A Picture of Paul as Shepherd

Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist most known for works like Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was also a famous poet and essayist. Stevenson faced significant handicaps throughout his life, but he possessed a brilliant mind. In addition to his writing, he was a scholar and a lawyer. In one sentence, he described the importance of gratitude as an introduction to this day, and his words are incredibly succinct and specific: “The man who has forgotten to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.”

It is fitting that we begin our study on this anniversary Sunday in the warmest and most affectionate book of the Bible, the book of Philippians. Please turn to this intimate New Testament epistle in your Bibles, and in a few moments, we will read from it. Paul, the apostle, prophet, and writer for God, never allowed the spirit of thanklessness that Stevenson described to overcome or become a part of his life.

The Philippian church stood alone among all the churches that Paul had ministered to or founded in making gracious material provision for the needs of their mentor and founder, the Apostle Paul. The resulting letter between Paul and this church at Philippi is a document of Christian joy. It is a joy that surrounds and surmounts all circumstances, grows and defeats discouragement and despair, and is as abundant as a bubbling fountain of life.

This joy is not a kind of happy Christian bouncy, manipulative puppet-on-the-string attitude that is prevalent in many contemporary circles. It is imperative to understand the connection between joy and gratitude and how noticeable the lack of either of these is. Many times, when people speak to me about a lack of joy in their life, I immediately ask them or require them in a counseling situation to begin documenting the sources of gratitude in their life. They should not compare themselves with someone else but list what God, in his mercy, has provided for them. The moment gratitude is awakened, joy comes again—not the frivolous mental attitude of some kind of happy-because-I-have-everything, but joy like a deep fountain of life.

Early this morning, doorbells were rung in Sacramento, Palm Springs, Fremont, Roseville, and Hawaii. A delivery person placed a lovely arrangement of flowers and a card that read “We remember, we love you, we care” into the hands of five individuals who answered that call. The card was signed by Pastor Rick Howard and the people of Peninsula Christian Center on the occasion of their 51st anniversary.

Those homes belonged to Bill and Mary Savage in Sacramento, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Radley in Fremont, Elizabeth Gomes in Roseville, Wesley and Arlene Spielberg in Palm Springs, and Eat An Erscratch in Hawaii. We should choose to remember with gratitude the people who have been involved in our foundations, just as the Philippians did.

Children often express their parents’ manners, customs, and courtesies, showing how they were brought up. Similarly, a church is inevitably productive of the signs of the attitudes, lives, and motives of those who have led and fostered it. The church at Philippi was prosperous, even though it was only 11 years old by the time Paul wrote his epistle. It was large enough to require a staff of Christian ministers and overseers.

Although the church had some deep problems when Paul wrote his letter, universally, all commentators on the book of Philippians call it an Epistle of Joy. This is a statement of the Holy Spirit. Joy is not a frivolous attachment to good times. In fact, the most succinct and pure fragrance of joy generally comes from the most difficult experiences of our lives.

Philippians is more peaceful than Galatians, more personal and affectionate than Colossians, less controversial than Thessalonians, more deliberate and symmetrical than Timothy, and larger in its application than Philemon. It is a comprehensive, pregnant statement about a love experience that can exist in ministry between people who understand gratitude. Out of that fountain, joy pours forth in their experience. Paul had visited this church twice after it was founded, and they had sent to him three times in his need. Now, for the fourth time, while he was in prison, they sent a message of love and gratitude.

They were materially conveying their relationship to him, and the importance of foundations is obvious. I have said that the building of any true church must be on the foundations of the apostles and prophets. The manner in which the foundation is laid will be shown years later. In the experience of many bodies, even large and so-called prosperous or successful bodies, they are not true churches, but only fellowships, for they have never been adequately founded.

The founding principles of the church at Philippi were three simple principles that we discover in Acts 16. The first is the unquestioned and immediate obedience of the servant. We have preached from this passage before, and you know that Paul and the others were going on a mission. They intended to do one thing, but the Holy Spirit shut the door and focused them towards another. The Spirit used physical illness and disagreement among those in the apostolic community. It was a difficult time, but the Holy Spirit was focusing them towards a specific moment in church history. The unquestioning and immediate obedience of the Apostle became a foundation for this church.

Obedience is such an incredibly important understanding of the Christian experience, and once they had been obedient, immediately the Holy Spirit operated. The first three converts, the charter members of the church at Philippi, were first a very wealthy lady by the name of Lydia, a businesswoman, who the Holy Spirit opened her heart as the word was shared, and in a prayer meeting she received the Lord. The second was the demon-possessed slave girl over whom the Spirit had to wrestle, and in a dramatic confrontation with Satan, she became a believer. The third was that Roman bureaucrat, the Philippian jailer, who on the point of suicide, in the earthquake of an event freeing the captives, came to know Christ.

Whenever servants are obedient, the Spirit will operate. But the third and obvious foundational truth of Acts 16 concerning this church at Philippi is that the minute there is an obedient servant and an operating Spirit, there will be a society opposing. Too often in our culture, we think society should stand back and applaud the church when it does something. However, whenever there is obedience and the operation of the Spirit, the godless secular society will stand in opposition. Some Christians get scared away the first moment secular society runs up a flag and says, “We don’t like you, and we don’t like what you’re doing.” We need a little more steel in our back.

One of the ways it will come, I’m sure, will be this comfortable American church coming to understand what it is to be a society identified within and for Jesus Christ and against the principles of this secular and humanistic society. So the foundations of this church are clear. They were well laid in a servant spirit of immediate obedience to the purpose of God.

Now, will you adjourn with me to Philippians 1 and let us quickly read through the passage, the first 11 verses of this passage. Paul and Timothy are the bond slaves, not a servant who chooses to do what he wants, but one who is irrevocably committed to the will of the master. They are the slaves of Jesus Christ to the saints of Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi, with his bishops and deacons.

Interestingly enough, bishops and deacons here don’t speak in any way about a particular title of some rare or unusually highly exalted group of clergy. Bishop Episcopals in Greek simply means one who has given the watching and tending over the body.

In these first verses, we have Paul introducing himself, his object, or the object to whom he writes and speaking of the order in the church. “Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” How precious was that phrase? “Lord Jesus Christ.” Polycarp died because he would not reverse the order of those words. His own student had gone first to those inquisitors who said, “If you will simply say, ‘Lord Caesar,’ Caesar is Kuri, you’ll be saved.” The young student fearfully said, “Caesar is Lord,” and was spared. Polycarp came and would not recant that only one could be given the position of Lord, and that was Jesus Christ. And for that, he died at the stake. “Lord Jesus Christ” is not a little theological statement. It is a life commitment.

“I thank God upon every remembrance of you, in every prayer of mine for you, making request with joy for your fellowship in the gospel until the first, until now. Being confident of this thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will perform it under the day of Jesus. That’s the moment to which we all head very quickly—the day of Jesus Christ. Even as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers of my grace. For God is my record, how greatly I long after you in the bowels of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment. That ye may approve things that are excellent, that ye may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.”

This man had an obsession: Jesus Christ. They are in Jesus Christ. The works are in Jesus Christ, the glory is to Jesus Christ. The commitment of life is to Christ Jesus – an obvious obsession, just glancing through the verses of the Apostle Paul. I would like to share this morning that these verses speak to me about a pastor’s prayer for his people.

This epistle was written about 30 years after the death of Christ and 11 years after the church was founded. It was written from a moment of intense and terrible problems in the life of the Apostle Paul. He was in prison – two years in Caesarea of Philippi and now two years in Rome, in that embarrassing kind of imprisonment at which a Roman soldier was chained to each of his arms for 24 hours of a day, avoiding all privacy.

And in that particular experience, in these hard and difficult circumstances that Paul was himself in, he writes a message that has to do with joy. I’m often amused at the Holy Spirit’s timing. In AD 63, when these words were penned, there were three men in Rome: Nero, that embodiment of all willful and arbitrary; Seneca, whose name we so frequently see that a droit and suave, worldly wise philosopher; and the Apostle Paul – three men focused into one moment concerning destiny, both in their lives and in their world. Bishop Taylor Smith said, “The Christian life is meant to be a life of continual rejoicing.”

And it is from that background and with that spirit that the Apostle Paul writes. Notice here in these hard trying moments of his life, because of his love – and these first verses just overflow with love and affection – because of his love for these people, he omits the title of Apostle, which he normally uses, and comes right to the matter. He’s a friend, he’s a bond slave of. My young students at Bethany seem oftentimes to presume that somehow, when one receives the position and appointment of a minister, great authority will suddenly descend upon you as a mantle from heaven, and you will be able to stand with authority and say, “I’m the pastor, and I declare to you this is the way it will be.”

That’s also the way a lot of husbands think authority happens in a marriage, and I’ve seen a lot of men badly hurt because of it. Authority is given, it is not arbitrary. And when in the relationship of a life of consistency and mutual love and care, authority is the natural response, and Paul can say, “a bond slave of Christ writing to you. I don’t need to wave a banner about my position. I just want to share my spirit.” And he writes to a group of people he addresses as saints.

It’s always been interesting to me. One group of people thinks you can only be canonized as saints – basically, you have to die to get there. And by their definition, probably dead people are the only ones who could merit it.

Another group of people think you are a saint because somehow you’ve been cleansed to such purity and perfection that such a title could be. But I like what is simply said in the New Testament. Sainthood isn’t canonization or cleansing. Sainthood simply means that you have been claimed by God. It is an act of God’s Holy Spirit in separating you unto yourself.

Every time you say to people, “You are saints,” I always see wives looking out of the corner of their eyes at their husbands and vice versa. We sit beside flesh and blood people and say, “Basically, him or her.” Again, our attitude is based on a concept of cleansing or perfection and not understanding that sainthood biblically means God has claimed you.

You are unique in position unto him. It has nothing to do with the stage of spiritual development that these Christians had reached or not reached. They belonged to Jesus Christ. They were possessed of his life. They were separated to him. They were claimed by God’s name, and they were saved.

Perhaps it’s on that basis that Paul is able to share to such a degree as he does. His greeting is so standard, “Grace and peace.” Grace was the watchword of the Apostle Paul. It rolled like honey off of his tongue. He knew grace to be that choice word that protected against legalism and religiosity. And he was persuaded that this church, this experience in God, was only because of unmerited favor and undeserved mercy, and that that was true in him as the chiefest of sinners who had held the robes while Stephen was stoned, as it was true with these Philippians, the demon possessed slave girl, and the Roman bureaucrat, not excluded. “Grace and peace” in the Hebrew “shalom” or in Arabic, “salaam,” means not the absence of difficulty, not the cessation of problems, but it refers to the one whose troubled, restless heart had sought in higher education and religious fanaticism and external legalism and never found peace, who had found it in Jesus Christ. This searcher for peace could write about a peace that was not some kind of tranquility, some kind of meditated device, but a peace like a fountain that flowed out of the worst and hardest of experiences.

And Paul wrote about grace and peace. He must have been thinking about Lydia and the demon possessed slave girl and the Roman bureaucrat, all of whom were representatives to such a degree. Oh lady, if peace to you is some place where you’re hoping to get in, where everything is together, and there’s a sense of tranquility that wafts like an organ at a funeral across the details of your life, let me tell you, it doesn’t work.

In fact, probably this poem speaks best about the paradoxical kind of peace that God gives of any I’ve ever read. It’s by W. A. They cast their nets in Galilee just off the hills of Brown. Such happy, simple fisherfolk before the Lord came down. Young John, who trimmed the flapping sail, homeless in Patmos, died. Peter, who hauled the teeming net head down, was crucified. The peace of God. It is no peace but strife closed in the sod, yet brothers pray for it. But one thing, the marvelous peace of God. It isn’t. Paul isn’t saying to them, “I want to see you in tranquility.” He’s writing from the most imminent trials in his own life to a people who are experiencing trials and division in their church.

But he’s saying there’s a quality of life experience. It is the peace of God. He writes about a relationship to them. You want an outline for the next verses? You might see here the joy of recollection in verse three, and the joy of intercession in verse four, and the joy of participation in verse five, and the joy of anticipation in verse six.

And now, having satisfied my homiletical duty, I’ll talk to you from these verses. When you see a boxcar on a railroad, you immediately know it doesn’t belong alone because there are two sets of couplers on the front and back. One coupler has to be attached to a power source for the car can go nowhere alone, and the second coupler in the back speaks that it is not to go alone, but it is to bring someone else or something else in that case with it. God has made man with an imperative for fellowship, not only with himself but with others. And Paul speaks in these verses of the warmest kinds of relationship. Look in verse three, speaking of the past, “I thank God for every remembrance of you.” And in verse four, he speaks of the present action of that: “I am in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy.” That’s relationship.

I know tons of people who think that somehow relationship is an automatic thing. They go to church doing God a favor at the 11 o’clock service on Sunday and expect to be dropped in the middle of this great, wonderful Christian fellowship. That isn’t the way it works. Paul says in verse five, “Here is the reason why have we related this.” It’s because of a continuing constant coin in the gospel. The word is your fellowship in the gospel. From the first day until now, it really means partnership, working together, fellow labor. I’m often told by people, “Well, I went there two months, and I didn’t get to know anybody. Nobody was especially nice to me, and I didn’t experience any of this Christian Love, lady.”

You’ll never experience it until you get in a yoke and pull together with someone else. This isn’t a drug, it isn’t a magic wand that says, “What wonderful fellowship we have. Let’s all stand up and tell how wonderful our fellowship is.” It comes out of working and sharing the load, and in that process, develops a relationship that nothing, nothing can change.

Paul is saying in these first verses that distance, pain, or misunderstanding could not change this relationship you see in this very church that he loved so much and for which he had given so much. Now that he was in prison, men had come into this church and were trying to distort the character of Paul within this church. And yet Paul was testifying that when a relationship was correct and beautiful, when the relationship was forged on this kind of anvil by the Holy Spirit, nothing could damn that relationship. I know tens of thousands of those I teach, those I pastor, and those I speak to in conferences, but it’s a rare, beautiful, but rare thing when this kind of fellowship is forged and it’s forged together in the anvil of participation, fellow labor, and.

Now Paul has a wonderful faith for them concerning their prospect. This is a section of Philippians one we all like, especially verse six: “He which has begun the good work in you shall perform it under the day of Jesus Christ.” That’s one of the proof texts Christians memorized very early, and it’s a good text. It says that God having begun something good in your life, it will be performed. And you and I need to know that if there’s something good in our life, we had nothing to do with it at all. That which is good and has been started by God, we had better keep our cotton-picking hands off because what we try to finish that he started will be a mess.

Can you imagine Phil Saint beginning a lovely oil painting and leaving it unfinished for me to walk in and do the rest? The results would be so bad. Although, I don’t know, we may put it up in a modern art studio somewhere and get rave notices, but as far as it’s saying much, it would not. The work which he has begun, he must perform.

But I want you to notice something. The confidence that Paul has, that this relationship will be continued and perfected, has a basis. It isn’t off the wall. Just again, we think of these nice little wands, you know, just God wants every Christian, and that’s all right, honey. God’s gonna finish what he started.

Look what it says in verse seven. He said, “I can have this confidence because you are my life and in my heart. You share my bonds, you share my defense of the gospel. Your life confirms the effect of the gospel. You are partakers with me together of grace, and on the basis of this, I can long after you and the bows and compassions of Jesus Christ.”

It isn’t incidental that he has that prospect and hope. You ask me about some Christians, what my prospect for them would be. I would cover my bets. You ask me for others, and I would say incredibly, observably, and definably, I have real hope for them. I see in them the defense of the gospel. I see in them the continuation of the things that God has ordained.

What I’m saying to you is that God’s finishing what he’s begun does have a cooperative element in which I bring to him cooperation with His. And in that combination, God’s able to do His work. Now, the real heart of the message in the heart of this passage is Paul’s prayer. It’s a prayer that Paul offers for these people he loves.

In a sense, we are eavesdroppers. It’s a good prayer. It’s a lovely prayer. It has a lot to say to you and to me. But it’s a prayer that has to be applied by people who have the relationship. We are such an instantaneous people. We want our sex instantaneously by pornographic films or magazines, or by buying and paying for some level, or by achieving it in some kind of a one-night stand and some level of satisfaction.

We want all of our life to be isolated from continuing commitment. We want it easy and cheap and instant, and no holds barred and no commitments. We say, “You go your way, and I’ll go mine. And if perhaps we meet and we happen to offer something to each other, that’s really cool.” We say the point is the prayer.

The guts of this passage come out of the context that I’ve laid for you, and I’ve laid that context so that you understand. It takes that to pray for higher growth. And there are several facets to it, and I would like you to just take that Bible of yours for a few moments and look at it phrase by phrase, maybe take a pencil and mark the facets of this prayer down, because we want to pray it in this morning for us personally first.

Paul says, “I pray that your love may abound yet more and more.” Now, this is not erotic love nor social love. It’s agape; it’s divine love. It isn’t a natural or material growth. It is a divine gift of God. And he says, “I pray for a profusion of that love.” This is the greatest gift that Paul could give to them. It is the most necessary item in a pastor’s prayer because you see, the actual translation is “above all, I pray for your love towards one another to abound.” That’s what he’s praying for.

The word “abound” is interesting here. It means no meager or shrunken thing. In fact, the Greek word means “a running.” And the Latin source of our English word “abound” actually means, if you were to translate it literally, “wave upon wave.” Paul says, “I pray for you to have a love towards one another that just is like waves. It’s like crescendos. It’s like cascades.” In fact, one translator translates it: “My prayer for you is that your love for one another will never be doled out in parsimonious pinches, but it will tumble forth like some magnificent cascade.” Is that the way your love for brethren pours forth? A profusion of that love.

Jesus based the whole belief in his ministry upon the unity and love of the church. He said, “Father, that’s going to be where the rubber hits the road. If the church has that kind of love one towards another.” But notice, it is a love according to verse nine that is to be in all knowledge and wise judgment. Bishop Molay translates this: “It is to be a spiritual needed. It is to be a spiritual knowledge with needed discernment so that you may test things which differ.”

Let me tell you something, my friend: love without light is like a prairie fire burning destructively through a forest, but light without love is like the frigidity of an iceberg. The balance God asks for is a love cascading, pouring among brothers, but with discernment and insight. People in our culture say, “If you love me, take me the way I am. This is the way it is, baby. This is all you’re getting.” And Christians who say within the fellowship, “Well, you couldn’t love me or you wouldn’t be judging me. You wouldn’t be disciplining me. You wouldn’t be saying this to me if you loved me.” My friend, biblical love dare not allow an experience without light to be introduced. Biblical love is based on discernment and wise insight. It’s a cascading profusion of that. It’s based on light.

Secondly, he said in verse 10, as his second concern in his prayer to God, “I pray that you will approve things which are excellent, that you might have a perception which guides your ministry.” Literally, here in the Greek it says, “I pray that you will know things which differ by their superiority, but you’ll be able to possess a perception to determine priority.” That prayer, that portion of the prayer, is the hardest for me as a pastor.

The greatest grief, the most devastating grief in my life, is to see people live below their privileges. It’s the grief of knowing that somehow spiritual people are unable to perceive priorities and to show things which differ from other things by being superior to those slaves, to see the body of Christ messing around on the lowest level.

As one minister said, the hardest thing in his life was, number one, to hear what Christians talk about or complain about. And secondly, to see what Christians are willing to live with without complaining, not seeing priorities. Thirdly, in verse 10, the latter portion, he prays that they may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ.

Sincere is the Greek “without wax,” “sine cera.” The Latin “ex luce,” means “pure judged in the sunlight,” all defects or defects manifested. The test of this kind of sincerity is that a person is willing to let light shine through them and determine the true character of their principles and motives. I pray that you may be sincere.

Paul says, “pure judged, discern.” Not covert and hiding and protective and rationalizing, but bringing your life to the sun and letting it be judged, and with courage standing there in the intensity of that moment. Charles Wesley had a prayer. I very seldom quote this prayer because people always take it and run off to their own little interpretations. I just trust that some of you will receive it in the spirit that Paul wrote to this church, that they be pure and without offense. Wesley wrote, “I want the witness, Lord, that all I do is right according to thy will and word well pleasing in thy sight. I ask no higher state indulge me in, but soon or later then translate me to eternal bliss.”

“I want this witness, Lord, that all I do is right according to thy word and will, well pleasing in thy sight.” This “without offense” doesn’t speak about achievement. It speaks about intention. The young woman who is preparing for her loved one who is going to come and take her on a date, stands before the mirror for hours, determined that every hair must be in place, that every freckle and spot and blemish is covered, that every wrinkle is out of the dress, that everything is perfect. And after standing there for hours, she descends the stairway to meet the anxious young man convinced that it’s that way.

Anyone can take a casual look and know that every wrinkle isn’t out of her dress and every blemish isn’t covered, and every hair isn’t just in place, but it is that intention, motive of intention, that says in Wesley’s words, “I want the witness, God, that all I do is right without offense.” Now, notice this, please. Not only are they to be judged in the sunlight, but they are to be without offense. If I were not a pastor, I would say that’s mistranslated. It ought to be “not giving offense.”

If you’re speaking about Christians being pure and judged in the sunlight, what you want to say to balance that is that they don’t cause anyone else to stumble. But that isn’t what the word says. It says they are not offended themselves, they’re not stumbled. And believe me, as a pastor, I know why Paul puts that.

In every church I’ve ever ministered in, there are people who have been offended and stumbled in their Christian life and who are living far beneath both the call and apprehension of God in their lives. Because something happened, someone criticized the way they sang, someone criticized their teaching, or they were involved in an official church capacity.

And as a result of being offended, they have laid the ministry of God on the shelf and they have sat down on the bench. They are marching into the judgment seat of Christ unprepared and with a God-given investment buried in a cloth. Not because they have offended others, and they would very much protest their purity, but they are offended people.

In fact, the word of God says that Judas became an offended person, and his treachery against the Lord Jesus Christ was because he had been offended first. When the woman broke the costly ointment and poured it on Jesus’ feet, and then by other activities, that young man, brilliant and desiring to see the world changed, became offended in his spirit, and out of that offense came betrayal.

Paul said, “I pray that you are not only sincere, but you’re not stumbled in your Christian course. You’re not offended, you’re not scandalized by suffering,” and then he prays they will be filled with the fruits of righteousness by Christ Jesus, with good works abounding.

Look at this prayer for just a moment. They are to make progress in the likeness of Christ, progress in fellowship with Him, prayers and understanding His mind and learning His life, progress ever from the performance and failures of yesterday under the new disciplines of today. All of this is Paul’s prayer, a moving, dynamic, abundant fountain that pours forth life as a deep well.

But it ends with this phrase in verse 11, “It is unto the glory and praise of God.” Now, this is the word that in the Greeks is most often translated “glory,” but let me tell you what it means. The original word in the Greek that here says “glory” or “kin” means “opinion,” the opinion of God.

What kind of opinion do you have of God? What kind of opinion does your life show? What opinion does the world have of God because they’ve seen you? We think of the “sha,” kind of the glory, being some kind of a flimsy vapor cloud, some kind of an ethereal thing that floats. God says the opinion of God in your life is what holds you steady.

Last evening, it was necessary for me to spend time in the hospital. My neighbor’s husband, who was not in much of a condition to be in those circumstances, needed to be there. So I drove him to the hospital. Joseph, whom I love like a father, is one of those affectionate Irishmen who, especially under certain conditions, becomes very affectionate. Joseph was hugging me, kissing me, and holding my hand. And when we got into the emergency room and had to spend the moments while they were doing all the necessary things under those circumstances, he kept introducing me to everyone, saying, “This is my friend Richard. He is a holy minister.” You know, most of you know how much I like that, especially standing there in my cowboy boots and jeans. But that experience brought something valid and vivid to my mind.

The people with whom you associate business-wise or school-wise have formed an opinion of God through you. I don’t care what their knowledge of God is before or after the event; you have offered an opinion of God in your experience. The Philippian church was devastated by misunderstanding and confusion, being split by people wanting positions, and this apostle in the worst form of imprisonment, even having his fellow ministers using his bad circumstances to talk about his character and criticize him. In these circumstances, Paul is saying that there is such an overwhelming joy of presence in God’s place that we can live our lives in such a way that the glory, the opinion of God, becomes exalted. And men and women will see and know God in a way they had never known him. If our circumstances had not been so, and if our light had not been so bright,

Now, I want us to pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? And then stand where you are, just stand at your pew with your head bowed and eyes closed. Everyone across the auditorium.

Do you want a love to abound towards others in the body, like wave upon wave, not dependent on feelings and emotions and what people think of you? Do you want a love that is guarded by knowledge and wise insight that possesses both light and discernment? Is there a prayer in your heart that, whether anyone else loves and understands, you want to abound in that manifestation of Christ?

Would you please pray with me for a moment? Holy Spirit of God, may I not depend on others to love me. May I love others instead? In the early part of my life, I was looking for friends the way the Apostle Paul was a friend to Timothy or to this church until God turned me around and said, “Rick Howard, how about trying to be a friend on that level?” It’s marvelous how that changes one’s perspective. Can you pray with me for a love abounding wave upon wave?

And then, secondly, that you will approve excellent things. That you’ll know the difference of things that are different by superiority. That you’ll know how to place priorities. Will you pray with me, “Oh God, give me a sense of approving only excellent things”?

Thirdly, that you may be without wax, sincere, tested by sunlight, pure, wanting a witness of God that what you do is right. Do you want to pray that with me? “Lord, give me a burden and concern to do that which is right.”

And then, that you be not an offended person. If you’ve allowed any offense or stumbling to scandalize your Christian experience, will you just ask the Lord to forgive you for that? If you’ve accepted some criticism of you and you’ve laid aside a ministry, would you say, “Lord, forgive me for being offended. Forgive me for receiving that offense, for being stumbled in my own”?

Then, would you pray with me that you might be filled with the fruits of righteousness? “Oh God, I want fruit from my life.”

And finally, I want you to reach your hand to the people on either side of you. Before we pray this last prayer, can you pray this prayer with me this morning? “Lord, I want the opinion of you to be high because of my life. I want to hold you in a high opinion myself, and I want others to see that place in and through me.”

Now, there have been preparations made in our prayer room for communion, and our elders will be there also to minister to you, whether it’s to receive the baptism in the spirit or if you have a concern about whether you’re right with God or if you just need ministry. They are available for you for that ministry to be affected.

The prayer room is off to the left here of the sanctuary, actually to your right through these folding doors, a silent and separated place for you to receive ministry. Before I pray this benediction, may I just say again to you, the level of your relationship will be the level of your commitment, and the level of your life will be the level of your love.

And God is saying to you today, “I want this to be your witness.” Now, Father, I pray for my friends. Thank you for this word. Thank you for this love affair between Paul and this church. Lord, as you know, in my spirit, if I were a thousand miles away from Dublin and Redwood City, if years separated us from our active ministry here, I would pray as I do for Dublin daily because of my concern that those people in whom I’ve invested a portion of my life be all that you want them to be.

And Father, right now, we imagine you praying for us these words, that we be all and fully what you have desired and purposed for us. Lord, I pray that my friends will enter into this place of holding an opinion of you that is so obvious in their lives and that the world may see and know Jesus. Bless and protect us on our way home. Bring us together again this Sunday night for that time of celebration, worship, and praise, and grant that we shall be the people called by thy name, saints separated unto you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.

God bless you. Share Christ’s love. You are dismissed.