Our Outward Focus Fuels The Gospel - Romans 15:1-33
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
We are continuing back in our series in Romans. We are two weeks away from wrapping this bad boy up. It has been a journey, and I am so grateful for each and every one of you. Like, give yourselves a hand. Like, you guys have made it, you're here. Like, it is something to be celebrated. Like, this isn't just like regular old, regular old, but this is awesome stuff. And so probably, honestly, the longest series that I've been a part of in a church, And it's pretty cool to be a part of this and to be here with you guys through this series. And so if we could, I'd love to just pray real quick and then we're gonna jump in to our chapter 15 of Romans today.
Jesus, we thank you for today. God, we are so grateful to be here. God, I am so grateful, God, for the amazing blessing of this church family. God, and we know we're missing a lot of people morning God and we hope that they're joining us online God but you're with them wherever they are we know there's a lot of sickness and even a grieving loss in our family and so God we pray for all those in our church family today as they walk through some some hard times right now Jesus would you be present with them God we remember them we're we are sad with them we are hurting with them God we are in intercession, as you would say that you call us to pray for our family and those in our lives. And so Jesus, we call upon you to be with them today. God, as we study your word this morning, Jesus, you would continue to give me the words you put on my heart, God, in that this day would just be honoring and glorifying to you. We love you, Jesus. Amen.
So Paul here is actually wrapping up basically the letter. This is the, he's come to the last section of his letter, and we're gonna finish the series tomorrow as Paul kinda had some last remarks. He has a couple words for specific people, and you know Paul, he can't put anything in a letter without having some truth or something, some wisdom in it, right? So we're gonna, there's still gonna be a piece of that where we're gonna work through next week as Pastor Andrei and I wrap up the series, but today is basically Paul's final words. And so if you were to write a letter, put together, you probably have something to really say and to want to communicate right at the end of your letter, right? It's kind of like, "Ah, we open as important in the middle, give or take, and in the end it's like, here is my final send-off." And Paul here is gonna work through three different parts, the first of which is gonna be talking about how now this power of the gospel affecting us, how we then continue to further on the gospel in our actions. And the first Action in that is honoring God by honoring one another and then Paul is gonna dig into some nitty-gritty He's gonna talk about the gospel mission and what it means and how do we live that out and then Paul himself actually He's not one to just sit around and say hey you guys go do this you do this you do this Paul is a man of action and he wants to tell you right here at the end what his plans are Now that he has taken this time to clearly communicate all of the details down to the smallest little piece What the power of the gospel means and he's gonna share some plans for us So our big picture today where we're headed. All right is a purposeful outward focus rooted in love for others ignites and grows the gospel of Jesus Christ That's where we're headed today. And so if you would open up your Bibles, there's Bibles under the chairs if you want You can get it online Those of you brought your Bibles. That's awesome.
We're gonna be in Romans chapter 15 And Paul here is getting to this point where he wants to teach us some final lessons and that this purpose outward focus in love grows the gospel. So these past few weeks we've been talking about probably chapter 12, 13, 14 and now 15 is really a purposeful shift. It's gone from all this deep theology and head knowledge and background and ins and outs and all the details about the gospel and Jesus Christ, Paul shifts in chapter 12 to go very practical. He gets to this point where he says, "Hey, you need to live this out," talking about living our life as a sacrifice, how love above our own personal gain to not dispute with people who are in the church and of the faith and to not cause other people to stumble. Paul here is wrapping up the whole series talking about this topic again. And here is the first part of the chapter we're going to cover this morning.
Romans chapter 15, starting in verse 1. It says this, "We who are strong ought to bear the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up. For even Christ did not please himself, but it is written, the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us. It was written where I lost my place. Man, I hardly do this. Written to teach us so that we ought to, through endurance in the scriptures, may have the encouragement they provide, we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and and courage give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ had, so that with one mind and with one voice you may glorify the God of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed, and moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy. For it is written, 'Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing the praises of your name.'" Again it says, "Rejoice you Gentiles with His people, and again praise the Lord all you Gentiles. Let all the peoples extol Him." And again Isaiah says, "The root of Jesse will spring up, one who will raised to rule over the nations. In Him the Gentiles will hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Whoo! Paul's not letting up, is he? No, he's still coming in swinging. He's still hitting here hard. And side note real quick, we've been doing this study for a couple weeks on Ruth. Ruth here, actually I'm gonna put these two together, okay? So So you got that root of Jesse? Jesse is actually the son or the grandson of Ruth. So Ruth has a son, Boaz, Boaz has Jesse, then Jesse has a son who is King David, and then we know out of the line of King David comes Jesus. That was the church answer right there. I was just the softball. Like just say Jesus, okay? That's where it is. So like Paul here is like wrapping up all of this stuff in the power of the gospel, detailing where all this comes from.
But he first says in here, his first main point, if you're writing something down, you can write this down. It says, "We live with humility as our aim." Paul says there in verse 1, he says, "We have an obligation not to please ourselves." It's our obligation, church, to put the needs and the desires of others before our own. That's our obligation, to put others in front of us, whether they're weak people, whether they're strong people, whether they're in the middle, go to the gym every other week, strong people. Like, we are to put other people before us. And Paul here is saying, we are obligated. This word obligated means that we are bound, compelled, perhaps maybe legally or morally, to do something. Think about the obligations you have in your life. You have any obligations in your life? Maybe Maybe you're married, you're obligated to be faithful to your spouse. Maybe you're obligated to be a loving parent, or some of us here, a grandparent. Maybe you're obligated to show up at work at a certain time. Maybe you're obligated to pay taxes, your mortgage, your rent, your utility bills. I would hope that you'd be obligated to support your church. My wife thinks that I should be obligated to give her gifts every single day of her birthday month. There we go. I got an "amen" from the back on that one. But we have obligations in our life, right? And as Christians, people who call ourselves followers of Christ, we have obligations too. We are bound, we are compelled by the love of God and the work of Jesus to put others before ourselves. If we're obligated to do something, we better make it our goal or our aim to live that out to be sure that we do that thing. You better be obligated to pay your taxes or you're gonna get in some serious trouble. You better sure have a plan how to love your family. And I better be sure how to figure out how to give my wife all these gifts she needs on her birthday month. But we are obligated to put others ahead of ourselves. And Paul here is saying this is our aim, that we truly believe and have allowed the gospel to change who we are, we should live with humility as our aim.
The second thing Paul talks about here in verse 4, he says we're to live with the Bible as our guide. It says here, "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope." So what What does this matter? Does this matter at all? Why do we care about being humble? And why do we care about bearing with one another? We care because God has commuted through His Word, the Bible, the Scriptures we believe, of how we live our lives. This is a guidebook on how to live our lives. This isn't an old dusty manuscript, a fairy tale story, or something that makes you read and it just makes you feel good, right? No, no, no. This is the Word of God. This is God's words to us so that we know how to live our lives and conduct ourselves. And Paul here is saying it is written to teach us for our instruction to bring the benefit of hope and encouragement. It's good to know what God wants for us, right? Have you ever had a job or a task and you didn't really know what you were supposed to do? You didn't know how to do it, you didn't know the details of it, you didn't know the end result that your boss or somebody that you wanted to have the alchemy of, you're kind of lost, right? You're kind of like, "Ah, maybe I'll try to figure this thing out as I go." But God here is saying, "This is how I want you to live your life. This is your calling." First Timothy, or Second Timothy, excuse me, 3 16 says, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, rebuking, correcting, for training up in righteousness so that the man of God, a woman of God, may be complete and equipped for every good work." I don't know about you, but I want to be equipped. I want to be complete. We talk about here with our different teams, and I learned this actually with Starbucks back in the day. I was your friendly neighborhood barista, the Green Apron back in the day. That was my jam. We always talked about setting your employees, your co-workers up for success. We talk about that here at Spring Valley with our teams and we volunteer when we serve with them. Our goal is to set each other up for success. God has given us instructions of how to set us up for success in life and that is His word. The Bible will teach us and help make us complete. It will help teach us how to love God and how to show God love. It will teach us how we show love to other people and how to love others. It will tell us how we live our life and we must live with the Bible as our guide. Paul wants to just drive this home that scriptures are so important. That's what we talk about being in God's Word on a regular basis because if we don't have the manual, the guide, we're just gonna get lost. We're gonna make our own choices. I don't know about you, I know my choices aren't as good as God's choices, right? You can get lost out there on your own.
Paul continues on and says, "We are to live with Jesus as our example." Paul here uses so many Old Testament Scriptures here, which has kind of driven his point before of using the Bible as your guide. He's using Scripture. But he says here in 15 3, he says, "For even Christ did not please himself, but as is written, the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." These are Jesus' words. These are Jesus' words basically saying, "When I went to the cross, I took those insults, and other people hurled at you," he goes, "I stepped in front of him and I took him." That is on me. And this is this humble example that Paul lives out himself, and he's teaching us where he learned it from Jesus. And that Jesus wasn't about Jesus. Which honestly, if you think about it, nobody would have thought anything twice about Jesus being Jesus because he's God, right? He could be, he could do, he could say whatever he want to say? He is God. Ain't nobody stopping him. But Jesus takes this humble approach and he says, "No. I'm gonna live as an example of a humility for others." Jesus was insulted for our sake. He suffered for our sake. He died for our sake. Jesus displayed the ultimate humility so that we might be changed by His loving sacrifice. It was a sacrifice to help change the world. Paul continues in verse 7, he says, "Accept one another then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God." Jesus here is our example. If He was humble, if He sacrificed everything, if he gave up his own power and his own rights and his own way to say, "Hey, this is about me," and in doing that he opened himself up for us. We ought to do the same for those in our lives. Paul quotes Psalm 18, Psalm 117, Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 11, to really demonstrate that Jesus wasn't just for the New Testament people. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures and God's chosen people of the Jewish descent. So Paul here is communicating and saying, "Yeah, Jesus is here for those who have this storied past with Him, all the way back to the Israelites and Egypt and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all those fathers, Father Abraham, he had many sons and many sons that follow Abraham. Jesus is here for them, but Paul is reminding us Jesus is here for us too. And that because of Jesus there is no separate, there is no dividing, it is just for everyone. It's all human kind. Jesus, by humbling himself, lovingly welcoming others, changed the world and brought hope to those who were lost. That's what Jesus is all about. So we too are to humble ourselves and display that same love to the world specifically and more than that, abundantly for our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. We live with Jesus as our example.
Fourth thing in this opening section Paul talks about is that we live with the Spirit as our power. See, all of this would never be able to be accomplished without the power of the Holy Spirit, right? Paul says in 5 and 6, he says, "May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind towards each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and with one voice you may glorify the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." We need God's help, right? There's no way we could do this on our own. What God calls us to in this Bible is overly crazy, mission impossible. Like there's no way that this is happening in our lives without Christ and without the direction and the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the only way that any of this is ever gonna be able to happen and Paul here recognizes that. Paul has found himself in thousands of different situations where there was no way that he was gonna be able to get out of prison, be saved, be rescued, redeemed, fed, clothed, sheltered without the power of Jesus, acting in the Holy Spirit for him. Paul knows this firsthand. And you and I are the same way. We can't humble ourselves on our own. We can't live in harmony on our own without the power of God, we're helpless. Without the power of God, we're sheep without a shepherd. You and I need the power of God's Spirit in our lives. We need God's Spirit in our church. What do you have in our lives? We don't live it out in the church. It ain't happening. We could all be doing our own thing and that's great. But think about what it would be to unlock the power Holy Spirit through our church. That'll be life-changing. We need hope, we need joy, we need peace, and we can have all of these godly qualities through the power of the Holy Spirit. If we want to live the Christian life, if we want to live with humanity, if we want to live as those who love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, we do so by the power of the Holy Spirit. There's no other way around it. So when we live with humility as our aim, we live with the Bible as our guide, we live with Jesus as our example, and we live with the power of the Holy Spirit in us, we honor God as we honor one another.
Paul continues on in chapter 15 verses 14 to 21. He's going to share here some personal stuff. He's going to share a little bit more of his firsthand experience, his own ministry, and how this power of the Gospel unlocks this for our lives. So I don't want us to forget here this mission that Paul is trying to portray with this Scripture for our lives. Paul talks about this in verse 14, he talks about this idea here, is that we to see gospel encouragement. See, I think sometimes we talk about this gospel idea, and we think about, "Oh, well, that's only if I lead somebody to Jesus, and we say the right words, and we pray the prayer." That's something that the church in America and the U.S. kind of developed themselves over the past 50, 60 years. Paul here is talking about this idea of a gospel being something so much greater than that. The gospel changes who we are. And Paul here focuses in talking about this idea of encouraging. He says, "I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, you're full of knowledge, and competent to instruct one another." Paul here wants to encourage the church in Rome. They're doing a really good job. They're doing really good stuff. They're living out as witnesses, they're loving one another, they're sharing with those that are their lives, the needs, and God's doing some incredible stuff in the church in Rome, and Paul here wants to encourage them. And I think this is a key component in the gospel I think sometimes we forget. You ever had somebody like really encourage you? Like somebody like show up in your life, Maybe it's a note, it's a text, it's a phone call, but just real encouragement. It sticks with you, right? It can change your day. Shoot, it can change your week. You get some really cool encouragement. Paul here wants to remind them, "You guys are doing really good. You guys are doing really good, and I want you to keep doing this." and he wants to remind them of why he was writing them and why this mission of the gospel is so important, but he wants to encourage them first. He doesn't want them to forget that. I don't want us to forget that. I think sometimes in the church we've lost this. We've lost this heart of encouragement, whether that's taking care of those that we know, or it's a neighbor, or it's a family member. Sometimes we forget that. And I want us to be reminded of that.
Can I encourage you guys real quick? I just want to take, I'm gonna take a side note here. I want to encourage you guys. Church, I want to tell you that you are friendly and you're a welcoming church. You care about one another in a way that I have not seen in churches before. It's beautiful. You care for Pastor Andre and myself through your prayers, through your appreciation during October, or Pastor Appreciation Month. You guys don't just keep it in October and then now, oh, we'll see you next year. Like, you guys keep this going year-round. You're incredible. You care about what the Word of God says for your life. You care about when you hear of a need, you step up. You have a reputation and you care for those in your life and in your community. You're doing so great in those areas. I want you guys to be encouraged.
That's a heart in a prayer of Pastor Andre and myself that our gatherings on Sunday morning, you would come here and you would leave encouraged. You wouldn't feel the same maybe as you did when you walked in here. That whether through the Holy Spirit or through a cup of mediocre coffee or through a muffin or— We're not like high-end chocolate fish espresso, I understand that. But we want you to be encouraged. We would hope that when you come to this place, you would be different when you left because you were here with us in presence of God together. I want to remind us of this as the holidays are coming up. you're going to be need to be an encourager. I know some of you have some tough family situations and you are the gospel encouragement for your family. And I want to encourage you as you encourage your family in some hard situations. And we are praying for you. And if there is something specific we can pray for, write it down, drop in a card, we will pray for it. you walk into some hard situations in your families this holiday season, places you don't want to be, people you don't want to be around, meals you don't want to sit down and have to deal with that uncle again. But you are called to be that gospel encouragement. And Paul here is saying that is how the gospel is furthered, is in encouragement, because reality is our world's hurting, right? Our Our world is hurting. We got wars going on. We got chaos around the corner. We got political leaders that are supposed to be our guide that can't even get along with each other. It seems like whatever corner we come around, there's stress, there's anxiety, there's worry, there's anxiousness. Jesus wants to show up in that, in our world and in your life today. And every single day after that, and forever and ever and ever. And it starts with the gospel of encouragement. I want you to be an encourager yourself.
Paul continues on focusing on this idea of explanation. So Paul encourages them, but then he says, "Yet." Just because they're doing great doesn't mean they don't have anything they can't learn. Paul here wants to encourage them to then help them explain the gospel a little bit more. This is Paul's baby here in this letter that he has written. He has taken hours to put this letter together to teach the church in Rome. He says, "I have written you quite boldly on some points proclaiming the gospel of God." Paul here is reminding you it's not his gospel that he's written, but it is God's gospel, and he wants them to continue to grow in their explanation, to be able to share themselves more with others. He continues on, he says, "Because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus, therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my sacrifice to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done." Paul here is continuing to even clarify the gospel in his statement of encouragement. But it boils down to this, the church, the gospel of Jesus is for everybody. The gospel is for everybody. It's not about Paul. It's not about the early church. It's not about the fourth fathers or pastors that have come after and those pastors after that. It is about Jesus. The power of the gospel is centered in Jesus, will always be in Jesus and is always for Jesus. Paul here is saying, in probably the best explanation, just a eloquent way of how the gospel is as we walk through these last few weeks, the minute details of the gospel and that changes us. But Paul also calls us then to then share that with others. This isn't just some this amazing thing we hear and we go, "Oh, I love it." It's for us to come in and change us so that then we go, "This is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I can't stop but telling other people about it." You ever had that friend that learned something new or like got into that new hobby or changed their diet and they can't stop talking about it? Kind of annoying, right? God wants that for us. Not to be annoying, but God wants that for us, for other people, that we can't stop talking about it. And in a way that is encouraging, that is loving, that is giving, that is caring.
Paul's going to talk about four key things here at the end of what true relational gospel life looks like, but he He wants them to understand this. He says this in 1 Corinthians, "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing this mystery of God to you, I did not come with the brilliance of speech or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." We over-complicate this idea of the gospel. We feel, "Well, you know, if I don't have the understanding of all the Bible, if I don't have the degree, if I haven't gone to school, I'm not properly changed." No, the gospel is us living our lives going, "I was messed up, I was lost, I was hurting, I was broken, Jesus showed up, he turned my life around, and I want to encourage you." That's the gospel. Don't overcomplicate it. Paul here is saying, "I didn't have all the answers, I didn't have it all figured out, but it didn't stop me." He still showed up. Paul here is saying, we show up in people, which when we show up in that, it takes us to gospel expansion. When we show up through encouragement, explaining the gospel, it creates this explosion of growth, fueled to this fire of the gospel, to change the world around us. Paul talks about all these different places he's going to go, where the gospel is going to expand north from Israel up into Syria, over into Turkey and Greece, and even into modern Croatia. He's just ready to explode this gospel explanation. And it's really the fulfillment of the words of Jesus in Acts 1-8. It says, "But you will receive the power," remember? "The Holy Spirit comes on you. You be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Paul has this massive vision for the gospel to spread. And I want that to encourage us, not put us down. Because the reality is, if you were to look anywhere around this building, there's people that don't know this Jesus that we worship. There's people that don't have this peace that we do. There's people that don't have this hope, this joy that nothing can take away. That is our gospel expansion. We don't have to be on the level of Paul going to the ends of the earth. That was his calling with Jesus. Our calling may be just our neighbor next door. Maybe how we conduct ourselves online, which if you think about it, takes it to the ends of the earth with technology this day. Isn't that incredible? Maybe it's your family. That's some of the hardest mission work right there. be easy to take me overseas. Now I have to try to show Jesus to my family. Oh, that's what we're called to. That's our mission where Jesus is asking us to take His gospel. So how does all of this work out? Paul here closes this section, talks about four things. He talks about Christian fellowship. Paul talks about, hey, I'm leaving Jerusalem, you guys are in Rome, I gotta go to Spain, I can't wait to see you. Paul's gonna take a jaunt through the Mediterranean Sea, pop into Rome on his way to just spend time with them. Why? Because he desires to be with them. You and I should desire to be with one another. We should want to be here on Sunday because there's something here that we don't get the rest of the week, right? I talked to you guys about some of this. You guys, there's something different about Spring Valley on Sunday morning I just don't get during the week. That's the power of the Holy Spirit. Now I get it, an introvert, you're like, "Eww." I'm an introvert myself, by the way, if you guys didn't know, I fake it really well. Sometimes I don't fake it really well. But even our introverts, it's okay to be here to want to spend time with one another. And Paul sees this and says, "I'm going to come see you. I'm going to make a detour on my trip to come see you." The importance of Christian fellowship.
He talks about the importance of Christian giving. He says in Romans 15:26, "For Macedonia and Ahia, we are pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem." We would read that and go, "Cool, they sent some money," and you keep going on. Here's what's going on. Those are two Gentile churches sending money to the Jewish church in Jerusalem. That's a witness. Because right now Paul is trying to bring these two, which are like oil and water, not mixing well, not playing nice with each other, two different groups of people who both see Jesus as their Savior. Paul here is saying the church is living this out by being generous to send money, even to the church in Jerusalem.
Paul then says in this moment of Christian prayer, Paul knew the power of prayer. He knew that it changes people's lives. He knew that it changed his life. He knows how incredibly amazing this power of prayer is. And then 1530, he says this, he says, "I urge you, brothers and sisters, "by your Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit "to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me." Paul's supposed to be the superstar Christian, right? He's supposed to be like the Superman of the Christian early church. And Paul here is still saying, "I struggle and I need your prayer." If Paul needs prayer, oh Lord Jesus, we all need prayer. And in our Christian fellowship, we have the opportunity to pray with one another, to care for each other, to love each other, to be there when times are great, and when times they ain't great. We do that through prayer. Paul here takes a moment, he actually specifically prays for them, and then he closes with something think we overlook so easily in Scripture.
And that's peace. God's peace. Our peace to share, our Christian peace to share with others. He closes this, essentially at the end of his letter, he says this, he goes, "The God of peace be with you all. Amen." I sat on this verse all week. And at first I was like, "Okay, God of peace be with you all, amen." That's a cool little like email signature, just kind of like down there at the bottom. "Yeah, that's fine, just auto-fill, don't think about it." There's no auto-fill in Paul's letters. Every single word was with purpose and for a reason. And the more that I sat with those words, "God of peace be with you all," changed my week. There were moments of chaos I had this week, and I was reminded of God's peace. And there was just something that happened in that moment I can't explain. And the only way I can explain it is God. It's God. Paul wants you to know all the details about this gospel. He wants you to take it to the ends of the earth. He wants you to have all the answers, all the details. He wants you to have the strongest rebuttal to anybody who comes at you. This thing is written tighter than some legal documents that I've seen in my life. But at the end of the day, the power of the gospel is God's peace with us. So maybe this week you've been through some stuff. We're going to face stuff this week and in the coming weeks that we have no idea. No idea what's coming at us. But you know what will be with us? God's peace. God's peace will be with us every single day. And sometimes we need to remind each other about God's peace. Because sometimes it's so hard we can't even see it ourselves. We're so far lost, we're so far in the dark, we're so far with our head below water. That's where this power of the gospel comes together. And Paul here is saying, in Christian fellowship, in Christian giving and generosity, in Christian prayer, in Christian peace, we see the power of the gospel before our eyes. We can't go back, we can't see Jesus. We can't see Him on the cross, we can't see Him when He lived His life and His miracles and His disciples and everything He did in those years of ministry. can't see that.
But we can see the power of the gospel in each other. And the world around us sees that power of the gospel as well. So as we live with an outward focus, not on ourselves, with humility, and God is our example and Jesus is our guide and the Holy Spirit is our power and the the scripture of God, we live a life that is rooted in love. And when that love is lived out, it ignites and it grows the gospels in an exponential way that nobody can understand. And it changes the world. Paul had this calling to go to the world. Our calling is to change the world around us where we live, learn, work, and play. That's our calling to take God's peace with us as we go.
Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for your peace. We thank you for your gospel, for your love, for your grace, for your mercy. Jesus, I pray this week as we go that we would carry your peace with us. We would bring encouragement to those in our lives, that we would live with humility, keeping our focus on you, keeping our calling central as Paul was so focused on doing. He knew his calling. There was nothing that was gonna shake him from that, not even the threat of death. Jesus, we may not face death anytime soon, but may we keep this focus of taking the gospel with us wherever we go at the forefront of our mind. God, that we see our community saturated with Your glory. That we see the world around us transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Not our power, not our friends' power, not the pastor's power, not anybody's power, but Your power, Jesus. Your Holy Spirit would be with us, reminding us of Your peace. That there's no place we can go without it. It's always right there with us. Jesus, may we go with your gospel. Bring people into our lives this week that we need to encourage in the gospel. We may not have to say anything about the word Jesus or the Bible or church, but just encourage somebody this week in the name of your gospel and the covering of your peace. We thank you, Jesus. We love you. Amen.