Teaching: Connecting with people

We pray that Thou would not leave us to ourselves and on our own, but as we live our lives day by day that we might be able to have communion with Thee, to live consciously as in Thy presence and to experience that fellowship with God that will fit us and equip us to be a beneficial effect and influence to other people. We ask for Thy grace upon us as we open Thy word again. We pray that Thou would give help both in explaining it, drawing attention to its significance, and for each one who listens that there might be an ability to appreciate and enter into Thy truth and that the result will be that each one will be edified.

We ask Thee then for Thy blessing in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's turn to Isaiah chapter 50.

Isaiah chapter 50. Now what I want to think with you about now is sort of a progression from what I was looking at this morning, from the idea of contact with God, being in touch with God, the importance of that, to being in touch with people, connecting with people. So let's look in Isaiah chapter 50 and we're going to look at the example of the Lord Jesus himself.

Verse 4, the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that is of the trained, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God hath opened mine ear and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.

I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded.

Therefore have I set my face like a flint and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth me. Who will contend with me? Let us stand together.

Who is mine adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me. Who is he that shall condemn me? Lo, they all shall wax or become old as a garment.

The moth shall eat them up. Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. Now verse 10 and verse 11 are put in contrast to each other.

Verse 11, behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that you have kindled, this shall you have of mine hand. You shall lie down in sorrow. Now this particular passage is one that is called or categorized as one of the songs of the servant.

There are a number of poetic passages in the book of Isaiah that seem to particularly relate to the Lord Jesus as the servant. And at times I have taken these up and it's interesting to relate them all together, but I'm not going to do that today. But if you go through each one of those you will find that there is a particular aspect of service that is being emphasized.

And in this aspect that is mentioned here, it is his work as our high priest, as our counselor, our encourager. And so this relates particularly to his care of us now while we are on our spiritual pilgrimage. We're going to end up where he is.

He's in the glory. That's where we're going to be. But he is equipped to help us.

And this passage is really giving to us the secret of that fitness. Now a couple of things that I wanted to mention. First of all, whenever you want to help somebody, you have to overcome two barriers.

The first barrier is that that person may not know if you care for them or not. The other barrier is they may not be confident that you really understand them and their need. So in any counseling that goes on, the counselor has to overcome this resistance or these barriers that we all sort of have.

And we don't just let anybody come barging into our personal territory. Especially if we are in distress or we are discouraged. We're fed up.

We tend to isolate ourselves when we get down and discouraged. And so the Lord as our counselor, as our comforter, he says, the Lord God has given to me the tongue of the learned, the tongue of someone who has been trained to know how to counsel. And so in speaking of this subject of teaching, I want you to understand that we are also including the idea of shepherding.

Shepherding and teaching, they're bound together in the New Testament spiritual gifts. Shepherds and teachers. And you really can hardly teach the Word of God if you don't care about the people of God.

So you not only have to be in touch with God, but you have to be in touch with people. And somehow, whenever we're trying to help people, whenever we're trying to communicate to people, we have to be able to convey those realities. We have help for them because we know God.

And we care about them. And so we draw near to them. I want to just go down through a few of the details that are given to us here.

And the first thing that you notice, this again relates to our relationship to God. He wakens morning by morning. He wakens mine ear to hear as the learned.

Now, this is a very basic issue. Do I spend any time learning from God? Do I open myself for the Lord to speak to me? This passage suggests that in the life of the Lord Jesus on earth, morning by morning, he awoke to listen to the Father's voice. That's a beautiful thing to just to think about.

I know we all have trouble with fitting together the deity of the Lord and the humanity of the Lord and how he could even need to learn anything. And I even hesitate to use that language. And yet you have this idea of him in his dependent human condition that he entered into.

He listened for God's voice. Now, how many times do we barge into the day, head out into our activities and our responsibilities and never even pause to commit ourselves to the Lord? Never stop to think, I need his help today. And if I'm going to be useful to him in my life, how am I going to keep in touch with him? And so you have this emphasis of his communion with the Father.

And so in doing this, keeping in mind what I touched on this morning, our goal should be to get to know God, to get to know him in his character, to sense what he's really like. Because when we are speaking on his behalf, we want to be representing him right, correctly. We all have our own deficiencies of character.

We all have our own extremes of character. We have our imbalances. And if we stay simply within our own framework, we will often represent God in an unbalanced way.

And so we need to get to know God as he really is. And so this communion with him morning by morning, and then linked with that, you notice it says in verse 5, the Lord God has opened mine ear and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. One of the essential things at all stages of our Christian life is to have an obedient spirit, to be obedient in heart.

If I am not walking in obedience, can I help somebody else to be obedient? Can I strengthen their walk to live for God despite all the obstacles and the challenges? So this is part of the challenge. And in looking at this subject of the messenger, the preparation of the messenger, you see, I must become in harmony with God. I must become in harmony with what the message is that I am to convey to others.

And so the messenger and the message must have a coherence. And so obedience to his will. One of the things that obedience implies is trust.

It's hard to obey if you don't trust. And many of the hindrances to obedience are really a lack of trust. And so that should again make us realize that our personal faith in God is the foundation of our spirituality.

If you go to Galatians chapter 5, it mentions, you know, circumcision avails nothing, nor uncircumcision, but faith which works by love. Faith which works by love. And that is really giving to us a spiritual principle of life.

Faith works. Faith operates as it lays hold of love. That's why the best thing that you can do in your family is to provide an atmosphere of true love, because that will create confidence.

That will generate trust. And so in our relationship to God, our obedience is a peek into that inner heart of trust in our God. Then the next thing that is touched on here is not only are we to get to know him ourselves and live submissively, obediently to him in his will for us, but we have to have experience.

You know, there's a lot of graduates from college and university that get frustrated looking for work, because everybody wants five years of experience to start. And that's kind of tough to get when you're starting. But experience is invaluable.

And God treats it the very same way. He intends to us for us as we go through life to become increasingly effective, increasingly competent in caring for people, because we are going through life's experiences and learning to know God, learning to know ourselves, and learning to overcome in those experiences of life. And so that's what is really the emphasis of this section.

From verse six down, you have his obedience to the Father, walking right into the trap, being betrayed, being hauled off to trial. He knew that was going to happen. You know, if we knew that was going to happen to us, we would be on the next flight.

We wouldn't even take the bus. We'd be getting as far away as we could. But in obedience and trust to his Father, he was going to go into the very crucible of suffering.

Now, the one thing that has struck me for a number of years is in looking at this suffering of the Lord Jesus that's emphasized here, these are not his atonement sufferings. And so the question arises, why would God allow his beloved Son, his faithful servant, to experience these terrible sufferings at the hands of men if they weren't necessary for the putting away of sin? And I hope that you at least have some confidence in your mind that God doesn't waste experience. And if I could say something emphatically, it is this, that God has never wasted any experience in my life.

I have. I have had dry spells where I have just been very dead, very dried out spiritually. But I have discovered afterwards that God has made use of those to teach me about myself, and I've been able to relate to other people in their struggles because of some of the same struggles that I have gone through.

And this is the kind of experience that is being emphasized here, that the Lord Jesus was brought into experience of hardship, experience of affliction, of suffering, in order that he might be perfectly equipped to be able to relate to us in any of our kinds of distress. And so that is the emphasis that is given here. So true knowledge of God, that as we get to know God through the Word of God, as we go through life's experiences, God not only wants our personal faith to be deepened in him as we go from experience to experience, but he also wants us to become more and more equipped to be able to convey his mind, his encouragement, his strength to those around us.

And let's just see how this fits with this. After describing the brutality and so on, from verse 7 to 9, you have the emphasis of God being near, God helping me. And this is what we need to look for, we need to count on as we go through our life's experiences.

To have the presence of God with us, the encouragement and the strength of God. In fact, if you look carefully at verse 7 to 9, I think you will discover that this is the foundation of Romans chapter 8. Just put that in your little memory bank for something interesting to think about and study. Romans chapter 8. Romans 8 is that triumph of faith, the pinnacle of Christian security.

God is for us. If God is for us, who can be against us? The chapter starts out with there being no condemnation to those in Christ. The chapter ends, even with the most brutal persecution, there's nothing that can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

So we have this complete security that is ours in salvation. And these very principles are emphasized here. He is near that justifies me.

The Lord God will help me. Who is he that shall condemn me? And so this is taken up in the New Testament again in 1 Peter chapter 2, where the Lord Jesus was kept and preserved in his submissiveness to the will of God, even though he was being battered and slandered, he didn't retaliate. Who did no sin? Neither was guile found in his mouth.

He didn't react to provocation because he was committing himself to him that judges righteously. When somebody yells at you, when somebody speaks contemptuously to you, there's an instantaneous reaction within us to retaliate. If someone tries to batter on us, well, it's pretty hard to hold your hands.

But he did it trusting in God, his confidence in God, his consciousness of God and the recognition God will judge. And so our lives in many ways need to grasp these important principles, because how do we react when we're provoked? Do we still represent him? Are we capable of being his servant? Sometimes it's very humbling how quickly we get riled up and we get speaking very reactively to people and we're just defending ourselves in the name of God. And we want to punish them and so on.

And we fail as servants of God. So, verse 10 is his counsel to us. What is his counsel? Well, no matter how many times we've been told to trust the Lord, there actually is hardly any other exhortation so needed.

So much within our lives, but to trust God. Here's his counsel. Who is among you that fears the Lord, that obeys the voice of his servant? You see, here's the it's a pattern.

This is looking at someone who is honoring God. Someone who is obedient to God and yet walks in darkness and has no light. Now, sometimes in the Bible, walking in darkness is referring to walking in wickedness, but that's not the meaning here.

It's very obvious. To walk in darkness here is to be going through a circumstance where nothing makes sense. It's all dark and he has no light.

There isn't anything that you can see that that makes it understandable. Walking in darkness. That's not a very nice place to be walking in the dark.

Here's his counsel. Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. In contrast, in verse 11, you have someone protecting themselves, someone deciding, I'm not going to let the darkness surround me.

I'm going to keep the danger at bay by lighting my own torch, building my own fire. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that you have kindled. This shall you have of my hand.

You shall lie down in sorrow. Now, whenever I read this, I think of the imagery of somebody out in the bush somewhere and the wolves or coyotes are out there howling away. And you better keep that fire going.

Be pretty hard to sleep. Hoping that the light will keep them at bay. That's the imagery that's here.

What this is saying is that God wants you to trust him in the dark instead of building self-protective barriers around your life. Now, that's easy to say standing here, I know. If you have been through trauma, someone who has been through a marriage breakdown, someone who has lost their loved one, someone who has been through financial catastrophe, sometimes that event, that experience defines their life.

And from then on, they live building up protective barriers, not letting anyone get close to them again, afraid to trust. Look at the example of the Lord Jesus. He let himself suffer at the hands of his enemies, trusting in God.

He's on the other side now. And in his faithfulness to God, he wants to vindicate the value of putting your trust in God. And trusting him with your life, with your safety, with your security, no matter what.

And in doing so, you will be trained and equipped to help others who go through times of trial and hardship. Let's go quickly to 2 Corinthians 1, where we pick this same idea up in the New Testament, and we see how this pattern follows through to someone like the Apostle Paul. 2 Corinthians 1. Now, it would be nice to read the whole section, but we'll just read a couple of verses here and there.

2 Corinthians 1 and verse 3, he says, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. Now, does that sound like a tongue twister? If you read down through it, he is speaking about his sufferings, and he actually says, if I am suffering, it's for your sake. Now, how would you like to live your life like that? If you're going through a hard time, it must be for some good for somebody that I can help.

I don't know if that would make it any easier to handle, but as I said, God does not want any experience to be for nothing. He wants it to be valuable for your benefit and also for the benefit of others. But this is a beautiful description of God.

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. How much do we know God like this? I hope as you are going through your spiritual life that you are coming to appreciate more and more the tenderness of God, the Father of mercies. That word mercies is often associated in the Old Testament with loving kindness, compassionate care.

That's our Father. That's the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he's the God of all comfort, of all encouragement, of all consolation. That's the character that he wants us to develop in.

So he may have to tenderize us. Usually tenderizing isn't an easy process. He wants to tenderize us so that we become sensitive, tender, compassionate to others who are in distress.

And one of the key things, if you grasp the context of this passage, this follows the first epistle when Paul has to speak to them very, very, you would almost say harshly, very, very faithfully about sin in their midst. He has had to speak to them as a father over his disobedient children, calling them back to repentance, calling them back to God. Now he's revealing his inner heart toward them.

And the fact that they were going through distress through the assembly problems, which was causing him distress, and he was also going through tremendous trials at Ephesus in the gospel. And he goes on to say here that he was pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch, end of verse 8, that we despaired even of life, but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. This is quite a mouthful, isn't it? To trust in the God who raises the dead.

To have such a confidence in God that his purposes and his blessing goes beyond death, and death is no barrier to the care and power of God. Now, I don't fancy throwing my life away for nothing. So that's why I don't do downhill skiing and things like that, where I feel completely out of control.

But this passage is encouraging us to so trust God with our life, that if he brings us into death itself, he is still over us, with us, in us, and for us. And even our very death is meant to be an experience by which we glorify God. So Paul has thrown himself into the hands of God.

He has confided in him, and he has this confidence that the God of all comfort, the Father of mercies, is the one who is managing my life, leading me through these experiences of life, so that I may be able to comfort others with the comfort which I myself have experienced. Now, let's think for a moment or two about Timothy. Not only do we have the pattern of what is of God seen in the life of Paul, but Timothy is a tremendous example, and there are so many verses we could read.

Maybe let's look in Philippians 2. If I have it correct, I think Timothy is the only one in the New Testament that is actually called a man of God. A man of God. That's a very precious description of someone who stands for God, someone who knows God, who walks with God, who is more at home with God than he is with the ungodly.

A man of God. A man characterized by what God is. Philippians 2, Paul says in verse 19, Now, there's a number of other references that we could look at in the New Testament where Paul had confidence in sending Timothy to help out in assemblies where there were problems.

1 Corinthians 4, verse 17, he speaks there very solemnly to these Corinthians and says, That's why I've sent Timothy to you. He will bring you into remembrance of my ways. So here's a younger man who had such a godliness, such a faithfulness, and such a sincere care for the people of God that the older preacher was confident to send him where he couldn't be to help out in times of trouble.

Now, when you have troubles, assembly troubles, you need a man of God. You need a woman of God. You need people who are in touch with God and at the same time are sensitive, caring for the people of God.

In this description of him, I have no one like-minded who will genuinely care for your state. Why should we care? Because every Christian belongs to the Lord. That's the basis for that interest and care, that considerateness in dealing with them.

Now, there's a number of others, but I'm just going to leave those. And I want to touch on this competency to counsel, the value of the word of God to fit us to be those who can counsel others. Now, I'm just going to quote to you Romans 10 and 17.

This is under the heading of faith for salvation. The word of God is an inexhaustible resource. The word of God is living.

It's eternal. It's quite amazing if you really stop to think about it. And I'm sure there are people maybe even living in this community that just shake their head when they see people still going to church.

They're sure that religion has been debunked and that the Bible is just, you know, an old archaic religious artifact and can't possibly have any relevance for people living today. And yet we have come to know that the Bible is God's word, which comes from the very creator, the one that we're going to be with forever. And his word has an unlimited capability of benefit and help.

And of course, the very first thing is faith for salvation. And that's essential. Romans 10 and 17 says, so then faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.

And that's in the context of the gospel and why the gospel was rejected by the nation of Israel. Faith comes by hearing. How can people have faith in God? How can they have faith in the gospel if they never hear the message? So the message must be spoken.

And that message is by the word of God. God gives his word and we pick up his word. We convey his word to those around us.

Let's go to 2 Timothy chapter 3 because this little section has a lot of the details in it that I am interested in to try to emphasize the value of the word of God for our fitting. Again, in the context of the last days and the ungodliness, the departure. 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 13 says, but evil men and seducers shall become worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

But continue thou in the things which thou has learned and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them. And that from a child thou has known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof or correction or conviction rather, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

That the man of God may be perfect, that he may be complete, throughly furnished, completely equipped unto all good works. So when we think about the value of the word of God, I've put down a few headings here that I think are useful for us to think about. Not only do they bring us into the knowledge of salvation and the experience of salvation, but the word of God is that essential nourishment for us to live in our Christian life.

And I just want to drop back to 1 Timothy chapter 4, or a familiar verse here. 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 6. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine whereunto thou hast attained. There's another reference there in Matthew to the Lord's response to the devil when he tempted him to turn stones into bread.

The Lord answered in what might seem like a strange way. He said, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live. That's a quotation of course from Deuteronomy chapter 8 in relation to the wilderness experience.

And it says there that God brought them through those hardships of the wilderness experience so that they might learn that man does not live on bread alone. We have a spiritual part of our being and it needs to be nourished. It needs to be sustained.

It needs to be strengthened. And God is the source of life for them. But at times we've all experienced this I'm sure.

And especially some of us who have frequently preached, whether it's in the gospel or in the assembly meetings. We're not nourishing ourselves. We haven't been enjoying the Lord.

We haven't been deriving food from the scriptures ourselves. And then we try to preach. And I don't know whether everybody else knows it or not, but I know it in my own self that I feel dry as dust.

It's not a good feeling. It's possible to dry out spiritually even while handling the word of God. That's hard to understand.

But it's because of our focus. If you are just hurrying to get ready for the Bible reading, you know, to be able to figure it out and know what to answer for this or not and the other point. And you aren't meditating in it to enjoy it for yourself.

So I want to encourage this to everyone. We all need nourishment. Day by day.

And usually, usually we can help others. Best with what we have enjoyed ourselves. With what we have found strength in, with what we have learned to appreciate about the Lord.

That's how we can best help others. And so in Timothy, being a good minister of Jesus Christ, a good servant of Jesus Christ, he said, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine. Now, I remember particularly when starting in the work in Capposchasing, both Murray Pratt and I were relatively young preachers.

If I get it right calculating here. I think I was 26 the first year we went to Capposchasing and Murray would have been 29 when we were starting to get involved in that new work. Within a year, the work took off and there was a nice number of people saved.

And all of a sudden we were faced with this responsibility of of teaching, nourishing, shepherding, guiding a number of people who were saved without any, you know, basically any Bible background. And because there were so many problems among them, their lives, some of them, even though they were just in their 20s and 30s. Some of them, their lives are already messed up.

A lot of problems. We were confronted with this need. You know, how am I going to meet their need? I haven't had the same background as they have had and so on.

And I had to come back to this assurance that this passage teaches that if we are willing to learn from God. If we are willing to learn God in his character, in his ways, we will learn about ourselves. God is the best psychologist.

He knows us. The word of God will have the greatest insight into human behavior, into its problems and into its help. And in saying this, I am not despising any help that can be derived from visiting a counselor who may not even be a Christian, but who simply by observation of human behavior has insights and help.

But one of the limitations that many of those counselors express and the frustrations is they can't change people. They might be able to dissect them, analyze them and tell them what's wrong and tell them what they should do, but they don't have power to change the person. And that is what is inherent in the word of God.

The spirit of God is at work in and through the word of God. And so there is a living power that is there that gives power to change. And so I certainly appreciate men and women who have devoted themselves who are Christians to helping marriage counseling, family and so on.

These different areas. And I particularly appreciate those who are willing to work from a biblical basis. And their counseling is rooted in the word of God, in the scriptures.

Have you ever asked yourself why God just didn't, you know, just give us a whole set of codes? You know, this is wrong. Well, here's the code. Punch it in and you'll be fixed up.

He has given his word in life stories. The story of Abraham, the story of Isaac, the story of Jacob, the story of Joseph. You go down through and you will see people's life stories interwoven in all of that is their faith in God, their sin against God and God's recovery of them.

And so the word of God is given to us in this life framework. In many ways. And so that's what should give to us encouragement as we search the scriptures.

If you are going through something personally or someone that you know that you're trying to help is going through something. Suddenly there's this passage just comes alive and you see, oh, there's there's something that can be a help. As I mentioned, the word of God is largely given in the framework of helping people with their troubles.

And so food for sustenance. Foundation for stability and success. I'm not going to take the time to go into those passages.

But in those verses, Ephesians four, verses 11 to 16 and second Peter three, you have the importance of the word of God and the grace of God. Stabilizing. Strengthening the life so that we are preserved from immaturity, instability, deception.

Those are the backgrounds in those two passages. And the teaching of the word of God, the careful teaching of God's word. Is designed to bring us to maturity.

To give us stability, strength in our Christian pathway. So obviously, if I am going to be trying to help others, whether teaching them, counseling them, I need to experience the power of the word of God. Strengthening me, stabilizing me, clearing me from wrong thoughts, wrong attitudes, wrong ideas.

And so the word of God has these benefits. And the last point, fitness for service. I actually have some of the thoughts on this later in the outline.

And on kind of the practical application. It's way on about page nine or something like that. It's quite a ways through.

But just to emphasize here that what is taught to us here is that in verse 16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. That means it's God breathed. Yes, there were human authors.

But God superintended. The scriptures being recorded and put down in writing so that his truth, his word is the result. So it's given by inspiration of God and it is profitable.

It's beneficial for teaching. The word doctrine really means teaching for reproof. And that is conviction of sin.

How many times have you opened your Bible and started to read and then you just get a little bit uncomfortable? Maybe that's why we don't read our Bibles. Because as we read the word of God, we become convicted of things that are not right within ourselves. And so the word of God educates us.

It gives us understanding of himself and of truth. It brings conviction. And one of the key things that that needs to be appreciated is that the truth of God comes to us into our lives through our conscience.

Our conscience is always activated by the word of God. That's why people react against it. Like they don't react against many other philosophies and ideas.

When the word of God is spoken, people have to respond. They have to react because their conscience is confronted. And so it convicts.

It corrects. It redirects us into right paths. And then it trains us, disciplines us in ways of righteousness.

Now, all of those things are mentioned here in preparation for the man of God being equipped to help others in the work of God. And so, obviously, as we teach the word of God, the word of God, because it has all of these elements in it, if we are going to effectively teach the word of God, we are going to have to teach doctrine. We're going to have to speak words that are convicting.

We're going to have to give reproof. We're going to have to give exhortation in training in righteousness as we speak the word of God. Now, I think I'm just going to close.

I think we have taken up pretty well an hour. And I know we didn't start on the hour, but I think we started about this time. And you've been very patient, especially after lunch.

Let's commit ourselves to God. Our gracious father, help us to get to know thee. We are so often distracted, sometimes through discouragement, we fail to reach out to thee.

And we seem to live at a distance from my presence. Help us to turn again to thee and to seek that nearness that we may at one time have enjoyed. Help us to find refreshing, strengthening, day by day, so that we once again become alive, spiritually strong, filled with joy, and filled with love for others.

We would commit ourselves to thee and pray that thou might help us to become true servants to our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask for thy grace upon the assembly and the collective witness that is being maintained in this area. We think of the purpose gospel meetings.

Our father, we pray that thou would give encouragement. Grant us to have strength, faith, to reach out to people where their circumstances may have changed. They may be seeking God when they weren't a previous occasion.

And so we cry to thee that thou might guide thy servants, guide the opening up of thy word. And we pray that there might be blessing in the gospel. Our father, as we are also concerned with the teaching of thy word at this time, we pray that thou might graciously draw near to us and make it beneficial and living.

We ask thee for this as we commit ourselves to thee in our Savior's worthy name. Amen.