And it's just incredible. Hey guys, we're going to be at Colossians chapter one today, and I want to call your attention to the end of Colossians chapter one today. We are going to have the opportunity to dive in. Let me give you the big idea right up front. Today is all about growth. It's all about maturity. It's all about the heart of a pastor for the people that they are pastoring. It is all about our focus on what we're hoping is happening in your life, which is really not all that complicated. It's Christian growth.
It's maturity. Here's the big idea this weekend. The church exists, I would say even pastors exist, the church exists to grow people in maturity. Y'all, these commissionings that we do are such a big deal because in a lot of ways they are sort of the end of what we're trying to accomplish. I mean, there's a group of people who have come together to hold the rope, to finance, to lead kids in a way that they think about the nations. And then there are people who have stepped forward with that famous quote from scripture, from the Lord to Isaiah, but who will go for us? And there's people that have stepped forward and said, we will go.
Send us. We will be the ones that go out on your behalf, supported by the church, sent out. That doesn't happen if there is not an intense focus on Christian maturity. That we aren't just reaching people, but we are seeing those people get in the stream, which moves them in the current towards maturity, towards a rootedness, towards an ability to withstand the drought and the winds that come in this life, to be mature in Christ. That is the focus.
You can say it like this. The focus is to know Christ and to make Him known. That we want to grow in those two endeavors. We want to grow toward maturity and knowing Him and letting others know about Him.
Guys, it's so easy to get our eyes off the ball here. Okay. I understand that we have back to school weekend has come in here and in another month or so, kids are going to be going back to school and all that stuff and I get that. But guys, school and kids and education and their future is not the main thing in our life. It's an important thing.
It's not the main thing. I think about some of us right now that maybe are approaching that. You know, we got some fourth quarter people at Mercy Hills, some of my favorite people.
All right. And what that means is that they're in that fourth quarter of life. We say, hey, 60 to 80. That's what just by the numbers, that's kind of the fourth quarter.
The only thing more important in the fourth quarter is overtime though. Okay. So, but you think about some of us might be that magic number. I keep hearing people talk about that magic number, the full retirement age. 67 is out there or whatever it is.
And you're like, but you know what? Retirement is not the focus of our life. November is coming. Politics is not the focus of our life. These things are important. These things matter, but sometimes they can get blurred up in our vision of what is the actual focus. What I want to call you back to as a pastor, reading a passage of scripture that is from a pastor to a church. Okay.
And he's really upfront about that. My goal is that those things in our life and in my life, y'all, they would not be the first thing. They would instead be used as tools that God has put in our hand to serve in our ultimate purpose.
Some of them are gifts from his hand to be used in our ultimate purpose, which is to grow in maturity and thereby glorify God, to know him better and better and better, and to make him known in greater ways. Sometimes our lives can just, all the stuff is coming at us and everything is blurry, right? I'm sort of a child of the late eighties and early nineties. That was kind of when I was like my child formative, you know, years, things that I can remember. So I remember the original Game Boy. Okay. No fear t-shirts. Who had one of those?
Cassette tapes, blockbuster, Bob Saget. Okay. And I remember magic eye posters.
Does anybody remember these magic eye posters where the thing was? Okay. About three of you guys. All right.
Maybe somebody at the campuses. The idea was, if you remember this, that the thing is so blurry, it makes no sense at all. And the idea is if you stare at it long enough, something with your eye focus will kind of trick and boom, the thing will just pop out at you. It looked like nothing. And then all of a sudden it was a unicorn jumping out of a waterfall or something.
Okay. And it just kind of pops. And sometimes I think about our life a little bit that way with how much is coming at us every single day, it's hard to decipher what the main thing is supposed to be. And here, what Paul is going to tell us, it's actually very simple. What his goal for the church is that they would grow in maturity. That is why he proclaimed Christ.
128. In him, he is the one that we proclaim. He is the one that we are giving to you, this mystery Christ, the gospel, so that what? So that we would grow up into maturity. And that's what we're going to try to get to today. All right. So here we go.
Let's dive in. Colossians chapter one, verse 24. Now I rejoice in my suffering for your sake. And in my flesh, I'm filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body. That is the church of which I became a minister, according to the stewardship from God, that was given to me for you. Note that it was given to me, Paul says, but it was for you to make the word of God fully known. The mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints. To them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery. Here's the mystery.
I know that some of this language can be like, well, what's the mystery? Here it is. Which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him, we proclaim. This is the money verse. Warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom.
Why? Why was Paul beaten? Why did he make it his aim to preach the gospel? Why did he struggle and toil?
And it goes on in chapter two to do the same thing. I struggle for you. I toil for you. Why that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all this energy that he powerfully works within me. Now, Pastor Paul, if you want to say that, is talking to a church. This is not a church that, different times in the Bible, he has different relationships with churches.
Some of them didn't be planted, some of them he didn't. The idea is this, he is a spiritual authority in their life and they recognize him as such. And in that place of spiritual authority, he tells them right off the bat, this is why I am preaching to you and writing to you the most Christ-centered book, in the most Christ-centered book in the world. The Bible, Christ-centered book.
Number one all-time bestseller, okay? In that Bible, there is the most Christ-centered book, some would say, and that is the book of Colossians. And what Paul is saying is, is I am giving you this Christ theology or this Christology. And I'm trying to give you this Christology in order that you would understand what maturity looks like and where you get it.
That you go to him for that. And in understanding the gospel, you would grow into maturity. Paul is, listen, he's a gardener expecting to produce fruit. He's a businessman expecting to produce a profit. And what I mean by that is, by analogy, he has got inputs and he wants to see the output. And the output that he wants to see, not a businessman for profit, not a gardener for fruit, he wants to see pastoral input, I make the gospel known to you and what comes out is your Christian maturity. He wants to create an environment where people are able to grow up into strength, into maturity, that they're not blown to and fro by the wind, that they're not gullible, they're not naive, they're not deluded, they're not taken in by false doctrine, they're strong.
And that's what he wants. You know, one of the things that Mercy Hill is known for is our absolutely gourmet coffee, okay? I don't know if you guys, I mean, you know, highest quality in the entire triad, okay? You know, you don't get this kind of coffee just anywhere, all right? Now we have incredible volunteers who make the coffee the right way and they do things every single week the right way, but you know, we may not buy the highest quality because you guys drink like at least 175 gallons a weekend, okay? Now here's the thing about coffee, I'm being a little bit funny, but here's the thing about coffee, right? The coffee is, you know, whatever kind of coffee you get, it's pretty much equivalent to and produced by whatever the environment is that produced it, right? You go to the high jungle of Peru, you go to some different places in South America, you can get the really, really good stuff.
I think we try to grow ours like in Thomasville or something, okay, that we get here. But the idea, the idea, right, is that there is an environment that produces, and that's what Paul is after in verse 28. So with that in mind, let's just kind of walk through this. He is after their maturity, all right, so what does he say in verse 24? In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of this body, that is the church. Paul is saying as a pastor, as a spiritual authority in your life, I am rejoicing in the sufferings that I have taken on, the beatings that he has taken, the marks that he bears in his actual body, because why?
What does he say? It fills up what is lacking in the afflictions for the sake of this, of his body, that is the church. Now, you know, you may not have had to even be around the Bible all that long, and this is one of the great things about Mercy Hill at all of our campuses. Man, we got people in here that are absolute scholars. You've been studying the Bible twice as long as me, literally, okay, because, you know, you're older, you've been walking in the Scripture for a long time. You've got other people who may have been around here for two weeks, and it's like, man, this is my first rodeo. I'm trying to get in. Okay, here's the deal.
You probably don't have to have been in that long to look at this and go, that's kind of curious. I would have thought there is nothing lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Like, what could be lacking about the afflictions of Christ, right?
I mean, what we have said last week is what? Christ is first. He is preeminent. He is the priority. He is before all things.
What in the world could be lacking about what he has done? Well, here's what I think. There are different, you know, interpretations of this. Some people have looked at this and said, well, there's a certain amount of suffering that has to happen before Jesus comes back, or there's some things like that. I think it's a little more simple than that.
I think that you could just say this. Paul is not saying there's something lacking in Christ's afflictions when it comes to the atoning work that it does. The lack is not in the atonement. The lack is in the awareness of the atonement. That there are people, this is the point, the only thing lacking about the afflictions of Christ is that not everybody knows about it. And that's why it's one of the biggest celebrations you will ever see in this church when you see a group of people who are willing to go to the nations and name Christ, where in some cases he has not been named, literally. They're going to go places where people have no idea who Jesus Christ is. And this is why.
Well, why? Because what's lacking is not the atoning work. What's lacking is the awareness of that atoning work. And I think what he's saying here is this, there is something about the suffering Christian that puts the atoning work of Jesus Christ on display for the world. There are missionaries that go out all over the world.
There are people that all over the world. There are people that go out from this very church and they go to the hardest places among the most unreached and it's dangerous and it's hard. And some of them face persecution, but there are other areas of our life where every single one of us, even in our day-to-day life, y'all, anytime we image and picture suffering for the world, for the kingdom's sake, we are showing them something about Christ. We are showing something about what is lacking in his afflictions. Not that anything lacks, but that they don't know about it.
And we have a chance to picture. You could say it like this. We image the gospel when we choose suffering for the kingdom's sake. It makes a value statement. Sacrifice is a decision that we make. Here's the definition of sacrifice.
It's giving up something that you love for something that you love even more. And when we make a choice to sacrifice for the kingdom, it creates a value statement. I think that's what Paul is getting at. Hey, he said to the church, the Colossians, hey, look at my body. Look at the afflictions that I've suffered.
I mean, he talks about this in different places in the Bible. Man, I've been stoned. I've been beaten. I've been shipwrecked. I have the daily anxiety and weight of all the churches that is on me.
And it's something about being willing to suffer in that way shows something about Christ. You know, I think about how, you know, we're talking about big stuff. Let's just try to bring it right home. Okay. It's when you decide, even though I'm scared to death to get on an airplane, I will go on a go team in 2024. Okay.
You're scared to go on an airplane. I'm going to tell you something. That is completely reasonable and rational. Okay.
It really is. People that love to fly something. You got to watch people like that. Okay. It's unnatural.
All right. But if you're like, hey, I don't want to fly, but I'm going to, but I'm going to do it because my family is going to go and we are going to get cross-culture and we are going to catch a heart for the nations. When people around you know that, man, what are you doing? You are putting on display something about your willingness to suffer. That is sacrifice. I have seen it so many times in this church where you have someone who cares for an ailing spouse for years before they pass away. You have, man, there are so many of you that have, have modeled this for our church when it comes to caring for parents in the, in the, in their ailing years, their final years, their final years, I mean, years of caring for them.
And, and, and, and what do you do? You're putting something on display to the world. What are you saying? You're saying I care more about the unreached than I do comfort. I care more about honoring marriage and family than I do experiencing freedom.
And that's backwards to the world. And so when the world sees that, when the world sees the afflictions of Paul, who is willing to stand and preach and, and take the consequences and pay the price, it speaks something and it fills up what is lacking that people don't know. You know, I've thought about this in our family. Guys, faith and our adopted daughter is just, you know, one of the biggest joys of our entire life. Okay. And I've learned, man, sometimes you don't get that deep joy without deep sacrifice. There is, I mean, Elizabeth Elliott said it like this.
There is no such thing as love without sacrifice. Right. And, and, and I think about different stories, you know, in the last few years when faith and was probably a year old, I mean, she was like this big. Okay.
Seriously. And, and some of you don't know, faith and has, has down syndrome. She she's got some special needs. A big thing was to get her home from the hospital.
We did a G tube and it was a big decision, you know, and so she had a G tube for the first year of her life to get her eating and all that. Now I think back and I remember, you know, this is stuff like this always happened on a Sunday. Go figure. Okay. I'm already gone.
I'm at, I'm at church, whatever. And our nine year old daughter, who I look back at this now and I'm like, I can't believe at nine, this is the kind of stuff she was. She was kind of not just having to deal with choosing to deal with, you know, with, with a sister like faith and, but anyway, my daughter Anna's getting ready and getting other kids ready and they're young.
And, and so how do you Joe nine years old and it's her job to get faith and ready and get her down and all that kind of stuff. She goes up there and the entire crib is covered with milk because what's happened is in the night that G tube came out and there's milk everywhere. And the problem is with the G tube like that, if you don't get it back in pretty quick, now you're talking about going to the hospital and now they got to do another surgery to put it back in and all that kind of stuff. And so my wife and my nine year old daughter, my nine year old is the one that's holding the baby's hands because it ain't comfortable to get a G tube back in.
And she's kind of having to hold her down and Anna's not a nurse, but it's doing all this stuff and man, they get it back in and all that. And I think about how many stories like that have come out, but the reality is hands down, we would say it's worth it, right? We wouldn't have it any other way. Do you think I have not thought about man?
Is there anxiety that comes from a nine year old dealing with that in the home and all that kind of, do you think I've never had those thoughts? Of course I've had those thoughts, but we, as a family have decided it's worth it. Like it's worth it. And whenever we make decisions like that, you kind of get a head scratch from the world. Why would you choose that? Why would you choose the things that you choose? Well, I think in Paul's case, it's a little bit that way. My question for you is this, right? And we're going to move on.
I want to get into more of this kind of idea of growth and all that, but here's the deal. In what ways do you picture sacrifice of what you love? You know, in what ways do you picture sacrifice for what you love the most? Where is the world seeing that man? Are they, are they, are they looking in and seeing it? What do you love the most in the world and how are you sacrificing for that?
And what do people see? Maybe right now is the time for you to grow. Would you go on a go team in 2020? You know, we have a couple of left. There's only a couple of go teams left that are not filled for the whole year, which is really incredible.
Okay. I think we're going to close, you know, we're probably going to close to see about 300 of you be on a go team in the next year. And I'm from this year, I praise God for it. Maybe next year you go, maybe you try to jump on one of these last ones. Would you give up vacation time?
What about your finances? What about stepping in to adopt or foster a child and choose something that is hard or hold the rope? What Paul says is I'm willing to suffer to fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. We have the chance to do the same thing. Verse 25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you. I want you to see that. Given to me for you.
For what? To make the word of God fully known. The mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints to them. God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery. Okay.
So it's all about the mystery. Paul has been chosen. He's called. That call is not for him.
It's for you. It's for the church. Pastors calling for the church to do what? He said it. To make the word of God fully known. Why does that matter? Because in making the word of God fully known, there is a mystery that gets revealed.
Okay. What is the mystery? The mystery is Christ in you. The hope of glory. Him we proclaim warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ for this I toil struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. Y'all there's a pastor talking to a congregation in a sense, a spiritual authority talking to a congregation and what he's saying is I want you to be mature. I want you to be steadfast.
I want you to be rooted. And the way that we're going to do that is by making the word fully known to you so that you can understand the mystery of the gospel. Christ in you. That you in your sin could be reconciled to God. That you could be joined. That Christ could enter you.
This is the grand mystery. And he said this is why God has called me to this. To give this to you. To make this fully known to you. And in doing this, you can attain the fullest maturity of the believer.
Y'all have said this two or three different ways but I want you to write this down if you're taking notes. God gives pastors their calling for the maturity of the church. It's not for their platform. Man it's not for something in their life. It is not for them.
It is for you. They are given for you. They are a spiritual authority in your life for your good.
It's all about making the word of God known to you so that you may flourish and thrive in maturity. You know one of the ways that the old school church would say this and I like the way they said it I'm old school enough to remember this is a pastor wouldn't necessarily say they were called the ministry they would say they surrendered to the call. They surrendered to it. What do you surrender to? You surrender to something that's gripping you. You surrender to something that's grabbed you and you're kind of fighting it and it's pulling you in.
You surrender to something that is like man I don't even know if this is good for me. You know that's kind of what you are that that's I think that's what they were trying to get at that you are surrendering to the call especially of vocational ministry. Y'all I uh I you know I uh like I said I'm old enough I don't think I don't know that you I don't know that you have to have this experience actually actually I would say I don't think you have to have this experience but I do think I'm old enough to be of a generation that maybe really did want you to have this experience and so that end up producing a lot of these experiences. At the same time I do think I have this experience okay so it's a little complex um but I I I really believe I had like that old school call to ministry. I was 16 years old. I'm at a revival in uh in Montana on a mission trip and I really believe the Lord was calling me to to be singled out for the work of the ministry.
Now I didn't know what that meant. I mean I was doing a lot of different stuff. I was leaving I was trying to lead worship. I was doing FCA stuff. I started preaching around that time and I didn't know what it was all going to culminate in. Man to go to college and just continuing to figure it out. I had some professors in college that really tried to push me into law. You know I I had some other other people that were like man maybe you know and I I had a heart that was like I kind of I mean ministry's awesome but I I still would sort of love to coach football you know and I mean so I had some different things going on but as another you know as the as professors would say like man when it comes to ministry and a vocational calling if you can do anything else do that if you can if you can get away from it then do that okay um because there you're surrendering to this I tell people that we have people that jump on our staff from the marketplace and I always tell them I'm like hey man this this is there look the hard thing about ministry is a vocational ministry you're going to make half as much money as you would anywhere else in the marketplace okay the good news is you get twice the stress all right so that's that's what's awesome about it all right and uh and that's that's not a great that has not been the great selling point that I thought it was going to be but my point my point is this all right there is this idea that Paul is giving out that I think that we need to maybe bring back around a little bit which is God has given the pastor something but it's not for them it's for you and I think there's two pieces of that there's one piece where the pastoral ministry sort of begins to understand this is not about me and we all all of the pastors at Mercy Hill all the staff pastors at Mercy Hill and our lay pastors we say elder we say pastor we mean the exact same thing okay at Mercy Hill we all need to sit in fear of that and understand God what you have called me to is not for me because any of us can fall into thinking this about us but the other piece of this is for the church to understand there is something given by God in terms of a spiritual authority that is for you and what I mean by for you is for your good and it's for your flourishing and it's for your growth and it's for your maturity see what I fear sometimes is that people walk through some things they walk through church hurt or they walk through some things that are very hard or they saw a pastor one time in their life when they were growing up they thought it was all about them and they thought God gave them something for them not for the church and then here's what you do sometimes people say well I'm not going down that road again I'm going to keep the church at arm's length no one is going to be an authority over my life now listen I understand that you got hurt but I will not coddle you in that I get it man stuff happens in life there are people that get hurt there are people that hurt others I understand it I'm not saying it wasn't real what I am saying is that judging every other pastor and ministry by that for the rest of your life is immature as hard as that is that's what you need to hear because you wouldn't want anybody to do that to you in any area of your life and it's not and the reason I'm being so hard on this it's not good for you we might say in piety we might say something like well you know I I got hurt and then you got friends that come around you and they're like I fully understand you're never going to do a church membership again you're never going to do group again you're never going to I get it I get it I get it that's not helping them it's not they need to be called out from that they need to be called back from that we need to acknowledge man church hurt is real and it can be devastating but there's still no excuse for just staying there and we need to step forward and I pray listen our pastoral team is far from perfect I promise you that okay I know that all right but I will tell you this that there look at verse 28 him we proclaim warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ the pastoral team in this church is far from perfect we got a long way to go but I promise you this our goal is your maturity man our goal is for you to grow our goal is to labor over the word half my week every week whoever's standing in this pulpit I promise you that pulpit okay I promise you I promise you whoever's standing in this pulpit man they spent half their week working on whatever that sermon was that week one sermon for you so that you would grow Saturday night special that might be a good skinner song okay it don't make a good sermon and you're not going to find that here we're going to labor we're going to toil look what he says in verse 29 for this I toil struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me y'all there is a glorious rich hopeful mystery that mystery is Christ in you you have a pastoral team that wants to weaken and week out make known to you that mystery that Christ can dwell in your life take you back to the gospel so that you will grow but here's the deal this is where I want to start moving this thing even more toward a conclusion the bottom of all of this okay I can't nor do I want to we can't force anybody to do anything I can't force that upon you nor do I even want to do that what do we do as pastors we try very hard to create environments where the church can grow and to flourish but I'm going to tell you something I've seen this over and over and over if people don't want to grow they also don't want to be pushed very hard and you know you know how I know that because there are hundreds of people around the triad that used to go to Mercy Hill you know what else there are there are hundreds of people in the triad that sign up for a gym membership every January and quit by March why it was a good idea but when somebody started pushing me no I wasn't really here for that there's two sides of this whole thing you understand my question for you is it's got to be a this I can't give you this I certainly can't make you have it it's like at the bottom of your heart in your life do you want to grow do you want to move into maturity Paul is saying it is plain as day man I'll take beatings I'll suffer I'll toil I'll do everything I can do to make known the gospel to you so that you will grow my question is do you want to grow do you want to hear the message and dive into the church growth and and personal growth flywheel as hard as the pastors are trying to give it to you you see do we want to meet with energy the receiving of the word and the same energy that is being proclaimed do we want to grow it's a question that we've got to kind of wrestle with and ask and I want you to wrestle with it here's what I want to call you to by way of application y'all I want to just call you to grow man grow in Christian maturity take inventory of your life and grow in Christian maturity man I'm hoping that people are going to pray to God today God where is that area in my life that I have just decided and neglected and just said man that's just going to be what it is and I'm not going to grow in that area and my prayer is that we will have people that are willing to ask the question God will you put your finger like David says search me and know me show me if there is a wicked way in me put your finger on my heart on that thing that I don't want really want to grow in because I don't want to go through the pain I'd rather coast because it really comes down to that do you want it if you don't want it you're not going to want to be pushed I promise you and I'm going to tell you something if you've already sort of got this demeanor of like man I will never serve give go on mission I'm not bringing discipleship into my home I will never invite anybody to this church I am here to please somebody else I am here to coast I promise you this ain't the best church for you there are other churches that may be okay with that you're going to be really unhappy here I'm just telling you because it's every week it's going to be like man you're pushing man you're talking about this environment man you got another thing it's like yeah in my life we we are people that are hungry for growth in every area of our life and when we're not that we need other people to put that into us and to speak that over us and to remind us of that so my question is man do you want to grow we call this the growth flywheel it's actually one of the things that we say we think this is how churches grow because this is how individual believers grow this is not every single thing that a Christian ever needs to do in their life to grow okay I understand that but what we have said about the church growth flywheel is man if you commit to the gathering that means serve and attend you commit to being in community gather with others you commit to give your time talent treasure there is no way faster to get us to open handedness with the Lord than giving away our money our time giving away our talents and if you decide to go I'm going to live on a mission bigger than myself if you get in that stream you will move in the current you will mature you will grow and so I'm going to ask for the big okay so here's the I'm done all right some of us need to ask the Lord to to save us today you this stuff about growth only happens once the seeds planted okay so some of us it's like man I need to become a Christian today admit my sin believe in what Christ has done for me confess him as the Lord of my life I would love to help you with that your campus pastor would love to help you with that we want to talk to you talk to somebody who brought you but for others would we ask the big question okay God what we saw in this passage is a pastor who is heartbroken toiling str struggling for a people to make the word known to them to reveal the mystery of Christ to them so they would grow into maturity would we then all me me included ask the question God what is that area in my life what is that area in my life and will we ask the question expecting an answer sometimes we ask questions we don't expect answers one of our staff pastors was selling something on facebook marketplace the other day you know you get spammed all the time trying to sell something like people are hey man send me these codes or what you know whatever it is you've seen this before about the fifth one he writes back hey man how much money do you make scamming people all day which you know you think it's like a robot on the other end or whatever 30 seconds later they text them back i make five to six hundred dollars do you want it he's looking at it and he writes back and he writes back something like um you know man that was a joke what in the world you know like what in the world are you sometimes you write stuff sometimes you ask stuff you don't think anything's ever coming back down the line maybe you've done that with the Lord i'm gonna throw it up but i don't really expect can we pray with an expectant heart god search me and know me what is that area in my life i'm coasting i want to grow in this area and expect him to answer us guys this uh the stickers we have here um for everybody may put this somewhere put it on a water bottle you can put it on uh something of you know a journal or something like that the idea is in him him we proclaim man we proclaim christ we go back to christ why for our maturity and the maturity of others y'all the sneaky thing about this passage it is a pastor talking to a congregation but in this church in our theology we believe in something called the priesthood of all believers what that means you're like that's a weird term okay here's what that means very simple i want this for you and i have a position as our other elders do of spiritual authority like we want this for you but man this is for you to want for others as well people in the neighborhood people you work with and who in your life would you want to see grow up into maturity in christ all right let's pray father we come before you lord and we thank you so much for the commissioning that we were able to see and god you are moving in our midst and moving for the mission for the sake of your great name and your glory we are grateful for that father i pray that you would grow us every one of us lord i pray that you would allow us to hunger and thirst god i pray that you would break hearts in this room that people would begin to pray to you to give them even greater desire or some of us aren't hungry right now some of us aren't thirsty right now we need you to give us that god i pray you would do it for the sake of your great name in christ's name amen you
