A Call to Perseverance | 2 Timothy 1:8-12, 4:6-8
Brian Hedges | December 28, 2025
I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles to the book of 2 Timothy. We’re going to be reading from both 2 Timothy 1 and from 2 Timothy 4.
Let me begin with this historical anecdote that some of you are probably familiar with. On July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams, the second president of the United States, lay on his deathbed. And with his final breath, he is reported to have said, “Thomas Jefferson lives.” What Adams didn’t know was that his friend and longtime political rival, Thomas Jefferson, had died earlier the same day.
Two great men, bound together by history, left the world on the same date, 50 years after signing that great document, the Declaration of Independence. They were united in death just as they were in liberty. Last words of a famous man: “Thomas Jefferson lives.”
Last words matter, don’t they? They often reveal what someone truly lived for. They reveal what they loved most deeply. They reveal the hope of their hearts or maybe their dying regrets.
The book of 2 Timothy contains for us the final recorded words of the apostle Paul. You might think of this letter as the last will and testament of Paul. He is in prison. He is awaiting execution. He knows that the end is near. And the final things on his heart are expressed in this letter to his young son in the faith, this pastor, Timothy.
Calvin once wrote that this letter was not written merely with ink, but with Paul’s life blood. There’s an earnestness to this letter as Paul, preparing for death, preparing to meet Jesus, is passing the torch to the next generation.
I want you to see what he says, hear what he says, at both the beginning and the ending of the letter, in chapter 1 and in chapter 4, as we conclude this series that we’ve been working through together over the last several weeks, called “When Grace Appeared: Salvation in the Pastoral Letters.” We’ve been focusing especially on the great salvation statements, the summaries of salvation that are found in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus—today in 2 Timothy—where Paul often uses the language of the appearing of Christ or the appearing of grace.
We find that language again in 2 Timothy 1 and 4. In chapter 1, the language of appearing refers to the first coming of Christ; in chapter 4, Paul looks ahead to the second coming of Christ and uses that language of appearing once again.
Let me read the passage, 2 Timothy 1:8-12 and then 2 Timothy 4:6-8.
“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.”
Drop down to 2 Timothy 4:6.
“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”
This is God’s Word.
This is a fitting passage to end 2025 and to begin 2026, to reflect on Paul’s last words and on Paul’s example and on this vision of the Christian life that Paul presents for us. And I want you to see that this vision of the Christian life is shaped by three realities that are shared and explained in these two passages we have read. Those three realities are:
1. Confidence in God’s Grace
2. Perseverance in Faithfulness
3. Love for Christ’s Appearing
Let’s look at each one of those.
1. Confidence in God’s Grace
Here I want to focus on that opening statement in chapter 1, especially verses 8-10. Philip Towner, in his commentary, says that this is a description of salvation that proceeds in carefully-conceived series of pairs and contrasts, in step-down fashion, beginning with God’s activity in salvation, continuing with the basis of salvation, and ending with the means by which salvation was executed. Now, we don’t have time to explore all of that in full and in detail, but I want you to just see kind of a diagram of the passage and see how this passage kind of works through this series of contrasts.
We can say it this way, that this passage is showing us that salvation is by grace, it is through Christ, and it is from death into life. God “saved us and called us to a holy calling,” and then notice the first contrast: “not because of works [our works] but because of his own purpose and grace.”
This is showing us that salvation, conceived in the mind of God in eternity, is by grace from first to last. Salvation has always been by grace. Salvation has never been by works, and our works really contribute nothing to the basis of our salvation.
We are perhaps more familiar with Paul’s words in Ephesians 2, where he says,
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, but this is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. But we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
Or Titus 3:4-5, which we considered earlier in the series, where Paul says that “when the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his mercy.”
It’s by mercy, it’s by grace! Salvation is by grace from first to last. God initiated your salvation, God is the one who brought you to faith in Jesus Christ, and he is the one who keeps you saved. And if you stand before God in eternity as a saved and a redeemed man or woman or boy or girl, it will be because of God’s grace, and only because of God’s grace.
Salvation is by grace, and salvation is through Christ. Notice the passage says that this grace “he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus.”
There’s, again, a contrast, a contrast between the time before time, if we could put it that way, before the ages began, as Paul says, and what has happened now in history in the appearing of Christ Jesus. Here’s that familiar word again, “the appearing of Christ Jesus our Savior.” This is language that describes a divine intervention.
This divine intervention happened in the first advent of Jesus Christ, his incarnation, and then everything that flowed out of that, his death and his resurrection, through which he accomplished something. He saved us from something, and he saved us to something. He saved us from death and to life. Notice it says, “He abolished death and brought life and immortality to life through the gospel.”
I love the words of Gordon Fee, who says, “The immortality that is yet to be is, in a sense, already ours, because in his appearing, and especially through his cross and resurrection, our last enemy, death, has already received its mortal wound.”
Christ has conquered death. He abolished death and brought life and immortality to light, and that is declared to us through the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news.
There’s a quaint story that I’ve always found helpful about a little girl who was one time outside with her mother. They were folding laundry together that had been set out to dry, and the girl saw a bumblebee. The bee scared her. “Mom, there’s a bee! There’s a bee!” She was fearful of being stung by the bee.
But her mom calmed her down and assured her that she was okay, and her mom showed her arm, and her mom’s arm was red because her mom had already been stung by the bee. And because her mom had been stung by the bee, of course, the bumblebee could not sting the little girl. Her mom said, “I took the sting.”
Don’t you remember how the apostle Paul tells us that death has no sting, the grave has no victory? Why? Because Christ already took it. He took the sting of death. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” That means that when we face physical death, we’re not facing the real thing. We’re not facing death as it would be if we were separated from God, if we were being punished for our sins. Death for us is just a doorway into everlasting life.
“Lives again our glorious King…
Where, O death, is now thy sting?...
Once he died our souls to save…
Where thy victory, O grave?...
“Soar we now where Christ hath led…
Following our exalted head…
Made like him, like him we rise…
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluiah.”
Confidence and grace. This is why Paul was so confident, even as he sits in prison awaiting execution, because he knows that he is secure in the grace of God, given in Christ, grace that has overcome death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
That’s why he says in verse 12, “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day that which has been entrusted to me,” or alternatively, the text could read like this: “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him until the last day.” Either translation can work; it’s somewhat obscure which thing has been entrusted to who. But what is clear in either of the interpretations is that God is the one who keeps. God is the one who keeps.
The basis of our confidence for living faithful Christian lives is not found in ourselves, but in God’s gracious purpose, planned in eternity, realized in Christ and proclaimed in the gospel. That’s the main application.
You and I need to grasp that this morning. Our confidence is not in ourselves. It is not in our works. It is not in our competence. It is not in our emotional balance. It is not even in our personal faithfulness! Our confidence is in God and in his grace.
As we conclude 2025 and as we begin 2026, let’s do so with confidence in the grace of God, given to us in Christ. Grace is the granite foundation beneath our feet. It’s on grace that we stand.
Now, listen, that does not mean that our faithfulness doesn’t matter. What it means is that our faithfulness rests on grace, that our faithfulness is supported by grace, that our faithfulness is empowered by grace. And unless we are well-rooted in the grace of God, we will never be able to be faithful.
2. Perseverance in Faithfulness
But Paul was faithful. He was faithful because of the grace of God, and we see something of Paul’s faithfulness in 2 Timothy 4:6-7. This is the second point, perseverance in faithfulness.
This is the second reality that shapes our understanding of the Christian life. It’s not only confidence in God’s grace, but springing out of that, it is a life of perseverance in faithfulness.
Again, these are Paul’s almost final words, his last words. And listen to what he says in verses 6 and 7. He says, “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Those two verses pack together four vivid metaphors or word pictures that help describe the life of the Christian—Paul, doing this retrospectively as he looks back on his life, but for us, we’re still in it. We’re still in it.
Paul says, “I am already being poured out as a drink offering.” That’s the language of sacrifice, the drink offering, the libation that was poured over an offering as an offering of thankfulness to God. It’s not the atoning offering, it’s the offering of thankfulness to God. It was a part of worship. And he says, “My life is being poured out in this way,” and he’s referring to his impending death and says, “This is an offering, a sacrifice of gratitude to the Lord. The time of my departure has come.”
That is nautical imagery. It’s the word that’s used for a ship when the anchor is pulled and the ship begins to sail out of the harbor. Paul’s saying, “My final voyage is about to begin, the time of my departure. I’m about to leave the harbor of this world and go into another world. I have fought the good fight.” That language is clear. It’s the language of the competition. It’s the language of the arena. It’s the runner who runs a race.
Then he says, “I have finished the race.” Also this language of competition and the race. And maybe in “good fight” you also have battle language, the language of warfare.
Then he drops the metaphor when he says, “I have kept the faith.” That’s what all of these metaphors are telling us. Paul has kept the faith. He has persevered in faithfulness. He has been faithful to the gospel, he has been faithful to the Lord, and now his time has come.
There are so many passages in Scripture that use this same kind of language, and I know you’re familiar with them. We might think of 1 Timothy 6, where Paul tells Timothy in that letter to “fight the good fight of faith and lay hold of the eternal life to which you were called.”
We might think of Hebrews 12, following that great chapter rehearsing the deeds of the saints through faith in Old Testament history, where the author then says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith.”
We might think of Philippians 3, where Paul uses the language again, and he says, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and looking forward, straining forward to what is ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
The Christian life conceived as a race, as a battle we have to fight, as a race that we have to run. Paul looks back on his life, and he says, “I’ve done it. By God’s grace, I’ve done it. I fought the good fight, I finished the race; I have kept the faith.”
When I read Paul’s language, it always reminds me of another runner whose life bore witness to the same perseverance and faith, Eric Liddell, the Flying Scotsman. Maybe you know his story from that great film, Chariots of Fire.
Eric Liddell gained fame in the early 1920s when he ran in the 1924 Olympic Games. And there is a scene in the film where he is running this 440-yard race—I guess this was in 1923—where he is jostled by another runner, and he falls down. But rather than staying down, he regathers his strength, he gets back up, and he starts running again, and he closes the gap between him and the runner who had pushed him over. He closes that gap, and he wins the race. He does so with his head flung back, his mouth open, his arms flailing. People who knew him or had seen him said that’s indeed how he ran. He ran with that complete and full abandon. Of course, you know the famous line from the film, “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.”
But the rest of the story is not really told in the film. After winning those Olympic Games, Liddell went on to become a missionary in China. He was interred in a Japanese prison camp during World War II, where he served tirelessly, teaching children, giving away his rations to help others. Then ,while still in the prison camp, he contracted a brain tumor. He had an opportunity to leave. He was on a list of prisoners who were to be released, and he gave up his spot to a pregnant woman. He died there in the prison camp.
One of the fellow prisoners later wrote, “None of us will ever forget this man who was totally committed to putting God first. What was his secret? He unreservedly committed his life to Jesus Christ.” And Eric Liddell’s last words, reportedly, were, “Complete surrender.” Complete surrender.
How might you and I follow in the example of a Paul or an Eric Liddell as we move into the new year? I’m going to give some practical application. I actually want to give kudos to Brad for this. He didn’t know I was going to do this this morning, but Brad preached a sermon on this passage from 2 Timothy 4 about three years ago. It was at the beginning of 2023. It was an amazing sermon; it was really good. It was funnier than mine will be. Mine will be a little bit shorter than Brad’s was, though.
So, I want to give you just three application points. I’m kind of drawing from Brad’s suggestions in that sermon, and I think you will find these helpful.
(1) So, application one: wear the gospel armor for the daily battle. Paul says, “I have fought the good fight.” And we know that wars are made up of battles, right? There are daily battles. You win the war by fighting the daily battles.
That means that we have to wear that armor daily, and you have to fight today’s battle. You have to fight tomorrow’s battle, and you have to do that in the strength of the Lord.
You could go to Ephesians 6 and read all about the armor of God. I’m not going to do that here, but just remember that you are in a fight, and you will be in a fight this week and this next year. You’ll be in a fight against your three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The world, which is the world system around us, which is opposed to the values of the kingdom of Jesus Christ; and the devil, with all of the hosts of evil, that is there to exploit our weakness and exploit the temptations of the world and lead us into temptation and sin. And then maybe the most insidious enemy of all is the enemy that’s in our own hearts, right, the enemy of our own indwelling sin and the flesh.
We have to fight those enemies. We have to be watchful. We have to be alert. And we have to be fully clothed in the armor of God—the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of the hope of salvation, and our feet with the boots of the gospel of peace, prepared in the gospel of peace, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. We have to wear the armor, and we do that as we employ the spiritual disciplines that help us—in prayer and in meditation, in devotional time, in God’s word—as well as what we do corporately together that help arm us for the battle.
I think so often, rather than being fully armed with everything that God gives us, we settle for superficial spirituality, and we are not well-equipped for the battle ahead of us.
I think sometimes, rather than being a soldier fully decked out in full battle gear, we’re more like Barney Fife in the old Andy Griffith show. Do you remember Barney Fife? He had one bullet, right? One bullet that he kept in his pocket.
Sometimes Christians are one-bullet Christians. They have the one verse. They know John 3:16, but they don’t really know the rest of the Bible. They have maybe the one pat prayer that they pray before meals, but they’re not really engaged in pouring out their souls to the Lord with any kind of regularity—not studying, not growing, not really learning, just kind of resting on the one simple truth that you know.
The simple truths are great, friends, but you need more than one bullet. You need the full armor of God. Dress yourself for battle and win the daily battles.
(2) Number two—second application—set a sustainable pace for the race of faith. Like Eric Liddell running with endurance, the Christian life requires something of us. We have to remember that this race is not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and that means we have to pace ourselves.
Now, there are lots of things that we could do to pace ourselves. Again, I commend you to Brad’s sermon. You should listen to it, because there’s so much detail there that will help you. You need to do things like build margin into your life, margin into your schedule, that gives you time to be with God, time to pursue the things that really matter most.
But you also need margin in your soul. We need practices of Sabbath rest, rhythms of rest and work where we’re not on all the time. Sometimes we have unstructured time where we can pursue the Lord and pursue those things that help fill our hearts and our souls. We have to put limits in our lives on things like noise and media, and we’ve got to build those disciplines into our lives that are sustainable.
If you’re like me, sometimes I begin a new year with a list of goals that are way, way too lofty for me. And that inevitably, then, will set me up for failure when I don’t meet the goal that I set. Part of wisdom is learning to set a goal that is measurable, that is achievable, that’s something you can actually do. Don’t set the goal to read through the Bible five times in 2026 if you’ve never read it through once. In fact, if you’re not reading the Scriptures on just a daily basis, maybe that alone is the goal. “I’m just going to spend a minimum—I’m going to read a chapter a day.” Maybe you don’t even get through the whole Bible in a year. Set a pace that you can sustain.
Maybe it’s not hours of prayer; maybe it’s simply beginning and ending the day with prayer and taking short little moments throughout the day to turn your heart to the Lord. Figure out what will work for your season of life, and set a sustainable pace for the race ahead of you.
(3) Then here’s maybe the most important thing: number three, train through injury, and do not let suffering or sin pull you out of the race. Just like Eric Liddell had to get back up after he was knocked down, just as Paul had to persevere through the beatings and through the betrayal and through the personal discouragement and through temptation and sin—yes, Paul! Paul struggled with sin. Remember, this is the same man who wrote Romans 7: “I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. O wretched man that I am!” Paul knew those struggles.
If you’re not careful, those struggles can take you out of the race, because you get so discouraged with what feels like a lack of progress in your life. When you’re in those moments, you have to keep going. You train through the injury. You don’t let suffering, you don’t let sin hold you back.
The call, friends, is not perfection. The call is perseverance in faithfulness, and that means when you fail, you get back up and you start running again.
3. Love for Christ’s Appearing
Confidence in God’s grace, perseverance in faithfulness, and now point number three, love for Christ’s appearing.
In some ways, this is the motive power behind it all, and you see it in verse eight, where Paul says, “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing.”
So, he continues with the imagery of the race. The crown of righteousness is the crown of a champion. It’s the crown of the victor, the one who finishes the race first in the games.
Perhaps Paul is thinking of the ancient Olympic games, or the games that were held in Isthmus or in Corinth or in one of those places, and a laurel wreath that would have been given to the one who competed and who won the race. And Paul uses that as a metaphor, and he says, “There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” Other passages of Scripture talk about a crown of life or a crown of glory.
I think all of these are not literal crowns; these are metaphors that describe what we will receive from God when we finally finish the race. We will receive life—that’s eternal life. We will receive glory. We will be glorified together with Christ, and we will receive righteousness, the final vindication from the divine judge, that declares that because of our faith in Jesus Christ and what Christ has done for us, declares that we are right with God.
Paul says, “This is what I’m waiting for, and this is not only for me, this is also for all those who love his appearing,” and there you have the appearing language again. Here Paul, I think very clearly, is describing the second coming of Christ; he’s using this language of appearing.
I think that because he uses that language in just that way in verse 1 of this chapter, where he’s urging Timothy to preach the word, and he does so in light of the appearing of Jesus Christ and coming judgment and so on. And also because of a contrast that Paul makes in the next two verses, verses 9-10, a contrast with Demas, who was in love with this present world and therefore had forsaken Paul, deserted Paul, and gone to Thessalonica. Here’s two different kinds of love—love for this present world, love for the appearing of Christ. And Paul says this crown of righteousness is for all who have loved his appearing.
Compare also these passages, Ephesians 6:24: “Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love,” and 1 Corinthians 16:22: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be anathema. Our Lord, come!”
John Piper, in his book on the second coming of Christ called Come, Lord Jesus, considers all those verses together and says this:
“Loving the Lord Jesus and its extension to loving his coming [or his appearing] is an essential mark of a true Christian. No one is a Christian, no one is saved, who does not love the Lord Jesus.”
This crown is for those who love his appearing. This is showing us that the Christian life is lived not only on the basis of God’s grace given to us in Christ before the ages began, although that is essential, as we’ve already seen, but it’s also lived with a forward look, a forward look, and we’re looking ahead to Christ.
There is a motivation in the heart, there’s an affection in the heart called love. It’s love for Jesus Christ, love for the appearing of Christ—Christ who is bodily absent from us now and we’re waiting for the day when we will see him face to face. Those who know Christ love him, and it’s because they love him that they run with faithfulness.
What does that mean? What does it mean to love Christ and his appearing? Love can be such an abstract thing. You think of a young person, maybe a young woman, and she asks her mom, “How will I know when I’m in love?” What is a mom going to say? She’s going to say, “You’ll know when you know. You’ll know when it happens to you, because it’ll change everything.”
As I tried to think about how to illustrate this, what I finally landed on was the great poets of the faith who describe for us what love for Christ is. Let me give you two examples, and then we’re almost done.
Bernard of Clairvaux, in this well-known older hymn, put it like this:
“Jesus, the very thought of thee
With sweetness fills my breast,
But sweeter far thy face to see
And in thy presence rest.
“O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fail, how kind thou art!
How good to those who seek!
“But what to those who find? Ah, this
Nor tongue nor pen can show;
The love of Jesus, what it is,
None but his loved ones know.”
It’s almost the same answer as a mom to her daughter, “You’ll know when you know.” “The love of Jesus, what it is, none but his loved ones know.” There’s something that is so satisfying, something that is so sweet, something that is so good, something that so captures the heart when you see Christ and when you know Christ, when you fall in love with Jesus Christ the Savior, that it changes everything in your life.
No one has surpassed Saint Augustine and his confessions in expressing this love. Listen to Augustine.
“But what do I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony in song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God, and yet when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; that they are of the kind that I love in my inner self when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound in space, when it listens to sound that never dies away, when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind, when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating, when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.”
There is something in Jesus that is better than anything else the world can offer. And when we discover that, and when that captures our hearts, we are those people who love his appearing.
I wonder this morning, have you come to love Jesus like that? Have you found a beauty in him that surpasses all other delights? Has the sight of his peerless worth liberated your heart from the worthless idols that once held you captive? Paul and Augustine and Eric Liddell and thousands of others, men and women, have experienced that love. Where does it come from? How do you get it?
Now, here’s the answer, kind of the final move in this message. You get this kind of love by seeing his love for you. That’s what you need. “We love him because he first loved us,” 1 John 4:19. Or Paul’s words, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
In other words, love for Christ is not something you just work up. Just like you can’t make yourself fall in love, you can’t make your heart love Christ, but what you can do is you can set before your eyes and before your minds the beauty of Christ, the love of Christ, the work of Christ, the coming of Christ, and all that Christ has done for you. You can read the gospel so that you see the character of Christ. You get to know Christ, and when you get to know Him and you see him as he is, you begin to find a love in your heart welling up inside for Christ.
Brothers and sisters, this is what we need this morning, this is what we need this year. We need a love for the appearing of Christ. Remember this morning that the Christian life is lived with confidence in God’s grace given in Christ. That is sure, that is certain, that is signed and sealed and delivered to you in Christ and through the Spirit. That grace enables perseverance in faithfulness as we fight tomorrow’s battle, as we take the next step in the race of faith, as we live in daily faithfulness, and sometimes that just means getting up when you fall down. It means rising up to fight the next battle even after you’ve experienced a defeat. But you keep going, and you do so because of your love for Jesus Christ.
Let’s not just endure the Christian life this year, let’s love the one to whom we are running, the one who loved us first. Let’s love the Lord Jesus.
Let’s pray together.
Lord, we thank you this morning for your great love for us. We thank you for the good news of the gospel of grace that we have considered together this morning in this wonderful, rich letter, and we pray that just as your grace and your love captured the heart of Paul and so many other saints in history, that your grace and love would capture our hearts as well, and that we would therefore fight the good fight and run the race set before us with confidence in your grace given to us in Christ and with love for our Savior.
Lord, that’s a gift, that’s not something we can manufacture, but it is something that your Spirit produces in us, and so we ask you by your Spirit to kindle those affections of love for Christ in our hearts this morning. We ask you to do that now as we prepare our hearts for the Lord’s table, that these moments following would not be merely going through the motions of a familiar religious ceremony, but instead it would be something we do in our bodies to express what we do in our souls, that as we take the bread and take the juice, we would in our hearts take the Lord Jesus Christ as the living bread, as the one who satisfies our hearts’ deepest desires.
So, Lord, draw near to us in these moments through your Spirit. Help us to experience fellowship with you, and meet us as we continue now in worship. We pray this in the name of our blessed Savior, Jesus Christ, and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
