Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Good morning.
[00:00:06] My name is Eric Boling, and I'm part of the preaching team here at Village Church. And I'm excited to share with you today some truth from God's word from Second Corinthians Chapter three. So we're going to be there today, if you want to go ahead and turn there. And what we're going to see in Second Corinthians Chapter three is really, it's a continuation of Paul in his letter to the Church of Corinth. And he's going to really shift and talk about how much deep love he has for these people. And if you've been with us in this series, you know that the Corinthian church was far from perfect.
[00:00:44] They were a mess in a lot of ways. And so Paul has written them several letters in order to encourage them and exhort them and help them to transition to be what Christ had called them to be. And the text we're going to look at today in second Corinthians 3 is going to show that despite their challenges, Paul has incredibly deep love for them.
[00:01:09] Before we dive into the text, though, I want to set it up by asking you to think about yourself when you were younger.
[00:01:18] Specifically, what was it like to parent you?
[00:01:23] What kind of kid were you like? What was it like to teach you, coach you when you were younger?
[00:01:29] Some giggling, some nervousness.
[00:01:33] Psychology tells us that there's really some basic temperaments that we have that are fairly stable throughout our lives but are evident pretty early. And there's a whole bunch of them. But I just want to highlight three and see if any of these resonate with you. The first type is called the easy child.
[00:01:52] The easy child tends to respond to the world in a positive manner, mildly to moderately intense. They adapt easily to new schools and people. When encountering a frustration, a frustrating situation, they usually do so with relatively little anxiety. Does that sound like you? It's who we all want to be. Let's be honest. That's the kind of kids we want to raise, right? Let's do a different one. The hesitant or shy child tends to have moods of mild intensity, usually, but not always negative. They adapt slowly to unfamiliar surroundings. They tend to withdraw when first meeting new people. They typically become more accepting of new people in situations once they become more familiar.
[00:02:39] The third one, today, the difficult child may be hard to please or prone to temper tantrums. May may adopt poorly to new situations. Trouble adjusting at school. Emotional responses may be more positive or negative than expected.
[00:02:57] Does that sound like you? If we're honest like, we're probably a blend of these to some degree or another. But we have our tendencies. When you add on top of that, the way we are parented, like the parenting styles of your parents, whether they were authoritarian or permissive or authoritative, whatever that is, that creates a reaction in us that happens very early on that we tend to carry with us through life. And maybe we become like, really compliant.
[00:03:29] Maybe we become like, really independent. I'll figure it out myself. Maybe we become rebellious. All of that to say how we are parented and who we are plays into who we are today. Now, I will tell you, I was a difficult child, particularly as a teenager. And that's shocking to some of you who know me. You're like, really? I was not an easy kid, man. It's funny, not long ago, I found some old progress reports from my sophomore year of high school. Now why my parents still had that, I have no idea.
[00:04:04] But I start reading these progress reports, and if you were to ask me before reading these reports, how were you in Heisman? I was probably a bit of a challenge, but, you know, I was a good student. And here's what I read.
[00:04:19] And this is back in the day, like, all handwritten, right before you could get. I feel bad for kids today, man. Parents get notified immediately. Bing, why don't you turn in that assignment right now? When I was a teacher, I did love that. Cause I'd be like, I'm just gonna text your mom right now and you'll turn that in. No, I'm sorry. Okay. Anyway, handwritten, come out. So I'm reading this progress report and it says, this is almost verbatim. Eric does not take school seriously. He is a distraction to himself and others.
[00:04:54] Okay, that's kind of harsh, right?
[00:04:57] Another one said, eric seems more interested in having fun than he does in learning math. And I'm like, yeah, it's math, absolutely. That's a no brainer, right? I'm reading these and I'll be honest with you. I'm well past my sophomore year of high school, but I felt that a little bit. I was like, man.
[00:05:20] And then I was like, I didn't even ask my dad. Dad, was I hard to raise because I knew the answer to that.
[00:05:26] But here's the good news, right? Over time, I matured. My brain kind of caught up with everything else. I began to become.
[00:05:36] I was changed from who I was to become a responsible student overall. And so with this brain development, what's really interesting is there's a biology that goes to maturation. See when you're younger, the first part of your brain that kind of activates is what they call the limbic system, which is all your emotions that wires up real quick, right? So this is why you get outbursts from young people.
[00:06:04] The last part of your brain is the frontal lobes of the prefrontal cortex, and that wires up last, usually in your mid-20s. So when I first again, I was a high school educator for 22 years, I would ask students, why did you do this? And they would go, I don't know. I said, what do you mean you don't know?
[00:06:25] I really don't know. And I realized over time it's because their brains weren't fully wired yet. Now, when I would teach them brain science, they would often say, well, good, now I've got a built in excuse to do what I. I said, no, you have enough to be able to function, but it happens late. But we mature and with the gift of time and really this biopsychosocial maturity, we can look back to see more clearly that most people in our lives were there for our good, right? Like my parents disciplined me and educated and dealt with me because they loved me, they wanted the best for me.
[00:07:07] I realized that they were trying to help me in spite of myself. I didn't always see it that way. At the time, they knew more about life than I gave them credit for.
[00:07:19] And it's amazing, all my own children are in their 20s. It's amazing how much smarter I got. After they got a couple years of college, every single one of them independently came back and said, you really did know some things about life.
[00:07:36] And my wife and I were like, yeah, we did. We finally watched the YouTube video that explained it and we learned, no, it's amazing, right?
[00:07:47] When you start looking back, you realize that, man, maybe you gotta apologize to some people in your past.
[00:07:53] Now I'll tell you. So again, high school for me, rocky road, right? I had an opportunity to go back and work at that same high school as the dean of students, which means I was hired to handle student discipline.
[00:08:09] And there were still teachers there that taught me.
[00:08:14] There was one teacher in particular that I just battled with and I was awful to him.
[00:08:20] He's now my colleague.
[00:08:22] And I don't know if you've ever felt that, like, nudge of the Holy Spirit, where it's like, you need to apologize to that person and like you don't want to and like, you're good. At least I'll speak for myself. I'm pretty good at rationalization. I was like, nah, he probably doesn't remember, right? It was a long time ago, and he's probably over it by now. And so I really avoided what I knew I needed to say to him.
[00:08:48] I walk into the cafeteria one day, and the only seat was directly across from him.
[00:08:54] And I was like, oh, man, this is it. So I sit down and I said, hey, I don't know if you remember how I acted in high school. Immediately, he's like, no, I remember.
[00:09:09] And I was like.
[00:09:11] I was like, man, I'm really sorry. I apologize. Like, I was not. It was not good. I apologize. Apologized profusely. And he said, you know, I've been waiting to hear that.
[00:09:26] I was like, fair, fair, right? But I followed that. So here's the point, right? The point of reflecting back on us as children, and if we were to flip it, to reflect on being a parent, it's really hard.
[00:09:40] It's not easy. It takes a significant investment, emotionally, physically, spiritually, like, to do this process well is difficult work.
[00:09:53] And as parents, the best we try to do is train up our children through building a foundation so they can figure out how to change a rapidly.
[00:10:05] How to impact a rapidly changing world, how to navigate it.
[00:10:09] And there comes a point as a parent where you look at your children and you say, you gotta step out and you gotta do it.
[00:10:18] And I know when you're a young parent, you feel like that day will never, ever come. These children will be with us forever.
[00:10:26] But I can tell you, as a parent of older kids, it goes by like that.
[00:10:32] The other day, the other night, my wife and I went to celebrate senior night for our youngest child. She's 21. She plays soccer at Olivet Nazarene University.
[00:10:42] We've been literally watching this child play soccer since she was 4.
[00:10:47] And it felt like it went by in a second. And everybody tells you that, but you realize that time goes quickly, and at some point, you've done all that you can do.
[00:11:01] And that's really what Paul is setting up when he's talking to the Church of Corinth. He's coming to a point with his ministry to them where he's done what he's needed to do. And it's time for them to be able to launch out and to fulfill their gospel calling.
[00:11:18] And this morning, we're going to look at a new series from Second Corinthians. We're calling Gospel Ministry.
[00:11:24] And what we're going to look specifically at is how Paul continues to build on his calling and how he's going to encourage followers of Jesus to continue to define their calling to a gospel ministry. Now, before we dive in, we need to define a couple terms. First of all, when we're talking about the gospel, we're talking about the good news of what God has done in Christ to secure salvation.
[00:11:49] It's the gospel. And then ministry, the mission of every follower of Jesus to share the good news to others through our words and actions.
[00:12:00] So this idea that as a follower of Christ, we are expected to share the gospel.
[00:12:08] Remember, the last thing Jesus says in Matthew to his disciples is go into all the world, make disciples. That's what we're called to do.
[00:12:17] And so when we talk about this gospel ministry, we're talking about taking the good news of what God has done in Christ and looking at, how do you and I live that mission out? Where do we do that at? How do we do that?
[00:12:34] Let's dive into the text and see what Paul is going to teach us. We're going to look at verses 1 and 2. In 2 Corinthians, chapter 3, Paul says, are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts to be known and read by all.
[00:13:06] Now, Paul has previously written a couple other letters to this Corinthian church. One of them is known as the severe letter. And again, if you've been in this series, we've talked some about that, and the Severe letter was really strong correction and explicit instructions to the church about how to follow Jesus.
[00:13:24] And you wonder, why did Paul have to come so strong? Well, because the people in the church were living out of alignment with the way of Jesus.
[00:13:32] And Paul wanted to drive home. The point of forgiveness from Jesus is a life that is submitted to Jesus.
[00:13:42] So he's really trying to make them understand, look, that if you have forgiveness, then the submission of your life follows and you need to live according to that. And what had happened to the Corinthian church was they had received that forgiveness and then gone on and lived how they wanted to live.
[00:14:00] And it caused all kinds of dysfunction and disorderedness.
[00:14:05] And so when we get to this chapter three of second Corinthians, the church had repented of a lot of these sins. They had, like, changed their ways. They were now headed in a new direction.
[00:14:17] They were moving forward.
[00:14:20] And while many had repented, Paul still had a lot of detractors. Okay. There were still a lot of people in the church, though, questioning Paul's ministry, which is why he asked these two questions.
[00:14:33] He asked these two questions to deal with people in the church who were asking, what authority does Paul have to really tell us what to do?
[00:14:43] And so when you understand that context, when he asks again from the text, are we beginning to commend ourselves Again, he's stating, do we really need to go back and, like, reintroduce ourselves to you and the weeds? Talking about was Paul and the other apostles he had sent to the Church of Corinth. He's saying, like, you don't really need me to come and explain who I am, right? Like, you get it. You know me. You know who I am. You know what I'm about. I don't need to come and prove that to you again.
[00:15:15] And then he asks the second question. Do I need letters of recommendation to you or from you? It was a common practice in this time for traveling teachers to have letters that would, like, verify who they were and what they were about. And so as people would travel to these different places, these different churches, they would bring these letters with them. And it was almost like a certification of, no. This person you should listen to because they're, again, they're, like, certified by somebody else. And Paul is saying, you know, I don't need those letters because you're the letter, right? He's saying, I don't need a letter of external validation because I can look at you.
[00:16:02] I can see the Corinthian church. I can see how you were living this way, and now you're following Christ and you're living this way. He's like, you're the testimony. You're the evidence.
[00:16:13] Naomi says it explicitly. You yourselves are the letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by all.
[00:16:22] So what had happened was the Corinthian church had matured, right? They had learned how to overcome the temptations of their culture around them. They no longer looked like the Corinthian culture. They were different. They had confronted and challenged the tendencies of the sinful patterns they had established.
[00:16:41] They were beginning to seek the Lord. They were discerning false prophets and false teachers.
[00:16:47] And remember, Paul loves these people deeply, and he's saying that their commitment to Jesus has now brought them to a place where he can send them out to be known and read by all.
[00:17:03] So he's saying, instead of having this letter of recommendation, you're the letter, and you're ready to be sent out to be read so people can see the effectiveness of what Christ has done.
[00:17:17] And if we think about that in our context, many American Christians come to church to get something.
[00:17:24] Ministry, preaching, teaching, relationships, whatever things that village church excels in, you're going to benefit by being a part of this church. Those things aren't wrong.
[00:17:37] They're actually very good things.
[00:17:40] But if we follow what Paul is teaching here, he's saying the evidence of effectiveness of village church is not what you get from the pastors, elders, deacons, ministry leaders, ministries, et cetera. It's about what you become to the world around you. That's the evidence of the effectiveness of preaching the gospel in the same way as Paul. We aren't here to simply preach to you.
[00:18:09] We're here to preach you to the world.
[00:18:12] And sometimes churches can get that twisted a little bit.
[00:18:18] And sometimes you can get distracted by the mission of, okay, well, what should this look like? How should this be? And Paul's saying, pretty clearly, no, it's, you're the letter. You and I are literally letters explaining who Jesus is.
[00:18:36] That's heavy when you think about that, because it's not like we turn that on and turn that off.
[00:18:43] It's not like we can pick and choose when somebody's going to read that letter. If we keep using that example, it's all the time.
[00:18:53] And so Paul is saying to the Corinthians, you are the evidence of the effectiveness of the church. Same thing to us. You, I are the evidence of the effectiveness of the church in preaching the Gospel.
[00:19:09] The Corinthian church had really grown because they did four things. So remember, they were a mess.
[00:19:17] They got their act together. These four things really brought them back. Alignment number one, they repented of sin. Number two, they reconciled relationships. Three, they got rid of ungodly influences. Four, they embraced challenging ministry and a changing culture.
[00:19:37] Christian growth in our lives often explodes, and I think that's the right term for it. Like, it blows up exponentially when we address these same four things in our lives.
[00:19:51] We grow when we confess our sins. And if we're honest, all Christian growth starts with the repentance of sin.
[00:20:00] If you don't start there, it's really hard to do everything else.
[00:20:04] And so when we talk about repentance of sin, we're able to repent because of the grace of God, the sacrifice of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit. We're reminded if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
[00:20:21] And so one of the things that we need to ask, if we're not experiencing growth, could it be we have sin that we need to confess?
[00:20:33] And that's what I Like to call kind of a dangerous prayer. If you take it from the Psalms where David says, search me, know my heart.
[00:20:40] Because if you were to ask me, all right, Eric, what are some sinful patterns that you have? I could probably tell you a few. I'm not going to, but I could. Things I'm aware of, yeah, I struggle with this, this and this.
[00:20:53] But there might even be things I'm not aware of or that I try to push away so much where the Holy Spirit needs to be like, no, that needs to be repented of. And so I think my encouragement to us is like, be open to that. If we're going to pray those types of prayers, be open and seek it. Because when we repent of sin, we don't find condemnation. We don't find, you know, work harder, try to be better. We find grace and forgiveness, and it's taken care of.
[00:21:27] So the first thing we do to grow is we confess our sins. Another thing we do to grow is to reconcile relationships. All of us have a broken relationship somewhere in our life.
[00:21:41] And when we talk about this, it's hard because it brings up a lot of stuff for us.
[00:21:49] It hurts to think about this.
[00:21:52] Maybe this relationship is broken because of something you did. That's hard to think. Like, I caused this. Maybe the relationship is broken because of something that somebody else did.
[00:22:05] Maybe you want to reconcile, but that person's not willing to reconcile with you. That's hard.
[00:22:12] And I'm certainly, I don't know every broken relationship that you have in your life. And honestly, there are legitimate reasons to avoid intimacy with other people who have hurt us or taken advantage of us. But I think you can make an argument from Scripture that it's our job to live at peace with people to the best that we can to try to do that. And it's really, really hard to reconcile with people.
[00:22:42] And so this idea of to grow, we need to reconcile the relationships around us. And again, dangerous prayers, maybe that's one to say, God, like, I know I need to reconcile with this person.
[00:22:55] Quite honestly, I don't want to do it.
[00:22:58] I don't think they're going to be receptive to it. But this is what I have to try to do, to live at peace with people. Help me through that.
[00:23:08] Number three, we experience growth when we get rid of ungodly influences.
[00:23:15] And when we read that, a lot of times we think about all right, things in culture that are obviously wrong. And we go, oh, that's stay away from that.
[00:23:24] What Paul is talking about when he talks to The Corinthian Church is there was a group of people that were so called super apostles, right? And these were false teachers that would like come into a church after Paul established it. So what Paul would do is he'd travel to an area, he'd establish a church, he'd set up local leadership in this church, and then he would go on to establish another church and he would write letters back to these churches to encourage them. Well, along the way, there was these super apostles that would try to infiltrate these churches and they were teaching things that were antithetical to the Gospel.
[00:24:03] What they were teaching was things that were designed to make them rich and to give them prestige. And so Paul continued. If you read all the letters of Paul, he battles against these super Apostles.
[00:24:17] And these super apostles had influenced the Corinthian Church.
[00:24:22] And so what Paul is saying is saying, get rid of that.
[00:24:26] Maybe for us there are things that we listen to or we believe and we need to stop listening or believing those things because they're not true and they're having influence over us that it shouldn't.
[00:24:42] The last thing to experience growth is to be committed to embracing, challenging ministry that happens in a rapidly changing world.
[00:24:53] Something powerful happens when we jump into ministry that is beyond ourselves and our capabilities.
[00:25:00] I don't know if you've ever experienced that in your life where you feel this prompting of man, I should really step out into this.
[00:25:08] But again, you don't want to, or it's going to be scary, or it might be dangerous, or it might make you unpopular or whatever it is. We're very, very good at that resistance. We say, I don't want to do it, but when we do it, we really step into explosive growth in our lives. I can tell you, I can look back over my life and see seasons of my life where I felt pushed into this ministry. Opportunity that I didn't want to do, I felt was beyond me. I didn't feel capable for. I mean, I can remember very clearly one where I was in a situation that I quite honestly loved being in.
[00:25:51] It was a fruitful ministry at the time. I was good at it, I was successful at what I was doing. And I felt this nudge by the Holy Spirit saying, I've got a different assignment for you.
[00:26:03] And I remember at the time, my kids were little, my wife was a stay at home mom. And I remember battling internally with the Holy Spirit. I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it. And I remember praying one night, family's all in bed. I'm laying on the couch. I remember praying, all right, God, if this is what you want, I'm going to release it to you.
[00:26:22] I then had the worst six months of my entire life.
[00:26:29] It was hard.
[00:26:31] It was challenging.
[00:26:35] At the time. I was working as a therapist part time. I went through clinical depression.
[00:26:41] I remember talking to people and they'd be like, man, life is meaningless. And I'd say, yeah, it is.
[00:26:47] I wasn't helping anybody at that time. And I'm not making light of depression. I'm just saying, like, I get it.
[00:26:53] It was really a hard season. But when I look back, I recognize that prepared me to step into other things that I couldn't have gotten to if I would have stayed where I was.
[00:27:07] Now do I want to go back to that? Absolutely not. But what I learned was I can trust God through that challenge, and I stepped out into it.
[00:27:18] The other thing that we have to understand is that we live in a rapidly changing world, don't we?
[00:27:24] Things move fast, and maybe they've always moved fast. It's just now we have an ability to see it better, but things change so quickly, it's hard to keep up.
[00:27:36] And we live in this changing culture, this changing world, and we try to make sense. How do we engage it? Our world's gonna change a lot on November 5th.
[00:27:47] How? I don't know. I have no idea. But it's going to change.
[00:27:53] Our families change. We talked about that. You blink, your kids are grown. You look in the mirror and you go, oh, man, that's my dad's face.
[00:28:02] It's my mom's face. How did this happen? You don't know what's cool anymore.
[00:28:10] I remember the day I realized I had crossed over into uncool was we had our first child, and I used to be a hat backward loud music guy, right? Grew up in Northern Indiana. That was cool. So I remember it was a nice day. I didn't have my son with us. My wife wasn't with me. I got in the car and I was feeling good. Music goes up a little bit. Hat goes backwards, windows down, got the lean right? Wabash, Indiana, right? You get it? So I got the lien and I'm driving. I pulled up next to some people and I gave them the cool nod, like, what's up? You know, not the. But like, what's up? And I realized the Winnie the Pooh sunshades were down in the back of the car.
[00:28:54] And I was like, all right, no luck. Turn the hat around. Music down, windows up, seat goes Up. It changes, changes fast.
[00:29:06] But what shouldn't change is our commitment to the Gospel.
[00:29:10] We have to remain steady and consistent.
[00:29:14] Which is why I think when we look at a rapidly changing world, one of the greatest witnesses we can offer as followers of Christ is a consistency and steadiness. Because we know our hope doesn't lie in all that's around us.
[00:29:31] Our hope lies in Christ.
[00:29:34] Right? And we cannot be afraid of this rapidly changing world. We can embrace it.
[00:29:44] As we continue to look at Paul and his writings to the church, in verse three, he continues this thought about letters and about them being the evidence. He says in verse three, and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
[00:30:09] Again, he continues this theme. You're the letter from Christ not written with ink as Paul would have written. He says, you are literally written by the Spirit of the living God.
[00:30:20] Which means that what was being written on their hearts was completely true, eternal, and it was going to last forever. And not only was it written on a tablet like it would have happened in the Old Testament, it was literally written on their hearts. It was the most intimate thing that they could experience as followers of Christ.
[00:30:42] He's saying, this is how close it is to you.
[00:30:47] Paul doesn't need to continue to instruct them because the Spirit is literally written on their hearts. He's bringing them into their calling, which is to grow in Christ.
[00:30:59] And when we think about growth, all of us grow at different levels. We don't all go through the same path as followers of Christ.
[00:31:10] And we have seasons where we grow a lot. We have seasons where we don't grow much at all. But there's always a common goal as we journey through our faith and that's to be an imitator of Christ.
[00:31:23] I think what I would add to that is when we experience growth, particularly growth that is painful, don't resent what God is doing.
[00:31:33] It's easy to resent that. Why me? Why do I have to go through this? This is hard. I should be able to. Can I just listen to another podcast or watch another YouTube? Say no. It's difficult and it's worth it.
[00:31:48] I told you before about the worst six months of my life. A follow up to that is, I remember it was Christmas time and somebody had randomly brought like a bunch of gifts for my children, like one of those anonymous like on the doorstep. And you would have thought as a follower of Christ, I would have Dropped to my knees and thanked God for his unexpected provision and blessing. I did not. I was angry. I said, how dare somebody treat us like this? My wife goes, what's wrong with you? I was like, I don't know. I took off walking. It's December in Indiana. It's cold. I have no coat.
[00:32:27] I'm muttering to myself because people had to be like, there he goes. He lost it.
[00:32:33] I walked to this little park, and I remember praying this prayer. Thank God that he doesn't answer every prayer. I remember saying, God, look, I'm out.
[00:32:42] Whatever I need to do, I'm out. Like, I know once saved, always saved. And I've been raised in good Calvinistic churches, but I'm out.
[00:32:51] And I'm telling you, it started to snow, and I'm like, what is this, a wonderful life? Like, really? Is an angel gonna come next? Right? Anyway, I love it. It's a wonderful life. But I was like, really? Snow? I remember hearing this voice. It's one of the few times in life where I felt this so strongly. It was like, hey, have I not been taking care of you this whole time?
[00:33:13] What's sitting at your house right now?
[00:33:16] And God brought me through several things where I realized he was taking care of me. Even when it didn't feel like it or I didn't see it.
[00:33:27] I remember walking back into the house and telling my wife I was sorry. And that, like, that really started to change that whole period of time for me. Why? Because I realized that growth is what I needed to do. It's what I needed to go through.
[00:33:44] Last thing here as we wrap up, let's look at verse four together.
[00:33:49] Paul says, such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. What Paul wants them to know is that the confidence of the Corinthian church is not based in who they are or what they could do or how far they have grown. Their confidence isn't even in Paul himself.
[00:34:07] It's in Christ.
[00:34:10] He wants them to know that what Christ had done, what he began in them, what he purposed to do, he was going to accomplish.
[00:34:19] And I think that's a good reminder for us as a church to know that what we have and what we can do and how we do it is because of Christ.
[00:34:29] That's it. Our confidence is in that.
[00:34:34] Three, so what's for us? Number one. Whatever Jesus does for you should never stop with you. I'm going to say that again. Whatever Jesus does for you should never just stop with you.
[00:34:47] What that means is you're taken through growth in your life so you can help other people. It's the beauty, I think, of being part of a body of Christ.
[00:34:57] I love hearing people's stories about how they've gone through their faith.
[00:35:04] And I know some people, they feel like they have to downplay their testimonies, like, well, I didn't really go through anything. I don't have this amazing test. It doesn't matter because God's taking all of us through something in order to leading us to be more like Christ. So whatever Jesus does for you should never just stop. For you, it's to be given away. Number two, you have a gospel ministry to build the kingdom.
[00:35:31] Each and every one of us, if we're followers of Christ, we have a Gospel ministry to take part in.
[00:35:39] And I don't know what that looks like for you. That's a matter for you to pray through, but what does that look like for you? It's again, dangerous prayer. Pray that, Lord, what's the ministry for me? And it might be for a season of time and you do it and then there's another one, or you might get into it and you might do that the rest of your life. I don't know.
[00:35:59] But you have a gospel ministry to build the kingdom. And I think the last thing that we need to understand with so what here is you are sufficient to what you're called to do because you have the Holy Spirit.
[00:36:12] If you're called to something, you need to have a confidence in it that you're sufficient to do it. Because of the power of the Holy Spirit, it won't feel like it to you.
[00:36:24] You're going to feel overwhelmed. You're going to feel overwhelmed. You might feel like it's too much, but again, if God has called you to it, he's going to lead you through it. Sufficiently thankful for this example of the Corinthian Church and how we can see what they used to be to where they are now as a good reminder for us that no matter where we are, through that process of growth, through that process of growth in Christ, we can be changed to his likeness. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word.
[00:36:59] We thank you, Lord, that your word works in such a way that we can read a letter written to a church in an ancient world.
[00:37:07] That applies to us living here today, the 21st century. Lord. Lord, help us to be people that are willing to pray bold prayers asking you to search our hearts, asking you to help us reconcile with other people, asking you to help us step into challenging ministries.
[00:37:32] Lord, give us the confidence that we have enough. And we can do all that we're called to do because we have the sufficiency of your spirit. Lord, thank you for this encouragement. From your word. I pray this in your name, Amen.
