The Formation of a True Christian | Galatians 4:8-20
Brian Hedges | November 5, 2017
Turn in your Bibles this morning to Galatians, the fourth chapter, verses eight through 20. Galatians, the fourth chapter, verses eight through 20. We’re continuing in our study of this wonderful letter of the apostle Paul, and it’s interesting, we come to the passage this morning which reveals as much as anything in this letter the throbbing heartbeat of Paul as a pastor. He was an evangelist, of course, he was a missionary, but he had a pastor’s heart; he had a shepherd’s heart.
Paul in this passage issues a personal, passionate appeal to his Galatian friends to hold onto the gospel of grace. He reminds them of their former slavery and how God had set them free, he recalls the beginning of his relationship with them when he first preached the gospel to them, and he pleads with them to become like him, even as he expresses his grave concern for their spiritual welfare.
So Galatians chapter four, verses eight through 20. Let me read God’s word.
“Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.”
This is God’s word.
So you can hear the heart of Paul in this passage. He’s concerned about his friends, he’s perplexed about them, he’s concerned about their spiritual welfare. As we’ve seen throughout our study of this letter, he is concerned with the false teaching that has crept into the church, their potential departure from the gospel of grace, and he is concerned that the process that began with their first reception of the gospel from him not be retarded, that it not be halted, that their growth not be stunted.
You really get Paul’s goal as a pastor, as an evangelist, you get Paul’s goal or his ambition in verse 19, where he says, “My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” That’s what he wants. He wants Christ to be formed in them. He wants them to become like Christ.
You remember that in another passage, Romans chapter eight, verse 29, Paul says that God has “predestined us to be conformed to the image of [Christ].” This is God’s great goal. God’s goal is to make us like Jesus, and this was Paul’s goal as well. He wanted the believers in the Galatian churches to become like Christ.
And so, a close look at this section of Scripture I think will teach us something about this process, about how we become like Christ. So, five key ingredients to a Christian’s formation. Now, there are lots of ways you could look at this passage, but this is how I want to focus on it.
And it’s really interesting to me; as we look at what Paul says, it gives us, I think, some interesting avenues into thinking about formation. Most of the time, when you hear sermons on this (even sermons from me), the sermon may sound something like a list of spiritual disciplines to follow. And of course, that’s all good and well; we need those. But as we look at what Paul says as he describes his relationship with the Galatians, as he appeals to the Galatians, as he expresses this goal that Christ be formed in them, as we then look into what Paul actually says, he gives us a rather interesting perspective on the kinds of things that are needed in our lives for us to become like Jesus. So that’s our focus this morning.
There are five of these, so I’m going to move fairly quickly, especially through the first couple. Here they are:
1. Hear and Receive the Gospel
That’s fairly obvious; it is the beginning point. You see Paul’s reference to this in verses 13 and 14. He says, “You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.”
So Paul here is alluding to his experience as a missionary. We don’t know exactly the nature of the illness, but for some reason Paul’s illness actually was a catalyst that brought him into this missionary context. It may be that Paul was planning to go somewhere else, and an illness delayed him. The scholars speculate what this illness was; it may have been malaria, where he had been in lower, more humid regions, caught malaria and had to go to a more elevated place, and so within the Galatian churches he was doing that. It could have been an eye condition, because in verse 15 he says, “If it was possible you would have gouged out your very eyes and given them to me,” so the scholars have speculated just what this illness was. It doesn’t matter too much. What does matter is that here Paul found an opportunity for gospel proclamation in spite of his illness. Here he is in not the most ideal circumstances, but he’s doing evangelism, and this was the inception of the Galatian churches.
Now, there are a couple of things that I think are important for us to note about this. The first is this: the process of change, the process of discipleship, of formation of the Christian, always begins with the gospel itself. This is how our faith begins, isn’t it? You remember how Paul says in Romans chapter ten that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” The word is always primary and prior. The word comes, the gospel comes, and it’s in response to the gospel that we believe and that we begin to change, that we begin to become like Christ.
The other thing I think that’s interesting here is that Paul was not content with merely getting people to make a decision for Christ. I mean, he planted the churches, they had believed in Christ, they had made their decisions, they were converts, and yet Paul’s anxious about them. Paul’s deeply concerned about them. Paul says, “I’m concerned that maybe my labor among you was in vain. I’m perplexed about you,” he says. Paul is not content simply to note the decisions.
That’s one reason that I’ve always been somewhat uncomfortable when people give an evangelistic report, and you know, “It was last Sunday and we had this big outreach to children and 42 kids received Christ and became Christians, are in the family of God.” We hear those kinds of things all the time in evangelicalism, and I’m always a little bit uncomfortable, because it’s not enough, for one thing. Maybe they really became Christians; I hope they did, and we want to see people become Christians. But there’s always the need for discipleship. There’s always the need for follow-up.
The evangelism is only one piece of the process, and you can see that in the ministry of Paul. He would plant churches, he would return to the churches; he would come back to them again. He would plant a church, he wins people to Christ, and then he’s writing them letters, he’s discipling them, he’s pastoring them; he’s trying to build them up. He wants to see that they grow in their faith, if there’s progress in their faith. He wants to see them formed into the image of Christ.
And so, brothers, and sisters, in our own evangelistic efforts, in our own outreach efforts, we must never be content with merely getting people to event, we must never be content even with getting someone to pray to receive Christ. We want to see people enfolded into the family of God and actually on a path of discipleship, where they are becoming like Christ. That path always begins with the gospel, hearing and receiving the gospel. In fact, it continues with the gospel, for as you see this in Paul’s letter, he’s giving them a fresh articulation of the gospel. He’s reminding them of what he’s already preached, he wants them to hold onto the gospel; he wants them not to move onto something else.
So number one, hear and receive the gospel.
2. Develop a Deep Relationship With God
Develop a deep relationship with God. As you can see, I’m stating these points in terms of what we must do. We must develop a deep relationship with God. But notice how Paul words it in verses eight and nine. He reminds them of what they were; we looked at this briefly last week.
He says, “Formerly, when you did not know God,” there was a period when they did not know God, “you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.” Remember that he’s writing to Gentile converts, and they had been converted out of paganism. They were polytheists. They had worshipped many gods. Then in verse nine Paul says, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?”
Now I won’t explain that again since we looked at last week. What I want to do now is just note this two-way relationship. He says, “You have come to know God, or rather to be known by God.” This is a deep relationship, and it is a relationship that is characterized by knowing and by being known.
Have you ever had an acquaintance that you knew for some time, and every time you meet with this acquaintance, with this friend, they talk about themselves the entire time? You walk away from the lunch or the coffee or whatever, and you feel like, “I still don’t feel like they know me. I still don’t feel like they know me. I know something about them, but they don’t know anything about me.” It’s kind of one-way, and eventually you begin to kind of lose interest in the relationship, because it’s not two-way; you’re not gaining something, you’re not giving much to it, you’re just there to kind of listen to someone talk. That’s not a healthy relationship. So even on the relational level we have to learn to give and take, to both know others and to be known. It involves self-disclosure, but also asking lots of questions, learning from others.
But this is true in our relationship with God. God knows us, and we are to know him, and there is this give and take. That give and take we find as an ongoing dimension of our relationship with God, ongoing discovery as we come to know him, we deepen in our knowledge of him, we come to know him more and more. But also self-disclosure and recognizing that God knows us through and through, that we are known by God, that we are loved by God. So a deepening relationship with God.
Paul appeals to that with the Galatians, and notice that there’s a contrast here between the relationship with God and their former religious practices. He says, “At one time you were slaves of these things which were not gods; you were enslaved. But now you’ve been set free!” As we saw last week, now they’re sons rather than slaves. So the relationship they had with God brought freedom into their lives. It brought release from the slavery. It led to flourishing in their hearts and lives. But what they were in before, the idolatry, that brought bondage, that brought slavery.
Here’s the key thing to note (this is really important): Paul’s writing to a group of people who are not tempted to go back to paganism. That’s not the temptation! The temptation is to embrace the Mosaic law as a means of salvation, and he says, “If you do that, you’re going back into slavery, the same kind of slavery that you were in when you were in idolatry.”
You know what that means? It means that even religious people can be profoundly idolatrous. It means that even when we’re really religious, if it’s not oriented towards God or relationship with God, it’s just religion; it’s keeping rules, it’s following laws, it’s earning our salvation by our works. When we do that, it’s idolatry. That’s what Paul is saying. And it always leads to slavery. It always leads to bondage.
I’ve used this quotation before, but I want to use this again this morning. One of the most famous contemporary novelists, the late David Foster Wallace, gave a famous speech at Kenyon College, and in this speech he talked about worship and idolatry. Now, he was not a Christian, and tragically, some time after giving this speech, he took his own life; but he said something about worship and idolatry that is so penetrating into the nature of the slavery of worshipping idols, I think it’s worth saying again.
Wallace said, “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. The compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth; worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths. Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart; you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”
That’s how worshipping idols works. It always leads to slavery. C.S. Lewis one time said, “Idols always break the hearts of their worshippers.” The only way we’re going to flourish as Christians, the only way we’re going to grow in our relationship with Christ and become more and more like Christ is to grow in our relationship with God himself, knowing and being known, worshipping God, worshipping the true God rather than idols.
The measure of whether we’re worshipping the true God or not is what degree of freedom do you have in your life. Some of us this morning are enslaved in various ways. I’m not saying you’re not a Christian; you may be very much a true Christian, but you’re still living like a slave, as we talked about last week. You’re living under the dominion of rules or law or sins, in some area or another. I don't think that a true Christian can live completely under that dominion, because Paul says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace,” but we may in some areas still be worshipping idols, not fully realizing the depth of freedom that is ours, that comes from a relationship with God. We’re not worshipping God as we could or should.
Well, that’s the second thing that’s necessary to our formation; a deep relationship with God characterized by worship.
3. Build Loving, Truth-Telling Friendships
Here’s the third: we also need to build loving, truth-telling friendships. We need to build loving, truth-telling friendships.
Paul was the Galatians’ friend. Now, there are several ways we could construe this. I could say, “You need to be a part of a loving, truth-telling church,” and that’s true. You need to be a part of a church where you have relationships with believers in the church and where you’re hearing from the pulpit of the church the truth being preached in love; that’s true. But I want us to drill down a little bit deeper than that, because it’s very possible for you to attend a truth-preaching church on Sunday morning and have no friends, and have no relationships, and not be benefitting in precisely the kind of ways that Paul’s talking about right here.
Look at how he describes his relationship with them; verse 13, “You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.” That shows there’s history here. They loved Paul! They loved him. He had given himself to them, they had compassion on him in his affliction, he preached the gospel; there’s some history there, there’s some longevity.
“What then has become of your blessedness?” verse 15. “For I testify to you that if possible you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.” He’s appealing to the history. “Don’t you know the relationship we had? You would have given so deeply to me. You would have given your own eyes for me.”
Then verse 16, “Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” You see, there’s the punch. A deep relationship that he’s had with them, and now he’s at the risk of losing them because he’s telling them the truth. That’s what he feels, but it’s actually the truth-telling in his letter that is God’s means of recovering them, of bringing them back.
So you see this relationship is very well-rounded. It’s characterized by love, by concern, but also by truth-telling. This is exactly what the church needs. Paul talks about this on the whole corporate level in Ephesians chapter four, where he says that the whole body grows and develops and matures into the stature of Christ, right; into Christ’s likeness as a body, and that happens as each part of the body is doing its part and as we are speaking the truth in love, Ephesians 4:16. That’s what we need: we need speaking the truth in love.
Two or three months ago, Jared and I went to lunch. I didn’t tell him I was going to share this, but I’m going to share it. Jared and I went to lunch, and I was not in a good state that day. I just kind of started venting. I was angry about something, and I just started venting. I wasn’t angry at him; I was angry at somebody else, I’m not going to say who. And I just vented for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever; we talked about this. Jared was very patient, just listening, in a very non-threatening way, which is very characteristic of Jared.
When we left Chipotle over on Eddy St. and we walked out to the garage, and before I got in my car he just said, “You know it’s not okay to stay in this anger, this state of mind?” I don’t remember his words, but he said, “You know it’s not okay to stay like this, don’t you?” Two-by-four, you know. Yeah. You know, you have to start preaching at the preacher.
Do you have somebody to do that for you? I mean, it was helpful for me, just the reminder. Here’s a friend speaking the truth in love. Do you have anybody who will do that for you?
If you don’t, here’s maybe why. I’m going to give you three reasons. These aren’t on the screen, but if you want to write them down, here’s concrete, down-to-earth, practical stuff. If you don’t have that kind of a relationship, here are three reasons.
Number one, not enough longevity, or history. There’s history in the relationship with Paul and the Galatians, and so he’s now confronting them; he’s speaking the truth to them. He has history with them. They loved him, he loved them; he’s able to do this. If you don’t have anybody who can speak the truth to you in love, it may be because there’s not enough history.
That’s one thing Jared and I have. We have history; we have ten years of friendship, and lots of it. So lots of give and take, and that proved very helpful. Jared’s not the only friend like that; others of you could tell similar stories.
But if you don’t have longevity in your relationships, if you’re not in a place long enough and with the people long enough to develop that kind of traction in your relationships, you’re always going to be kind of pecking the surface of relationships. You’re always going to be struggling to get that kind of friendship.
Second reason you may not have it: not enough proximity, or we could say frequency. Proximity; that’s closeness in space or frequency, you’re meeting often enough. So it not only takes time to develop this kind of relationship, it takes getting together a lot, getting together often.
Again, I think for the relationship as it played out that day, part of the reason was because there have been so many lunches, there have been so many breakfasts, there have been so many times when our families have gone together to do all kinds of things. There have been so many times where we’ve maybe not literally wept on each other’s shoulders, but come close; sharing burdens, sharing problems, speaking into each other’s lives, and doing that not always in a formalized way. I think we’ve been in a small group together only one year out of all that time, but a relationship that extends way beyond Sunday morning.
You need that. You need that. You need it, and maybe find that in a small group; we want you to find that in a small group. You need to find it somewhere. You need to have that kind of relationship, and it takes some intentionality and frequently getting together with someone else.
Here’s the third reason why you may not have that. You may not have it because not enough longevity, not enough proximity, or thirdly, not enough vulnerability. Not enough vulnerability.
You have to take risks in relationships, and part of it means self-disclosure. Now listen: that day at lunch, I was not confessing sin. There was no real spiritual ambition in my mind; I was just venting to a friend. But I let him in, you see? I let him in, and it gave opportunity to say, “You know, you can’t really stay in that state of mind.” There was no judgment there; I felt loved and cared for by a friend. But you have to let people in. You can’t always have the wall up; you can’t always have the hard exterior. You have to take the risk, you have to jump in, there has to be some self-disclosure.
Listen to what C.S. Lewis said. He said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” That means that without vulnerability there is no love. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully ‘round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket or coffin of your selfishness, but in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
So here’s the hard question for us this morning: have you let somebody into your spiritual life, your emotional life, your family life? Have you shared burdens, have you confessed sins? Have you invested in the kind of two-way relationship where somebody is speaking the truth in love in your life? Take the risk. If you don’t take the risk you will stunt your growth in Christ. There’s just no doubt about it. You have to have it.
So, grow or build loving, truth-telling friendships. That’s the third thing we need.
4. Resist All Deviations From Truth
Number four: resist all deviations from truth. This isn’t typically in the kind of list of things you would think about when you’re thinking about spiritual transformation, becoming like Christ, but it’s right at the heart of Paul’s letter, isn’t it? He’s concerned that they are veering off into false doctrine, into error.
Again, look at some of what Paul says; verses nine through 11. He says, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years!”
Okay, that verse gives us a little window into the nature of this false teaching. The days and months and seasons and years are probably the days and months and seasons and years of the Jewish calendar. That’s probably what it is. The concern in this litter is a return to or an embrace of the Mosaic law, the Mosaic dispensation as a means of justification. That’s Paul’s concern. It’s legalism.
Now, there are other kinds of errors to be on guard against. We’ve talked a lot about legalism in this series because it’s so much the focus in Galatians, but we could also talk about the opposite error, which is license. It’s, “Grace is a license to sin,” it’s, “Since I’m saved by grace it doesn’t really matter how I live.” You know, “Since I’m justified in the righteousness of Christ it doesn’t matter if I grow in holiness.” That’s also an error, and it’s also deadly. There’s another whole letter written about that, the letter of Jude.
There are other errors still. I mean, there are as many distortions of the gospel of Christ as there are pathologies and diseases to the human body. Any good physician knows that for a person to be restored to health you have to deal with the disease. False teaching is a disease. That’s why it’s a problem. That’s why Paul, in his letters, the pastoral epistles - Timothy, Titus - he says so much about sound doctrine. The word “sound” means healthy, as in a healthy body. Healthy doctrine, or healthy teaching. Because he’s concerned about their spiritual health, and the kind of teaching they’re getting is going to play into that. So we need, very much, to be alert to false teachings rooted in truth and resist all the deviations from the truth.
One more comment to make based on verse 17. In verse 17 Paul says, “They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out that you may make much of them.”
Here’s another interesting thing about false teaching: false teachers almost always have another agenda, and the agenda is self-promotion, or the promotion of an organization or a movement, but not promoting the glory of Christ. Paul wants them to flourish, he wants Christ to be formed in them; he wants them to flourish, but he wants them to flourish for the glory of Christ.
That wasn’t the agenda for the false teachers. The false teachers made much of them, but he says, “It’s not for a good purpose. They want to shut you out.” I think what he means by that is they wanted to shut him off, or shut the Galatians, rather, off from Paul’s ministry, from that apostolic ministry. They were trying to kind of shut them off from Paul. “They want to shut you out that you may make much of them.” There’s the real goal: you see, it’s self-promotion. That’s often characteristic of false teaching: characterized by self-promoting religion, the glory of a movement or a personality or an individual rather than the glory of Christ.
So, we need to resist deviations from the truth, false teaching in whatever form it may come.
5. Embrace Change as a Lifelong Process
Then here’s number five: embrace change as a lifelong process. I’m drawing this from verse 19, and it’s the image that Paul uses. It’s interesting the kind, the breadth of metaphors and images Paul uses for his ministry. Sometimes he compares himself to a father: “I have begotten you by the gospel,” he says to the Corinthians, or, “I was like a father among you,” he says to the Thessalonians. But here he compares himself to a mother. “My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth.” The word he uses there carries that idea of the travail of a woman in labor. Paul says that’s what it’s like. “I’m like a woman in labor, travailing to see Christ formed in you.”
Well, the image teaches us several things. It teaches us that this process of formation is painful, and it’s not only painful for you, it’s painful for the people who are investing in you, trying to see you grow in Christ-likeness. It was painful for Paul. But it especially shows us it’s a process. Gestation; it’s a process. The development of a child from conception all the way to birth, and then maturing through childhood and into adulthood, that’s a process, and it takes time.
You’re going to have to reckon with that and embrace that if you want to grow in Christ-likeness. It takes a whole life, so you have to embrace this lifelong process of change. Sometimes we just get too impatient with the process. Change isn’t happening fast enough.
Five or six years ago when our little Susannah was much younger she one day had collected some cherry pits from cherries, I believe it was - cherries, or maybe it was peach. But anyway, it was a fruit, cherry pits, and she wanted to grow a cherry tree. So she said, “I’m going to go plant these in the back yard.” She went and she dug a hole and she planted them there, covered them up, came back in. After a little while Holly said, “Well, how did it go?” And she kind of looked cast down and she said, “It didn’t grow.”
Isn’t that how we are in our expectations? We kind of expect discipleship to be quick and easy; microwave discipleship. It just doesn’t happen that way. It doesn’t happen that way. It is lifelong; it is a process, and it’s agonizing sometimes; a process of Christ being formed in you.
In the very first of the 95 Theses what Luther said is that when our Lord and Master called us to repent he meant that our whole life would be one of repentance. I want to end by giving you this wonderful quotation from Luther that I think so beautifully describes what the Christian life is like and what our expectations should be.
I want you to see this as an invitation this morning to step back into the journey if you’re not already in it. For many of you this is a reminder of what you’re already experiencing, but for a lot of us it may be kind of a wake-up call, that, “I need to grow in my relationship with God, I need to re-embrace the gospel, I need to be cultivating the kinds of friendships that are going to help me grow, I need to be growing in my understanding of doctrine so that I can resist false doctrine, so I’m really flourishing in truth; and I need to embrace that this is a lifelong process.”
So, here’s a quotation from Luther; I’ll close with this. Luther said, “This life, therefore, is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
Let’s pray.
So Father, I pray that even right now you would search our hearts and that you would show us, through your gentle Spirit that you would show us where there needs to be course correction, that you would show us where there needs to be fresh engagement with the gospel and with truth and with other believers and with you yourself. I pray, Father, that if any of us have been AWOL as soldiers of Christ, we haven’t really been in the battle, we really haven’t been in the fight; or to change the metaphor we’ve been like runners who’ve dropped out of the race, we haven’t been engaged, all in, in our discipleship; I pray that you would recover us this morning and bring us back.
I pray for those of us this morning who are just discouraged, defeated; we just feel like we’re spinning our wheels. We keep fighting the same sins, we keep failing in the same ways, we keep struggling in ways that it feels like we’ve been struggling for years; I pray that you would give us hope that we are on the road. If our hearts are oriented towards you, if we are looking to you this morning in repentant faith and with the desire to become like Christ, that we are on the road, and that whatever setbacks we may have experienced this week or this month or this year that we can stand back up and start walking towards the finish line again and continue in this process. So give us hope.
Father, I pray for people this morning in this room who are deeply lonely and need friendship. I pray that you would give them friends. I pray that you would create and forge new kinds of relationships between brothers and sisters in this family, in this congregation. I pray for those who are looking for a place to land and plug in, that maybe this would be the place for them, and not just a place for a Sunday morning learning experience but a place to build friendships that will last years, perhaps even decades, that will help them in their growth towards Christ-likeness.
And I pray that you would give us all courage to be vulnerable, to open our hearts to others, to let people in. I pray that you would give us the deep kind of intentionality where we will create space and time and opportunity for these kinds of friendships. Then I pray that even as we seek for these things our expectations would be in you; that we would trust you to be guiding us in this process. For all of us this morning, we ask you to help us and to move us along in our journey towards Christ-likeness. We want to be more like the Lord Jesus, we can’t do it on our own. We need all of these resources of your word, relationship with you and with one another, so help us to that end.
As we come to the table this morning may even this moment, this shared family meal, this time of opening our hearts afresh to you and doing it together; as we receive the bread and the juice and as by faith we lay hold of our risen and ascended Christ and say yes to Jesus and all that he is for us, may this moment be a moment of growth; may it be step in the journey, may it give us strength for the journey, strength for this week. May we know the presence of your spirit. We pray all this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
