WELCOME
Good morning First Baptist. We welcome you to worship this morning. Be sure to remember your brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the week as you pray for them, and as the Holy Spirit brings their faces to your mind. Be sure to also connect with them in the ways that are possible. And if you have any questions or would like to talk to someone, please don’t hesitate to contact the church through the church telephone and leave a message. (519-733-4144)
Songs
Call to Worship
Good morning Church, how are you?
How many times this week have you said I’m fine, yeah, I’m fine oh I’m fine, hey I’m fine… but you know you’re really not…
IF that’s you folks, you’ve come to the right place this morning!
Songs
Prayer
Prayer of Confession & Assurance
Lord, we need a miracle today.
Like Jesus changing water into wine
at the wedding feast in Cana,
we need a miracle today.
Lord, we are tired of the hurts of this world.
We are discouraged in the face of pandemics and restrictions.
We need a miracle today, Lord.
Your steadfast love, like a mighty mountain, will not be moved.
Your gifts, as many as the mighty winds, cannot be counted.
Your glory, like a mighty torch, will not be put out.
And yet we doubt – we let hopelessness stream in.
Lord, forgive us.
Forgive us when we show how shallow our faith is.
Help us to really understand the miraculous ways in which you have already worked in our lives and will continue to work as we journey in faith. Bring to us the Light of Joy, and let it flood through our whole beings, that we may be transformed into people of joyful service and faith.
In Jesus’ Name, we pray. AMEN.
Words of Assurance
Church, he knows, he knows your struggle, he doesn’t love you any less b/c of doubt…
He sees you,
His plan was made for you,
Truly, be at peace with that and live in hope even in these difficult days. AMEN.
Love Has A Name
How Deep Is Your Love
Today's Message: Pastors Marlee and Dave Page
Over these first three weeks of the year, we have been talking about Love – Love revolving around three different themes:
Love takes a posture of seeking – we are to be seeking and we need to acknowledge and then take great comfort in the fact that through His love for us, God is seeking us;
Love needs to be actionable, sincere – As the Church, we are called to show love to others as a part of our witness, as a key part of our calling to show Jesus to our community.
Well, this morning, we want to finish up this series with primarily a ‘how to’ message – how do we develop a posture of seeking, both as individuals and as the Church and the, how do we best answer the call of spreading the Gospel in this awkward time in our lives.
The answer to those and many other issues we face is one word – PRAYER
Prayer is one of the most important gifts that God gives to us in our pursuit to answer the commands Jesus gave to us – loving God and loving each other. It may sound somewhat cliche or even anticlimactic to say that prayer is the primary vehicle we can use but it’s true. It’s absolutely true and critically important that we understand this together.
We get asked this question a lot – How do I talk to God – How do I pray – “what should I say when I pray Pastor”? That’s a really good question and it’s one that a lot of people are asking, especially these days. Look at some stats that we found:
An economist at the University of Copenhagen, who released a report on her findings, titled: “In Crisis, We Pray: Religiosity and the COVID-19 Pandemic. “ Analyzing the data from searches across 75 different nations, they found that Google searches on prayer “skyrocketed during the month of March 2020,” which coincides with the period of time when COVID-19 began to rapidly proliferate across the globe.” Indeed, the academic discovered an extraordinary numerical trend: the intensity for prayer continued to double for every 80,000 new registered cases of COVID-19.
In March 2020, the share of Google searches for prayer surged to the highest level ever recorded, surpassing all other major events that otherwise call for prayer, such as Christmas, Easter, and Ramadan.
Now think about the events of the Pandemic over the past 24 months. The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The level of prayer search shares in March 2020 was more than 50% higher than the average during February 2020. For comparison, the surge in Google searches for prayer was 1.3 times larger than the rise in searches for takeout meals and amounted to 12% of the rise in Netflix searches or 26% the fall in searches for flights, which all saw massive changes globally, since most countries were in lock down and air traffic was shut down.
The Barna Group has tracked the decline of religious affiliation and church attendance over the decades—but prayer has comparatively remained steady and is practiced by the majority of North American adults. In a recent survey, about two-thirds (64%) say that they pray weekly or more often, and just 17 percent never pray at all. This trend is cross-religious: Three-quarters of those who self-identify as Christians (76%), as well as 71 percent who identify with other religions, keep up a weekly prayer habit. What’s more, one-fifth of those who indicate no faith at all (22%) also says they pray with this frequency; that’s a notable proportion of atheists, agnostics and “nones” who employ this spiritual discipline weekly.
The majority of people, in our context, rely on prayer in some manner. Yet we hear this question all the time. How Do I talk to God? The answer is, very simply. We talk to God with Love, and respect, but we always need to talk to God with our hearts, intimately. You see, what matters to God, are not the size and complexity of the words you use, what matters to God, is not the length of your prayer. What matters to God, is do you love Him? Are you being honest with Him? Are you open and willing to have conversation – yes conversation, which means we incorporate listening also.
In his letter to the Church in Phillipi, the Apostle Paul talks extensively about prayer and about praying for these people at the very beginning of his letter to them. Paul loved these people very, very much, but as he gets into the letter more extensively, he shares 2 passages that I think are quite relevant to the time we find ourselves in today.
Scripture Reading:
Philippians 1:9-11
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
Philippians 4:6-7
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
One of the greatest gifts we have as Christians is the power of prayer. Prayer is a most important conduit for us to respond to the commands we are given to love God and love each other. So, let’s look a little more closely at what Paul is saying here, about love and prayer because he’s talking about both.
Paul opens with a statement that is stunning in itself:
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more (Philippians 1:9a).
Stunning because “love” here has no object. He doesn’t say “that your love for God may abound more and more,” nor does he say, “that your love for one another may abound more and more.” This is because Paul prayed that love would overflow up to God and out to each other in limitless abundance. Paul, always rooted in the Old Testament, knew that the two tables of the Ten Commandments were structured in just this way. The first four command love for God, and the second six command love for others. Vertical love first, horizontal love second. As such, Paul prayed that the Philippians’ love would overflow all dimensions in an opulent, ongoing, limitless love—a constant fountain of love up to God and a flood of love out to others.
Prayer for Knowledge and Insight (Philippians 1:9b)
At the same time, we know that Paul was not praying for a shapeless, uninformed overflow of love because the whole of verse 9 reads,
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight” (Philippians 1:9)
Today, our existential, postmodern culture is very sentimental about love. We have heard from the sixties on, “All you need is love,” as if an outward focused nature of goodwill is the answer to life. A modern proverb says, “Love is blind,” suggesting that blissful ignorance is part and parcel of love. The Bee Gees themselves said:
I believe in you
You know the door to my very soul
You’re the light in my deepest, darkest hour
You’re my savior when I fall
And you may not think I care for you
When you know down inside that I really do
And it’s me you need to show
While the Gibb brothers certainly weren’t writing about God here, the fact remains that the more we know of God, the more reason we will have to love Him.
The word that Paul uses here to urge that our overflow of love be “with knowledge” (epignosis) is used by Paul in all fifteen occurrences in his letters to mean the knowledge of God and of Christ. It is a personal knowledge. And Paul was super-passionate with those he was writing to and encouraging. Remember the Church in Philipi was special to Paul, he held a special place in his heart for them. He yearned for them to increase in this knowledge. In fact, all four of the “prison epistles” pray for this at the end of his introductions.
Ephesians 1:17:
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”Philippians 1:9:
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight”Colossians 1:9, 10:
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.”Philemon 6:
“I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ.”
We must understand that Christian love is never a matter of sentimentality. Christian love comes from a work of the Holy Spirit bringing the revelation of Christ through prayer and the Word of God. And the more you are in the Word, the more you are praying – sharing your heart and listening to the Father – the more your knowledge of God and Christ will increase, and the more your love will overflow.
Remember this: a casual love for God is a sure sign of a casual knowledge of God.
This is why we must give priority to specific times of prayer with our hearts open to God. This is why we must daily open the Scriptures for ourselves and teach them to our children. This is why we must desire to work towards growing our relationship with Jesus. The more you know of Him, the more your love will rush up to Him and out to the world! This is why Paul prayed that their “love would abound more and more, with knowledge.”
There is, of course, another important word here because “knowledge” is coupled with “depth of insight.” This Greek word appears only here in the New Testament, but it is used twenty-two times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament book of Proverbs where it means practical insight, the insight that informs conduct—practical living.
This is a tremendous example for us to take in!! Paul’s prayer for his beloved church—a limitless overflow of love to God and others, coupled with a growing knowledge of Christ and God (both concurrently expanding the other), and all of this producing practical insight for living. Again, overflowing love coupled to a growing personal knowledge of God leads to practical insight for common everyday living. This is what we all so desperately long for as we seek to live out our lives as Jesus followers and as His church.
We said at the outset of the message that we wanted this conclusion to the series to be very practical – Paul gets very practical and very helpful for us in vs. 10 – But there is more as Paul’s line of prayer thought extends to a further result—
“so that you may be able to discern what is best” (Philippians 1:9b).
The idea here is intensely practical: it is to examine or test what is before us so as to determine what is excellent or the best. Here it has to do with our lives as Christians. What Paul is describing is a Spirit-led ability to discern that which God has already marked off as essential for us in following Jesus. This ability includes not only distinguishing right from wrong but also the best from second best. We access this ability through prayer.
Life for everyone, and especially believers, is a series of choices. What we choose day to day will shape the course of our lives. It is the little choices that determine our spiritual vibrancy because they in turn govern bigger choices. Most of us have little trouble distinguishing the big issues. We know that theft and murder are wrong, and that generosity and justice are right. But in the grey areas, choices involve a range of options that are not so clearly moral or clear-cut. It is here that we find difficulty in discerning the best. Social media and culturally relevant advertising confuse the lives of so many of us because in our weakness, we don’t always have the wherewithal to discern what is best.
To see falsely is worse than blindness. A person who is so blind that they cannot distinguish the ditch from the road still may be able to feel which is which. But if they see the ditch as the road and the road as the ditch, they are in big trouble. And many today are in big trouble. Just look around you.
However, it doesn’t have to be that way for you! If God’s children overflow with love to God and others, along with a growing personal knowledge of God and Christ, coupled with practical insight, we will be able to discern and choose what is really the best—the best over the second best—the best over the good—the best in knowledge of God—the best in priorities—the best in habits—the best in pleasures—the best in pursuits—the best course of action for ourselves and for our families.
What a beautiful prayer Paul prays for this church that he loved so much! For one another be that we will be able to discern what God has marked off as best. And that is what Paul prays for.
Now, later on this letter Paul gives us some additional, very practical advice about how and what to pray. In Philippians 4, Verses 4–7 we see four specific reprimands of a sort (“rejoice,” “let your gentleness be evident,” “do not be anxious,” and “present your requests to God”), which at first seem to have little to do with one another. However, a closer look at the meaning of the terms standing behind these “reprimands”, reveals a common background for them all.
For example, the term “gentleness” (epieikes) was often used of an attitude of kindness where the normal or expected response was retaliation. The words “be anxious” (merimnao) can refer to being overly concerned about anything, but it is often used in contexts where persecution is the issue. All of this points to the context of persecution as the background for Paul’s coaching here. The Philippians were suffering under opposition from their pagan neighbours, and so Paul is asking the Philippians to maintain an attitude of joy “in the Lord” at all times, urging them to act toward their persecutors in a Christlike manor of gentle nonretaliation, and telling them not to be anxious about anything.
If the Philippians follow Paul’s advice - if we follow Paul’s advice, he says, then “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” will stand like an army on watch over their hearts and minds.
Now, you might be asking, “But what is the “peace of God”?
Is it an overwhelming sense of inner contentment?
Is it the serenity that characterizes God himself, who is never anxious?
Is it the peace that results from God’s work in the world through Jesus?
Since the peace mentioned here stands opposite to the anxiety mentioned in verse 6, it is probably an inner sense of contentment supplied by God. It transcends all understanding because the anticipated response to the persecution the Philippians were experiencing is anxiety, but just as throughout this letter Paul expects Christian behavior to break the bonds of normal behavior, so here God supplies an attitude in the face of adversity that does not fit the normal categories.
Church, in both of these examples, Paul prays for and encourages us to use the gift of prayer to address the challenges they and we are facing every day.
Some of you might be thinking, “Pastor, you haven’t answered the question, “How Do I Pray?” Here are two tremendously important parts of a deepening posture of prayer.
First of all be quiet and still,
BE STILL
I like to call this the shut up and listen principle.
I once read an account of a reporter’s interview with Mother Teresa. The reporter asked her, “When you pray, what do you say to God?” Mother Teresa replied, “Sometimes I don’t say anything I just listen.”
Psalm 37:7 emphasizes this point as well.
“7 Be still in the presence of the Lord,
and wait patiently for him to act.
Don’t worry about evil people who prosper
or fret about their wicked schemes.”
Remember also what Jesus Himself said:
Matthew 6:6,
“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father.”
Be still and allow the time and space to truly be with God.
We must also consider our relationships with those around us.
BE FORGIVING
Not only must our relationship with God be in good standing, but also with your brothers and sisters. The following scriptures speak to this issue.
Mark 11:25
“But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too.”
If we are harbouring an unforgiving heart, this causes a barrier between God and us, and that’s not a good foundation for an intimate and loving prayer life – is it??
How Do I talk to God? Paul gives us the perfect examples here. Not the exact words to recite necessarily, but the framework for how to talk to God. That is how you should pray to or talk with God. All day, every day, about everything.
Friends, I promise you, there is not anything that God loves more than talking with His children each and every day. Since we, you and I, are His adopted children if we have accepted Jesus as our personal Saviour, God wants to talk with you and listen to you each day. He loves you very, very much. That is why He is always happy to talk with you.
Prayer
Lord, the daylight hours are becoming longer for us. Evening comes a little later, and the dawn is earlier, but the darkness in our hearts somehow persists. We continue to look at the miraculous ways You work in our lives as mere stories or happenstance. How foolish we are! From the beginning of all that is, You have poured Your love and light into this world and into our lives. You have offered us countless blessings and opportunities through the gift of prayer, some of which we have followed, and others that we have ignored. You have forgiven and healed our spirits. Thank you, Lord - by Your Holy Spirit we pray that each who have heard Your words this morning can meet You in the time you want to spend with them – Come Holy Spirit. We continue to bring before You the names and situations of people that are in direst need. We ask for Your healing mercies and yet we wonder if You really are with us. Turn our moaning and crying into songs of praise and hope. Give us spirits of trust and rejoicing, that we may truly be Your people all of our days. Prepare us for joyful service in Your world; for we ask this in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
Song
Note for next week – New series, focusing on Paul’s letter to the Church in Ephesus – Although Paul wrote this letter to the church in Ephesus while he was in jail, it is his most optimistic and encouraging correspondence to the young churches. He tells of the advantages a believer has in Christ and instructs believers on how to “live a life of love.”
Benediction
Look around you, Church. God’s joy is poured out for you so that you might be a blessing to others. God will continually walk and work with you, Make Prayer a consistent part of your life and you will find His Spirit relieving your burdens and giving you strength.
Go into God’s world, rejoicing! AMEN.