My Prayer for You: Ephesians 3:14 -21

Good morning Great to see you here this morning What a blessing it is as we consider.

This is the day. The Lord has made and We will rejoice and be glad in it.

So we are here this morning to praise God and to remember all of his blessings and So let us be joyful this morning as we come and serve him

Let's go to Lord in prayer Dear father, we're thankful for all of your blessings upon us individually and as a church and as we

Assemble this morning and worship you May we worship you from our hearts father, and we give you all the glory this morning in Jesus name

Good morning I Bless the

Lord of my soul and all that is within me bless his holy name for forgetting on his benefits

My help comes from the Lord which made heaven and earth Jesus Christ is Lord It is

Jesus Christ who saves souls praise God the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit It is in him that we are able that he

It is him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless Before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy to Jesus Christ the only wise

God our Savior be glory and majesty Dominion power now Forever amen

And please stand and let's sing. The Lord is my salvation I Thank you for singing and please be seated at this time

Well, good morning First want to say see a few new faces out there. So welcome to the

Bible Church this morning We're glad to have you and we'd be giving you a hug right now, but we just can't so I hope you understand

Everybody's resisting that impulse to extend themselves physically to embrace someone else and especially as believers

And so yes, okay. There we go sign But it's not quite the same thing, but you know, our heart is so welcome

This we're grateful. This is our second week of being open Corporately in this building and praise

God for that. So amen It's another significant day and that this is

Bernstein's last Sunday with us and we're gonna share some more after the service, but Few heavy hearts today

Ladies Bible study is next or this Saturday at 10 o 'clock So meet here 10 o 'clock ladies

And if you haven't been to a lady's Bible study before you'd like to come out all visitors are welcome Come totally unprepared, but if you've been there before she's far, but expect you to come prepared

So I think it'd be a blessing to be there with the ladies I know but my wife comes home

She's just got a smile across her face and the ladies just thoroughly enjoy getting together like that.

So Thank you bar turn to your Bibles to John chapter 17

Start with verse 1 go to verse 3 These words spoke

Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said father the hour is come glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee as thou has given him power over all flesh that he should give eternal life to as many as thou has given him and This is life eternal that they might know thee the only true

God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent And may God bless the reading of his word

Please stand and join us in singing beautiful Savior Oh God is holy.

Holy. Holy is the Lord God Almighty Oh For singing, please be seated.

I handed over to pastor step What a song all the glory goes to God Praise God he is worthy, isn't he?

Let's go Lord in prayer dear Heavenly Father we

Exult in you this morning we Exalt your name on high because you are so good.

You are so holy. You are so Loving you are so worth

Serving and worth knowing and we are so blessed this morning as we come

Before you this morning and before your word We pray that you would bless us as we

Get into your word that we might hide your word in our heart and produce fruit for your glory and I ask this in Jesus name.

Amen My wife and I have received many blessings in But I would like to say perhaps one of the greatest blessings

In our lives has been serving here at Faith Bible Church With you in the gospel.

It has been an incredible privilege. It has been wonderful Blessing I couldn't imagine a greater church a more loving

Church a more Generous and caring and faithful Church than this church right here and you have been a blessing to myself and my wife all of these years and We've had to make a hard decision

To leave but we know that it's going to be for the best and that you have an incredible future ahead of you and so we are

Going with in a hard way in the sense that it's sad but we also know that God is going to be with you and in you are going to Be incredibly blessed as a church

Just as you have been an incredible blessing to us so this morning

I couldn't think of a better way to Have a

Parting sermon so to speak then to have a blessing In other words, the name of this sermon is my prayer for you

And my prayer for you is Paul's prayer for the

Ephesians and That is basically summed up in this

That Christ will be your all -in -one all

That's my prayer Let's look at Ephesians 3 14 through 21

Ephesians 3 14 through 21. It's always good to read the verses before you preach.

I Remember once I didn't do it I used to always do it then one of the brothers came up to me after the service said pastor

You know, there would be a good thing to do when you preach and that would be to read the verses beforehand

And it's always stuck with me. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good thing to do. So that's why I do it

Verse 14 For this reason I bow my knees to the father of our

Lord Jesus Christ From whom the whole family in Heaven and earth is named

That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory

To be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith That you being rooted and grounded in love

May be able to comprehend With all the Saints What is the width and the length and depth and height?

To know the love of Christ which passes Knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God Now to him who is able to do exceedingly

Abundantly above all we ask or think According to the power that works in us to him

Be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever amen

You know what those verses are so glorious. I feel like I can just stop and go home now

I hope you sense the glory in those verses

First of all when I consider what my prayer would be for you this morning first thing is

I Pray that you will find God's strength verses 14 and 15

We see true prayer now in this

Prayer in these verses as Is the case with Paul's prayers for the believers

He always prays that God's people

Will know Christ in a deep and personal way and know his blessings and the blessings they have in Christ and That's what we see in this prayer

Now Paul's prayer for the Saints is God's heart

It's his desire for us So my prayer for you this morning is

Paul's prayer that you may grow deep in Christ and find the riches of his love and Be able to extend that to other people not only individually

But as a church, that's my prayer for all of us now verse 14

Really goes back to chapter 3 verse number 1 in chapter 3 verse number 1

Paul had been talking about the glory of the church Where he took

Jews and Gentiles and he saved them through Jesus Christ He redeemed them and he made them the

Blessed Church God's spiritual Church his body which is called one new man.

And so after chapter 3 verse 1

Paul Goes into what we call a parentheses, which means that he goes into He goes off the beaten path a little ways and he talks about the mystery of Christ Which is the glory of the church the one new man that God has made by saving

Jews and Gentiles What a what a glory it is when when we not only have a high view of God, but have a correct

Biblical and high view of the church, even though we do see a lot of problems in the church.

It's God's Church, right? and it's made up of Jews and Gentiles that are saved and what a wonderful privilege it is

To be a member of God's Church and to serve God through his church and again,

I Just want to thank you For all the years of support that you have given my wife and I My heart can't tell you how much

I appreciate that the love and support That you have given us

It has been Wonderful and God has done great things and God will continue to do great things at Faith Bible Church and So Paul says for this reason

I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Now When he says

I bow my knees He's not saying that when you pray every time you pray you have to bow your knees.

That's not what he's saying here but that expression

I bow my knees is What should be our posture in prayer?

true prayer is Humility and reverence When we come to God in prayer

We come humbly don't we through Jesus Christ? Knowing who we are that we're sinners saved by grace and we come with sweet reverence before God our

Father and that's the idea and Paul Bows his knees before the father of our

Lord Jesus Christ Now that term in expression the father of our

Lord Jesus Christ basically means the true God the true

God is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ and here what we need to Understand that so glorious here is our

Lord Jesus Christ is said to be Lord He's Lord.

He's God Jesus Christ, he's so glorious in Here he is equal to the father you see and what a blessing it is

That we here at Faith Bible Church are not only brothers and sisters in Christ But we know and serve the true

God and what an awesome privilege that is

May I encourage you that whatever area God has you serve

Outside the church or inside the church you consider it a great privilege to serve

Isn't it true beloved we can't give him enough for what he has given us through Jesus Christ in our salvation

Isn't that true? Can we ever give him enough? And so we see verse 15

God is so glorious That he is the king over all earth the whole earth he is the creator of Everything and of you and I which gives us purpose and Dignity because we all of us no matter what background we come from no matter what?

race or culture or whatever we come from we were created in the image of God, right and God Has authority and power over all of his creation

That's what verse 15 means That's the God we serve though.

It might seem like we go, you know Three steps well one step forward put it that way and three steps backward a lot

God goes with us as his church God goes with us as His people and We serve the true

God who has all power All power to do anything and Nothing is impossible with God.

That's why I serve I serve

Because not only has God called me To serve as a pastor and gifted me by his grace

But I also serve because it is an incredible glorious privilege to serve

God and I have been one of the most

Privileged individuals may I say that? Because I have been given the great honor and privilege to serve

God in the gospel of And be a preacher of his everlasting word.

That is a great thing That is a more glorious calling beloved than being president of the

United States. I wouldn't stoop for that I'd rather be the lowliest preacher of the word than to be the president of the

United States and not know Jesus Christ and so We see in verse number 16 prayer for strength

It says that he would grant you Notice that in that verse

Where's the emphasis? Who is the emphasis on in? Verse 16 is it on us?

No, it's on God, right? It says that he God's the emphasis in other words.

It's God who gives us strength We have no strength in ourselves

We need the strength of God We need the strength of God in order to live in order to face our battles in order to serve him

And that's my prayer for you that God will strengthen you

To do what he wants you to do to serve him

He grants us strength praise God You know,

I think it's a good thing for us daily to pray God give me strength today

To face this day We all need that don't we we all need to do that Say it says here that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his spirit you see

God strengthens us by his spirit and He strengthens us according to the riches of his glory.

My that's some strength because the power and the might and the

Strength that God gives us is out of the riches of his glory.

That's really the focus Here of the according to the riches of his glory

It's out of the riches of his glory and that means out of God's Abundance, right?

He gives us abundance to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man and Praise God for the

Spirit of God that we have When you have received Christ as your

Savior you received the Spirit of God and the Spirit of God baptized you into the body of Christ and You have the

Spirit of God and God strengthens us By his spirit in the inner man

Now that phrase inner man means the immaterial part of us inside of us

The true person he gives us inner strength, isn't that what we need?

We're all kind of rickety and failing Physically and outwardly

I like to tell people I I'm gonna go bandage to heaven But at least I'm gonna go to heaven, you know, but what we need no matter how old you are

No matter what your state is physically no matter how young you are What we need is

God strength We need inner strength How do we get inner strength we get it through God?

We get it through having a personal relationship With God through Jesus Christ and putting him first in our life and living for him and Living for his word and he strengthens us daily

It's a daily walk with Jesus, isn't it? And he gives us

Daily strength. I like the Old Testament verse according to To your days.

So shall your strength be I love it. God gives us strength for every day

He gives us enough strength for every day. That's my prayer for you as A church that you will continue to serve

God that he will strengthen you and you will serve him here at Faith Bible Church and You will be full of joy and you will enjoy it and You will continue to be a blessing and you'll serve him by the strength

That God gives you to serve him Second I pray that you will know the love of Christ That's my next prayer for you.

That's Paul's next Prayer for the Ephesians Verses 17 through 19

Live in Christ's love verses 17 and 18 and here

Paul Basically is praying for the Saints. He's praying. I pray that you will know

Christ deeply Is there is there anything greater than that? Knowing Christ in a deep and personal way

That's what he's saying that Christ may dwell in your hearts He's not praying that you're gonna be saved

He's praying That You're since you're already saved

That Christ may make a home in your heart because that's what the word Dwell means in the

Greek to Settle down and make a home that Christ will settle down in our hearts and make his home that our whole life will be

Christ -centered as Believers Christ is our life and That we will live for him and that everything we do

Not only our thoughts but our deeds our words our actions Would be to glorify

Christ. Oh that he would dwell in Your hearts you see it's not just enough to know the

Bible and To know that Christ is Lord and he came for us

But you have to have faith in him you have to receive

Jesus Christ the Lord in your heart and Come to know him in a personal way

So that he is your personal Savior That's the most important thing.

My whole thrust as a pastor is very simple first of all It's to get the gospel out

To see people come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and after that it's to build them up In Christ and in the

Word of God So they might do the work of the ministry. That's it.

It's as simple and as complex as that That crop in Paul's praying that Christ may

Dwell In their hearts through faith and if Jesus Christ is your

Lord and he is living in you and You are abiding in him you are gonna bear fruit and That's the great thing and it comes over a period of time

Rome wasn't built in a day and a Christian doesn't mature in a day

Sanctification is a whole lifetime process isn't it coming to be more like Jesus Christ and so we see that the end effect of Knowing Christ in a deep and personal way is

That we will be rooted and grounded in love

Wow, I remember once my wife said

That her whole focus in life was to live in love to love and Personally, I think she's doing

By God's grace a great job of it and That's what we are to do.

My prayer for you is You will not only be sound in doctrine and love the

Word of God and teach and preach the Word of God but that you will live it out in love and That I would live it out in love and Paul says it this way

That you will become strong and grounded in Christ and Reflect the love of Christ and he uses a mixed metaphor

The first one is an agricultural term and the second one is an architectural term

He says being rooted Love that You know when

I think of a tree a cross tree from our house is this great big tree and I look at it

And I go wow, how great is God that tree it I look at it's a like a tower of strength

You see We need to be rooted and grounded in Christ like a tree

Whose roots go deep into the earth? Deep into the soil deep into grace

Our roots need to go deep into the grace of God So that we're strong like a tree so that when the winds and the trials of life come

It'll just make us stronger say That's what happens with a tree

It bends in the wind and it becomes stronger and we become stronger if we're rooted in Christ, right

We become stronger through the trials. They're not easy, but God uses them to make us more like Christ and then grounded in love

The word grounded in the Greek means foundation that our foundation will be in Christ My prayer for you as an individual is that the foundation of your life will be

Christ and the Word of God because Christ is the true foundation of Any life in any church and I pray as our heritage and faith

Bible Church has been so rich And it's been a biblical heritage that you will continue the wonderful heritage of Christ and The Word of God and being a biblically minded church

That preaches the Bible and lives the Bible Gives out the word that this church would would grow strong in Christ and The word because that's how we grow

Grow strong your deep your roots will go deep in the faith and deep in Christ Paul says it this way in Colossians chapter 3 verse 17

Colossians 3 17 Nope wrong.

Sorry Colossians 2 6 and 7 Colossians 2 6 and 7.

This is the same thought In these verses is telling us how we are to walk as Christians when it says walk in the

Bible It means how we are to live our lives And look what it says as you therefore have received

Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in Him rooted and built up in him and Established in the faith as you have been taught abounding in it with Thanksgiving first of all you have to become a

Christian you have to get saved, right? You're not a

Christian until you have received Christ as your Savior You received him by faith.

You know that you're a sinner You know that you can't save yourself and without Jesus Christ you are doomed for an eternity of hell and that he died on the cross for your sins as your substitute and You put your faith in him and when you do he will save you in other words

He will cleanse you of all your sin. He will forgive you of all your sin, and he will make you a new creature

That's the beginning of the Christian life You can't walk in Christ and have the power of God unless you're a child of God and So as you've received

Christ Jesus the Lord walk in him. How are we to walk in him rooted and built up in him?

established in the faith That's the goal for this church.

That's the goal for each of one of us to mature in Christ To be grounded in Christ to be grounded in the

Word of God and in the glorious faith of the gospel and Abounding in Thanksgiving let's not forget that last part so important to be a thankful person and so Paul's praying

For them For the believers To know

Christ deeply to be grounded in Christ to walk in love and also verse number 18 to be able to take hold of Jesus Christ and eat the word there is

To be able to comprehend him Wow That word comprehend in the

Greek means to hold on to or to appropriate

Paul's praying that the believers would appropriate Christ in their lives

Know him Experience him the glorious thing is is

We can know Christ through faith But we can't comprehend the totality and the essence of his being and his glory.

He's so glorious But we can know him and that's what

Paul's praying that you will know Jesus that you will Appropriate it to your life that he will be the focus of your life that you will now live for God and not yourselves and you will

Comprehend with all the Saints all the truly born -again believers

The very glory of Jesus Christ that is unfathomable think of that the very glory of this person as God is beyond our knowing intellectually

It's so deep it's immeasurable Greater than any ocean and he's saying

I pray that you will Know the glory and to show

The immeasurableness of his glory and how expansive and Great -and -wonderful it is

He uses these words that you'll know the width and length and depth and height

That God will continue to show you as you walk with Jesus and you grow in Jesus the greatness and glory and the wonderful calling that you have in Christ Oh that we might understand

The glorious calling that we have in Jesus Christ. And what a wonderful thing it is to serve

Jesus Christ, right To serve him together It goes together, doesn't it?

When you know the glory of Christ, you're gonna want to serve Jesus Christ and so The first Exhortation in verses 17 and 18 is to live in Christ's love.

The next Exhortation is to let Christ's love live in you Let Christ live in you

Verse 19. I Love this verse. I love them all.

Let me tell you. I just love the Word of God. I I love everything about the

Word of God. I hope you do too. If you love God you should love his word and I know you do that's why that's one of the reasons why

I love this church Because you love God and you love the

Word of God and you can't get enough of it. That's the way to be I hope you never lose that.

I hope I never lose that He's he's praying to know the love of Christ Hey, can there be anything better than that than to know the love of Christ?

Nothing, there's nothing better than that You see it passes knowledge

It's greater than our intellect You see Jesus Christ The glory of his person has to be revealed to us

God reveals Jesus Christ to us through his spirit and his word and The love of Christ is so great

It's beyond our Knowledge that you'll know it in a deep and personal way

It's my prayer that you'll know the love of Christ So that you'll be able to as a church share the love of Christ With a world that so desperately needs it.

I Know that you're in grief and sorrow over the situation

In our country right now just as I am I'm in such grief

With what's going on in this country right now the division the violence and everything

But if you know the love of Christ You can not only stand strong in a world that doesn't but you can share

The love of Christ with people who so desperately need

Christ and his love that's what the world needs now We need

Christ and his love The world needs people like you that know

Jesus Christ and Show love not hate show forgiveness

Show tolerance show acceptance That's what we need

The world needs God right now. We need to show more love don't

It really is applicable and if we know the love of Christ We will be filled filled with all the fullness of God this word filled means being like a container that's filled with something and We are filled with the fullness of God You see if you are full of the fullness of God and you are walking in the

Spirit of God You are gonna be full of the love of God You're gonna show the love of God What a prayer

That we might be filled with the fullness of God You see when you receive

Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior It says in Romans 5 5 that the

Spirit of God shed abroad the love of God in your heart

And he gave us the love of Jesus We have his love we need to live in his love

We need to live it out and we need to let Christ live in us, right? That's the essential of Being a

Christian. That's my prayer for you. I Don't know many churches with as much love as Faith Bible Church, and I'm not just saying that I'm a pastor.

I've been to as many churches But when you come to this church

You're always Welcomed you're always greeted with love and if you come for the first time

You're not a stranger But that's not the case in some churches.

I thank God For you for your love and I would say

Encourage you as I would encourage myself Let that love abound more and more

We can never be complacent, right? We can never love enough. We always have to love more

Lastly I Pray that you will glorify God What a great

I? Pray that you will glorify God verses 20 and 21

We have a big God verse number 20 You see in verses 14 through 19, this is

Paul's prayer For the Ephesians and now in verses 20 and 21

It's the doxology Now doxology is a big word that simply means praise to God.

That's what doxology is Paul is now praising God Let me say

Just like Paul our lives should be prayer and praise

We should be people of prayer and we should be people Who praise

God? That makes a Christian and that's what we see right here

Paul is also telling us he he was praying about things that the

Ephesians should be Character qualities fruits of the Spirit that they should seek to develop in their lives

He's telling us how we should live and how what we should strive for and now he is showing us

How we can do it. He's showing us that we can do it by the power of God see

He's not telling us to do something without Having the power he's now saying you can do it because you have a big

God That's what the doxology is telling us right here.

I love it Now to him who is able again

Who's the emphasis on here in the doxology God? Giving glory to God that should be the whole focus of our lives

We should give glory to God for whatever he gives us any blessings anything all glory all praise

Goes to him praise God Now to him who is able

I love that God is able that's what he's saying this word able in the

Greek is Dunam I What English word do you think we get from that?

dynamite, there you go, I Think we've got a Greek scholar here dynamite

God's power is dynamite God is powerful

He's able We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, right?

Amen That's the idea He is able to do more than we can imagine or think

Isn't that true? We limit God, but God is so big.

He's so much greater than we even think he is and Paul Emphasizes God's power by just piling up the adjectives

And here they are Exceedingly abundantly and above Showing us those words show us how great and how powerful

God is Not only that the word exceedingly abundantly in the

Greek means I kind of like this Super abundantly

He can do super abundantly above all that we

Ask or think in other words Even what we pray for and what we think

God can do God can do so much more. I love it because I Have seen

God So many times I Pray for something, but he gives me something so much greater than I ever would pray for about Can you relate to that?

But it's so easy to limit God, isn't it? as you know

My wife and I are seeking to move to, Idaho And we didn't realize what a journey of faith

It would be we kind of put everything all together and we've got all these stress points going on and we

Thought okay. We got to sell our house here in Sacramento and then we got to go and buy a house in,

Idaho And we thought oh It's not gonna be any problem to sell our house

Here in Sacramento because we have a pretty nice house. At least we thought we did We put it in the market and nobody wanted it

What a realtor said you're gonna sell it the first weekend. We took his word for it.

Why were we naive? first weekend goes By second weekend goes by the house still isn't sold three weeks later

It's still not sold. Well, we got it kind of coincide the sale of this house with the sale of the other house

We're getting worried Nervous You know what

I was buckling a little I gotta admit it but God never buckles

Even though I was buckling a little God came through he's faithful We got somebody

Who put an offer on the house? we thought the person was gonna buy it and the person bailed out and we

Were nervous we lacked Faith or let me just say

I did but God never Left us just like God.

I thought watch He's gonna open the floodgates now when we're really low because he's testing our faith, which he was and Sure enough right after that person bailed out of that buying the house

We got two offers on the house right after that and the very last person who looked at the house bought the house

God's timing is always right We limited

God but guess what? God is still God. He's still glorious and He's still faithful and he's still great and we can trust him and look at It says according to the power that works in that in us.

I love that You see as Believers we have

God's Power we have great power We have the Holy Spirit.

We know God And that's how we live that's how we face life

We don't face life on our own we face life with God and he empowers us

And it's my prayer That you will continue to trust God as a church

To do great things because beloved Yes, this is a hard transition

You guys have been so great to us and faithful to us all these years and it's hard for us to leave

I I say it like this. It's like leaving family, but I want to tell you something God has a great future for you in this church.

And this is a new beginning for you a new beginning He's gonna do great things

He can do great. We got a big God and that's what we have to believe

We don't live life on our own we live life Depending on God and trusting him even in the midst of our disappointments and our

Discouragements we get back up on the horse and we keep on riding you keep going

We keep going right? We don't give up because God is so big the gospel is so glorious His church

Is so glorious And it's a privilege to know

God and to be a part of his church and To serve him in his church, isn't it?

And that's what we see in verse 21. I Love it to him what be glory in where in the church

You See what Paul's showing again? Is that God's glory is shown in his church in the redeemed?

Saints in the body of Christ It shows that not only can

God save people he makes them his children They have forgiveness of sins and we have the

Spirit of God and how glorious it is to be a member of this Church, and again, of course,

I'm not saying the building I'm saying being his very people

In whom he lives You see the glory of God is seen in the church

If I didn't believe that I wouldn't be a pastor If I didn't believe in the

Word of God, I didn't believe in the gospel I would pack it up and I would sell used cars

We're packing and we're leaving But I'm trusting God to continue to use us in ministry in areas that he has because there's no retirement in the kingdom of God as a pastor you just transition

Into another area of service I'm getting older and I'm I'm tired and I can't do the work

I used to do and that's the big reason why I'm retiring But God has something else for me and our family

And he has good things in store for you because God's glory is seen in his church

In his church are the people to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus And it's all because of Jesus Christ It's all because we are now

His church we are now saved through Jesus Christ And he is risen and we he is our

Lord and to him be all the glory It doesn't mean it's not one person

Beloved it's him. He gets the glory It's his church and his church not only

Will stand against the gates of hell the gates of hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ and the church is the pillar and the ground of the of the truth but it also

Will remain and show his glory to all generations forever

And ever I like it when old Barry McGuire got saved some of you

From the 60s He was a rock -and -roll guy and He got saved and I actually saw him in concert as a

Christian. He was a Christian. I love what he said he said

I was on a Different bandwagon, but now

I'm on the only bandwagon and that's Jesus Christ I hope you're on the right bandwagon

Hope you know Jesus Christ this morning. I hope you're saved. I hope he's your

Lord. I Hope you that he's the foundation of your life. And my prayer is that for faith

Bible Church that Christ will be the foundation of this church and the

Word of God will continue to be the foundation of this church and And by Jesus Christ, it'll show forth the glory of God be encouraged

Be faithful Continue to serve God For he's able he's able and He's doing a good thing.

And as you have blessed us My prayer is that God will continue to bless you

So that you can continue to bless others with the

Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ my closing

Benediction is May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ Be with you all

Please stand for a closing benediction It is a sweet sorrow in a sense for a last service and sermon

But it is great seeing you all you have all been Such an incredible blessing to our lives and we know

That you will continue to be a blessing to our lives and to Many many others.

This is a special church It's a very loving church That loves

God and loves people and it's my prayer That God will continue to bless faith

Bible Church for the gospel sake Let's close in prayer

Dear Heavenly Father. Thank you for the glorious Privilege That we as a family have had serving these years with such a wonderful church and group of individuals that you have assembled and As my prayer that you will bless

Faith Bible Church in each and every person here That they will all use their gifts to serve you that they will move forward in unity and love and Will be a testimony for Jesus Christ in the

Word of God not only in this community but in the world and We ask all this in Jesus name.

Amen Please be seated at this time

We're gonna take this time we do Presentation here give you the opportunity to turn the mic around if folks would like to say some things

Please come forward and share your thoughts with the Bernsteins, but you would

Congregation and this is for you. This is a an expression of Our love for you our heart for you

He's got a pocket knife Okay, yeah, he's making it Just as pastor today was sharing from Ephesians Wait till it gets there

There he goes This is a verse that has

I'm sure special meaning to them It's a prayer. It's a thankfulness

Our thankfulness for you and I would like to read it here

It's a it's Philippians 1 3 through 6. I thank my

God in all my remembrance of you Always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy

Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now and I am sure of this

That he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Amen Amen, and it's and it's on the footnote because some of you don't know that says with love and gratitude for your life of shepherding and ministry faith

Bible Church and You know words really can't express What you've meant to and I think some of those cards will try to attempt to do that But a lot of it's unspoken

Closing prayer a Gracious Heavenly Father. This is as we've shared a heavy day for us

But Lord, it's a it's a glorious day because we know you are upon the throne that you are

Lord over all That you show us love that we can demonstrate to it one another as love has been demonstrated this morning

God we thank you for your faithfulness Thank you for the faithfulness of the Bernstein's father

That you would go before them that you would help them in this move that the move would go smoothly for them

That you would open a door and gates for them in in Idaho that you would take them lead them to a solid church and that they would have new

Relationships and new friendships father that will continue to build and to uplift in and to spread your kingdom father

God be with us here as we remain behind, but Lord, we're not alone and We have you as our shepherd and as our guide above all things

So we thank you again for the Bernstein's and what a what a blessing it's been and what a privilege

It's been to be a part of their lives and for them to be part of ours So Lord, we are are full of gratitude this morning and we ask for your blessing on each one here today