Baptism and Global Partnership: Growing Together in Christ

the more time we spend in God's word, and the more time we spend in God's word reading the book with the author, with the spirit in us Mhmm. It really it it changes the soil of our hearts Right. And makes us much more fertile ground for God to do to work change in our lives and God to minister through us and for us to to share our share our faith. I was part of our staff went to a conference this past week in South Florida called Church for the Rest of Us. [00:53:38] (35 seconds)  #RootedInTheWord

that in a hundred years, when there are people living in your neighborhood who still need to hear the gospel, who still need to be discipled, families that still need to be ministered to, and marriages that need to be healed. What are you doing now to influence that? And and there are a lot of church planners and things like that, and it came I was sharing with what God's doing through our bible studies and through our cover to cover ministries. And one of the the older pastors who was there, actually from South Africa, [00:54:37] (31 seconds)  #ShapedByTheWord

and and we'll see what happens. And he said he said to me, he said, Andrew, you and your church need to be encouraged to continue on in that. Yeah. Because what you'll see is that the more time you spend in God's word, that after five or six years of that, God's going to begin to do some really unexpected things. Yeah. God's gonna be able to do some things that are way beyond anything that we would see as the capacity of our church or the capacity of us as individuals. [00:55:36] (32 seconds)  #MoreGraceThanSin

We come before you with loss, addiction, depression, anxiety, and we ask, Lord, that you would be near to us. Lord, may we be a church who proclaim the good news to one another, that in you, there is more grace and mercy, more steadfast love than we could ever ask or imagine. And you anxiously love to pour that into us. Thank you, Lord, that there is more grace in you than there is sin in us. And so, Lord, we worship you today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I would like to before we go to our time for our tithes and offerings, [00:35:35] (54 seconds)  #CloserThanBreath

We thank you, Lord, that you are not only providential over the what seem like the humongous things of life and the world, but you also are mindful of each of us no matter how small and overseen, overlooked that we feel. You know the number of hairs on our head. You are nearer to us than our very breath. You know the things that make us joyful. You know the things that break our hearts, though no one may else no one else may know. And so, Lord, we come before you with our celebrations and our joys, but also with the things that we grieve over. [00:34:50] (46 seconds)  #FeedOnTheWord

Almighty God, what a joy it is to gather in worship this morning, to gather together and to sing your praises, to acknowledge that you are God, you alone, and we are not. All the other gods of this world are false gods. They are idols. And, Lord, in our stubbornness, we often worship ourselves as though we were God, but you are the one who is God. You are the good shepherd. We are privileged to be the sheep of your pasture. And so we come before you today to feed before you, to graze, to feed on your word, to grow stronger through worship, to be drawn deeper into a relationship with you. [00:32:46] (46 seconds)  #PrayForTheGlobalChurch

Lord, we're reminded of the pressure that your global church is under throughout the world. We think of brothers and sisters in different areas of conflict around the world, particularly in The Middle East. I think of when pastor Sasan came and spoke a couple of years ago about the amazing things that you're doing in the church in Iran, and we pray for them. We pray for peace. We pray for justice. We pray for wisdom, Lord. We pray that you would protect the innocent. We pray that you would protect your church, that you would mobilize your church, that there would be miracles where people experience your salvation in such dark and dangerous times. [00:33:58] (51 seconds)  #BibleReadingCommunity

God can transform us. He can turn our lives upside down. He can do something in our church that we couldn't do on our own. Mhmm. So thinking about that, for your people at GAVA Community Church, what does it look like to be in the word of God? And how does how does that work for y'all? [00:51:55] (85 seconds)  #DrawNearToGod