The Christian Operating System

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Pilsak takes us through his series,

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Hope Rising, from the book of 1 Thessalonians. Let's listen in. I'm glad we have the opportunity to come together as a community of worshipers of God through Jesus Christ and be reminded each week on Sunday mornings that we're not alone, that we have a community that God has put us into and allowed us to be a part of and it actually is a privilege to have the freedom to gather together as God's people.

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It's been an amazing thing to be a part of the journey of Recast Church from the very beginning.

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We started off as just a few couples praying on Wednesday nights at another church over in Portage, praying

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Wednesday evening, strategizing about planting a church. We didn't even know the name, we didn't know the location, we did not know where we would be, but we were trusting and heavily leaning on God to use us.

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We began to meet in the basement of a home in the Trestle Creek neighborhood, up on the north side of Matawan, north of Red Arrow.

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We moved to a storefront on Red Arrow where we met and grew to the point where we had two services.

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We were considering going to a third service at that location when we began to talk to the schools and they allowed us to use the space that we're meeting in now.

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So we've been about three years setting up and tearing down almost every Sunday since then here in this place.

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We had hoped that our building would be finished in mid -August, but now it's shaping up to be more like the end of September or the beginning of October.

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So I would ask that you please continue to be in prayer for the timing of that building, that we would love it to actually be what they're saying right now, so October would be fine, but not, maybe it ends up being a

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Christmas present, I hope not. But at this point, October is what we're shooting for. And so be in prayer about that.

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The good news is that we can stay in this space. I don't know if you guys realize this, but originally, according to the very first plans, my very first communication with the superintendent of the schools, this would have been our last

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Sunday in this building. According to the first conversation, we would have had to take everything out of here on this

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Sunday at the end of the service and be done. But they've allowed that to extend. And unfortunately for the school, the contract that they had for this building has fallen through.

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So I feel bad for what that means for the community, but actually it is helpful to us, because now we can continue to meet in this place indefinitely with some changes.

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They are gonna begin to use all of the space in the classroom area on this main floor is now gonna be used for ancillary services and offices.

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And so because of that, all of our classrooms are now gonna be moved up to the upstairs, what we use there.

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And we are gonna be paring down the children's program for the next couple of months and seeking to just try to remain flexible during this time.

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And I appreciate your willingness to be flexible as we try to make as smooth a transition as possible, but how many of you would just identify that you've experienced enough transition to know that smooth usually doesn't define it?

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Did you know that? We pray and we ask for a smooth transition, and usually

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God is gracious to give us exactly what we need, which is a choppy transition. So, and many of us in various ways, some of us kind of thrive off of that change, and we like that.

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And then others, it's like, oh, just call me when it's over, right? And I'll come visit in a new building, but hang in there.

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I believe that God is preparing all of us to be super excited when we get in the new building. I think by that point, we'll be tired with the setup and tear down, going back to that again in two weeks.

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And so with that, yeah, that reminds me, not this next

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Sunday, not today, not next Sunday, but the following Sunday, again, anybody that can help out at the end of the service, putting chairs away and all of that, we're gonna be back to that routine for a few weeks until, again, until we get into the building.

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So everybody's aware of that. But God loves this church. God loves this church, and he is guiding us out from this place to a new place he is providing for us.

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And I think it's kind of interesting to think in terms of that being the overarching story of the

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Bible, God taking and carving out a people for himself and leading them to a new place.

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I don't mean to over -spiritualize a church building like that's the new Jerusalem or something like that, but in a small scale as a church, we're gonna be living out that type of transition that God has for us in the bigger picture of our lives and where he is leading us and guiding us as a people.

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And as we consider what God has done and is doing here at Recast Church, I want to turn our attention to the text this morning to introduce us to this very short text that we're gonna be working through.

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In this section of scripture, we are going to find three things that are so fundamental to the Christian life that I'm going to call them the operating system of the

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Christian life. Now, that's in terms of, in case some of you might not, that might not speak to you right away, operating system, it's the program that you use to run your computer or your phone or your iPad or your devices.

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And so it has something already pre -installed. When you get it, it already has Windows installed or it already has

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Mac OS or iOS on it. And so that's already taking up some storage.

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It's already there and it's the thing that you use to actually do everything you do with the computer, unless you're like really into it and then you do

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DOS or, I don't know, and that's still a type of operating system. But anyways, these things that we're looking at here in our text are so fundamental that they should always be running in the background of your life.

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They should always be present. They should actually be influencing and even bubbling up in you and through you to others around you.

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They should be the pathway through which you accomplish your daily tasks.

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These three things ought to define and exemplify the life of the follower of Christ.

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They are that fundamental. They are, the text is gonna tell us in the very end, the will of God in Christ for you, church.

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I'm actually standing up here this morning and going to be conveying to you through God's words something that I know because the text tells me he wants for you, something that he wants to define you.

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And I wonder how many of us before reading this text could name one of them. If I ask the question, what does

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God most want from your life or what does he want to exemplify your life? What does God want to define your life?

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If I pose that question to you and you didn't cheat by reading it first, I wonder how many of us would be able to get at least one of them.

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Now, it's a bit unfair because these three things are not the sum total of everything that scripture tells us that God desires of us.

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And so there's a whole, how many of you know that you've read scripture enough to know that there's a lot of different things in there and a lot of words could be going through your mind?

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How many of you know there's more than three? And this text is gonna seek to kind of simplify that for you in what can become very complex in our minds.

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What does God desire of us? Well, some of you may say faith, hope, and love.

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There's the three things, faith, hope, and love. Well, those aren't the three that he's gonna identify here. You might say obedience, but that's not on the list.

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You may say that he desires for us to imitate the life of Christ. That's not on the list.

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None of those would be false. It wouldn't be false to say that those are things that God desires of us.

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Even our church highlights faith, community, and service. We're saying that those are three things that we believe that everybody needs to be growing and maturing in the

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Christian life, and none of those three make the list. It doesn't say faith, community, and service.

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So does Recast have it wrong? Should we change? I don't believe that we have it wrong, but I do think that Paul was intentionally seeking to show us something here in this very short text to simplify for us what we often make very complicated.

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What God desires for each of us is rejoicing, prayer, and thankfulness.

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Rejoicing, prayer, and thankfulness. It's kind of, I would call it, the trifecta of the

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Christian life as far as behavior and outward manifestation of your relationship with God.

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An outward showing that you really trust this one, that you really believe he is and that he loves you and cares for you and has redeemed you and saved you.

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Joy, prayer, and thanks. And that should exemplify our lives.

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Those things should be running in the background of the life of the follower of Jesus Christ.

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I believe that as we walk through this text, we will see how powerful this very short passage is meant to be in our lives.

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It's meant to have power here. God wants us to be joyful in Christ. He wants us to be close to him in prayer, and he wants us to be thankful to him for the salvation he has provided.

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Many other blessings as well. This text was very convicting to me personally this week.

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Confession, I can whine and complain with the best of them. I can forget about God throughout my day just like everyone else.

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You say, Don, you're a pastor. Aren't you paid to think about God? Yeah, when I'm on the clock.

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I mean, I can forget. I can be forgetful. I can lack that discipline that is required of us to think about what we're talking about.

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To pray without ceasing, that's not like a high and lofty task. Are you equal to that?

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Are any of us equal to that? What does that mean? We're gonna work through that and talk through that. But this text is much more than just a call to you to feel guilty.

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It's not what it is. The purpose of this text is not that you walk out of here feeling guilty.

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It is that you walk out of here encouraged. That you walk out of here with motivation and fuel for joyfulness, for thankfulness, and a motivation to connect in prayer with a

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God who desires and hungers to connect with you, who has given us that as an avenue of relationship because he loves us and he wants to be connected with you and me.

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It's not a duty, not a responsibility, not a task to check off a list, but an ongoing relationship of love with our

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God who has sent his son to die for us. So much more in this text than a call to get busy doing stuff for God.

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It is a gentle reminder to trust him. And more than just trusting him, it's a call to show the world around us that we trust him.

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It's about our behavior and our actions that reflect on him. What God wants more than anything from his people is that we trust him by faith.

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And we will see that joy, prayer, and thanks are all driven by a faith that has experienced the love of the

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Almighty. So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Thessalonians 5. We're just gonna read three verses, 16, 17, and 18.

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1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18. If you don't have a Bible, please raise your hand so that Mike can bring you one.

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Down front, there's one here. But everybody, if you just have a copy of God's word on your lap, then you can follow along and see that the things that I'm reading are coming straight from God's word.

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And again, since it's gonna be a short passage, navigate over there quickly, or else it's gonna be done before we go.

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I think I might even read through it twice. 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 17. Short text, but brothers and sisters, this is

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God's word. God is gonna speak through his word here to us. Again, I say, probably the most valuable thing that will happen today for any of us is this thing right here, that we get to hear the riches of our

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God speak to us through his word. Starting in verse 16. 16, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

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Again, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much that you have given us an ongoing relationship with you, that we have the privilege and the blessing as your people to live out this life with joy, with thankfulness, with a deep gratitude for what's been given to us, and with a prayerful attitude of walking with you throughout the day, that beautiful metaphor of taking steps alongside of you and you present with us.

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As we make decisions at work, as we interact with our family, as we talk with others, as we get opportunities to testify of your goodness to us, as we receive news, both good and bad, as we endure hardship, as we excel and things go well for us

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Father, in all of these circumstances that you are present with us. And Father, I recognize that some are going on hard times right now, this has been a rough week, and this has been a draining week, and it feels like it's just been drawing down energy, and some people are here and their buckets are full, and everything has been blessing them this week, and it just seems like things have clicked for them.

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And we come as a whole host of people with different experiences and backgrounds and circumstances in our lives.

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Father, I pray that you would meet each person where they're at. Father, I can't be general enough in my sermon this morning to hit everybody, but you can, by your spirit, convict where there needs to be conviction and encourage where there needs to be encouragement.

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And Father, I pray that right now there would be rejoicing among your people. Regardless of how tough this week is, regardless of how bad the news was, or regardless of how good things have been that might cloud you out,

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Father, I pray that you would move our hearts to rejoice in gratitude and thankfulness for the salvation that has been given to us through your son and the many blessings that you've poured out on us.

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Father, help us to count our blessings, to rejoice and to be a people of rejoicing and thankfulness this morning, in Jesus' name, amen.

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Thanks to Dave and the band for leading us. I do encourage you to get comfortable, and if you need coffee, juice, or donuts, take advantage of those up front.

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You're not gonna distract me if you need to get up and stretch out in the back to stretch your back out or whatever it takes to keep your focus on God's word for the next half an hour or so.

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If you asked the question and you wanted to know the answer to how does God want a church to act, and particularly toward each other, you ought to turn to the text last week.

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Last week was about how the church ought to act, and then encouraged in our text last week, leaders to lead well, followers to follow well.

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We saw instruction to the church at large to help the weak, to encourage the faint -hearted, to admonish the unruly, and to work with all people with patience.

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Further, we were told to do good to everyone, even those who would seek to do evil to us as a church.

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And so that was kind of a summary of last week, but this text this morning is answering a little bit of a different question.

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How does God want you to relate to him? How does God want the church, and even you as a part of that church, remember the church is the people, and so how does he want us to relate to him?

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Last week, think about it in terms of the instructions and imperatives last week were on the horizontal scale, how to relate to one another, but this week is about your vertical relationship with God.

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How should you relate to him? And so it's answering a bit of a different question, and that's why I've broken these up. I mean, you look at them as short passages.

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Couldn't you take them all together? I'm breaking it up because I think it's valuable for us to see the distinction in this, and I would suggest to you that the fundamental answer to the question, if you had to summarize it in a word, how does

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God want you to relate to him? It would be summarized in the word faith. I really believe that that's the fundamental thing.

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Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Some of you have read it, you know it, and so without faith, it's impossible to please

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God. If faith is the fundamental thing, it is the fundamental substance of our relationship with God is believing that he is and believing some fundamental things about him.

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You see, first and foremost, we must believe that God is worthy of our trust, and it is reasonable for him to desire his people to trust him as their creator.

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Faith simply defined requires a few things. If we're gonna define it, it requires a belief that God exists.

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That's a fundamental component of faith, believing that he is. It also, though, must, to some degree, believe or trust in his goodness toward his people.

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And further, it trusts that he is powerful and sovereign. He is genuinely in control.

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Faith in God that pleases him, at its most basic expression, if you're taking notes, here it is, is the belief that God is both good and almighty.

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The belief that God is both good and almighty. In all three of our imperatives, our instructions, our commands, all different kinds of words you could use for that, all three of our imperatives from our text this morning connect vitally to a life of faith.

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Remember that Paul is giving instructions to those within the church about their relationship with God. And a church, by the way, the church in Thessalonica had been persecuted severely.

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They had been beaten. Many of them, some of them, it's implied that some of them maybe even died as a result of their beatings for their faith.

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This church, though, has held on tenaciously to their faith, despite a very rocky start.

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And so we must make sense of these instructions in light of the context to a persecuted church, but we also ought to bring them to our own circumstances and our own context to make sense of what is this text, what is

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God telling us through this text for us this morning? These are short words. There's not a lot of words here in this text.

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So am I gonna get, am I gonna use our time this morning? Yeah, of course, you know me. You're like, shorter text, is it a shorter message?

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By no means. Just more opportunity to expound a little bit. But they're simple commands.

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They're simple things that we can wrap our minds around, but they're pretty weighty. They have earth -shattering and ego -displacing power to transform us into people who show the glory and beauty of our

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God to others around us. So the first, if you're taking notes, the very first point is a clear call for us all to rejoice.

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Rejoice is the first point, and rejoice always. All three of our verses this morning begin in Greek with an adverbial phrase or an adverb.

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And some of you just closed down. I saw some eyes roll back in your heads. I said a grammar phrase, and you just suddenly like, bleh, okay, wake me up when it's over, right?

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I mentioned the grammatical term just to make a point here quickly, and then we'll move on from the grammar lesson.

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But in Greek, the word order is often used for emphasis. Word order, by the way, aside from emphasis, doesn't even matter.

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So a Greek sentence puts Yoda to shame, okay? You know how Yoda messes up all his words, and he always puts the verb at the end?

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Anybody even know what I'm talking about? Raise your hand if you have. Okay, some of you. I thought I knew my audience. So yeah,

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I mean, the word order does not matter. Greek is a really strange language. Whoever created that language,

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I think it was God, whoever created this language had some creativity. I mean, different languages function different ways, and some of you have studied, how many of you can speak at least part of a foreign language you got some of that under?

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Well, Greek is really unique in that the word ending tells you whether it's the sentence, whether it's the object, and which adjective, the adjective, the end of the adjective will line up with the noun that it, so they don't even have to be in the same proximity.

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The word can start with an adjective that modifies the noun that's at the end of the sentence. How do you know that they go together?

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How do you know that it's a yellow bus? Because bus is clear at the end, and yellow is at the beginning of the sentence.

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It's because of the word ending. The word ending will tell you which word it goes with. So you've got to memorize all these word endings and all this kind of stuff.

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So I say all that to say word order can be useful then to convey importance or value.

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So often Greeks would begin with the power punch of the first word. The first word was what mattered most.

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And we're gonna see that come to play here a little bit in these phrases, these instructions that are being given to us.

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The text reads this way. Always rejoice. Unceasingly pray.

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In everything give thanks. It is emphatic on the adverb, the description of the way that you do these things.

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This means that the way that we do these things is very significant to God.

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We cannot divorce the adverb from the verb and just say God wants you to rejoice. And you go, I've done that.

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How many of you would say you maybe rejoiced at something this week? Mission accomplished, I rejoiced.

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That's not what the command is saying. We're not gonna get off the hook on that. It's not saying rejoice sometimes.

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That's okay, just rejoice. Make sure there's some rejoicing sprinkled in your life. Make sure there's some thanks in your life. Make sure there's a prayer before you eat.

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Is that what the text is saying? Make sure that you pray at the start of your day, maybe before you go to bed and a couple times in between, good to go.

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It's not what the text is saying to us. He wants us to always rejoice.

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He doesn't just want us to pray. He wants us to unceasingly pray. He doesn't just want us to give thanks, but he wants us to give thanks in everything, in everything.

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And so here in this first point, we see he wants his people to always rejoice. This is a command, by the way, that personally has opened up a cut in my own heart this week that's allowed some pollution to flow out of me.

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I can be a complainer. I said that in my introduction. Rainstorm halfway through my morning run,

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I'm gonna grumble about it. I'm gonna complain. A delay on the building. I'm prone to complain a little bit.

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Too long between meals. Anybody know the word for that? Hangry, right?

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And I can excuse it and I can justify it, right? Like I've got justification for my, you know,

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I'm getting worked up and I can feel it. Oh, there it is. That's a nice, that's a nice graphic there.

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So I don't know if I'm only preaching to myself and maybe three others of you in the room who can identify with being quick to grumble and complain and the rest of you are going,

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Don, this is obviously not for me. You know, I can zone out. But even if you feel like this doesn't apply to you and you're like, no,

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I'm just easygoing. I never complain about anything. Everything's always good. It's all good, good, good. If that's you, just humor me and keep listening because I still think this text is talking to you.

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I think it's for all of us. God is calling all of us in this room this morning to action. He's calling all of us to take action.

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Verse 16, by the way, and this is kind of important because of the way that we think about scripture, the way that we think that God works in our lives, this is not about your attitude.

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This is not first and foremost about how you feel inside. We often think that God, we can get caught up in two faults, playing two things off against each other and really have one or the other.

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We can think that God is more concerned with our hearts and all he really wants is our hearts and he doesn't really want our actions.

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That's the real popular one right now is to really say God, just love

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God and do whatever you want and it doesn't really matter and just as long as all God wants is your heart.

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But how many of you know that as you read scripture, you kind of see some things that maybe he wants you to do? He wants you to act on that.

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There's action involved in it. It's not a good translation, by the way. This is not an accurate, it's not accurate to translate this be joyful.

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So it's not just have joy in your heart. It is express joy. That is the command.

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It is an expression, an action, something that you are to do as you go throughout your week, something that you are to behave on.

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How many of you know that you can have a joyful heart and not show it to others? Did you know that? You can actually have a fairly good day and not tell your spouse about it and they don't even know you had a good day and just kind of skate through and that's whatever.

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You know, it's telling us to rejoice, to take action. I believe that Paul, by the way, presupposes that if you're a follower of Jesus Christ and you have been saved by him, you have joy.

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It's there. It is available to you 24 seven, every single day of the year, every single week, every single month, every single year of your life from the time you came to understand what

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Jesus Christ has done for you, you have a limitless supply of joy available to you.

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If you recognize your condition before Jesus saved you, if you've experienced the great exchange where you gave

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God your steaming pile of sin and he gave you in exchange his shiny, golden, beautiful, pure righteousness, those who recognize that exchange that has happened or the change in your destiny from eternal separation from God to forever in his eternal glory in a place without suffering, pain, sin or the limitations of death or illness, those who've experienced that exchange, those who've experienced that change in destinies have an eternal, never -ending, limitless supply of hope and joy.

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Do you realize that? It's yours. Right now as you sit here, you have a limitless, bottomless, unending supply of joy available to you and it's eternal, an eternal source of joy for you.

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So then the question becomes in practice, what is rejoicing always look like? Anybody kind of like, what is that supposed to look like?

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Is that permagrin? Just like, you know, like you ever get cramped when you're getting a photo shoot?

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You know, you get pictures taken. It's like, come on. Two pictures do that to me. I cramp up. I'm like, Linda, you got two good pictures out of my face.

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And then after that, it's like, eh. Everything looks cheesy after that. So, I mean, you know, somebody's gotta be back there with a squeaky toy or something to get me to laugh or whatever.

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Yeah, I'm that juvenile. But what does it look like in reality?

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Like, you're gonna go to, how many of you are gonna go someplace to work tomorrow? Even if it's to get up and go downstairs and work with the kids.

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I mean, everybody's gonna work tomorrow. Everybody's gonna do something tomorrow. And does it look like annoying your coworkers with a chorus of it's a wonderful morning, like right away when you show up at the office?

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I mean, that's a recipe for workplace violence, right? It depends on where you work, but that's not always the best recipe.

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So what does it look like to rejoice always or to always rejoice? Is it to say, look at the bright side as someone shares the devastating news of the loss of a loved one?

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Is that rejoicing always? Oh, but there's gotta be a silver lining in here somewhere.

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Find that. I hope that none of us are too fussy about the use of the word always here in our text without understanding that the call to the church to rejoice always need not preclude the ability to mourn with those who mourn.

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We can mourn and still have rejoicing as the operating system undergirding everything.

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How many of you know that there's a wisdom that says that when somebody shares with you the loss of a loved one or when you are going through the loss of a loved one, you can have joy in the undercurrent while mourning at the same time.

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Did you know that? You can have joy and you can even rejoice while at the same time saying, the

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Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the

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Lord. Job, one of the greatest examples of someone who lost everything, lost everything, and said, blessed be the name of the

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Lord. He verbalized rejoicing in the midst of that suffering. And how many of you are just kind of saying,

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God, give me the grace to handle that should you take everything from me that I would still be able to bless your name?

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How many of you know that that's a prayer that we utter now and that's something that is a reasonable thing to pray now and it's not something that's really a great idea to wait until you're pressed to then go and make up your mind how you're gonna respond.

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But at the same time, God gives you the grace for the day. He doesn't give me the grace today for Monday.

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He'll give me the grace for Monday on Monday, right? So we ask for it. We say, God, walk with me through every day of my life, through the ups, the downs, the dark valleys of the shadow of death and the pinnacles and the high points and the times of celebration and great delight.

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Be with me and hold me fast and keep me all the days of my life and keep me in the joy of who you are and what you have done for me.

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Paul doesn't spell out, single out for us the specifics of how to rejoice.

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But on a personal level, I would ask you to consider this question carefully.

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Would people who know you best call you a joyful person? Would people who know you best call you a joyful person?

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Have you rejoiced consistently enough that they see you as a person whose trajectory is one of stability, that eternal joy brings in the good times and the bad?

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Now, that could be convicting. Maybe God by his Spirit would be convicting some of us in the room about that.

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Like I said, I think he convicted me this week and I've been working through that. But Paul doesn't spell out the specifics, but he does expect that joy is indeed a part of the operating system of your life and mine.

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If you've been saved, you take even a moment to consider what that means, you will be moved to rejoicing.

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When a diagnosis of cancer comes or the terrible phone call of tragedy that we all fear becomes reality, or when the next round of cuts includes our position, trusting

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God looks like remembering that he has made sure that cancer never gets the final word, we can rejoice at least in that.

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He stands with us in the tragedy and we can rejoice at least in that. And our eternal worth has nothing to do with our worth to our business, and we can rejoice in that.

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Are you a complainer? Are you a whiner? Let me suggest that if you are indeed and you know it, you felt it when

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I said it, you know, oh yeah, that probably defines me, then you're a Christian complainer, then

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I'd suggest that you ought to consider what's off kilter. That's what I've had to think about this week. When I complain,

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I have something off kilter. I'm forgetting the God who loves me, the

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God who made sure that any suffering or difficulty in this life is light and momentary in comparison with the final glory and joy that will be ours in his eternal kingdom.

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So let's practice that joy now by always rejoicing. Second, the second point, we are called to pray unceasingly, to unceasingly pray.

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And again, this call to always pray either requires us to redefine prayer or to redefine the word unceasing, okay?

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Because many of us have in our minds an idea of prayer that wouldn't work always.

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You just can't always be doing the thing that we've thought of as prayer, right?

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I would suggest that since Paul begins this with an emphasis on the word unceasing, that we don't bend that word.

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And since Paul seems to be calling the church to something he fully expects us to do, we may need to tweak our concept of eyes closed, hands folded, heads bowed, and all that formality that surrounds our traditional thoughts of prayer.

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Otherwise, there's gonna be a lot of car accidents this week if you're following these instructions, right? If you think that it's eyes closed, that head bowed, if you've got that traditional view of prayer, that it's always this imminent, like preparing myself and washing myself and cleansing myself and preparing my heart to enter into the presence of God, and it's gotta be a really formal, like nice, rigid, quiet.

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I've gotta have that temperature set at the right, and everything's gotta be just right, and then I can pray.

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How hard is it gonna be to follow this? I don't even know, sometimes the greatest prayers are uttered in chaos.

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Lord, keep me from hurting my children today, right? Like, anybody ever shot that prayer up to God? Like, I mean, some of you?

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No, yep. Yeah, anybody keeping track of who just raised their hands? No, I think we've all done that to some degree, especially those with kids.

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But before we get into the mechanics of prayer and try to tweak that and correct that, let's first consider the more fundamental question and that is why do we pray at all?

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Why do we pray? I don't think we think about that very often. Prayer for most of the world is simply a method of petitioning a deity to get something that we want, right?

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How many of you would just kinda say, yeah, that sounds like a pretty legit definition of prayer, like that's pretty common, what the world thinks.

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And I would suggest to you that that's one of many facets of prayer. If that's the only way that we've defined prayer, then we are missing significant teaching that God wants to give to us.

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At a more basic level, it might be better to define prayer as communication between our hearts and God.

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At the end of the day, that's really what it is. It's us communicating to God the contents of our heart and what's really going on in here and there are requests in that and there's thanks in that and there's praise in that, there's confession in that.

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But think about it this way. If we wanna be like Christ, which I think is probably everybody in the room,

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I think we wanna be like Christ. We recognize that he is our model and our example. Now, Jesus went out alone to pray.

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Did you know that? He did that frequently. That means his disciples would wake up looking for him and he'd be gone and he'd be out and then he'd come back and they'd be like, where were you?

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And he's like, I was out praying. What was Jesus doing when he was praying? Was he, do you think he was asking for things?

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Yeah, that's what he did. He went out there and asked for things. Hey, Father, I'm on my way to Jerusalem today, heading down there from Galilee and just asking for traveling mercies.

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Would you please put a hedge of protection around me? Whatever. Was he asking for things?

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Do you think that's the fundamental root reason that he went out in the desert to talk with his father? Was he doing it as pretend?

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Was it a pretend thing just so that he could be a good model for us and so we'd pray too because hey, he did it but he was kinda out there just kinda like counting sheep or something,

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I don't know. But, because I mean, he and the father were one, right? So like, why does he gotta go out there and talk to himself or whatever?

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Or is there something in it about communion with his father? Is there something about relationship going on there?

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I think we might be getting closer to the mark. I believe that shifting our understanding of prayer as a fundamental part of our relationship with God will help us make sense of this command in verse 17 if we shift to thinking about it as foundational communication between two who love each other why pray?

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Why pray? Because the Almighty listens. Is that a pretty good reason?

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The Almighty listens. Why pray? Because the Almighty is eager for communication with his people.

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Why pray? Because he wants us to lean on him and praying demonstrates trust and faith in him.

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Do we pray just merely to get something from God like Aladdin rubbing the lamp?

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Or do we pray because the God of the universe listens and is eager for an ongoing relationship with us, with little old us?

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And he wants to talk to us, he wants to hear from us. In this sense, prayer should take the form of an ongoing conversation

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I'm having with my maker throughout each day of the week, each week of the month and each month of the year.

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To pray without ceasing doesn't mean that my attention is constantly diverted from my wife.

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I've got the eternal excuse now. Were you listening, dear? Well, I mean, I was just praying, praying always, praying always.

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I was praying for a Michigan touchdown, but I'm praying always. I mean, I just, you know, not that the TV had my attention, I was praying.

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There are times when we will pray in a more concerted way, right? I mean, you know that there is that focus time.

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There is a time for us to get alone and that's acceptable. Jesus talks about that and he modeled that.

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There's time for public prayers. Jesus offered public prayers, even taught his followers how to pray and he did so in public.

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There are private prayers, there are quick shot prayers that we offer up between meetings. There are running prayers that are going on throughout our day.

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I hope so. When I was a counselor at Camp Barakel, back in the day we were all issued a few sheets of small dot stickers one particular year while I was up there during counselor workshop and we were encouraged to plant these stickers around camp and strategic locations.

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And then throughout the summer, whenever we saw one of those dots, anywhere we saw it, we were encouraged to turn our thoughts at that point toward God in prayer, to take our circumstances and offer those as prayer or to even just consider what the next activity was gonna be and turn that into prayer.

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I put one under the tongue of my soccer cleats and it stuck and so every time I put my soccer cleats on,

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I prayed and asked God to give me a good attitude and a good heart as I was gonna enter into competition and do different things and I'd be reminded to pray and ask

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God for a good attitude. Shaving in the mirror at the start of the day and every one of those mirrors had a sticker on the bottom corner of it and I was moved to pray or brushing my teeth.

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I think this captures both the heart as well as the difficulty that it is to pray without ceasing.

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You see, we should be mindful of God and his presence with us all day long.

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And that is a bad thing. Some of us were raised in churches and some of you still have that residual feeling as a kid where God's watching you,

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God's watching you and God's walking with you. He loves you.

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His head over heels enough for you that he sent his son to die for you, that he made a way so that he could be with you forever because he loves you that much and he's looking forward to the day when he can bring you in and patch you up and fix you for good and love on you for eternity.

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That's your God and he's with you all. He wants to talk to you, wants to hear from you.

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The good things, the bad things, he wants a relationship with you and he loves it when his people talk to him.

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He's looking forward to that. But there's the rub, there's the problem. We're a little bit forgetful from time to time, aren't we?

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Listen to this on Sunday morning and maybe it'll last to lunch, maybe into the afternoon if you have a discussion about it over lunch, that always encourages a pastor's heart when people get together and talk about the message later.

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Go ahead and roast me if you want, as long as you're talking about the word of God, that's great, have that. Always great when roast pastor is on the menu.

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But that's another thing all together. Yeah, but we're forgetful.

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We're forgetful and that's one of our biggest problems. This command to pray without ceasing, as difficult as it is to follow, has the power to completely and radically change our lives for the better.

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We be mindful of God's presence with us, to talk to him, to lift up our requests, to confess quickly to him when we've sinned.

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I've heard it said that prayer changes us. We shouldn't pray to get from God, but we should just pray so that we're reminded that he's gonna do whatever he wills.

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And have you ever heard that before? Like prayer changes us, but it never changes God or something like that. But I would suggest to you that whether you put your money in the vending machine to get a candy bar, or whether you put your money in and all you get out is a note that reminds you that candy bars make you gain weight, either way, you're still relating to a vending machine.

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Either way, your mind is still thinking of that thing as a vending machine.

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If you put your money in and the vending machine was already jammed up and the answer is not now, it's still a vending machine.

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If you think of God as a vending machine, you are still only thinking of prayer from that one facet of petition and asking

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God for stuff. Even if you only think prayer is meant to change your heart, you're still only going to him to get something, a change in you.

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But prayer ought to be an expression of a relationship, of trust, of need, of a vital connection in relationship.

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With your heavenly father. May I humbly suggest that God is not a vending machine of any sort, he is a personal

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God who loves you and has called us to be in close relationship with him through prayer because he loves us and likes it when we talk to him.

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I'd ask everyone in the room to consider what steps you might take to be more mindful of God throughout your day so that you could walk with him in a deeper relationship this next week.

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Maybe it's to take your Bible to work, set it on the corner of your desk and just to commit that every time you see your Bible there, you're gonna pray.

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Maybe you do, actually go buy some dot stickers and put them around your office or your cubicle or at home.

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I think we need those kind of reminders. I know people who have set their watch to that hourly chime, you know, the little one that beeps every time that an hour, the clock strikes a certain time and then pray, use that as a reminder to pray and annoy all your coworkers.

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Be cautious with that one. Actually, I know people who have done that only to really regret it later.

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But come up with some system, come up with a way to set your heart on God throughout your day.

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I believe all of us could grow significantly from turning our thoughts to the God who is always with us, who loves us always and wants us to remember we are in relationship with him always.

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And lastly, that leads to the final point in verse 18. In all circumstances, give thanks.

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In all circumstances, give thanks. God doesn't say that we are to give thanks for all circumstances.

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He doesn't say that. He says give thanks for cancer. But if you're diagnosed with cancer, give thanks.

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It might be for something else that you always have something to say thanks for. It may not be the actual fundamental fabric of your circumstances that you're saying thanks for.

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Sometimes, by the way, the only thing we have to rejoice in and the only thing we have to give thanks for is our salvation.

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But the Christian never lacks something to give thanks for. Let me say that again. The Christian never lacks something to give thanks for.

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We are eternally blessed in Christ. We should never be able to recover from the childlike wonder and awe that was fresh when we first came to realize that the son of God loved us so much that he came to die for us.

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How can one rejoice in tragedy? How can one give thanks in hardship? How can one turn their eyes to heaven and pray in the darkest moments of life on a broken planet?

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The Thessalonians had been thrown into a cultural blender and some were literally killed in the persecution that came quickly after they had given their lives to Jesus Christ and asked him to save them.

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How in the world can Paul tell them to always rejoice? How can he tell them to lean on a moment -by -moment relationship with the

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Almighty God in prayer? I mean, couldn't God stop the tragedy in Thessalonica? How could

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God tell them to be thankful in all circumstances? And as I thought about it and pondered it this week, there is only one reason

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I can see for rejoicing and praying and thankfulness in this broken world and that is simply that this broken world does not get the final word.

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Jesus, Jesus gets the final word and he promises to bring those who are his into a glorious kingdom under his benevolent rule.

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So these three things, rejoicing, praying, and thanking make up the fundamental operating system of a follower of Jesus Christ.

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And so this morning as we come to communion, let's come to the tables to remember the reason for our rejoicing, the source of our continual daily relationship with the

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Almighty, and the deep cause for thankfulness. Jesus paid for you and me.

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Jesus suffered and died a sinner's death for us. He faced the rejection and wrath of his father so that our punishment is now counted as paid by him.

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So if you're all in with Christ, come to one of the tables and rejoice. Come to the table and pray.

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Come to the table and offer thanks because his blood was spilled in your place and his body was broken for you.

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And let's go out from this place shining out this glorious hope we have in our great savior. Let's rejoice, let's rejoice always.

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Let's pray, let's pray without ceasing. And let's give thanks, let's give thanks in all circumstances.

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Recast Church, these three things are the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

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If these three things are not yours, I'd encourage you to please feel free to come and talk with me about the way that you can start a relationship with Jesus that leads to a continual joy, a daily relationship with his father, and a heart of perpetual gratitude.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your love and your care for us.

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You are so good and your mercies never end. We have a rich and deep well of blessings to draw from in our salvation.

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We thank you that no illness gets the final word, that no sin gets the final word, that there is nothing that is going to separate us from the love of you.

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And Father, that as we have an opportunity, we have opportunities to pray and to talk to you. We have opportunities to rejoice and to show that joy to others.

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We have opportunities to vocally say thank you to you and to even offer a recognition of what you are doing in our lives to others.

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Father, I pray that you would make us, in our relationship toward you, that others would find that contagious.

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That others would be moved by our joyfulness in difficult circumstances and that they'd be moved by that.

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Father, I pray that where there is conviction right now, that you would turn it into rejoicing, that you would turn it into thankfulness, you would turn it into a perpetual prayer.

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Help us to be mindful of you. Father, war against forgetfulness in our lives, that we would be able to engage tomorrow morning with a thankfulness in our hearts.