I'm Trevor Davis. I'm GCC's pastor. Thank you for being with us today on the Lord's day as we finish a four part series on more and better disciples. And I want to start off with just some preliminary remarks. You can find first chronicles 25 in your Old Testament.

I'll spend a little time there eventually for a text, first chronicles 25. But first thing I want to tell you is that when God gives a promise, he gives us everything we need to have that promise fulfilled, but he rarely fulfills it himself. That means that there's usually something for us to do, even if that something is only or simply responding by faith. And we learned about this in Joshua chapter one. Back in Joshua one, the idea was Israel entering the promised land for the first time.

It's called the conquest. And here's what was happening. God designated a territory for his people, and then he told them to take it. So Joshua one three says this, God speaks. And he says, I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses.

So here's how it goes. God would give the land. They must walk in it. That was the deal God expected from his people, that they would exert some effort, that they would participate in his enterprise. And while they did that, he expected them to have a joyful attitude.

And there are lots of verses in the old testament that the Israelites sang, especially in the psalms about this very thing. For example, psalm 100, verse two, it says, serve the Lord with gladness. Walk in that new land I'm giving you with a glad heart. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing.

I want to stop right here and say, it is right. When christians gather together on the Lord's day and sing the praises of God, that's a right thing. It's biblically prescribed. And so the idea would be that of all the things the world makes music about, all the things we sing and rap to, all of the stuff that we put in the gates of our ears melodically, that causes us to memorize what's being said, causes us to think back on happier times of all that the world sings about, is futile and useless and will burn up in the judgment fire of God one day. But when the saints of God sings his praises in the gathered church, that's different.

It's higher, it's holy and set apart. And so that God means for us to serve him with gladness, that he would make us a singing people. And for some of us, you have to submit your will to God to do that. The idea of being. Look, pastor, I'm not a good singer.

Well, I just showed you psalm 100, verse two. Psalm 100, verse one says, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. You can make noise. Right? And so, look, in the first service, I sit here and I sing to the top of my lungs.

And I sit here because I don't want to see any of y'all looking at me. Amen. Right? And in fact, in the first service, I just apologize to everybody in this area today. But I don't apologize for singing and making melody in my heart to the Lord, because, honestly, he's the only thing really worth singing about.

So God has stuff for us. He expects us to participate in it, and he wants us to have a joyful heart as we go. He sets the adventure in front of us, and then we step into it by faith. And so here's the question we've been answering the last three weeks, and this is part four. How does our church make disciples?

How do we gather new people into God's family? How do we bring new believers, new citizens into the kingdom? How do we make new christians? And there's four answers to that. Here's what we said.

In week one, we make disciples with Jesus. And then in week two, we said, we make disciples in person. And then in week three, we said, we make disciples through groups. And then today, the fourth piece of the strategy is we make disciples on teams in person, first of all, with Jesus, because Jesus made disciples when he was here on earth, and he never stopped doing it. And so because our Lord has never stopped making disciples, but he is seated at the right hand of the Father, he's still making disciples through us, right?

So we do it with Jesus, and then we do it in person. Look, one of the best gifts you'll ever get in your walk with God is to have a mature believer who knows you and cares for you, begin to take a period, a season of life, and meet with you one on one or one on two in the smallest of settings. And that person says to you, I want to show you what the Bible says about how you can walk with the Lord. I want to tell you how I do it. I want to just train you to be a disciple of Jesus in person.

And then through groups, we talked about our small group ministry. Last week, we even asked this question. Why did the one person who ever lived, the only person who ever lived, who didn't need any help, choose twelve helpers to spend time with the Lord Jesus needed no help. He picks twelve disciples and he pours into these twelve men. Why did he do that?

And we read the verse that answers that question. So that they might be with him, so that he might send them out to preach, and so that he might send them out to heal diseases and deliver from demons. And so everybody has a small group. Everybody needs a small group. Even God himself is a small group.

Father, son, Holy Spirit. And the christian life, even in the local church, is just a picture of plurality in unity through groups. And today we bring it all into the house of the Lord on teams. It's the final piece of the puzzle. I want to show you a Bible verse.

You've already heard it today in our service. Psalm 84 ten in the NIv. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. I called Blair on Wednesday, and I said, hey, when I was doing my sermon notes, psalm 84 ten came to my head.

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. And this was Wednesday. Is it too late to stick it in our church service? And he said, I'll check. All right.

So I knew that meant well. It could be. And then I heard. I talked to Jerry after the first service, and he sang that song. I said, did you know that song before?

He said, no, but I learned it. The dude learned it in a couple of days and sang it. How great is that? Right? I wanted us to sing scripture today to stitch into our hearts this idea of, we help you become a disciple of Jesus when you serve on a ministry team.

I want all of us, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, to get to the place where we go. There's no place I'd rather be than in the house of God with the people of God. I mean, better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. And that brings the question to all of us, what's your elsewhere? What's the place that, honestly, you'd be sitting in church and.

And you dream about? It's like, man, I can't wait for him to be quiet and then to say that closing prayer, because I got. I have places I need to be. What's your elsewhere? Is it the lake or the beach or the ball field or the gym or the snuggling up in your bed in the warm covers or the shop behind your house or out on the open road?

Everybody has elsewheres that fight against your spirit to keep you from internalizing this truth that better is one day in the house of the Lord than anywhere else. And so it's in this room and it's under this roof, it's in this building on this special day that God has set aside some spiritual maturity for you to get. And if you don't avail yourself while you're here, he will not give it to you. How do we make disciples on teams now one of my favorite preachers from days gone by was a british man named Martin Lloyd Jones. And Doctor Jones was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London for a very long time.

And look, every group, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, everybody claims D. Martin Lloyd Jones as their own, the same way they claim Charles Spurgeon. I found a quote from Doctor Jones this week, put it right in my sermon notes, because it helps communicate what I want you to know today. He said, I sometimes think that the whole secret of the christian life is to know how to use the word therefore. And the reason Doctor Jones made that quote is when you begin to read the scriptures for yourself and begin to be familiar with the most famous verses in the Bible, dozens of them have the word therefore in it.

And you know, I always heard the preacher joke, whenever you get to, whenever you come to a therefore in the Bible, you should stop and ask what the therefore is there for. And that's witty and clever. But I have something I think will be more helpful. When you see the word therefore, here's what it means. Something is true, so there's something for us to do.

When you come to a therefore in the Bible, it means something's true, so there's something for us to do. I'm gonna illustrate that with three therefore verses, maybe three that you heard before. The first one is one Peter four seven. One Peter four seven reads, but the end of all things is at hand, therefore, be serious and watchful in your prayers. So in Peter's letter, he says, look, when Jesus rose from the dead, the last days started.

The end times began when Jesus ascended into heaven. And so from that time and until the time Jesus returns, the end of all things is at hand. And it's imminent. It could be at any moment. And because that's true, there's something for us to do.

Because the return of Jesus is imminent, and when he returns, it's over. And the gospel is not going to be available to sinners any longer, then we need to take our walk with God seriously, so much so that we become people who pray. It's an important therefore.

There's another one. This verse is from the Lord Jesus. And it begins with the word therefore, meaning of all that I just said. There's something for you to do. Matthew 24 44.

Therefore, you also be ready. For the son of man is coming at an hour. You do not expect something is true, and that is that the son of man, Jesus, is going to come at a time nobody's expecting him. When I was a young man, a lad of about eight, nine or ten or eleven in that range, we moved into a new house that my parents built. My mother still lives there.

My dad worked at the bank. And apparently all the robbers assumed that when my dad went home to work, he took all the money from the vault with him. And so when I was a little boy, we got robbed, like, eleven times over a nine year span. It started small with firewood and then a chainsaw and then a tiller. And then they decided to just come on in the house.

And so you guys remember that great cartoon, Scooby Doo? I mean, you can learn great theology in Scooby Doo. You know, rut row, raggy and so Scooby Doo, you watch some of them and it's like. It's like Scooby and Fred and Wilma and Shaggy and Scrappy and all the. All the gang.

And they're in this scary house and the monster shows himself. And you remember that scene where they all turn and they take off running and there's, like, dust under their feet and they run and they run with abandon and they all just crash into the wall and there's this big smoke pile. Remember this scene that happened in my house one time?

My mom and my two brothers and I were in the living room. And the living room had a back door. It just goes out in the backyard. And my dad was. He had turned in early that night and he was down the hall in the master bedroom, probably halfway between sleep and never Neverland, wherever that was.

And we had already turned on the burglar alarm. We were watching some tv show. I don't recall what it was. And all of a sudden, the next thing we hear was that first blood curdling tone of the burglar alarm. And then the back door into the living room where we were watching tv.

Slams open they kicked the door in. They kicked the door in, triggered the alarm. So now we're, like 10ft away from whoever this is from the Scooby Doo show. That's scary. And my dad's 20ft away down the hall.

As soon as the alarm hit and the door kicked open, I don't know what. This was the fastest these white people had ever moved. All right, we just jumped up from. And me mom, Zach, and Jared turned, and we did the Scooby doo thing, and we were running to the back of the house. Well, my dad hears it from the other end, and he jumps up out of the bed, and he can't find a gun that quick, but he finds a knife.

And on the handle end of the knife, there was supposed to be this little piece covering over the edge of the blade, but it had fallen off. There's this jagged piece of metal, and my dad's running this way. We're running this way. This all happened in, like, just a moment of time. It seemed like forever.

And at the door of the hallway, we crashed everybody together, just like the Scooby doo show. And the edge of that knife grazed my brother Zach, and it cut him. And that was, like, the best part of this story. Not that my brother got hurt, but because the burglar alarm scared off the burglars, and the davises are laying in a pile right there by the door.

And that was. It was the thief in the night idea. We weren't expecting it, and so we got, like, the fright of our lives. It's always good to have a dad who's coming with a knife, though. Amen.

Pretty good. My dad was six 5230 at the time, and it hurt when we ran into it. Therefore, you also be ready. The son of man is coming like a thief in the night at an hour. You do not expect the last one.

In my example of the therefore illustration is more for our text today. It's Galatians six, nine, and ten. And in Galatians six, nine, and ten, the apostle Paul is exhorting the galatian believers that as they're living for God and doing good, which when you do good, by the Bible's terminology, you are being like Jesus, because acts chapter ten, verse 38, says how Jesus of Nazareth went around doing good and healing all those who were oppressed by the devil. And so the apostle Paul says, hey, as you're living out the christian faith and you're doing good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 210, when you do those good works, you're going to get tired.

You're going to get close to burning out.

You're going to go, hey, isn't that enough? Can't I take a break? And the apostle Paul says, when you get to that moment, Galatians six nine, let us not grow weary while doing good. For in due season, we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Look, I got to do children's ministry all over again this Sunday.

I got to go to band rehearsal one more time. Let us not grow weary in doing good, because there's a season that's coming that if you sow it, you get to reap the benefits. And then verse ten is our word. Therefore. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all.

And here's what I want you to see, especially to those who are of the household of faith. The great apostle writes to the church, and he says, look, take all that you got left if you're running out of steam, and you give your best to the household of faith. The NiV says, the family of believers, the bride of Christ, because better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. I'll be honest. When I was a little kid, before I became a Christian, I had a drug problem.

My parents drugged me to church. Ha ha ha. All right. I didn't have a choice because I had christian parents. And when I'm eight, nine, or ten years old, don't tell anybody I said this church was boring for me.

You believe that? Believe. I admitted that they were reading from a bible with Queen Elizabeth, Victorian English. I didn't understand all the words. It was the only day of the week that I had to dress up and wear the clothes that made me feel like a nerd, you know, dress up church clothes.

And. And my friends that came to church, they didn't have. Maybe they didn't have christian parents like I did. They got to talk and pass notes during the sermon. I didn't get to do that, and I didn't like it.

But my dad never let me out of it, because here's what he knew. He knew this one day. One day the Lord was going to quicken my spirit. I was going to be regenerated. I was going to be born again, made alive.

And then I would respond to the gospel in faith and repentance, and I would become a Christian. And when that day happened, everything that I used to hate, now I get to love. And now being in the family of believers, being in the gathering of the saints, man, that's the best time of the week. It's the safe place where Jesus is, and people are being taught to love one another and to love God. And I went from not enjoying church to not being able to get enough of it, because that's what God does when he saves a sinner.

He makes you love what's close to his heart. And what's closer to the heart of God than his bride? The church? Closer to the heart of Jesus. And so here's my outline today.

I'm going to go very quickly with it. There are two confessions for us to make in light of this idea that for you to become a mature disciple of Jesus, part of that is serving the Lord in a ministry on Sundays, virtually every week. Here are the two confessions. Confession number one is, I have something to give away. I want everybody to say that out loud, I have something to give away.

You need to be on a ministry team because you have something to give away. This is what the Bible teaches. And under I have something to give away. Let me give you two specific things you can give away. The first thing is I have worship to give.

One of the things that I have to give away is I have worship to give away to the Lord and to others. Here's what I want to tell you, because we're getting to this first chronicles, chapter 25 text. God has always set aside roles of service for people in his house, for his own glory, in order to show his magnificent holiness. One of the ways that God shows that he's better than all the other false gods is he goes, look what I can do when I transform sinners into believers. He makes you new, and he gives you an incredible ministry in your local church that makes a difference.

Wish you could have seen it after the first service when a word was given for prayer and some people came forward just melting by the Holy Spirit, overcome with emotions, and just the prayer team, just holding them up, hugging them and praying for them, that's ministry. I never could have given them from this stage, but it happened right over there, because God's put the ministry in our hands to give away. I have something to give away. The first thing I give away is worship. In one chronicles 25, King David's life's coming to an end.

He's about to pass the throne to his son Solomon. And King David thought, I'm going to. He looked up one day and he said, why do I live in this fantastic palace? But the ark representing the presence of God dwells in a tent outside. He said, God deserves a better house than me.

I will build God a temple. And God says, your idea is right, but your personnel is wrong. I will have a house built for me, but you won't build it. David, you are a man of warfare and bloodshed. I gave you the assignment to destroy my enemies who wouldn't repent and believe, and to prepare a kingdom from an earthly standpoint.

And so now you're the bloodshed guy. Your son's the peace guy. By the way, Solomon's name means something like prince of peace. So your son, in the peace that your army's brought, he'll build my house. Well, David looks at that and goes, I love your idea, God, my son's only 20 years old.

He doesn't have the contacts around the world. He doesn't have the ability to get the resources. He's young and inexperienced. First chronicles 22 five says, so before I die, I'm going to bring all the stuff into Jerusalem, and I'm stacking it up, and my son can administrate and contract the building. So David makes preparations for the temple being built, and as he makes preparation, he brings the wood.

He has all of the ironworks forged for all of the nails and the spikes and everything that they needed with those kind of resources. He gathers the silver, he gathers the gold. And then there's some chapters where he begins to gather the servants and the leaders. And I'm going to show you three verses about God's singers and musicians. First chronicles 25, six, seven, eight.

And all these were under the direction of their father for the music in the house of the Lord. Did you know that God created music, and he kind of assigned it to himself? So there's this idea in the Bible that there's music in the house of the Lord. It's dedicated and consecrated for it. I told you earlier, it's good that we sing.

And now let me show you what God's praise team looked like. You ready? Now, before I tell you, I grew up in the south, in evangelical churches, and there were exactly two musical instruments in that room. Now, depending on whether you're a Baptist or a Methodist or a Presbyterian, will, tell me what side of the room these two instruments were on. But what were those two instruments?

A piano and an organ. Now, at your church, what was on this side? Piano. Did I hear some organs? Okay, see, I told you it was baptism.

Methodist over here was what, the Oregon? Well, at my church, this was the piano side, and this was the organ side. And, you know, I started reading my Bible, and I couldn't find the piano in the organ. You want to know why? Because they hadn't been invented yet.

Now, they're fantastic instruments, but they weren't in God's praise band. You know what was in God's praise? Bandaid in verse 26. For the music in the house of the Lord with cymbals. We got cymbals.

Right over there in the drum kit. Y'all know that. Cymbals and stringed instruments. Hello. Got some guitars and some basses and all that kind of stuff.

Cymbal, stringed instruments. All right, I'll give you this one. We don't have any harps, right? I don't know any harpists playing in churches. I've only seen a harp in the Opryland Hotel.

But look what these things are for. For the service of the house of God. Now, could God have piped in from heaven the sound of angelic voices singing holy, holy, holy into his temple? I mean, there's nothing too hard for him, but his worship's different, and he's always designed it for people to do it, not for people to watch it being done. So there's this underlined phrase in my notes for the service of the house of God.

And here were the head musicians that God started with in his temple. Asaph Jedathon. And my favorite name now in the Bible, he man. Amen. He man, and the masters of the universe.

I don't know if that's he man or he man or he man, but I'm going with he man just because I think that's awesome. We don't know much about these guys, but Asaph's sons made some psalms that ended up in the. In your book of psalms. But these three musician guys, you know what they did? They trained others to play and sing.

And you can read about how God divided all of their teams to serve in the temple throughout the week. So here's verse seven. So the number of them with their brethren, with their group, who were instructed in the songs of the Lord, all who were skillful, everybody say amen for skillful singers and musicians, right? In the early days of our church, when you're smaller and younger, you attract a different kind of crowd of. And there was this one lady who came up to me after a Sunday service, and maybe in our first facility we were ever in, and she said, pastor, I just want you to know the Lord has spoken to me, and he has spoken that I should sing a song, a specific song, to the church next Sunday.

And I was maybe 25 or 26, but in a stroke of insight, I was like, what am I going to say to this lady? Because I had heard her sing amen. And I know I knew about the. The skillfulness. It's in the Bible.

And as soon as she said, the Lord has told me that I'm to sing a song, I said, that's interesting, because he hasn't told me that yet.

And she didn't come back the next week because I didn't let her sing. Here's the number of them. God started out with tons of help in this department, 288. And they cast lots for their duty because 288 people can't play and sing all the time. They just need to make a schedule.

But look, here's what I want you to see. The small as well as the great, the teacher with the student. And this is a theme that's gonna run throughout the scriptures. That in the work of Goddess, in making disciples, in serving the Lord in his house, you always have the veterans and those who are brand new to it, the trainee and the leader, the teacher and the student. What does that mean?

Well, the meaning is clear. We do not wait to serve the Lord until we're quote unquote, ready. We don't wait to start serving the Lord on a ministry team in the local church until we're quote unquote, mature enough. No, it's the teacher and the student. It's the leader and the trainee.

It's the old timer and the one who's been here for two weeks. We reach maturity and readiness by jumping in and learning and doing it all at once. Some of you been waiting too long to get started in helping the ministry keep going here on Sundays because you've told yourself, I'm not ready. And I'm showing you scripture that says God already understands exactly where you are, and he just wants you to start because there are some things you can't learn until you just do. Does that make sense?

For the first time in a long time, last week, I found myself watching a tennis match. Now, in the eighties, everybody watched Wimbledon. We wanted to see Chris Evert against Martina, never at the lobby. We wanted to see John McEnroe yell at the umpires and Jimmy Connors and Yvonne Lindell. And so all the tennis stars in the eighties were stars because we had three tv channels to watch.

And so whatever was on, that's what we got to do. And I remember watching Wimbledon, and one day I got distracted as a little boy. I was supposed to be watching the tennis players. I got to watching the crowd. Have you ever gotten distracted by watching the crowd at a tennis match?

Do you know what, you know what they do? Here's what it looks like.

And they just do this for 3 hours. They're just. They're watching the ball go over the net, and they don't realize, but they're just slowly shaking their head no, they're not playing they're watching and they're just going, no, no. And look, we have too many church, we have too many churches that the idea is, or too many church members even, that the idea is they treat this like a tennis match. They sit in the stands and they just slowly shake their head no, look, I need you all to do it all for me.

And I'll come and I'll evaluate and judge it, and I'll give your sermon a 7.8 if it's good, or I'll judge the music. Was it too loud or is the building too cold or did it go too long? Or whatever we can find wrong with it. Sometimes we just find ourselves just slowly telling God, no, I'm just not going to get in the game.

But we've just confessed. We have something to give away. We have worship to give away, and we have number two. Well, just in the interest of time, let me go to the second and final confession. I have something to give away.

And here's the second confession we're going to make. I have something to gain. Everybody say, I have something to gain. So you have something to give and you have something to get. I have something to gain.

Ephesians chapter four, verses 1213, verses 1112, 1314 and 15, teaches us about what we have to gain by serving the Lord in the ministry. Ephesians 411 tells us that God has gifted the church with, with gifted leaders, and he calls them apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. He gives you five of them, the fivefold ministry. And these are gifted leaders to teach you how to serve God. And so here's what he says those five fold ministries are to do.

God has given them to the church to equip the saints, that that's you to do the work of the ministry. That's this team ministry we're talking about. Well, what the american church did about 200 years ago when we got over here in the new world is we flipped it and we said, no, no, the gifted leaders, they do the ministry and we receive it and we fund it, but they do it. But biblically, that's off and not true. So if I have something to gain a from the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, what is it?

Two things, and I'm done. The first thing I have to gain is unity with those who know Jesus. That's what the verse says. I have unity with those who know Jesus to gain Ephesians 413, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. One of my favorite things I get to do during the week is I wake up early and I go for about a three mile walk in my neighborhood, and I pray for three families that live on three different streets.

They're my ones that I've said, Lord, let me be the evangelist that wins them to Jesus. And so when I pass by their house every morning, I just kind of. I don't know if they can see me or not, but I just kind of lift my hand toward their house and I say, goddess, would you give this family. And I name their, would you give them a great day today? Would you let them know your love?

Whatever they plan to do today that's under your watch, care and for your pleasure, would you let it be awesome? And, God, would you give me the opportunity to walk up that driveway and with an open heart and maybe an open Bible, show them what it means to meet Jesus and miss your wrath and receive your grace? So I just do that every morning. And one of the guys I was praying for, he's the best neighbor I've ever seen. He just meets all his neighbors that live around him.

He takes some of them to their doctor's appointments. One guy's blind. He drives him around, does stuff. This is a good neighbor. And somebody moved in new in the house next to him about three weeks ago.

And he says, her name is Liz. And so I just filed that away. He said, you're going to love Liz. She's a great lady. She moved in from New Mexico.

So I filed that away. And then I began to see Liz on my morning walks. And a couple of times I noticed that her window was rolled down in her little truck. And I. So as I walked by, I got my earbuds in.

I just turned over, and I said, hey, Liz. And I kept on walking, and that freaked her out. And so then I did it again yesterday. Hey, Liz. And I kept on walking.

And then she saw me this morning, and it was about right. She had just come out of her driveway, and I. And I turned, and she hit the brakes, and she says, all right, how do you know my name? And I said, well, that guy that lives right next to you told me your name, and he's a good friend of mine, and he told me you were somebody I needed to meet. And so then her heart just opened up to me then, and she just began to tell me the whole story.

And I made a new friend this morning because of the unity that this her next door neighbor had built in everyone around him. It was amazing. I knew her name because somebody reached out to her and cared enough. That's what happens on ministry teams in our church. You get up, you get involved in what we're doing, and you're going to meet some people, you're going to know their names, they're going to know yours, and there's going to be this unity around knowing Jesus.

That's what the verse says, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God. And so in your christian maturity, there's some unity around Jesus that God wants you to have. You won't get it until you get involved in the local church ministry. So I have something to gain. I have unity to gain.

And the last thing I have to gain is maturity to speak for Jesus, unity with those who know Jesus, maturity to speak for him. Here's Ephesians 415 and 14 and 15. That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine. I was a child in the eighties, and on Saturday mornings, what was on tv? Couldn't hear you.

Cartoons. Why did companies want kids to watch cartoons? Is because they want them to feel good, just have wholesome. No, they wanted the kids to watch the cartoons so they could see the what? The commercials.

Because if they can get kids to see the commercials when they go to the store with mom and dad, they can just have a meltdown on aisle three and take some of that stuff home. Mainly the cereal, right. Or the toys. And so when you're a kid, you think like this and you're just tossed to and fro by whatever is beautiful that's put before your eyes. And that's what the apostle Paul has in mind when he says that we should no longer be children, that we should grow up tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine, with every one of those commercials, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love.

When you grow up in Jesus, when you grow as a disciple and gain this maturity, your speech becomes absolutely immersed in the love of Jesus so that you can speak hard truths and disarm people so they can hear what they need, because it's spoken in love. And here's what happens, that that person can grow up in all things into him. Who is the head? Jesus Christ.

You have something to give and you have something to gain as you grow in Christ. So you need to, if you belong to our church, you need to be on one of our ministry teams. Well, pastor, if everybody gets on ministry teams and you want us all to be here serving the Lord every week, you'll run out of things for all of us to do. Well, I would love that problem. Amen.

We'll figure that out. I just want you to grow up in the Lord and you do so by serving him. Let's bow and pray today. Father, thank you for biblical truth to believers. And I pray that it would help the church today to think about what we gain, what we give away.

And I pray you'd minister to the saints as we adjourn this service for special prayer in Jesus name. Amen. Now, here's one thing I'm going to do before we leave, before I call the prayer team to the front. I wrote down some things this week that the Lord was kind of burdening me with, that I couldn't get off my mind, that I think are going to be some specific prayers that he wants to answer in this room today in private prayer with our prayer team. And I'm serious when I say these things.

You may think I'm joking on this first one. I'm not. I think the Lord, I know he did it in the first service. I think he'll do it in this one. I think the Lord wants to help someone, or someone's with this issue of profanity.

And I don't mean just everybody who says cuss words. I mean, if this has been a struggle for you since you become a believer and you go, I know that my words help build my testimony for Christ. And before I was a Christian, I just was four letter word this and bad word that. And I thought that when I became a Christian, that would just go away, but it hasn't. And it bothers you if you're struggling with that and you want the Lord to kind of supernaturally take profanity out of your vocabulary and replace it with words that are seasoned with grace, I think God will do that for you if he'll come forward for prayer today.

And I know he'll do this one because I saw him do it in the first service. Another special prayer that I think he wants to answer for you in your life is if you've been battling depression, and it could be clinical depression or it could be a secret depression that you're going through that you're the only one who knows about, but it's coloring everything in your life. If you'll come for prayer today and say, look, I think I need prayer for depression. I think God might supernaturally lift it off of you today. And there's one more thing, and that is, I think there's a word for someone who's addicted to nicotine, and you go, that's cigarettes.

Well, it could be tobacco use, but what I saw was addicted to nicotine, and this has been an issue. You're a smoker, you're a dipper, you're a tobacco chewer or some kind of nicotine addiction, and you want it to go away and you tried other things, and that hasn't worked. I think God will take the sincerity of your heart today and give you a grace gift. And I think that there's someone here with a nicotine addiction that he's going to lift off of you today if you'll come for private prayer and have them pray for you. So profanity, depression, and nicotine addiction are the words I received this week.

I think it might help some of you, and I think it's one of those things where it has to be in here and it has to be today, and you have to step out in faith to do that. All right, prayer team, come forward, if you will.

We had long lines in the first service. I don't know how many we'll have today, but we have people ready and trained and want to pray for you while they're coming. You don't have to be a member of our church. We will pray for anyone and everyone, and they will keep confidence. What we're going to pray with you about, we want to pray for people because God hears our prayers.

Let's see one more team. Come on this side. There's more room. Go ahead. These two ladies right here.

Just come on over there. All right, let's stand together and be dismissed in prayer. Father, thank you for the gathering of the saints. And I pray that you'll give every believer and every unbeliever the blessings you want from the prayers of the saints today. And God, let us be filled with the Holy Spirit as we walk this week for the glory of Jesus.

And a faith filled church said, amen. You are dismissed.