Building Up the Body of Christ | Ephesians 4:1-16
Brian Hedges | January 14, 2018
So, let me ask you a question this morning as we get started: how many of you long in your heart of hearts to have meaningful relationships with other people? Let me see your hands. Is there any hand that’s not up in the room? Maybe there is one extreme introvert in the room. No, even introverts desire to have good relationships with other people; introverts just want to have it with one or two people, or three people, but not a whole party or a whole group of people at once.
But human beings all desire and need and long for relationships; that’s why we long to belong to a family, and that’s perhaps one reason why you’re here this morning. You’re in a church, you’re coming to a church, you’re visiting a church, both because you want a thriving, growing relationship with God and because you want a relationship with other believers.
Researchers have noted this for years, that human beings need relationships in order to thrive. One of the most thorough research projects on this was called the Alameda County study. It was headed by a Harvard social scientist tracking the lives of 7,000 people over nine years. This is what the researchers discovered. They discovered that the most isolated were three times more likely to die than those who had strong relationship connections. People who had bad health habits, such as smoking or eating habits, obesity, alcohol use, but had strong social ties - bad habits, strong social ties - lived significantly longer than people who had great health habits but were isolated, all by themselves.
In other words, as pastor and author John Ortberg says, “It’s healthier to eat Twinkies with your friends than to eat broccoli by yourself.”
The problem is that you and I have something of a love-hate relationship with relationships (to quote Paul Tripp in a great book on relationships). We love relationships, but they’re messy. We want to have deep friendships with people, but people are difficult. We want to belong to a church, but it’s a church, you know, and churches can be difficult as well.
There’s an old poem, and it’s bad poetry, but pretty true to life; it goes like this:
“To live above
With the saints I love
Oh, that will be glory;
But to live below
With the saints I know,
That’s another story!”
Maybe you’ve felt that way. Maybe you’ve had a bad experience with church. Maybe you want, very much, to be a part of a church, but you’re very unsure about what that would look like, what that would mean. Maybe you’ve been committed to this church for a long time, but we go through changes over the years, and you’re in an adjustment phase with our church. Or maybe you’re plugged in and you just need encouragement to stay at it.
Wherever you are this morning, God’s word, I think, speaks to us both as for our need for relationships and God’s plan for relational health, for flourishing in relationships, and his plan is the church, the body of Christ.
So, this morning we’re going to go to Ephesians chapter four. This is a familiar passage of Scripture; I’ve preached on this many times over the years. We’re going to go back to it again this morning: Ephesians chapter four, verses one through 16. This is just kind of a one-off sermon, not part of a series, but we’re going to look at Paul’s teaching on building up the body of Christ, God’s plan for the church as it’s described in this passage.
So I’m going to read it, Ephesians chapter four, verses one through 16; you can follow along in your copy of God’s word, and then we’re going to look at three primary things in this passage, three priorities, three aspects of growing as the body of Christ that we see here in this passage. So, Ephesians chapter four, beginning in verse one.
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says,
‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.’
“(In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
This is God’s word.
So, three things I want you to see about building up the body of Christ, building up the church, and how our flourishing as human beings comes through our participation in this. I want you to see:
I. The Unity We Preserve
II. The Gifts We Exercise
III. The Goal We Pursue
That kind of breaks down this passage into three segments.
I. The Unity We Preserve
First of all, the unity we preserve. Notice in verse three that Paul commands us to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” In the NIV it says, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” So there is a focus here on preserving unity.
Now, one of the things that you note right off the bat is that Paul does not tell us that we unify ourselves, but rather we maintain unity, we keep unity, we preserve unity. We don’t create this unity; God is the one who creates unity. God is the one who unites men and women to Christ and who unites them to the body of Christ; he does that through the Spirit. So Paul calls this the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace, and Paul says that we are to maintain this unity, so it’s a unity effected by God’s Spirit, but one that we maintain.
Paul is saying this in the context of several commands to us, telling us how we are to respond to the calling which we have received, in verse one. He says, “I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” and then he gives a list of attitudes or virtues that we are to cultivate. I just want you to see these. These are things that each one of us needs to demonstrate towards one another if the church is going to flourish, if the church is going to be unified and be one.
Look at this, in verse two; he urges us to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
So there are five things here he tells us that we are to have.
First of all, humility and gentleness. Why humility? Humility is important because, as Proverbs chapter 13 tells us, only by pride comes contention. When you have people who are proud and ambitious and arrogant rather than having humble hearts towards one another, there’s always going to be strife. Strife follows pride. Unity follows humility. So Paul tells us that we are to be humble, we are to humble ourselves.
Oftentimes this language occurs in Scripture in this way. Peter will say, for example, “Clothe yourselves with humility.” I think part of the idea there is that we are to put on these virtues like a new set of clothes, like a new set of garments. Perhaps the writers even had in mind the apron that a servant would wear, the household servants. They would wear an apron; they would gird themselves as they would then wash the feet of the guests in their house.
You remember that Jesus himself did this in John chapter 13? He’s the greatest example of humility. Jesus, the Lord of glory, God manifest in the flesh, Jesus the Messiah washes the feet of his disciples, and he does it in humility. That’s the spirit. That’s the attitude that we’re to have towards one another; serving one another in humility. So that’s first.
And then secondly is gentleness, or meekness. This has been defined as the absence of the disposition to assert personal rights. Not claiming rights, not self-centered, not stubborn, not willful, but a quickness to yield to others. That’s gentleness or meekness. Remember that Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Then there’s patience, or longsuffering. This comes from a Greek word, makrothumia (μακροθυμια), which literally means “long-tempered.” So it’s the exact opposite of a short fuse. It’s people who are not quick to get angry; they are slow to anger, even as God himself is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. We are to imitate him. We are to be slow to anger with one another. That’s longsuffering; that’s patience.
And then he says, “Bearing with one another.” Now that shows it’s reciprocal; it’s one another. I bear with you, you bear with me. That means that we put up with one another. It means that when people do things that would be likely to tick you off, instead of taking an offense you’re quick to forgive, you’re quick to show kindness, you’re quick to give the benefit of the doubt.
Now, here’s one thing that’s kind of interesting: you can’t even obey that command to bear with one another until somebody ticks you off. There are some commands in Scripture you can’t obey until someone blows it in the relationship. So next time somebody ticks you off, don’t think, “Well, that’s a good reason to leave that church, leave that small group!” Don’t do that; obey this command! Bear with one another. You know, I might by the guy that ticks you off, so…
And then he says, “Bearing with one another in love.” “In love” really is the summary of the command. This is the new commandment that Jesus gave us, that we love one another; even as he has loved us, we are to love one another. Paul calls this “the bond of perfection” in Colossians three. He reminds us in Galatians that love is the fulfilling of the law.
John Stott calls these five attitudes that we’ve looked at, humility, gentleness, longsuffering, forbearance, and love, he calls these the five foundation stones of Christian unity. This is what makes for a unified church in terms of our behavior and our attitudes towards one another.
So that’s first. We have to show these kinds of things towards one another.
But then notice also that there is a basis for this unity that is found in the truth of the gospel. The basis for this unity is found in the truth of the gospel, and you see this in verses four through six, which follow.
Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
That’s an amazingly dense series of verses. You could spend a whole message just looking at that confession of faith. But I just want you to notice this, that it’s Trinitarian—he talks about one Spirit and one Lord and one God and Father of all—it’s Trinitarian; this is rooted in who God is, and it all has to do with the unity we have. Notice the repetition of the word “one.” There is one body and one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”
So, Paul here seems to be reminding us of our basic identity, who we are. We are the body of Christ. We are connected to one another organically; we belong to the same family.
He’s reminding us of how this all began. How did we become members of the body? We became members of the body through the work of the Spirit. He’s reminding us of our hope, our destiny, where we are headed. There’s one hope. We’re all headed to the same place, if we are in Christ.
He’s reminding us of our Lord, the one we follow. He’s reminding us of the one faith that we confess. I love the song that we just sang. This we believe; it’s a reminder of the fundamentals of our faith, the basic things that we confess together as believers in Christ.
He’s reminding us that there is one baptism, and I think he has in mind here what baptism signifies. Now, I know that in the Church today (this was not true in the New Testament), in the Church today there is a lot of division over baptism. There are some who immerse and there are some who sprinkle, and some baptize infants, and some baptize only believing adults, and some baptize believing children, and there are all different ways that this is approached. Those are important distinctions that can be made, and there’s a time and a place to talk about that, but listen: the thing that unites us as believers in the gospel, when it comes to baptism, is not the mode of baptism or the method of baptism. What unites us is what baptism signifies. Baptism is a sign that points to our union with Christ, it points to our baptism in his death and our resurrection to newness of life, Romans chapter six.
And then Paul says, “one God and Father of all.” This is the one that we worship, and he is our Father; again, the family language here.
So, here is the basis of our unity. This is what it means. It means, on one hand, that we can’t have unity at the expense of truth. There has to be a common confession. You can’t have unity in this sense, you can’t have unity with an unbeliever, you can’t have unity with someone who’s not a Christian, with someone who doesn’t believe in this faith, who doesn’t worship this God, Father, Son, and Spirit. We can’t have unity with them.
But on the other hand, it means that we should have unity with other believers, even where we differ on secondary, even tertiary, doctrines. I love that saying, often attributed to St. Augustine, “In the essentials let there be unity, in the nonessentials let there be liberty, and in all things let there be charity.” I think that’s exactly right. There are essential things that we must unify around: the gospel of Christ, our triune God, this common faith that share. But we can have pretty different opinions about some secondary things and still get along just fine when we humbly love one another, as Paul calls us to.
This is the unity we are to preserve. We preserve it by exercising these certain attitudes and we preserve it as we remember the truth that unites us to one another.
II. The Gifts We Exercise
Alright, secondly — we’ve seen the unity we preserve — secondly, the gifts that we exercise. You see this in verses seven through 12. Paul says in verse seven that “grace was given to each one of us,” and then he goes on to describe the bestowal of these spiritual gifts. Now, this is not a comprehensive list of spiritual gifts. You have longer lists in Romans chapter 12 and in First Corinthians chapter 12, but Paul lists five gifts here in this passage and tells us what the purpose of those gifts is.
What’s really interesting to me here is that he tells us that these gifts are given to us by the ascended Christ, that Christ, in his ascension, gave these gifts to the church. Look at verse eight:
“Therefore it says,
‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.’”
He’s using language from the Psalms, and it’s kind of the idea of a victorious king who has won the battle and is now distributing the spoils of war to his people. That’s the idea, and Paul is telling us that Christ, this victorious one, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.
And then in verse 11 he specifies what those gifts are: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. So there’s a diversity of gifts, and if you look in other passages like First Corinthians 12 or Romans chapter 12 you see that there are other kinds of gifts, such as serving, or giving, or leading, or exhorting, and so on.
My interest is not so much in the specific gifts themselves, but it’s that these gifts are given for a purpose. Now, what is that purpose? What is the purpose for which these gifts are given? Look at verse 12. He gave these gifts “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
That’s why they’re given. God gave gifts to the church, or Christ gave gifts to the church so that the saints would be equipped for the work of ministry so that the body would be built up.
One reason I thought about this passage for today is because we installed new elders today. We installed new pastors. These guys are pastors. They’re lay elders, but they are shepherds. That’s what a pastor is. They are shepherds. And the reason God gave gifts to this church, such as these men who serve as shepherds, is to equip you, the saints, so that you can do the work of ministry.
Alright? God didn’t give gifts to the church so that the leaders would do all the ministry. He gave the gifts to equip the saints so that the saints would do the work of ministry. That’s part of their role as shepherds and as leaders.
And then, when you bring in these other passages on the spiritual gifts, it becomes really clear that everybody has a gift. Your gift may not be the gift of a pastor or a teacher. You may not have that official role in the church. Maybe you have a gift of teaching but you’re not an elder.
Whatever your gift is, whether it’s teaching, or whether it’s generosity, or whether it’s serving, or whether it’s a word of exhortation; whatever the gift is, use the gift! But why do you use the gift? You use the gift to build up the body of Christ.
You see, the focus is not so much using the gift to find fulfillment for yourself; it’s using the gift to help others to grow in Christ. Again, a servant attitude is what’s so crucial there and so important.
So we are to use these gifts, we are to exercise these gifts, and we do this—this is what has been referred to as “every member ministry.” Every member ministry. Now, it’s pretty easy, when a church gets to a certain size, it’s pretty easy for a few people to do most of the ministry while a lot of people attend and benefit but don’t really plug in and serve.
Now, I’m thankful to say that in our church, when I look around and I start thinking of what everybody does, there is a lot of service that goes on in our church. There are many of you that are plugged in in multiple ways. Some of you are probably serving too much. It’s a scary thing for a pastor to say, but some of you are probably serving too much and need to pull back, because you can serve to the point where you’re neglecting other priorities; I don’t know that that’s happening. But I think we are a church of people who serve.
So this isn’t a rebuke or anything, but let me just encourage you to keep serving with this spirit, with this attitude. You serve in order to build up the body. And if you’re not serving, maybe you’re fairly new to the congregation, maybe you’re just finding your place, you’ve just plugged in in the last year or so, then find a place. Let’s talk about what your spiritual gifts might be. What are ways that you can plug in? Let’s talk about what the needs of the body are, and how can you use whatever gifts you have to serve the body, to build up the body?
What I would love to see is that in 2018 every member of this church is plugged in in ministry, that every member is using their spiritual gifts to serve others, that every member is taking this basic posture: “I want to do anything I can to help the church, to build up the church, to bless the church.”
And again, I think you largely do have that attitude, and I’m grateful for it. So, gifts; the gifts of the body. They’re for the building up the body of Christ.
III. The Goal We Pursue
That leads us to the third thing. The third priority we see in this passage is a goal that we are to pursue together, and you see this in verses 13 through 16. I’m not going to read it all, or maybe I’ll just read it in stages here.
Let me just show, first of all, what this goal is in verse 13. Alright? Look at verse 13. Again, this is kind of continuing the thought from verses 11 and 12. God gave the gifts “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
Now, here’s the goal for this, verse 13: “...until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”
So Paul is just kind of piling the words on here, but we could say that in a word, the goal that we are to pursue is maturity. It’s spiritual maturity. It’s maturing, it’s growing into Christ-likeness, both as individuals and as the church. We are to grow, and we are to grow in likeness to Christ, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Now notice, the goal here is not breadth, it’s depth. It’s not more members, it’s more maturity. It’s not a full building, it is a greater participation in the fullness of Jesus Christ. That’s the goal.
This is important, because it is only as we are growing, only as we are maturing, only as we are thriving in Christ-likeness, that we are protected from the opposite, which he describes in verse 14, which is a kind of instability, a kind of immaturity. Notice how he describes this in verse 14, “...so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves,” a ship at sea, tossed to and fro by the waves, “and carried about by every wind of doctrine,” or teaching, “by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”
So here are the options: we could either grow in maturity towards Christ-likeness, or we’re going to be tossed about, we’re going to be blown about by the winds, we’re going to be unstable. Notice what these winds are. They are winds of doctrine.
Paul is really concerned here about false doctrine in a church. He doesn’t want there to be false doctrine in the church, and one of the ways to protect the church from false doctrine is a church that is maturing in the faith, they are growing towards the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Doctrine matters. What you believe matters. Doing the word matters. That’s why it’s a good idea for us to do something like a catechism, where it just drills in the truth of the gospel, where it just drills in the truth of Scripture, so that we know the true from the false.
Don’t ever think that we can put unity over against doctrine. The two go together. We are united in our faith in our knowledge of the Son of God. Again, we’re talking about primary biblical doctrine, what the Scriptures clearly teach. That’s what we’re talking about here, and it’s as we grow and mature that we are kept from the false teaching that would lead us astray.
Now, here’s the last question to ask, and this will move us to a close: how do we do this? How do we pursue this maturity? You see it in verses 15 and 16. Let me read it, verses 15 and 16, and I want to give you some takeaways for the sermons this morning, okay?
Verses 15 and 16: “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
Now that’s a mouthful, alright. Again, Paul’s just kind of expanding on this idea of the body of Christ, and growth comes from the head, and yet we’re growing up into the head, but there’s a basic command here and a basic presupposition to the command that I think gives us some important takeaways.
Here’s the command, where it’s at least implicit as a command, “Speaking the truth in love.” That’s how you grow up. He says, “Speaking the truth in love, we grow up into Christ.” We “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” The only way that happens is if we’re actually connected to one another. That’s the presupposition in verse 16: the body grows up into the head when it is joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly.
All you have to do is just think of Paul’s metaphor here of a human body. You know, the various members of my body are only going to flourish when they’re connected to one another. Chop off a toe, the toe’s not going to flourish anymore. It has to be connected, alright? The life comes through the connection to the body, and a healthy connection to the body.
Okay, so you put all that together, and here are the takeaways: You have to be connected. That’s number one. You have to speak truth. That’s number two. You have to do it in love. That’s number three. Do you want to know what the plan for spiritual growth is in our church? This is it: you are connected to other believers, you are speaking the truth, and you’re doing it in love.
It’s really simple. It’s really simple, and whatever structures are used, that’s how the growth happens. That’s what has to happen in small groups. That’s what has to happen in a Sunday school class. That’s what has to happen in a one-on-one discipleship meeting. That’s what has to happen in a women’s prayer group. That’s what has to happen in your relationships, your informal relationships with other believers in the church. You may be friends and have lots of things in common, but if you are not speaking the truth in love to one another, there will be no growth. That has to be happening.
That means you have to know the truth, and it means you have to love. Love means you’re making sacrifices, you’re making time for one another, you’re making personal commitments to one another. You’re involved in each other’s lives; you have to be connected.
That’s why I want every person in a small group, or every person in a class, or every person in a discipleship relationship. Again, I don’t care as much about the structures. What I care about is that this ministry is happening, but the structures help facilitate the ministry. Whenever we come to a point where a structure’s not working anymore, where it’s more of a hindrance than a help, then we get rid of the old structure. We don’t need the structure; we need the ministry.
There was a great book written a few years ago called The Trellis and the Vine, and I think the imagery here is very helpful. The authors described the church as a trellis and a vine, and the trellis is like a structure, you know, the trellis in your garden on which the vine grows. The trellis is the structure of ministry, it’s the programs of ministry, it’s the governance of the church. That’s the structure. That’s the trellis.
But the real life is the vine that’s growing on the structure, or the vine that’s growing on the trellis. You can have a trellis that has missing slats and needs to be freshly painted and it’s kind of rickety and it’s not holding things up really well, and you can still have a healthy vine. Now, sooner or later you have to maintain the trellis in order to keep the vine growing, but the vine is what counts. On the other hand, you can have a really, really nice trellis and no vine growing on it, or only a vine that’s not very healthy.
Now, ideally, we want both, don’t we? We want to get our trellises in as good of order as possible. We want structures and programs and strategies and plans for ministry that will help us to thrive. That’s why I’m meeting Tuesday night with the strategic planning team, where basically all we do in that meeting is talk about trellises. But the goal is for the vine to thrive! The vine needs to thrive, and that’s only going to happen if there’s real gospel ministry, speaking the truth in love, as we are connected to one another.
So, those are the takeaways. Connect to other believers, speak the truth, and love one another. And let me tell you, as we do that, that’s where human flourishing begins to happen. That’s where people begin to mature. That’s where people begin to grow into likeness to Christ. That’s the atmosphere in which the Spirit of God works. Where the Spirit of Christ is working, that’s where the body grows. That’s where the body is built up.
Let me end in this way: there’s a famous story that dates back to, I guess maybe the 17th century, where Christopher Wren, this famous architect, was building St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. One day he came to the site of the building, the construction site, and he was talking to the various workers. They didn’t know who he was. I mean, here’s this famous architect, brilliant mastermind, who’s designed this massive cathedral.
He’s talking to the workers, and he’s asking them questions. He asked one worker, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, I’m cutting the stone down to the right size so it’ll fit in the right place.”
He asked another person, “What are you doing?” “I’m earning my paycheck. I’m earning money. That’s what I’m doing.”
But then he asked a third person, “What are you doing?” and he said, “I’m building a cathedral. I’m helping Sir Christopher Wren build a cathedral!”
You see, he had perspective on what he was doing in the rather menial task that he was assigned to.
When you’re serving one another, whether it’s in nursery or it’s helping to keep a place clean or you’re connecting to one another in ways that, you know, I may never know [about]. I may never know some of the most important ministry that happens in the church. It’s behind closed doors, it’s over a breakfast table, it’s over coffee, where you’re lovingly helping another believer, helping one another grow. I may never see it, but when you’re doing that you’re building the body of Christ, you’re building the church. So have a vision for it, and as we do it under the blessing of God and the power of his Spirit, with God’s grace we will see a thriving, flourishing community of believers.
Let’s pray.
Father, we confess this morning that it’s easy for us to get distracted as to our priorities when we think about the church. Sometimes we think about the church primarily as a place to meet our own needs. Sometimes we think about the church as consumers, where it’s more about finding the right product for our consumption, whereas your word teaches us to think of the church as a family, to think of the church as the body of Christ, and to think about how we can serve one another, to see one another grow into the fullness of the stature of Christ.
So we pray this morning for that perspective. We thank you, again, that you have given so many gifts to this church, to this body, and we pray that these gifts would be exercised in ways that cause the church to flourish so that you would be glorified in it.
We confess that we need your Spirit in all of this. I’m reminded of the words of that old hymn, [that] unless the Spirit of the holy one come down, all is in vain. So, we don’t depend on ourselves or what we can do. The growth comes from the head, it comes from Christ, so we want to be connected to Christ, filled with the Spirit, even as we connect to one another.
As we come now to the Lord’s table, we remember that the table itself is a sign and a symbol of our unity. We are one loaf. We are the body of Christ together. Even though we are unique and individual members, we belong to this one fellowship. So, may our partaking of the bread and the juice this morning be a symbol of the unity we share in Christ, and may it be a means of grace to us, so that as we take the physical elements we are, in our heart of hearts, directing our faith, our trust, towards Christ, the incarnate, crucified, risen, and ascended Lord who sits at your right hand and now nourishes the church through the Spirit. May we come to Jesus this morning in faith and receive from him all that we need for life and for godliness. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
