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Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is a great privilege to preach the Word of God to the saints of Durbin Memorial Baptist Church.
I’d like to begin this morning by having us all think back.
Go back in your minds to when you were a child.
I want you to think about what is was you wanted to be when you grew up.
The answer to that changed quite a bit for me growing up.
I may have shared this before but at any given point I wanted to be a lawyer, or President of the United States, maybe a videographer, and at one point I really thought I was going to be a nuclear engineer.
What about anyone else?
Call out something you wanted to be as a child, Troy?
Anyone else?
Some of the classic answers include “astronaut,” “teacher”, “pro athlete”, “firefighter”, or “doctor.”
Interestingly enough, the answer to that question has changed over time.
According to an article from the last couple of years, those in Gen Z aren’t as interested in the traditional vocational aspirations.
The most popular vocational aspiration for Gen Z is to become a YouTube Star!
If you’re not familiar with the type of work its basically producing your own videos and gathering a following of people that are dedicated to watching your content.
This is a type of job that would have been unfathomable even just back to when I was in grade school.
54% of Gen Zers said that if the opportunity presented itself, they would lunge at the opportunity to become a social media influencer.
It seems this next generation strongly desires to become celebrities.
Now, its really easy for the older generation to look at this and think it is ridiculous.
You might think that its a lost generation that just “doesn’t get it.”
If you’re tempted to shake your head at the next generation, you have to ask yourself, where did they learn to value celebrity so much?
From us!
It was over two decades ago that Time Magazine Film Critic Richard Schickel noted that celebrities have become “the chief agents of moral change in America.”!
From a broad, cultural perspective, the celebrities are giving the moral guidelines, setting and changing the moral standards for society.
And this is nothing new!
Society often follows the whims of those who are popular!
It is no wonder that our next generation would seek to become celebrities!
We have put them on a pedestal and proclaimed them to be the tastemakers!
But the question is, should we really lift up celebrity status so high?
Should we take them to be our moral compass when they have no standard for morality?
Should reaching celebrity be our desire?
On the macro level, society on this side of glory will almost certainly continue to follow the way of pop culture and society.
But on a personal level, I would like to present to you a better way.
A counter cultural way.
A higher purpose.
Today’s sermon has been entitled Plod On and as we look at some of the final instructions Paul gives to the church of Colossae, we are given very simple ways to live meaningful, purposeful lives.
Let me warn you, it is not flashy.
In fact it may be so simple that the outside world would call you foolish.
But this high calling, heavenly direction, and humbled living is the greatest height we could aspire toward.
“Spirituality is a matter of understanding our identification with Christ, having our lifestyle transformed, and honoring Christ in our relationships.
Ordinary sounding stuff, but with Christ at the center, it becomes extraordinary indeed.”
Take to heart what is written in 1 Corinthians
If you would, turn your Bibles to Colossians 4. We’re often so tempted to get swept up in celebrity culture, we often even apply it to our faith.
We think that we are rather insignificant because we pale in comparison to King David or the Apostle Paul.
But we see there from 1 Corinthians that God has called us, even us who are not particularly wise, powerful or noble.
He has called us and chosen us to accomplish His will.
To save us and commission us.
To give our lives Godly wisdom, sanctification, and redemption, not by our own ability or aptitude, but by the Lord of our Salvation!
This is true for all those who believe in the name of the Lord Jesus and confess Him as the Risen Savior.
The highest calling in this life is to plod on for the glory of God! What should you want to be when you grow up?
Someone who presses and plods onward and upward for the glory of God! Let’s see how this practically works out in our lives.
Beginning in Colossians 4:2
The first priority in the life of the redeemed is prayer.
I think that Paul must have been a baptist preacher because in this verse we are given three points on prayer for our practical application!
First, we read, “continue steadfastly.”
This means that we are to be “diligent” in prayer!
You may have heard another Bible verse that reads “Pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17).”
The same idea is being presented here.
The redeemed are to be in a continual posture of prayer.
We hold fast and don’t let go to communication with God.
This should lead us to two questions.
1.
Why do we need to do this?
What’s the big deal about prayer?
and 2. How do we do this in a practical way?
I have a job, I have kids, I have responsibilities.
I can’t spend all day in a prayer closet.
Let’s answer those questions in order.
First, Why is prayer important?
One pastor wrote that prayer, “is the most important speech the new man can utter.
Prayer is the strength of the believer’s fellowship with the Lord and the source of his power against Satan and his angels.
Through prayer, believers confess their sin, offer praise to God, call on their sympathetic High Priest, and intercede for each other.
Prayer from a pure heart is to be directed to God, consistent with the mind and will of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Christ, and for the glory of the Father.”
Prayer is important because it is our communication with the God of our Salvation!
Think about it like this, before you are saved by the grace of God through faith in Christ the Son and given the Holy Spirit, you are separated from God.
Your relationship with true divinity is separated by iniquity!
Your sin has cut you off from God!
I’ve illustrated this many times using the Three circles Graphic.
Three Circles Graphic
Without Christ we are stuck in the circle labeled brokeness.
We try vice after vice looking to escape brokeness, but it just leads to more brokeness.
In that state of our sin, our relationship with the Holy God is severed.
In our broken condition, we have no communication with God! Sin has severed our fellowship with God.
But praise be to God who loved us, even while we were still separated sinners and expressed that love through sending Christ to pay for our sins!
Through faith in Jesus Christ we are restored to God!
We are given fellowship with the God to whom we were once separated!
Through faith in Christ we are finally able to truly pray to God!
This is why we the redeemed should cherish prayer!
Because your prayers are being heard by your heavenly Father!
Why do we pray?
Because through the grace of God we CAN pray!
If we cherish being restored to the Holy God, prayer is the expression of that restoration.
Hopefully you now see why it is important to communicate with the God of our salvation through prayer.
Now lets go back to the text and answer how to go about steadfastly continuing in prayer.
BACK TO Colossians 4:2
You would find it highly unpractical to spend all day in constant prayer even though that may very well be a great use of a vacation day.
When we talk about praying without ceasing, we are not declaring that you must spend every waking moment reciting a prayer with no cognition of the world around you.
Rather, we are talking about actively living in a state of God consciousness that relates everything in your life, every experience, to Him.
It is acknowledging the sovereignty and providence of God in every moment and actively seeking to do so.
This plays out in the day-to-day but lifting a simple praise to God after your heart is warmed by the learning experience of your toddler.
Or maybe its seeing a need in someones life and lifting a silent petition to the Lord.
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