All right, if you would, open
with me to Philippians chapter one. I've titled the message
this morning, My Prayer for You and Me. And it's obvious that
Paul loved this congregation at Philippi very much. He says
in verse three, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.
Every time I think of you, I thank God for you. He says in verse
eight, for God is my record, how greatly I long after you
all. in the bowels of Jesus Christ. He loved them so much. He longed
to see them. He enjoyed being with them. And then beginning
in verse 9, Paul tells these brethren what it is that he prayed
for them. He said, I thank God for you.
Every time you come to my mind, I pray for you. And he tells
them, this is what I prayed for you. And I'm going to borrow
Paul's prayer for this congregation that I love so much and for me
too, because we all need these things. And Paul makes six specific
requests, and I want you just to notice from the start, these
things that Paul asks, for these that he loves so much, every
one of them is a spiritual blessing. Not one of them is a physical
blessing. And number one, this is my prayer for you and me.
I pray that our love may abound. In verse nine, Paul says, and
this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more. Now the love that Paul is talking
about primarily here is our love for Christ our Savior, that it
will grow and abound. Now, every believer loves Christ. Every believer loves. It's a
nature that God has given us in the new birth. John said,
1 John 4 verse 7, everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth
God. He that loveth not knoweth not
God, for God is love. So everyone who's been born again,
everyone that God has saved loves. But our love needs to grow. A
believer does love, but we need to be taught to love, and we
need that love to grow. If you look over Revelations
chapter 2, I'll show you why. There's a danger in our love
growing smaller and colder. That's what happened to the great
church at Ephesus. Their love did not grow and abound,
but it grew colder. In Revelations 2, verse 2. I know thy works, and thy labor,
and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are
evil. And thou hast tried them which say they are apostles,
and are not, and hast found them liars, and hast borne, and hast
patience, and for my name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted.
You haven't quit. Nevertheless, I have somewhat
against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Now, we
can have the right doctrine. We can hate false doctrine. We
can identify and hate false teachers. We can have works that help others. We can patiently endure trials. We can have all of that and still
not have a true heart of worship, still not have a true heart of
religion because we're doing it without love, without love,
without love for Christ. You know, this is the question
that the Lord asked Peter. When everything was said and
done, the Lord's getting ready to go back to glory. He didn't
say, Peter, are you sorry for what you did? You promise you
won't do that no more. Somebody asked him, is it? He said, Peter,
do you love me? I'll take care of everything
now. Do you love me? It's not, Peter, are you willing to travel
and preach? It's not, Peter, are you willing to be a martyr
for the gospel's sake and my sake? Peter, he didn't ask him,
are you willing to support the gospel? Frank, do you love me? Chris, do you love me? That's the question, isn't it?
I tell you why this matter of loving Christ is so important.
The more we love Christ, the less likely we are to leave him
and go looking for another message, another savior, and another false
gospel that would tickle our fancy. A believer loves Christ,
and that's what keeps us needing him and needing to be with him
and needing to hear his gospel. It's love. It's not just loving
the things about Christ. It's loving Christ. And the more
we love Christ, not not picking out and saying, oh, I love this
doctrine, the doctrine of whatever, you know, people and they get
hung up on those things. It's not those things about Christ
is loving Christ. And the more we love him, the
more pure and the more sincere our worship will be. It really
will. The more we love Christ, the
more devoted we'll be to him. The more devoted that we'll be
to his gospel, the more devoted we'll be to his people. You know,
our goal as a church body, we preach the gospel. It's not to
prove other people wrong. I mean, we point out error when
that's appropriate, but our goal is not to prove people wrong.
Our goal is not to prove our point and change people's thinking.
You start thinking the way I think. Our goal as a church body is
for people to hear of Christ and believe Him. Come to Him
and love Him. That's the issue to us, that
people know Christ, that they hear of Him, that they come to
Him, that His name be glorified. Christ will be the issue to us
if we love Christ. And boy, I'm telling you, it's
astounding. how well a group of people gets
along swimmingly when the issue's Christ. God's people just get
along that way. Now you're gonna start having
problems, you have other issues. But if Christ is the issue, you
love him, it just takes care of everything. And here's another
reason that growing in love, abounding in it is so important.
Love is the mark of discipleship. Our Lord said, by this shall
all men know you're my disciples. If you have love, love one to
another. Now every believer loves, we
love God's people, but our love needs to grow, doesn't it? Our
love needs to grow and we need to be more lovable. We need to
be, each of us needs to be more lovable. But here's the thing
about love. Don't let your love just be in
words. Tell somebody you love them and
just go off and don't think anymore about them. True love is put
into action. Put into action. Show your love
for one another by doing something. Pray for one another. When somebody
comes to your mind, pray for them. And if somebody needs help,
help them. If somebody needs a kind word,
give them a kind word. Somebody just, you know, having
a bad time, reach out to them. Put your love into action. And here's how our love for one
another will grow. The more our love for Christ
grows, the more our love for each other will grow. So let
your love abound. Number two, this is my prayer
for you and me, that our knowledge may abound. Back in our text
Philippians 1, Verse nine, Paul says, in this I pray that your
love may abound yet more and more in knowledge, in knowledge. Now this knowledge is tied very
closely to my first point on love. This is a knowledge of
Christ. It's a plain, simple fact that
the more you know Christ, the more you love him. The more you
know of him, the more you know him, the more that you love him.
See, salvation, is knowing Christ. This is why we don't try to bring
people around our way of thinking and our, you know, different
doctrines and things. Salvation is not knowing the
doctrines. You can know the doctrines and
be lost, but you can't know Christ and be lost. Salvation is knowing
Christ. That's the issue. Our Lord said,
John 17 verse three, this is life eternal. And you want to
know what eternal life is. This is what the savior says
it is. that they might know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sinned. If you know God, you know his
son, you have eternal life. That's why the apostle Paul,
however long it takes us to get over chapter three in Philippians,
said that I may know him. I want to know him. I need to
know him and the power of his resurrection. He told Timothy
in 1 Timothy 1.12, I know whom I have believed. Not a what? Whom? And since I know Him, I
love Him. Since I know Him, that's why
I'm persuaded that He's able to keep that which I've committed
unto Him against that day. See, I know that. I'm able to
commit everything to Him because I know Him. I know Him. And this
saving knowledge of Christ is not learned from books. It's
learned in the heart. It's learned experience. And
the more we know Christ by experience, the more we'll love him. The
more we know by experience how sinful I am, the more I'll love
salvation by grace. The more I see I can't pay my
sins I need a substitute. I need somebody else to pay my
sin debt. The more I experience that in
my heart, the more I'll love Christ to substitute. That He
would love me and give Himself for me. Oh, I love Him. See, I love Him. The more we
experience that the blood of Christ truly saves us, cleanses
us from all sin, the more we'll love Him who shed His blood to
put away our sin. The more we experience the gospel,
you know, this gospel of Christ, it suits me. The gospel of Christ,
this gospel we preach is the only gospel that suits every
need of a real sinner. The more I see how this gospel
suits me, the more I see how Christ answers my every need,
the more I'll love Him. and the more I'll love the gospel
because the gospel tells me about him. The more I experience that
in the heart, the more I'll love him. The more I experience in
my heart, or by nature, I will never choose God, never. And
the more I know about how God elected a people, even though
they don't deserve it, that makes me love the one who elected me. See, it's not just love in election
exactly, it's love in God and his electing love that he would
choose me, the one who chose me. There's just few things, I just
don't know I believe anything more strongly than the sovereignty
of God. But the more I experience in my heart about God's sovereignty,
how that guarantees my salvation, how it guarantees that I'll be
kept, the more I love Him who's sovereign. I mean, there's a
difference in loving sovereignty and loving the one who's sovereign.
The more I love the one who's sovereign, I love Him. The more
I know about Christ's sacrifice for me, the more I love Him. The more I see in God's word,
the more I experience this in my heart, this astounding, astounding
truth that almighty God loves me. I mean, I just can't, I can't
get over that. Well, the more I know of that,
the more I'll love him. The more I see Christ, the more
I know of Christ and his word, the more I'll love him, the more
I'll love his word. Now remember, love is the mark
of discipleship, that you have love one to another. First, the
more I know about Christ, the more I'll love him. But you know
what? The more I know about the gospel,
the more I experience this gospel in my heart, the more I'll love
you. That's exactly right. The more
I learn how weak and sinful I am, the easier it will be for me
to overlook your sins and your faults and love you anyway. Because
I find out, oh, we're cut from the same cloth. They're just
like me. The more I learn of this gospel, what it says about
me, the easier it'll be for me to love you. So I pray our knowledge
will grow and abound. Thirdly, I pray our judgment
will abound. At the end of verse nine, he says, abound yet more
and more in knowledge and in all judgment, all judgment. And knowing and loving Christ
is not an academic exercise. It's not just like memorizing
some facts from a history book or something. Salvation is a
heart work. And it affects the whole being. It affects all of the new man.
This word judgment is sense. That's what it means, sense.
The new man is a new creation. And he's just like the old man
in many ways. He's born from a seed, just like the old man.
The new man's born from a holy seed. The old man's born from
a corrupt seed. The new man has a nature. The old man has a nature.
Well, the old man has five senses. So does the new man. So does
the new man. The new man has a sense of sight
so that the believer sees Christ. I see the glory of Christ. The
glory of Christ is in how God can save sinners. And the thing
that particularly overwhelms me is when I see Christ, now
I see, now I understand how it is God can save me. It's easier
for me to see how God could save you. But me? I mean, you just
don't know my thoughts and my heart. The more I see of Christ,
his sufficiency, his perfection, the more I see this is the only
way God could save me. And the more I see Christ, the
more clearly that God enables me to see him in his word, the
less likely it'll be I'll wander away from him. If I see Christ,
I'm not gonna leave. The new man has a sense of hearing.
The new man hears the gospel in the heart. In the heart. And
he believes it. He clings to it. The old man,
he hears the gospel. People who have not been born
again hear the gospel. They can spit back out to you
the points of the gospel. But the new man has a sense of
hearing. He hears it in the heart. And he believes it. He feeds
on it. It strengthens and feeds his
soul. And when a believer hears the
gospel, They say, oh, that is a sound of joy ringing in my
ears. When a believer hears the gospel,
I hear God speaking to me in the heart. God's speaking to
me through His Word, through the preached Word. How many times
have somebody said to me at the door back there, you're leaving.
I say, oh, thank you for that message. You preached that message
just for me this morning. Now why is that? Why did you
feel that way? God spoke to your heart. This
is why this is my prayer. I wish every message was this
way. That I would hear the Gospel for me. That God would speak
straight to my heart. Apply the Word to me. Oh, I pray you all hear it. I
want to hear it. I need to hear it. Oh, that's
God speaking to your heart and you heard. Because God gave you
a sense of hearing. There's a sense of smell that
the new man has. The gospel of Christ is a sweet smell, a sweet
savor to the believer. Just smells so good. To the unbeliever,
our gospel is the savor, the smell, the scent of death unto
death. Don't see anything in it. But
to the believer, the gospel is the savor of life unto life.
Oh, this smells like life. A sweet life, life eternal. That
new man has a sense of feeling. Salvation is a whole lot more
than a feeling. If you're just dwelling on a feeling, my goodness,
the mistakes that you make, how far off the left field you go.
Salvation is a whole lot more than a feeling, but it's quite
a feeling, isn't it? Now, it's quite a feeling. We
preach to the whole new man, his mind and his emotions. The believer experiences a safe
feeling to be found in Christ. Oh, if I'm found in Christ, I
don't worry about the day of judgment like we looked at in
the Bible lesson this morning. That's a feeling. The feeling
of love for Christ. That's a feeling. Oh, what a
feeling. I feel a sense of joy when I
hear the gospel preached. Such a joy to me. Tell me again. That story is so good. Tell me
again. Oh, I feel such a sense of awe. and wonder that the eternal
God would have ever thought on a speck of dust like me, much
less determined to sacrifice his son to save me. That's such
a sense of awe. What a feeling. I feel a sense
of thanksgiving. Thank you, Lord. I mean, thank
you, Lord. Oh, that you'd choose me, that
you'd send your son to die for me. Oh, that's a feeling. And that new man has that feeling
of thanksgiving and love. The new man has a sense of taste.
To the believer, the gospel tastes sweeter than honey. David said,
oh, come, come and taste and see the Lord's good. He said,
taste the Lord's goodness, taste the sweetness of God's mercy
and grace. Come feed on Christ, feed on
his sacrifice, on his broken body and his shed blood, and
taste how sweet it is. Nothing tastes sweeter to the
believer than feeding on Christ. And I pray that the Lord will
fill our senses with Christ. All right, number four. I pray
we'll be able to tell the difference between truth and error. Verse
10, Paul says that you may approve things that are excellent The
word approved that Paul uses here means to examine something
or to try something. And the word excellent means
things that are different or things that are better. And I
pray that the Lord enable us to examine things that are different
and know the difference between the excellent and the not excellent.
I'll give you a few examples here so we understand what Paul
means. I want us to know the difference
between morality and righteousness. Now I'm all for morality. Please
don't get, I'm all for morality. We all ought to be moral people.
Morality is acting right before men. It's just not doing the
wrong thing. But acting right before men,
that's not our righteousness. It can't be because all of our
righteousness is sin. All of our actions are sin. The
very best things that we do, those are nothing but sin. They're
just rags of deceit is what they are, the rags of deceit. You
know, you can act right and not steal from somebody. You can
act right and not murder somebody. But you're still a sinner. You
can not do those things hourly. You're still unrighteous. You
can act right and do what a believer ought to do. You can come to
the public worship service, be here every time the doors open.
You can do that until the cows come home and still be a sinner.
Moral actions do not make us righteous. Christ is our righteousness. His obedience to the law is a
representative of his people. That's our righteousness. He
is our righteousness. God's people are made righteous
in Christ. Now, I ought to live a moral
life. I ought to do the right thing. Whatever it is, in every
decision you make, just say, well, what's the right thing
to do? Do that. But that's not your righteousness. Christ is
our righteousness. And I pray we know the difference.
So we don't trust in something that's going to send us to hell.
If I'm trusting in my morality, You might be impressed, but God
won't. I'll go to hell. But if I'm trusting Christ my
righteousness, I can never perish. That's why I want us to know
the difference. I want us to know the difference between salvation
by works and salvation by grace. Now, I want every believer here
to live a life doing good works. Believe me, that's what scripture
tells us to do. But we need to know the difference
between salvation by works and salvation by grace. Salvation
by works is any way of salvation that requires the creature to
do anything. Anything. I mean, just the smallest thing.
Somebody tells you, well, now Jesus died for you, but you still
have to walk in the aisle. Jesus died for you, but you still
have to make a decision for him. I saw some protester with that
on a sign yesterday. Jesus died for you, but you still
got to decide to accept him. That's works. That's works. Jesus
died for you, but now you've still got to live a moral life.
Or you could lose it. You could mar it. You can do
things and make God cast you aside. Jesus died for you, then
you commit the unpardonable sin and you're all alone. That's
works. That's works. Just give a man
one speck of anything to do. It's salvation by works. Salvation
by grace is this. God did it all, even though we
didn't deserve it. That's salvation by grace. I want us to know the difference
and choose that thing that's excellent. God did all the saving. He did
the choosing, He did the saving, He did the calling, He did the
keeping, and He's going to do the glorifying. Where's the doubt
in that? I love it, don't you? I want
us to know the difference and love this thing that's excellent.
Salvation by grace is excellent, isn't it? I want us to know the
difference between a true prophet and a false prophet. You know,
a false prophet preaches the flesh. Now, maybe he preaches
the flesh alone. He's so far gone that all he
preaches is the flesh, and you see plenty of those folks. He
may preach Christ plus something. That's preaching the flesh. A
true prophet preaches Christ alone. You just listen. You'll
figure it out for too long. You'll be able to, you discern
this and know the difference. God's prophet, a true prophet,
he is determined to preach nothing but Christ and him crucified.
A true prophet is going to do nothing. This is his whole message.
Every time he preaches, he's going to tell you what Christ
accomplished when he died for his people on the cross. It's
sure and it's certain and it cannot fail. Christ took the
sin of his people and he died for that sin on the cursed tree,
bearing the curse for his people so they never will. He took all
the sin of his people and put it away forever and brought in
eternal righteousness for his people. The death of Christ satisfied
God's justice against the sin of God's people. So everyone
for whom Christ died has to have eternal life. They can never
perish. It's all because of Christ. That's the message of God's prophet. He can pick a thousand different
texts, but that's going to be his message. That's the nuts
and bolts of his message. I want us to know the difference
between the Lord Jesus Christ and another Jesus. Now, there
are other Jesus's being preached. That's what Paul said. Another
Jesus. This other Jesus. He's powerless. He can't save
you unless you let him. Brother Henry said one time,
well, if it's other Jesus, he can't save me. except I let him,
he can't damn me unless I let him too, so I don't have to worry
about him, you know. This other Jesus begs you do
something to allow him to say it. This other Jesus does not
have the character of God as he's described in the Bible.
This other Jesus is unholy and he's unjust. If he can die for
somebody, die for their sins, and then perish anyway, he's
unjust. Isn't it unjust to punish somebody
for sin that's already been made for? That's unjust and that's
unholy. This other Jesus doesn't have
the character of God. But the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Lord of all, oh, He saves His people against their will with
their full consent. He saves them against the will
of Adam, but He gives them a new want to. See, just like that
new man, he has those senses. He's got a new want to, too.
Oh, that new man, he wants to be saved on God's terms. He's
willing to surrender to Christ. He's willing to bow and beg God
for mercy. The Lord Jesus Christ saves his
people completely, utterly, and fully. He put away their sin,
Isaac, all of it, all of it. then they can't perish. There's
nothing left to make them perish. He put away all their sin. And
He comes to His people. Now they don't know it. They
don't know the Father chose them. They don't know that Christ died
for them and put away their sin. They're out there wandering and
lost as can be. And the Savior comes to His people.
And He doesn't beg them. He says, come follow Me. And
they close up shop like Matthew did and they get up and they
follow Him. Because nobody can resist his
power. Oh, what a gracious call. In power, he calls his people,
and they come follow him. That's the Savior. That's the
one who's excellent in me. I want him. I want us to know the difference
between religious activity and heart worship. Heart worship.
Religious activity is activity to be done to seem be seen of
men. So other men say, ooh, well,
look how righteous they are. Look how religious they are.
Look how devoted they are. It's just religious activity.
True worship is from the heart. True worship worships God before
he does anything for us. That leper came to our Lord and
worshiped him, saying, Lord, if you will, you can make me
clean. He didn't know if the Lord would make him clean or
not, but he worshiped him. It's just worshiping Him and,
you know, just begging God to forgive you. Begging God for
mercy. That's worship. It's bowing.
True worship is just taking our place before God. Saying He is
who He is and I am who I am. Lord, if you will. It's worship.
True worship is smiting on the breast and crying out to God,
God be merciful to me, the sinner. Now, if God saves that person,
they're gonna be active. They're gonna be active in the
service of God, but it's not religious activity, what we're
interested in here. It's worshiping God from the
heart. Oh, that God would do a heart work. It is my prayer
that the Lord give us the discernment to try these things and see the
difference. Look at those things that are
different and choose the thing. Love the thing that's excellent.
I'm salvation by grace is excellent. The Lord Jesus Christ. He's excellent. I wish I could think of a better
way. Excellent. The righteousness of Christ is
excellent. His gospel is excellent. Oh, it's excellent. I just I
wouldn't waste my breath preaching anything else. It's excellent.
And I tell you how you prove these things, how you discern
these things is by the word of God, by the word. Look into God's
word and see the difference. and choose what's excellent.
That's my prayer for us. Fifth, this goes pretty close
to the last point, I pray that our religion is sincere. In verse
10, Paul says, you may approve things that are excellent and
that you may be sincere, sincere without offense to the day of
Christ. Oh, I pray that we would be sincere
in our worship of God. I don't want to play church.
I don't want to just play religion and get people to come here on
a Sunday morning and a Wednesday night and leave feeling better
about themselves because I did my religious hour for the Lord
this week. I don't want to play church. And I don't want to be a hypocrite.
I don't want to be a hypocrite. I sit in my study, Lord, don't
let me be a hypocrite. Don't let me talk about these
things and not believe Christ. Don't let me be a hypocrite and
put on a religious show for people. I don't want to cause others
to stumble. That's what the phrase without offense means. It means
that you cause other people to stumble. How I pray, this is
my prayer every day. The Lord give us faith unfeigned. I mean the genuine article. Not
a pretend faith that tries to impress other people. but a real,
genuine faith that believes on Christ. That trust Him to be
everything that I need so that I don't feel compelled to add
one word to Him. Just trust Him. I pray that the Lord give us
faith that's founded upon the Word of God. It's not what I
think God will do. It's not what God may be able
to do. There's plenty of things that
God's able to do that He never promised He'd do. Isn't that
right? Plenty of things. I want my faith
to be in this and what God says he's going to do. And this is
what I know. God's going to save his people
from their sin. He's going to do this in such a way that Christ
get all the glory. Now, I want faith in it. Faith
is built upon the word of God, not psychological mumbo jumbo
that tries to manipulate people into doing something. Well, anytime
you feel some preacher starting to try to manipulate you into
doing something, you know right off that's a false prophet. That's
not right. God's going to burn that ministry
to the ground someday soon. I want the sincere preaching
of Christ. That will never be a waste of
time, ever. The sincere preaching of Christ.
We'll never waste our time preaching it, and we'll never waste our
time believing it. I pray that sincerely we're seeking
Christ in His Word. I tell you, the only way sinners
are going to be saved is somebody preach Christ from the Word.
And God's people are going to be blessed. They're going to
be fed. They're going to be strengthened the exact same way by somebody
preaching Christ from the Word. I don't want a ministry that
looks impressive to me. It makes people think, ooh, wow,
look at that. I want a ministry that truly,
sincerely seeks Christ, preaches Christ, calls on sinners to come
to Christ and rest in Him, because that's the only eternal benefit
for anybody's soul, is to hear Christ preach. I want that to
be sincere, don't you? If this church It's going to
be an eternal benefit to anybody, anybody, to ourselves, to our
children, to our grandchildren, to our community, to whoever.
I'm telling you, the Lord's got to give us genuine faith and
make us sincere in preaching Him and believing Him. All right,
here's the last thing. My prayer for you and me is that
we'd be filled with the fruit of the Spirit. Verse 11. being
filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, under
the glory and praise of God. Now these fruit, the fruit of
the Spirit, the fruit of righteousness, it's love. We already talked
about love, didn't we? Joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law.
Now that's the fruit of the Spirit. It's not our fruit, it's not
something we produce, the Spirit produces it, it's the fruit of
the Spirit, produced by the Spirit who dwells in us. But now every
believer has this fruit. I know some in different amounts,
some 30 fold, some 60, some 100, but every believer has this fruit
to some degree or another. I'm not satisfied with the fruit
of the spirit in me. I don't know about you, but I'm not satisfied
with it in me. I sure do pray that Lord will
make that grow and abound. You just can't have too much
love. You can't have too much joy in Christ. Too much peace. You can't have too much long-suffering.
You can't have too much gentleness. You can't have too much goodness.
You can't have too much faith. You can't have too much meekness.
You know, meekness is just a right opinion of yourself, not thinking
of yourself higher than you ought to. You can't have too much of
that. You can't have too much temperance. Well, that's the
fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit produces it. But I
tell you what, we sure can't make it grow. We sure can't make
it grow. Want me to tell you how? Get in the word. The word of
God is the seed. You know, when a farmer's got
his farm, and he plants, and he weeds, and he waters, and
at the end of the year, you know, he harvests everything, and he
sells it all, and looks, and says, well, I've got this much
money. I sure would like to have some more next year. I need a
little more money. What's he going to do? He's going
to plant more seed, so he can get a bigger crop. If you want
these things to grow, the fruit of the Spirit, avail yourself
to the seed, to the Word of God. If we want to know more about
Christ, get in the Word where He's revealed. Hear Him preached.
Now this is the fruit of the Spirit, and I think this is a
good thing to keep in mind. Every believer will tell you,
I want more of this fruit of the Spirit. But now, be careful
about this. The Holy Spirit doesn't give
me an increase in the fruit of the Spirit for my benefit. It
doesn't do it for my glory so people can look and say, oh,
you know, he's got so much faith. He's got so much meekness. He's
got so much temperance. The Holy Spirit gives us the
fruit of the Spirit for the benefit of somebody else. See, that my
love for you would be sincere and act. So my love for Christ
is sincere and I stay close to him. I need him. It's all for
the benefit of somebody else. Being gentle and faithful and
kind and able to forgive others. That's the fruit of the Spirit
if it's in you, but it benefits somebody else. You know what
I'm saying? And I tell you this, it sure
makes us easier to be around. If this fruit of the Spirit grows,
it makes us beneficial to other people. It makes us easier to
be around. That's judgmental. Easier to get along with. That's
the fruit of the Spirit. But don't forget this. You bear
the fruit. That's right. You bear the fruit.
You got to bear the fruit. You are the one that's going
to reach out and help others. And I know God let you do it
and gave, but you're the one that's got to reach out for others.
You're the one that's got to pick up the phone and call somebody.
You're the one that's got to get in your car and go drive
and see somebody. You're the one that gives. You're the one
that shows kindness. You're the one that supports
this ministry. And the best thing we can do is pray that the Lord
give us more opportunities to help our brethren. And when he
opens that door to help, go through it. Go through it. That'd be
good for all of us. If the Lord would answer those
six requests and cause us to grow in those things, we'd be
mighty thankful, wouldn't we? All right, let's bow together.
Our Father, how we thank you for your word, the clear revelation
of Christ our Savior, And Father, we do, we thank you for the spiritual
gifts that you've given your people. You've made us complete
in Christ, lacking nothing. And Father, we do pray that these
graces would grow and abound in us, that we would love Christ
more, that we love his people more, that we learn more of him,
make us more faithful, make us more forgiving and more loving. Father, use us in your service,
we pray. We pray you bless your word to
your glory, to the hearts of your people. It's in Christ's
name, for his sake we pray, amen. All right, Isaac.