Thankful for My Church

I don’t want to get all mushy with you church, but it is that time of the year, so, I love you guys! I was telling the students this past Wednesday that I’d love to be in this town at this church for the rest of my life! And I still feel that way today!

I was praying and thinking about what to preach this morning and looking at different passages and these introductory passages that Paul begins so many of his letters with really struck a chord with me. This passage is instructive for us, but it also describes the thankfulness that I feel for all of you and I am using this prayer to pray for our church.

He begins by saying he thanks God for the church, and I thought “I’m thankful to God for my church!” Then he tells the church how he is praying for them, and Colossians has a great prayer for a church, so that’s what we’re going to look at this morning!

read and pray

Paul is thankful for churches filled with faith and love, being strengthened by the knowledge of God to live lives pleasing to Him.

I don’t usually have fill in the blanks in my sermon outlines, so if I miss one…

Paul thanks God

3-8

He is grateful to God for the work He has done in the Colossian church. He isn’t patting the church on the back, he’s thanking God.

Thankful for the faith of the church.

We are saved by faith in the Gospel of Christ. God set it all up, did all the work, and we place our faith in it. But even that faith itself is a gift from God!

Shortly after I got my license on a Sunday morning, I was getting ready for church and my mom called upstairs to me and told me she needed me to go grab some milk for us before church. This didn’t make any sense to me, but that was normal, so I went downstairs and went outside. There was a truck sitting in the driveway that wasn’t there the night before! My mom’s car was still there, my step dad’s was too, just an extra truck! I deduced that I had been given a gift! But I didn’t run straight to the truck to take hold of it, I needed something else. I needed a key. And I had to go back inside to receive that key to take hold of the gift.

The Gospel is a gift from God and faith is the key to that gift, and God is the one who gives us the key.

Ephesians 2:8 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

Thankful for the love of the church.

John 15:12 ESV

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Hope changes our disposition.

I’ve been doing the parenting thing for a little while now and I think I’m figuring some stuff out. I don’t want to offend anyone, but Dawson gave me a note the other day that says I’m the best dad ever.

One of the things that I have learned is that when your kids have something they are looking forward to, they tend to get along and behave a little bit better!

Their hope brings out love and increases their faith! This is why Jesus told us to pray that His Kingdom would come, to keep that hope before us! The hope that comes from the Gospel.

Thankful for the Gospel growth of the church.

There is evidence of their faith in their lives and the Gospel continues to spread through them. I’ve heard before that the Gospel doesn’t come to you, it moves through you.

Paul is grateful for what the Lord has done in this body of believers that he loves, but he is not satisfied! So he continues to pray for the church.

Paul prays for the church

9-14

In his holy gratitude and excitement, he prays for the well being of this body of believers.

Prayers to know God’s will.

The Spirit gives us understanding about these things, revealing God’s will to us. This is one of the things He does for us. We can’t do it ourselves!

We have all this work going on in the breezeway over here to waterproof our basement. If you would like to know what exactly is going on, how it’s being done, you are welcome to come ask me. I can come up with something to tell you. It may even sound good. But if you want to get a good answer, I’m not an engineer or a contractor. You need to ask one of the engineers or contractors in our church, particularly one who has been close to this job. That’s something they can help you understand because it’s in their realm.

The Holy Spirit gives us spiritual wisdom and understanding about God’s will because it’s his realm.

John 16:13 ESV

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

We need pray to know His will. When He gives us wisdom and understanding, we need to live according to it.

Prayers to live God honoring lives.

Right thinking leads to right living! This is the principle at play when a parent lets a child stick a penny in the electrical outlet. They do it once and they begin to think rightly that it’s a bad idea and they don’t do it again!

What is a God honoring life, what does it look like?

1 John 2:6 ESV

whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

This isn’t easy, but we aren’t alone. The Spirit gives us spiritual wisdom. He doesn’t stop there, He also gives us the will and ability to obey God!

Philippians 2:13 ESV

for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

The Spirit enables us to bear fruit. God has told us what the fruit of the Gospel looks like in his Word. We have to get in the Word to see what it is…

We also learn who God is in his Word.

Prayers to grow in the knowledge of God.

The more we know about God, the more we love God.

YOU HAVE ROM 11.33 ON YOUR OUTLINE, BUT I WANT TO GIVE YOU A DIFFERENT VERSE THAT FITS THIS IDEA…

Philippians 3:8 ESV

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

And Paul is just talking about meeting Him here! It keeps getting better!

So you have to be in his Word to grow in the knowledge of Him. We can not live the Christian life, we can not “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord” without being in his Word.

It will also give us strength, the next thing Paul prays.

Prayers for strength.

v11

We can’t live this life for Christ in our own strength.

We had a run of great baseball movies when I was a kid: Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, Little Big League, even A League of Their Own! Another great one was Angels In the Outfield. It was about Angels and they were really bad but a boy prayed that they would win the pennant and some angels came to help them win the pennant…

I think the movie contributed to some bad theology, but it helps to make this point! The team wasn’t strong enough on their own to win, they needed more strength. We need God to give us strength.

Ephesians 1:19 ESV

and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might

We must understand that this power isn’t to do what we want, it’s what we need to live the way that He has called us to live, the way we will desire to live as we grow in our knowledge of Him! We have much to be thankful for!

Prayers for thankfulness.

V12

Romans 8:16–17 ESV

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

That’s the hope that’s laid up for us in Heaven!

V13-14

Paul explains how we received this incredible inheritance…

I almost preached from 1 Cor 15 this morning about being thankful for our salvation…

1 Corinthians 15:56–57 ESV

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Gospel presentation

Paul prays for the church to know God’s will; that they would bear fruit, increase in the knowledge of God, be strengthened by Him, and give thanks to Him. These are the same things we need today church. We have to humble ourselves, surrender everything to Him, and seek Him out.

I’m thankful for you church! For the faith that you have, the love you have for one another, for the hope that you have.

I remember ever since I was a kid when I talked to my grandma she would always say something to me. She’d say, “I love you so much Brian, but you know what? Jesus loves you more!” I love you church, but Jesus loves you more!

Let me pray for you.

pray using verses 9-12