Desiring a Movement - 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5 - Waiting Well

Welcome to Mercy Hill this weekend.

I'm going to say this right on the front end. I have gotten what everybody else had, okay, for the last last week. I feel totally fine, but I have no voice. So we're going to try to just suffer through this thing together today. All right, we'll see how it goes. Don't pray for me during the sermon to see if I can get through it here or not.

If not, then we're gonna have somebody just come take over right in the middle. So I think we're going to get through it. Hey, if you got a copy of scripture, turn with me to Second Thessalonians Chapter three.

That's where we're going to be spending our time together today. As you guys are finding Second Thessalonians, let me go ahead and mention something that we've been talking about this last couple of weeks, and that is that this weekend, guys, is a big weekend in the life of our church because this is Big Give Weekend, and I want to talk about that for just a minute. All right, what happened in our church, if you're newer, is that in the late part of 2021, after much prayer, much tilling, man, you know, a lot of a lot of a lot of Lord's work and doing a lot of stuff, our church came together rallied around a $30 million vision for the next two years. That was for 2020.

That was for 2023 and for 2024. And man, overwhelmingly, you know, overwhelming support, man, I think people realize, I think you guys realize, man, it's a good moment for us in terms of moving from a rented campus. This is funny. We've been saying this was going to happen. I mean, the airport now owns the regional campus. Okay. So I mean, I don't know what they're going to do with it. You know, I mean, we're renting it now. But I'm just saying, like, we knew that this is a not a long term sustainable kind of idea. We need to get a new home and hub, among other things that we're going to do.

And so we rallied around that. Well, here's the thing, the Big Give weekend is important for two reasons. Okay. The first reason is that $30 million was a two year vision, but 10 of the 30 million comes to fruition, probably in May of 2024. So my point in that is there's a full third of that money that comes due before the two years.

Right. And so it doesn't just matter that the money comes in, it matters how it comes in. And so a weekend like this, we have an opportunity, y'all, to put our, you know, our first fruits on the table, so into what God is doing next year, and to go ahead and give out of an abundance of our heart to the Lord and see him use it. The second reason, of course, is a spiritual reason.

It's not just practical, y'all. The spiritual reason is because we understand in this principle of a first fruit. Guys, we don't give God our leftovers.

That's not what it is. We don't give him at the end of the year, well I had this left, so here. What we do at Mercy Heal, our habit is, I know we're given at the end of the year, but our habit has become over years, that giving is sowing into what God is going to do next year.

Yes, we're looking back and praising him for what he's done, but we're talking about what we want to see him do. Look at Proverbs 3 with me. You guys don't need to turn there because we're going to be in 2 Thessalonians, but Proverbs 3 says this, honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce.

Counterintuitively, what does it say next? Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine. Wait a minute, if I give away my first fruits, how are they going to be filled? How is the barn going to be full?

How is the vats going to be overflowing? That's God's work in our life. We don't give him our leftovers. See, here's the deal. The faith journey, if you want to stack up the steps and the faith journey, it looks like this. We believe God and then we act and then we see him move. But what do we want to do many, many times?

What do we want to do? We want to be like, God, I want to see you move, then I'll believe and then I'll act. And the whole concept of first fruits giving is, no, no, no, we believe you and we act and we know we're going to see you move. I don't know what you want to see God do in your life next year. I know for me, I want to see God do a lot in my life next year and I believe that first fruits giving is kind of me coming and saying, God, this is a sign of my faith in what you're going to do. I don't know what God's going to do and it's not a tit for tat.

You guys know that at Mercy Hill. It's not like I'm giving so that I know that God's going to, I don't know what he's going to do. He's God.

All right, I'm not God. But I know what I'm praying for. I'm praying for God to do incredible things in this church through the New Holman hub and I'm praying for him to do things that we can't even imagine. I'm praying for him to help my family make a huge impact on our sports teams and in our schools next year. Man, I'm praying that God is going to give us the ability to give more money away than we've ever been able to do. I'm praying that he's going to grow our resources. I've got a million things I want to see God do so the first fruits get sown, not the leftovers. God, I believe you can do these things and so I want to sow into what you're doing now and so I pray that you guys will join with us this week.

That's coming later in the service. But I'm not going to have time to talk about it then so I just wanted to kind of set that up for us now, all right? All right, let's dive in. Second Thessalonians.

This is actually going a little worse than I thought it was going to go with a voice. We're going to get through it, all right? We've done a lot of work in First and Second Thessalonians.

I feel like I'm 13 here. Okay, we've done a lot of work in First and Second Thessalonians and what we've seen in this series is very simple, right? Waiting well is not wasting time. Waiting well is an active flurry of a life. Man, it's using what God has given us in time, talent, and treasure to move the needle for his kingdom.

Waiting well is not buying in to the American dream, trivialities, a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice retirement, a nice family, no pain, no hell, and that's all we want. And what the Bible is trying to get us to see today I think is, no, wait a minute. As a believer, there is a movement that is out there for us to be a part of. And that movement is something that we desire. We desire a gospel movement.

Here's the big idea this weekend. Christians desire a gospel movement. We are not content with the American dream. Instead, we want to be used. We don't want to waste our lives. Man, we want to be used for the movement. We want to be a part of the greatest movement that has ever been in the history of the world.

And it's God breaking through and moving and showing the gospel among all nations and people getting saved and there being a multitude in heaven one day of every tribe, tongue, and nation. That's what it's about for us. And we get a chance to jump in. Man, there's movements like every single day, new movements.

You guys know this. You've seen the ice plunge. I mean this becomes a movement. Pickleball is a movement now. I don't know if you guys have done any pickleballing. I'm amazed at how intense the pickleball matches at the Y get. Gladys and Betty are nose to nose.

And they're about to throw down over who is hitting the ball in or out of the kitchen. I don't know what any of that means. But that's a movement now. You think about what is it about a human that wants us to advocate for things that we love? Why do things take off? Why does a movie take off?

Why does technology take off? Why does everybody not only have to have a certain type of phone, but you've got to make sure that everybody knows what kind of phone you have? Or whatever.

You cross fit. You see what I'm saying? It's not just the thing we do. There's something in us that is built to advocate for the things that work for us and the things that we love. Christian, you are built to advocate for the greatest movement in the face of the earth. And that is that we would see the gospel go forth. That it wouldn't stop with you.

The gospel came to you on its way to somebody else. And that's what we want to talk about here. So let's dive in. We're going to be in 2 Thessalonians 3. We're only going to deal with five verses today.

They're pretty heavy. So I'm just going to walk right through them. We're just going to try to break them down, diagram a little bit, and just kind of make sure we understand what the Bible is saying here.

And then we'll come out on the very back end. I'll give you two applications about ways that we can pray and participate in the mission of God. Chapter 3, starting in verse 1. Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you, and that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men. For not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful.

He will establish you and guard you against the evil one, and we have confidence in the Lord about you that you are doing and will do the things that we command. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. So this is a beautiful, deep, rich kind of text. And what we're going to do for our time together this weekend is just simply walk through this. The passage starts. I want you to keep your Bible open, kind of keep it where you can see we're going to be referring back to a lot of this stuff.

What does it say? It says that we are praying. He says that he requests prayer. That's what it says in verses 1 and 2. Pray for us, Paul says.

Pray for us. Because we want to see something happening that is only going to happen if the church mobilizes in prayer. One of the things that fascinates me about this passage is because it humanizes Paul. And if you've been around a church for long, if you've read much scripture, I don't know about you, but for me, I tend to view Paul as a Marvel superhero character. Like how can there be a dude that's heart is set so on fire for the gospel that he is willing to live this type of life, and it's incredibly inspiring. And I think there's a model there that we need to see, but y'all, he was a human, and he was humble, and he was humble enough in his humanity and frailty to say we need you to pray.

Why? Because we're coming up against things, and there are things happening that we need you to pray for God to dislodge. There are mountains in front of us that need to be cast into the sea. There are things that need to happen if the gospel is going to move forward. And so he was requesting prayer. And here's what he's really requesting prayer for.

Look what it said. That the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored. Here's another way of saying that. Paul requests prayer for gospel movement. That's what he's asking them to do. Man, listen, don't just pray for my health, although I know people are doing that. Don't just pray for our kids to prosper, although I know that's a good thing to do.

But he is asking them directly, I want you to pray that the gospel will speed ahead as it came to you. Let it go to others through our ministry. Pray for us. Guys, I've tried to make it a habit for years now that whenever I'm praying for our sent ones and our missionaries or even missionaries abroad, we have an incredible opportunity next year.

We're going to be taking a team over to Thailand to kind of rendezvous with a whole group of missionaries from one of the hardest places to share the gospel in all the world. And in that, I promise you, I'm going to pray for them. Listen, it's not just praying for their safety, their prosperity, and their protection, it's praying for their effectiveness. It's praying that they would go and God would give them the ability to do what they went there to do. That they would persevere, that they would have the strength to do it, but ultimately that God's hand would move upon their feeble efforts. As he is moving upon our feeble efforts here. I mean, when you really look at it, it's like, man, we think we have all this stuff, it's like, man, we're doing all this stuff, but really, man, to think about people's hearts going from death to life, stone cold to alive.

There ain't nothing we can do, really, you know? It's all pretty feeble until God blows upon it, and we need him to do that, and so we pray for their effectiveness, and that's what Paul's asking for here. Pray that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored as happened among you.

Now, one of the things that Paul prays for here, and I want to make sure the type of church that you're in, okay, if you're new or you've got to understand this about us, we take this very seriously. We are on the speed of things side of the arguments here, okay? There are some movements even that would build themselves on trying to be slow, that's not us, right? God is going to do whatever he's going to do, but what we're going to do is try to move absolutely as fast as we can because of passages like this where you see Paul asking for prayer that the gospel would speed ahead. My point is this, there is an urgency to the gospel message getting out.

There's an urgency in our heart from our neighborhoods to the nations, from our workplaces to the world that the gospel would get out and that it would move. What does it mean that it would speed ahead? That it would be able to go unhindered? That's what it means.

That it would be able to fly from place to place to place, and that's what we are. Man, we want to see God do it. Now listen, like I said earlier, God's going to do whatever he's going to do. I mean, I can't control that. I control what I get to pray for though, and I can control what I'm asking him to do. And what I'm asking him to do in our church, for example, is to see 5,000 people get baptized and 500 sent to the nations by 2032. Now, I have actually been pressed on that before.

People say, I've had people say to me that that's not even a spirit. How can you make that kind of the goal? It's like, well, we're praying that the gospel would speed ahead. I mean, that's it, really. We want to see the gospel speed ahead and move from place to place.

Why? Because there is an urgency. People are dying and going to hell without ever having heard the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And for them to die without knowing is every bit of tragedy it is for you or for me or for our kids. And so we go. And so we try to be fast. And we try to speed ahead. And we try to see the gospel go. And that's what he's praying that we would do. There is an urgency there. You know, you guys have heard this before. I think a good quote, you know, good news is only good news if it gets there in time.

We pray that the gospel would go forward fast. You know, the great illustration of this that I've used before is Andrew Jackson fighting in the Battle of New Orleans. Andrew Jackson's fight in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

The battle is absolutely raging and people are dying and people are being killed because the newly formed United States of America in the last couple of decades are not going to give up the Louisiana Purchase. It's too good a deal. Four cents per acre. Thank you, Napoleon.

Okay. Four cents per acre. We've got to protect it, right? And so the battle is raging for the Battle of New Orleans. And the battle is going on on January 18th, 1850. January 8th, 1815. Only problem is the Treaty of Ghent had been signed in December of 1814. The battle for New Orleans is raging even though the war was already over. Riders are sent out, dispatched, go all over the former colonies.

Why? We've got to tell everybody that peace has been made. But if you don't know, and if it doesn't get there in time, then the battle is still raging. And I would call upon us to look at this passage and to say, man, we have an urgency to the gospel message getting out.

You know, and I don't know what that means for you. We want to be the type of church that calls out the call. Y'all, is God calling you to the nations? Is he calling you to think about taking the gospel where it's not being named? There are places where the sun rises and sets and nobody there knows who to give the credit to. There are places where people can walk for days or weeks or even months and never see a Bible and never meet a Christian. Maybe God is calling you out.

Does that break your heart? Are you willing to go? Man, we want to help you with that. And we've got all types of pathways that are set up to help you any place on that journey that you are.

We would love to talk to you about that. The gospel is speeding ahead. But what else did it say? Look at verse three. Finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead, but also says, and be honored as happened among you, that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not all have faith.

So here's what he's saying. Y'all, there is a prayer here for the gospel to go forth fast, which we want to pray for. But the second part of this is that the gospel would be honored. Now, what does that mean, honored? Well, it sort of means accepted, glorified even. Another passage that has the same word is in Acts 13, where there's a group of Gentiles that get saved. They use the same word.

Here's what it says. They heard and received the gospel, and they praised and glorified God. It's the same idea that the gospel doesn't just get out, but it actually is honored and received and acknowledged. You guys remember what acknowledge means? Acknowledge is not knowing something. Acknowledge is showing that you know something, that you know and you show that the gospel message is getting in.

One pastor said it like this. Y'all, the gospel can get out without getting in. And so we've got to pray that both happen, that the gospel would go forth through the word of our testimony, through our scent lines, and I don't mean just our missionaries, but I mean people right here. I mean, the mission is all around us.

Our high schoolers at school, your office, man, the ball team, that you need to make a pretty sick little Christmas gift bag and ask every one of them kids to come to Tanger. You know? Like, the mission is all around us. We want to pray that the gospel would go forth and that it would be honored, it would be acknowledged. But it's not all that he says.

Look at what he says. There is evil and faithless men. And these are people that hinder the gospel message. That's what he said here in verse 4. From wicked and evil men, for not all have faith. Now we could recount a bunch of Paul's struggles in his life. I mentioned one from 2 Timothy chapter 4.

What does it say? You know, Alexander the coppersmith. He harmed Paul greatly. What did he do?

We don't know. But he was one of a lot of people that are in this category for Paul that were wicked. And they were evil. And they wanted to stop the gospel from going forth. They didn't want people to change.

They wanted to keep profiteering off of pain. They didn't want to change their life. They didn't want to change their ways. They didn't want to move in accordance with the word.

And what you end up having is these people trying to lay roadblocks. And what Paul at the very essence of this passage is saying. It's a prayer passage.

What is he saying? We've got to pray that these obstructions will be dislodged. It is a spiritual battle that hinders the gospel from going forth. And so we need to pray that we will see the movement go. And it will go out with wings. And it will be fast. And it will be unhindered. And there won't be evil, faithless people that are able to stop it.

Even though they try. You can say it like this. Desire in gospel movement leads to praying for gospel movement.

One of the challenges. You know when you can't talk you just ask questions and let it sit. Okay, here's the question I've got. The question I have for us is.

Do we have dedicated time in our week to pray for the gospel to go forth among the nations? I mean every one of us. Every family.

Every individual. There's been times in my life where that message, that question would have cut me because the answer was no. It happens sometimes at church.

It happens when people remind me. Thank God I'm in a place right now where we have a rhythm for that. I'm going to talk to you about what that is. For our family. But I want to ask you.

Are you in that place right now? And it's not a beat you up kind of thing. What it is is tomorrow's a new day. Okay, tomorrow's a new day.

And so let us begin to build the habit again of praying for our sent ones. You guys have these cards in every one of your seats. Man, everybody's got a different card. It's like a big Tetris math puzzle getting everybody different ones. You know, make sure nobody's going to have the same thing. Everybody's at all of our campuses.

They're going to be laid out this week. That's just one of dozens of people that you could be praying for. I want you to take that with you. And we're going to talk maybe a little bit later about what we can do. But I think about prayer and our desire for gospel movement. It shows up in our prayer life. Y'all, prayer is fundamental, not supplemental to gospel movement. It is fundamental, not supplemental.

Why? Because we don't wrestle against flesh and blood. There is a spiritual realm that seeks to impede our progress, that seeks to throw roadblocks of faithless and evil and wicked people that try to hurt and stop the movement. And the Bible is calling upon us. Paul is calling upon the church to pray for him in this.

Speed, honor evil people taken away, dislodged so that the gospel can go forward. Do we believe that? Do we believe in the power of prayer that much? Guys, I was in a very, very remote part of Indonesia a few years ago. And we had this, you know, I had taken a team down there, a very small team. It was kind of a, you know, man, get in, get out. And we're going with a team of translators that are believers.

And, man, everybody you talk to, I mean, it's 100% Muslim, 100%. You know, and so we're going and we're sharing. And, man, we're just trying to get in the conversation to see if God may give us some fruit, you know. Yeah, about the second day we were there, the interpreters who were really, they were sharp, man.

They were so sharp. They came to us and they were like, hey, today we really just think, man, we're going to do a lot better if you guys just kind of let us share, okay. And, well, what do you want us to do? Well, why don't you guys just pray for us?

Like, y'all hang out with us, y'all pray for us and we'll just go share. And we think that's going to be better. And I remember having this thought to my shame. I remember having this thought. I thought, man, here I am. I have come all the way across the world and all I'm going to do is pray. All I'm going to do is pray. Where did I think the power was, right? Where did I think the movement was going to come from?

And it was very convicting for me. And I want to call our church to say, wait a minute. Do you have a dedicated time to pray for gospel movement among the nations? I want to talk about our neighborhoods.

I want to talk about our kids' schools, okay. I understand all that. And it all goes together. But really, when you're talking about Paul, you're talking about a guy who said, I'm not trying to lay a foundation where somebody else has already been. I want to preach where it's not been named. And we have people from this church that are doing that very same thing. I mean, they're in the hardest places on the planet. And are we lifting them up and praying not just for their protection and their prosperity, but for their effectiveness and seeing people come to Christ.

And I pray that you're doing that. You know, we try to teach our kids this. Some of you guys have heard this story before. Here's a picture of our kids' space, okay. And you'll see, I love this.

This is one of those things. We don't have a ton of kind of traditional type stuff at Mercy Hill, but this is one of them. In every one of our kids' spaces, there is a banner that is kind of, it's kind of an adaptation from a couple of different Psalms. But the banner says, we will sing in all the earth.

Alright, and it's kind of from Psalm 96 or whatever. And you guys can take that down. And I remember when I was, when we were first moving into this space, okay, the kids' space down there at Regional, I know I'm talking to all the campuses, but at Regional, the kids' space down there was our main space. That's all we had. There was no campuses.

There was no nothing. It was just a small kind of, then we moved over here to the other, you know, the spot where the adults gather over here. And we were kind of dedicating that kids' space, and we were doing all that. And, you know, we had had this big vision for that banner. You know, that was going to be our thing.

We had a song we were singing that our guys had written, and it was, man, we're going to sing in all the earth. Why is that such a big deal? Because we wanted to teach our kids that what we do in here and praising Jesus doesn't happen everywhere. Praise and glorifying God in worship is so connected to sending. I mean, that's what happens. I mean, people really go when they start to realize that God is worth being glorified in every language, right?

And that there are places where that doesn't happen. And so we had this banner, and, man, we had pumped it up, and all the parents were going to come and, you know, and see, and all that stuff, and we were doing, like, an open house kind of thing, and somebody comes running up to me the morning that it happens. Remember, we will sing in all the earth.

And they come running up to me, and they say, Andrew, Andrew, the G has fallen off of the word sing. We will sing in all the earth. And I'll always remember that because I thought, my first thought was, well, that is theologically accurate as well.

So, you know, maybe not the greatest kid's banner. Well, what are we trying to do with that? We're trying to teach our kids from the very earliest time, okay. Well, then parents, like, hey, what are we doing in the home to reinforce prayer for the nations? Prayer for our sent ones that have gone out.

We want to be a church that prays in homes, in individuals, in our groups, that the gospel would speed ahead, be honored, and be unhindered by evil people. All right, verse 3. But the Lord is faithful, and he will establish you and guard you against the evil one. And we have confidence in the Lord about you that you are doing and will do the things that we command. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

You know, this is so rich, all right. We're going to try to walk through it a little bit slow here. So what does he say? There's evil and faithless men who seek to hinder the gospel, but here's what he says. But God establishes and guards. So the people that want to steal from the movement, want to steal maybe even our very salvation, they are being met with a, they're faithless, but they're being met by a faithful God.

You see the word play. They're being met by a God who is faithful that he would guard and establish. I think of rootedness, that he wouldn't let us be swept away. There is a confidence in the Lord that he will establish us even in the face of evil, wicked, faithless, inhibiting types of people. Mountains that are out there in front of us that need to be dislodged even when troubles and trials are coming against the church.

What the Bible is saying is, wait a minute, there's a God who establishes and roots you. When we first moved out to our property, I was trying to get a pasture established on a rocky, stony, clay hill. I don't know if you guys ever tried to do something like that.

It's very frustrating, right? Every time I'd drill up and till, every time I'd put seed out, the rain would come and wash it away. It was terrible. I had the greenest ditches in all of the county, but the actual couple of acres on this big hill that we had that was going to be the pasture, me and my son would be out there, Anna would laugh at us. We'd be out there on our hands and knees, crawling around looking to see if any grass was sprouting up. Now, years later, there was nothing there. It kept getting washed away. It was easily taken away. It was easily stolen. Well, now it's become rooted. Now the rain comes and it doesn't wash out, right? Because there is an establishment there.

It's been rooted there. And what the Bible is saying is that God will do the establishing and the guarding, even though the evil one, now who's the evil one? I mean, think about what Jesus said in Matthew 6 in his prayer. I mean, the evil one here is Satan himself. Satan has come to kill, to steal, and destroy. But, verse Peter 5-8 tells us, what is he? He's a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. That is who the adversary is, that God is guarding us and establishing us and protecting us against. I'm not saying we cannot be affected, but we cannot be stolen if you are a believer. You are being guarded.

You are being rooted, established, protected. Even the lion that is on the prowl looking for who he may pick off. I'm going to say something really shocking now, okay? I have had a change of heart, and I love cats. Okay, I know, that's weird, all right? I know.

I mean, I don't love them enough to, like, touch them, okay? And the one we have, like, I don't love it enough to, like, name it. But he's awesome. This cat is awesome, okay? It's a barn cat, all right?

So it lives at the barn. And this cat is just, like, I mean, kills mice, fights snakes, kills moles. I mean, just, like, it's like five pounds, just a ball of fury.

It's awesome. And I think about that, you know, I think about the, I think about that illustration of 1 Peter 5, 8 about Satan. The cat weighs five pounds. The lion weighs 500 pounds. As bad as that little cat is, you hit him with a, you know, blow-up gun.

He's 500 pounds. All of a sudden, what kind of bad is that? I watched a documentary one time of these lions in this national park had figured out how to climb trees and jump on the backs of elephants to take them down. A lion is a bad animal. And that's the picture that God gives us about Satan, and yet, although there are faithless men, although Satan is at work, there is a faithful God who establishes and protects. And this is where our faith is, and I want you to see what he says here in verse 4. Look what he says in verse 4. Because there is a faithful God who establishes and protects.

Look what he says. And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command. Of course I have confidence in that.

Why? Because there's a God who guards. There's a God who protects.

There's a God who establishes. Of course he has confidence, right? I think about this passage about the confidence that he is talking to them about, you know? I mean, we know this from leadership. We know this from parenting. Y'all, telling someone you have confidence in them puts confidence in them. You know, I don't know if you guys, I mean, you've done much business work, much leadership stuff.

I mean, in parenting, this is so important, you know, and I think about how, you know, the things that we say out loud to people, the things that we put in them, I'm confident in you. That puts confidence in you. You know, Dean Smith, Coach UNC, for years or whatever, and they say Dean Smith would never sub for a mistake. If a guy made a mistake, he would not sub them intentionally. Why? Because confidence is a very finicky thing.

It's a superpower if you've got it, but it's easily lost, and so he wouldn't. Bill Campbell, there's a book called Trillion Dollar Coach. He coached more of the Silicon Valley CEOs, I mean, Steve Jobs, blah, blah, blah, the whole deal.

They call him the trillion dollar coach because when you add up all the people that he coached, I mean, when you think about the companies they started and all that, you know what they said about Bill that caught me in that book? They said you never left a meeting with Bill without feeling more confident, and that was convicting to me. I thought, man, do my kids feel that?

Do the people that work with me feel that? You know? There is a confidence that is put in you when someone tells you they are confident in you, but look, that's actually not exactly what he said. Look what he said, and we have confidence in the Lord about you. If the business world can pick up this little nugget, telling someone you're confident in them puts confidence in them, what does it do when you talk to somebody about the confidence you have in the Lord about them? Man, that God will not let you fall. Man, that God will not let you be swept away by Satan.

You are established. You are guarded. That God will be with you in the midst of that trial. We are going to suffer.

We are going to die. We're going to go through things that are hard, but he will never leave us or forsake us. There is one who sticks closer than a brother. When you begin to speak the things of the Lord, the confidence in the Lord that we have about our brothers and sisters, what does it do in their life? Man, it helps them to persevere. I mean, look what he says.

Let it all hang together and just kind of put it together. But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one, and we have confidence in the Lord about you that you are doing and will do the things that we command. Listen. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. I want you to see the cycle that is here. Look at what he is saying. God is guarding you, so I am confident in him about you.

And when will that stop? Verse five. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. How do we continue in this? Man, God is establishing you. I am confident in the Lord about you.

And look. You need to be directed back to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. You keep going back to God's love for you, back to the steadfastness of Christ, and you know what it does? It perpetuates this establishment and this, you know, you are going to continue to do the things that I have commanded. He is talking, I think, about basic Christian growth.

This is how we are going to grow. God is establishing. We are doing the things that he has commanded. We are pointed back to the love of God.

God is establishing us. We are doing the things that he has commanded us to do. We are pointed back to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. I want you to think about if you are a Bible person, you have been around the Bible for a while, and I know a lot of people are brand new in every one of our services, but think about the Trinitarian nature of what is being talked about here. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. May the Lord direct your heart.

I want to ask you a question. How does God move in our hearts? Who in the Trinity does that? The Spirit of God is moving us to the love of God seen in the steadfastness of Christ. You think about what the Spirit does. The Spirit illuminates God's love for you.

The Spirit is like a spotlight. Have you ever been to an art museum or something like that? Nobody ever comes out of an art museum and starts talking about how epic the lighting was.

That's never happened. What do people do? They go into the art museum. They never notice the lighting, but they see the beauty of the picture. They see the beauty of the art. That's what the Spirit is doing. The Spirit of God is directing our hearts to see the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. This is where the Gospel comes into play. The beauty of the Gospel is lit up by the Spirit. Man, the love of God is seen where?

In the face of Christ. Man, we don't love God. He loved us, and then we love God. We see our love. We see his love for us, and we respond to it. Humans aren't built to muster love on their own.

They respond to love. When we see what God has done, our hearts are directed to see what he has done, that even in our sin, Jesus Christ stood in our place, that he was directed, that he went to the cross, and he was compelled to do that because of his love for us. It cancels our sin debt before the Father.

Then he is raised to new life. We have the opportunity to be raised to new life with him and live with him forever. The beauty of the steadfastness of Christ, let me ask you something. How long is the blood of Christ going to count for you? It's going to count forever and ever and ever.

That is a steadfast love, and we are united to him. This helps us to grow, and it points us back to the mission. The rest of my time, let me do this. Two quick applications, and we're done. Thank the Lord. We're going to be done quick.

Here we go. Number one, pray for the mission. As God is establishing you, as you are obeying the commands, as you are being directed to the love of God, may let us be ones who are praying for the mission of God. I saw this quote this week. The devil fears nothing from prayerless work, prayerless studies, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our wisdom. He mocks at our toil. He trembles when we pray. It's not Bible, but there's a lot of truth to that.

It's a good quote. We had some missionaries here for a short time. They came and took a job within our network here, and they were only here for a little while.

They came off a very tough place, but they had been there for years and years and years, and I was sitting at a lunch meeting with Brad one time and some other guys that were in a coaching group that I was in. They were small group leaders, community group leaders, and man, he just started talking about some of the work that they had seen where they were in South Asia, and I couldn't believe when he talked to them. He started talking about how they never had a people group that they tried to engage that was mobilizing, that they had mobilized a church in the States to pray for.

They never saw one of those not have some type of movement in it, and I was just blown away. He was like, man, I'm not talking about a mobilized church prayer, very focused, and he said, man, it was 100%. When we had that from the States, we saw movement in the field, and I just thought, man, are we praying? The network that we work with primarily has seen a lot this year, 178,000 new believers in 122 countries and 21,000 new churches that have been planted worldwide. This is our primary sinning agency.

This is where most of our people that go to the field come from. God is moving. The harvest is out there. Our labor is being called forth. Are we setting aside a day or a time in our families to pray that the Gospel would speed ahead, be honored, and not be hindered by evil and wicked and faithless people?

I pray that it is. Man, I want you to take that card that's in your seat. Man, if you're not doing it, start there, okay? Just start with this, and here's what I want you to do. I'm going to give you a thing just for the families.

You've got a devo. Maybe your kids are already out of the house, but maybe you do a devo together as a family, 15 minutes, read the Bible, pray. Okay, ready? Monday is for missionaries. That's it.

It's very simple, all right? Monday is for missionaries. Man, we pray for their protection. We pray for their effectiveness. We pray for their perseverance. We pray for their heart. We pray for their spiritual eyes to be open, that they might know the things that are unknowable about the love of God, that they would be growing.

This is our prayer, and we're going to pray Mondays. All right, so we've done a lot of different things like this over the years. We've had different times where it's something would go off on your phone. We've had a lot of different things. We'll continue to morph, but I just want to call us. Hey, Mondays is for missionaries, okay? One of the things we're going to do this week, me and Anna posted a 10-minute video or whatever, and it was just kind of a little bit of a family rhythm of discipleship and devo for reading the Bible and praying. Maybe we can try to post that again this week or something like that.

We can put it up maybe Monday or something, but let's do that. Mondays is for missionaries. All right, second thing, participate in the mission. Now, I'm going to kind of contradict myself a little bit here. Is prayer participation?

Yes, okay. I know that. I hope you know that from this sermon. Yes, prayer is fundamental, not supplemental. Prayer is participating. But of course what I mean by now is like, wait a minute, but how has he gifted you? How has he spiritually wired you to participate? What can you use for his kingdom? How can you share?

How can you invite? How can you be one who is moving the needle in your neighborhood, on your campus? I think about Christmas at Tanger, guys, just because it's right upon us, but it's right there. It's right around the corner. Are we going to do bags for the kids' teams? Are we going to walk around the neighborhood with goodies? Are we going to plaster our social media? Are we going to shoulder-tap people?

What I mean by that is like not just the air war, but talking about individuals. Hey, I want you to come with me. Why? Because God is doing some stuff in my life. I think he might want to do stuff in your life.

And I love you, and I want you to come with me. That's what I'm talking about. Would we do that? Would we share the Gospel with people one-on-one? I know people don't feel equipped for that, but you really are if you hear these sermons every single week.

Honestly, you really are, because you hear the Gospel like every single week. Jesus stood in our place. We deserve death. He took death for us on the cross in his resurrection. We have the newness of life.

One day he's going to come back for us riding a white horse. Do you want to go? But that's the Gospel, okay?

No, but in all seriousness, maybe it's time for you to share with somebody, man, that God's been putting on your heart. I don't know where you're at with that. But listen, this is the thing. Man, we share, we invest in life, we get in group with people, and here's what happens. Man, one turns into two. Two turns into three.

Three turns into four. Don't you understand? If you are a Christian, there is an unbroken line of people that share the Gospel with people who share the Gospel with people who share the Gospel with you. There's an unbroken chain that goes all the way back to Jesus Christ walking on this earth, some kind of way you heard from somebody who heard from somebody who heard. I want to give you guys a quick illustration of this.

You guys watch this video, and then we'll be done. What's up, Mercy Hill Pastor Bobby here. I just really think about the power of discipleship and the power it can have in somebody's life. I remember very early on we came here to plant Mercy Hill. There was three community groups, and I led one, and Pastor Andrew led one, and Pastor Jeremy led one, and I remember Landon Jordan was in one of those groups, and, you know, just so cool thinking back. Our group met in my apartment, and my wife and I, I mean, we weren't experts by any means. We just tried to do the best we can to invest in the people in that group, and Landon was one of the people in that group that moved here with us from Raleigh-Durham, and I was able to invest in him over the years and to try to disciple him the best that I could, and then a number of years later, my wife and I actually got to do marriage counseling for him and his wife and just to, his wife, Jenna, just to think about everything that they've been able to do to go overseas and to come back here and to now be on staff at Mercy Hill.

It's just crazy what God can do just through the obedience and the intentionality that we're willing to have into each other. I met Patrick on move-in day at UNCG. My roommates and I strategically rented a home right off UNCG's campus for the sake of engaging students with the gospel, and I remember taking off work this day, and we were going to help UNCG students move in, specifically freshmen, and I remember vividly Patrick coming up.

He looked like he was 12 years old. He had all his stuff, and we helped him move his stuff in, and we got his number after, and he came to a cookout later that weekend that we had at our home, and from there, he jumped into a community group. We watched a lot of football together. We ate a lot of chicken wings, the East Coast wings, just did a lot of life together, and we talked about Jesus a lot, and we dove into the scriptures together, but what really propelled Patrick was doing City Project. Patrick did City Project that summer. He got saved, was baptized that summer, and he's just lived a life on missions since. So during the second year of my two-year college residency, I had the opportunity to start investing in Josh Molloy, and the first thing was really just inviting him to jump into leadership.

I was the first person to really challenge him to jump into leadership with M.H. College, and then over the course of that year, I had the opportunity to just invest in him as he began just developing as a leader within the college ministry, and then towards the end of my time as I was finishing up as the first male resident at UNCG, I also challenged him to jump in and actually consider taking on the residency. He had the ability to coach him as he was going through support raising, and so really my involvement with Josh and during this time was really just challenging him to jump in as a leader and then being able to raise him up as a college resident and take over after my time was done. So when I was a freshman in college, Patrick Anderson got me meaningfully connected into the college ministry, and he just really poured into my life and invested in me in a way that I'm super grateful for, and he taught me how to evangelize. He discipled me, and I grew a lot spiritually in those first couple years of college, and I was really equipped and ready to share the gospel with people and to disciple other college students that were spiritually less mature than me and just be a good friend to people. So when I met Makeda in the latter half of my college career, I was just prepared to share the gospel with him, and I was prepared to be friends with him and just open my life to him and invest into him through a lot of prayer and just through a lot of discipleship efforts and things, and we read the Bible together, and by the grace of God, God miraculously worked in his life and saved him, and now it's just such a blessing to see how Makeda is just on fire for the gospel and on fire for evangelism, and he is leading his own family group, and it's just been an amazing experience to walk with Makeda, and it's all been a chain of events from Patrick and other people that have been super impactful in my life.

Hey, it's Makeda. I'm at UNCG, which is where I met Josh, and I've been so thankful for how he and the other church leaders have poured into me this past year and a half, and I've been so thankful for the opportunity to be able to pour into other students in a similar way. Leading a group has been such a joy this last semester, and I'm even in the early process of going to the nations. I just can't wait to see what God does in my life, and thank you all. Good job, there. Listen, every one of us that's a believer is in a discipleship chain.

Does that chain stop with you, or will it continue? Now think about Makeda. Makeda don't even probably know Bobby. I bet he don't even know Bobby, you know, and that was only five generations. Man, you know, who poured into Bobby?

Who poured into the person who poured into him? We're all part of a chain, but the idea is that it wouldn't stop with us. Let's pray for the mission, and let's participate in the mission, all right? You guys pray with me. Father, we come before you right now, and Lord, we just ask, God, that you will give us what we need, Lord, in terms of a confidence to move into those spaces, God, that you have called us into, Lord, for the sake of your mission, and Lord, I pray that we would go and make disciples through sharing the gospel, through inviting to the church, God, through investing life, being in group with. Lord, I just pray that we would be a church, God, that follows the model that we've seen in 2 Thessalonians, and we pray and we participate. In Christ's name, amen.