merits have been put on our count. That’s why we could sing this morning. If God is for us, who could be against us? It doesn’t mean that everything in our life will be easy. It means that the price has already been paid. But in Christianity then, because there’s no further sacrifice for us to secure our salvation, there is a call to present our lives as a living sacrifice.
Christ would say it this way In Matthew 16:24, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me Dear Church. This is not something that will just happen naturally. We will have the daily, weekly, monthly, ourselves to the presenting of our members, the presenting of our bodies as a sacrifice to God.
And so it’s a wise and a natural time for us to ask here this morning, how have you been doing with that? And and how will grow in doing that this coming year? I want to be balanced in my comments here, not only here but elsewhere. When I preach but I would suspect that there are persons here in this very room that if we examined your life, we would say you could grow in your service and sacrifice to Christ.
There’s no doubt that there are people here in this room that honestly, if we looked at their lives, they’re doing too much. But for many here in this room, there is room to grow and your service to the Lord. And so can I encourage you to take our passages, exhortation seriously this morning that because of the Gospel of Christ and your salvation being secured now that you would do these things to earn your salvation, but because of it, that you would grow in your service and that would be purposeful on your part.
For example, did you know that Berean has a number of deacons and those deacons lead a variety of administrative committees around? We’ve got things like ministry support that make the variety of things happen. We’ve got building and maintenance. Someone had to shovel those sidewalks here today. Christian education helping develop the discipleship process or or missions, fellowship, finances. And did you know those deacons who are leading those committees would love to have you help and serve in those areas?
Now, being on a committee is is signing up to to serve not signing up to to get your way around here you’re willingly placing yourself under the elected leaders to help accomplish the mission not get your own agenda, but point would be that I’m trying to highlight and encourage for us is that if we’re serious about spiritual worship, the text calls for us to present our lives as an act of service.
Part of the way that you could do that is to join one of those committees. Another way that you could do that is to serve in our various children’s ministry offerings that we have going around here. I, I’m so thankful and encouraged to see how many young families we have as a part of this this church family. If ever in your heart you go, Man, there’s way too many kids rolling around here.
Let’s have a conversation. But did you know that it takes people to serve in children’s ministries to care for those kids? And I want to especially encourage those of you here today, to think very carefully, how am I discipling the next generation, even if you have children in children’s ministries? I know that can be confusing for some. Like I don’t serve in children’s ministries.
I drop my kids off at Children’s Ministries. You can do both. But I would encourage everybody here to be very serious about attending both of our worship services in one way or the other, attending here in this very room as one of the worship services and either serving in children’s ministries or the other areas that we have here, or attending a Sunday school for discipleship.
And if you’re attending a Sunday school using children’s ministries, we’ve got Wednesday ministries to the point being, I believe God wants everyone who is able bodied and there’s a lot of able bodied persons around here to serve in a meaningful way. And so tonight, after we celebrate Pastor Bill and Peggy and and we enjoy if you looked at the menu some barbecue food, maybe one of the logical things to do tonight is to sit down.
And if you’re married, to sit down with your spouse and if you have children to sit down with your children and to say, okay, we want this year to be a great year, how are we going to grow in our spiritual acts of sacrifice and service in the local church? Because I believe by doing this, this is going to result in a life that is pleasing to God.
The New Year. It’s kind of one of those natural times where where we consider really big questions like, like what is the meaning and purpose of life? I actually think such a very big question is answered very simply and straightforwardly by the Bible. Our goal of our life, whether we’re at home that’s in the body alive or away from it, that dead you’re in heaven.
Our goal is to be pleasing to God in everything that we do and everything that is grounded by the gospel. That is a spiritual act of sacrifice, is looking for the result of pleasing the Lord. Last month, Bill and I were talking and a member of the congregation passed away. Joann Raven I did not have the opportunity to know her and even to to meet her prior to her funeral.
And he said to me in that month and I thought it was really interesting. He said, There will be more this month. And he was correct. There wasn’t more more deaths in our congregation, but there were deaths associated with people who were in our congregation. For those who are in Christ, they were immediate ushered into glory. And when I get there and when you get there, should the Lord Terri his coming?
I hope that these will be the words that you hear when you get there. Well done, Good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over. Enter into the joy of your master. Brothers and sisters. Paul is appealing to the church at Rome. And so I plead and urge you make this year about grounding everything in the gospel.
Make it about spiritual sacrifice and service to the Lord. And in doing so, one day you will hear from your master. Well done. Good. And Faithful servant. Second thing our text reveals for us this year is that we’re to be carefully evaluating our thinking. Do you agree with me that none of us came out of the room, the womb, thinking correctly, or that when you were converted, that you did not automatically experience perfect thinking on your part?
None of us were. So Paul instructs us this wouldn’t be conformed to the world, but but be transformed. How by the renewal of your mind that you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Our thinking is a key part of who we are. We spend so much time thinking and talking to ourselves each and every day, and we don’t have time to review all of the passages that instruct us about how important this is or or how we should go about doing it.
But I hope that you would agree with me this morning that as a person, it can be very easy to get sideways in your thinking. Someone does something to you and you interpret it the complete wrong way. You were driving in traffic and someone merges just a little too close for your comfort and you’re like, He’s trying to kill me.
It’s easy for us to interpret the world around us. And so one of the things that we have to do as Christians is to carefully veil you wait our thinking. So I hope to do that this summer in our series Faithfully Caring for Our Hearts. In that series, we’re going to wrestle with the struggle of discontentment and and how to put on being content in the Lord because the reality is even going back to the the second book of the Bible, Exodus Gods people were continually struggling with being content.
And when even when they got to the Promised land, it’s not like they arrived across Jordan and all of the sudden they’re battles were gone. The same is true for us. We each struggle with being content and if we’re not careful for not watching over our hearts, then then we will wander away from the path that the Lord has set before us.
And so it’ll be a series or a topical series. We won’t work through one particular book, but we’ll visit different chapters in the Bible and try to extract what does this chapter have for us in putting off discontentment and putting on a heart that is content in the Lord, as we faithfully care for our hearts? But I text tells us that as we renew our mind, if we do this, if we carefully guard our hearts and do that, then we will be able to learn God’s will for our lives.
The purpose statement that by the testing you discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. In my experience as a pastor, I believe that believers are regularly plagued by the question What is God’s will for my life? I love sitting down with people and helping them wrestle through that question because it tells me that they actually care what God thinks about how they live their life.
There’s so many people in our society, they don’t care what God thinks. They’re just going to make decisions and come what may. But when a Christian is wrestling with the will of God, that that is a beautiful and great meeting to be a of. And so our passage helps us see that that as we renew our minds that is to to think the way that God thinks that we’ll be able to discern his will.
Now, the only way that you can learn to think the way that God thinks is if you get to your Bible really well. If you want to renew your mind, you have to begin to know God’s Word backwards and forwards. So let me pause and ask you here this morning, the first Sunday of 2024, do you have a very specific plan for reading your Bible this year?
Do you know what you’re going to read each and every day? If not, I would like to encourage you Don’t go to bed tonight without a clear plan for your entire year on on what you’re going to do. If you say that just sounds so overwhelming, just Google a Bible reading plan. There’s a lot of great ones out there.
You don’t have to create it on your own. Personally, I used the McShane reading plan. I find it great because it takes me through the Bible that year, the New Testament twice and Psalms. And I know for some of you thinking that sounds a bit radical. Read the whole Bible in one year. Have you seen how big that thing is?
But I would encourage you, if you’re a Christian and you’ve never read through this entire thing front to cover, but you would do it. You might even a fellow brother or sister to keep you accountable. And if you said, well, I have read it, but it’s 20 years ago, it might be time for a refresher. Most of us do not have photographic memories.
Like I know what Nehemiah nine is about. And so if it’s been more than five years, it might be time to refresh. But the main point is you must be constantly devouring the bread life. So do you have a plan for knowing your Bible better this year? And it’s purposed intentional so that as our text tells us, then as we change our thinking, we can discern what the will of is.
Now, in theologians talk about the will of God, they often break it up into two helpful categories. They expressed of God in the and the secret will of God. The expressed will of God are those things that you can clearly see revealed from the Bible. So if you’re at work this week and you’re wrestling with the question, does God want me to steal from my employer, the Express will of God revealed in this book is No, he does not want you to steal from your employer.
But the secret will of God a bit different because we know that passages like Ephesians one tell us that the God is working all things, everything to the counsel of will. But that doesn’t mean that he’s told you and me everything that he’s doing in that particular moment. So take for example, and Pastor Bill announced his retirement. It wasn’t really clear from the Bible what the next steps were, how the outcome would be achieved.
But there was a secret will that God was working in those moments. So if you’re with the logic, you’re thinking, okay, I can know the expressed will of God, but but then how do I or more importantly, how do we a congregation know the the secret will of God? The answer is sometimes we don’t. But as a church we believe, as Baptists, that one of the tools that God gave us to, to mediate, to determine his will is through congregation governance of the members.
Notice this way how Jonathan Lehman puts it in his book Don’t Fire Your Church Members Congregation does and does not want to diminish the specialness of the pastoral office. It just wants to add another office Member Jesus, by means of the gathered congregation, calls every member of the New Covenant to assume just a set of office functions, duties, obligations and powers through his or her membership in that congregation.
Jesus puts every Christian into office and the church’s workweek. It lasts all seven days. The church is its members. Membership is an office, and members never step out of the office because they are the church and because theirs is the work of representing Jesus and protecting his gospel and each other’s lives. Every. So I hope that you would take that very seriously, that you would want to know not only what is God’s will in your life, but that you would help this congregation participate in knowing what the will of God is in our corporate lives.
So let me give you two ways that I think that you can be a part of that. First is being involved in attending things like church business meetings and such. I realize that there’s a lot of fun ways of being involved around here, and some of you don’t think being involved in church business meetings are all that fun.
But it is part of what being involved and being a member is all about. And if you’re paying, both myself and Jonathan Lehman have been using that word a lot. Member I realize that there are some here today who are not members of, this or another. Church And we’re so glad that you’re here. Don’t hear me long, Don’t hear me wrong.
But the Bible and our church, because of the Bible does does make a pretty stark contrast between those who are part of a local body and our local body and those who are not. So if you’ve been here for a while checking us out, considering if this is the church for you, we are so very happy about that.
But but if you’ve been coming here for over a year or you been coming here from multiple years and you haven’t yet joined, can I just say that there’s probably something wrong with that picture? I know that myself or any of the other pastors, the elected leaders of this church, we would be happy to sit down, answer any questions that you might have.
But God wants each and every one of his children. I believe, according to the scriptures, to be joined to a local church so that they can fulfill part of the office that we have been talking about and help the local church the will of God. My exhortation to you is don’t spend another year on the sidelines. I hope that if you’re here, that you would take seriously what the Bible has to say and that as you renew your mind that you would take serious what God has to say about his will.
Secondly, I think that we can, as a congregation, determine his will is through the working out of something that I’m going to lead us through this year. Lord Willing in a strategic planning process, where are we and where are we going in the next few years? Because part of being a part of a congregation is us talking together.
We’ve elected leaders to lead. They need to lay out the direction, but we need to hear from one another as well. And then we need to communicate here. Here’s where we believe that God is taking us. If you say, you know, I really want to be involved in that planning process, email me, email the office. We’d love to have you part of that, but that you would take seriously.
Okay, where is this church going? How do I fit in? Because if we’re doing that for renewing our minds and trying to answer the question, what is the the will of the Lord? The goal of all of this, according to our text, is transformation. Don’t be conformed to the world, but but be trance formed. The world is most trying to conform all of us.
We need to be so careful about how the world is putting pressures on each and every one of us. And I recognize that many of you place you have great pressures that your workplaces in schools do to be conformed to the thinking of this world. Your pastors are here for you. Your deacons are here for you. We want to help you not be conformed, but to be transformed.
And part of that is going to come down to ultimately. Do you have intentioned purpose plans in your life to be growing and changing? So many times in our world is talked about as New Year’s resolutions. And it’s not just the history of that in our current generation, but but of the Christian church, the great Puritan. Jonathan Edwards.
He’s well known for many things, but one of them is his 70 resolutions that he used to organize his life. Each week he would read those and ask himself, How can I apply these to my life? Because his goal, our goal is transformation. So my hope, my prayer for us as we consider where are we and where we going that that we would have an eye for, How are we being transformed into the image of his son?
And so perhaps not today, because you got a lot of homework already today, but maybe this week you would sit down with your spouse, sit down with a friend and say, how am I going to purposely, intentionally grow to become like Jesus. Now, that might be joining a Sunday school around here, joining one of the discipleship groups. It might be asking one of your pastors for personalized counseling.
But but if you’re just coming and going to church and that’s about it, then I’m not sure that you’re where God wants you to be. And Men, men who are married and men who have children in the home. I hope that you would especially hear this sermon and feel the weight of what I’m saying for. Your family that God has called you to lead your families.
And that starts with you thinking about transformational leadership. If you want to see how that I’m doing that in my role here as the pastor of Berean and on your on your handout, there’s a funky looking QR code at the very bottom. My assumption, my working assumption is most of you have smartphones and with your smartphone you can use the camera app to pull up my yearly initiate.
What am I trying to do and trying to transform and grow in this particular role. And you can use that as a model. You can use that as an example. If you don’t have the ability to access that email, the office will get you a copy. You can even print it for you. But that it’d be really clear that if you and I are having a conversation on December 31st of this year and I asked you, how was your year?
How did you grow that you’d be able to take your plan out and say, Here’s how I grew very specifically and objectively, this. Some aspects of growth are subjective, but nobody grows in fuzzy land. I know you might feel overwhelmed by thinking about that. We’d be happy to sit down with you, but the goal for this year for us as we carefully evaluate our thinking, is transfer.
Now, the only way that we can do that then is we have to have a focus on humble self evaluation. Notice how Paul puts it here in verse three four By the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
You can probably see there in our English translations the use of the word think three times. But but actually that word sober judgment is a compound word that has the same word thinking in there as well. So it’s really four. And what Paul is trying to do is to draw a contrast between those who would be intoxicated and their thinking being altered, their their actions being altered it and their thinking being clear and sober.
The reality is that when we’re evaluating our thinking, we tend to, by nature, fall into two ditches. We either fall one ditch and we and we think we’re really amazing, or we fall into the other ditch and we think we’re the worst person who’s ever existed in the entire history of humanity. Paul’s going after that first ditch, but is encouraging us to this entire part for humble self-evaluation of ourselves.
And so as you try to grow this year and you lay out those steps of growth, that is going to require a focus on humble self of evaluation. And you might even need to invite others into your life to speak into that and say, Hey, where do you see that I am weak. Where do you see that I’m strong and I can build on those strengths?
Where do I need to grow? That’s part of why we’re going to go through that planning process as a church. What are the the strengths that we can continue to use and what are the areas that as we see into the future that we should be working on to grow? But in our humble self evaluation, let’s remember that as we look at our lives and if you become overwhelmed, remember that no is too far gone.
Remember that no addiction is too great, that no sin is too dark, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can, can transform anyone to a new creation. But it first has to begin with a humble self-evaluation of where you are. Lastly, our text encourages us to celebrate and cultivate the unity that we enjoy, the unity around the person and work of Christ in our lives.
Well, Berean is a diverse church in many ways, and that is a really good thing that we want to celebrate. And our unity comes from Christ. The text puts it this way in verses four eight for us in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function. So we though are one body in Christ and individually members notice we’re members of one another having gifts difficult differ according to the grace given to us.
Let us use them. That is the gifts. If prophecy then in proportion to our faith, if service, then in our serving, if the one who teaches and is teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does, who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. We have a great unity because of the Gospel of Christ and because he’s called.
We have a great diversity as well. And this year we want to celebrate and strengthen that by faithful Lee ordering a gospel church. We’re going to, in the fall, look at the book of First Timothy and ask, how do we grow in this faith for unity and diversity that we have as a body of Christ? We’re going to look at first Timothy, see that we’ve been entrusted with the gospel, and then we want to see how can we take the gospel that is given to us and grow ourselves and share the gospel in all of Kalamazoo County and all over the world.
Building on that very idea of faithfulness around Thanksgiving, we’ll also consider how, oops, I skipped a slide here. I apologize. I got ahead of myself. I want to say, first and foremost, thank you for all of those who gave to our building committee, our building capital campaign. I’m so encouraged by this. And you’ve seen how we are growing to faithfully order our church to to reach our community.
Praise God for what you’re doing. So many of you have already given thank you for your commitment. Now is the time to start honoring those commitments. This will be a test of our unity in the days to come and using the gifts that God has given to us. And as our text mentioned, we’re we’re going to use those gifts for the service to others. But why did God give us all of the various gifts that he gave to us? Did he give it to give you and me a better life, that you’d have a a bigger house or a greater car? He gave us gifts that we might glorify him and serve others.
And so as he’s giving us these gifts, this is where I was going before. He’s called us to faithfully steward God’s household. And we’ll be looking at stewards of principle or principles of stewardship around Thanksgiving this very year in our diversity in our unity. What we will see ultimately then, is that there are different functions, but there is the same savior.
There, different functions, but the same savior. So as we conclude here today and we consider where are we? Where are we going and how do you fit in? My hope and my prayer is that it’s clear that God is calling for us to to cultivate a heart of spiritual worship that leads to sacrifice for one another, that we would be carefully focused on watching our thinking and discerning how can we grow.
And that we would celebrate our unity and our diversity by faithfully using the gifts that God gave us for His glory. Let me pray, Father. We come before you today and we offer you thanks. And I thank you for the many blessings that you’ve given to us. I thank you for the people who are here who chose to worship with you this Lord’s day that we could gather together and consider Where are we?
Where are we going? And how do you fit in? I pray that we would be serious about our worship father, that we would take guarding and watching our hearts seriously this year, and we would focus on transformation all for your glory. We asked this in your son’s most precious and holy name in the name of Jesus, we pray him in