Exercise Yourself Toward Godliness

So it has been said that there are three areas where Christians are most tempted. Sex, silver and sloth. Have you heard that before? The three S's.

Sex, silver and sloth. And it seems that a number of church leaders nowadays have given in to the temptations of non-marital sex or the scandalous use of money. But there's something even more unfortunate going on within the Christian church that the secular news media is not caught up on.

And if they did, boy, would they ever promote it if they thought it would somehow hurt the church, I suppose, with some of them. But I think this is an extremely serious thing that's going on with the Christian church. Besides sex or silver, it's this thing called sloth.

I want to talk to you this morning about the temptation we all face on a daily basis. Spiritual sloth. Now, some of you have probably heard of an animal by the name of, but called a sloth.

Have you seen a sloth before? Yeah, I got a few pictures. See this cute little guy here? That is a sloth. And I think we have a second picture there.

And they have these hook-like things. And if you've ever seen them move before, they move really, really slow. I'm not exaggerating what I'm doing right now.

This is actually fast motion. This is fast forward. They move so slow.

And you wonder how in the world these things survive in the wild. And because they move so slow, they almost kind of look like non-energetic or they look lazy. And so the word sloth, which is what this animal is called, has also come to mean, have another meaning of laziness.

All right. So I want to talk to you this morning about spiritual sloth, spiritual laziness, something that we contend with on a regular basis, day to day. Now, turn to First Timothy chapter four, because in this chapter, Paul challenged young Timothy, his protege, with the metaphor of being an athlete.

And Paul used the example of an athlete to represent the Christian life. And his challenge to Timothy was, Timothy, be as serious, be as committed, be as disciplined in the Christian life as an athlete is in training for their sports. And so really, you could say this chapter has the language spread throughout it that talks about being a spiritual athlete.

Now, just quickly, we're going to go through the whole chapter verse by verse, but jump down to verse seven and eight. And look what he says. This verse is kind of the anchor of the chapter.

In verse seven, he says, but reject profane and old wise fables and exercise. Do you see that word exercise or train yourself to be godly? And then in verse eight, he uses the same word for bodily exercise or training profits a little. But godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that is now and the life that is to come.

So interesting here, that word exercise used in verse seven and verse eight or training, as some translations say, that's what the word exercise mean. It means to train. If you were to look at it in the original language in the Greek, you would see that it is the word gymnasia.

Now, does that word sound familiar to an English word like what? Yeah, gymnasium or a gym. And so the chapter is filled with hints of athletic words. Now, interesting.

Interestingly, the first six verses talk about food, talk about physical food. And you go, what does that have to do with it? But Paul sort of weaves it all together. And he talks about physical food and the doctrine of these false teachers that were in Ephesus that Paul had sent Timothy to deal with.

Actually, that's where Timothy was based in Ephesus. Usually when we think of Ephesus, we think of the book of Ephesians. But first and second or first and second, Timothy are really first Ephesians and second Ephesians.

It has everything to do with the Ephesian church. And so Paul's talking about these false teachers and their false teaching about food, physical food. And then he turns it all around.

And he speaks about doctrine and how doctrine and how the Word of God is like spiritual food. And you have to be careful about what you feed yourself because there's good food and there's bad food. So let's dive into it verse by verse.

Verse one, he says, Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart or abandon, depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. Some will depart from the faith or some will abandon the faith. Now, again, if you were looking at the original language of the Greek here and you saw that word abandon, you would see that that Greek that word there is it would look like our English word apostatize.

You would look at you look at that and you say, hey, that looks like the English word apostatize. And it is. To abandon or to depart, to apostatize means to fall away from something.

And so literally, it means someone who holds a position and then they move away from that position. And so as Paul is writing these words about people abandoning their faith, I think he's actually he had in mind two guys by the name of Alexander and Hymenaeus that he mentions in chapter one, verse 20, who once held to a position in the faith and they abandoned it. And he actually says they have shipwrecked their faith.

They've destroyed their faith. They held to a position and they moved away from it. Now to illustrate what I'm talking about here, let me use myself as an example.

You may not know this about me, but about 12 years ago, I really wanted to get in shape physically. All right, we're talking about physical athlete stuff here. I wanted to get in shape physically.

I wanted you know, I just I was eating poorly, wasn't exercising, I was a little overweight. And one morning I got up, I looked in the mirror. And while I look kind of like what I look like now actually is what I'm talking about.

Okay. You know, talking about holding to a position and sliding away from it. Well, long story short is, for two or three years, I went to the gym, like three times a week, then four times a week, then five times a week.

And I was working out, and I was eating and I was in the best shape of my life. And people were coming up to me and said, Ed, you look amazing, man, you've lost weight, you look younger, you're athletic. I mean, and I was going, yeah, well, you know, and I was telling them how, you know, what I was doing and all that.

But then about 10 years ago, we got in a car accident. And as a result, I kind of got, you know, knocked off track sort of thing. And then, you know, one thing led to another, you can't exercise anymore, then it kind of affects your mood a little bit.

You know what I'm talking about? You know, and then you see a bag of potato chips, and it's not just one potato chip, it's a bag of potato chips. You know what I'm talking about. And then you just sort of slide away from a position that you had, and you fall away from it.

Holding to a position and then moving away from it. Well, by the time we get to the last verse in this chapter, verse 16, take a look at your Bibles, verse 16, Paul's going to say, take heed to yourself, or watch your life and your doctrine closely. He's going to say persevere, or continue, that he uses the word continue.

Don't give up on these things, continue, move forward, watch your doctrine, watch your life closely. And so Paul speaks here, interestingly, here in verse one, he talks about deceiving spirits and things, doctrines, taught by demons. And he goes on in the next couple of verses, and he talks about the false teachers.

And then he describes their false teaching. Verse two, they speak lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. Now you see that word seared, it's in every single translation in your body out there.

That word seared was actually a medical term that they used 2000 years ago. And that word seared, like you would actually again, look at it in the original language, you'd be and even though you don't know Greek, you would look at it. And you would go that looks like our English word, cauterize.

Now, do you know what to cauterize something is? All right, well, you've seen the war movies, like somebody gets wounded or something like that. And what happens guys bleeding, somebody whips out their knife, they heat it in the fire, they put it on the wound sizzle, right stops the bleeding. That is what it means to cauterize it to cauterize is where you you burn the skin or you burn the flesh with a hidden instrument.

And it stops the bleeding or it stops infection. But the thing is, after you cauterize the skin, it leaves scar tissue. And the scar tissue is usually thicker and it loses its sensitivity.

It's not as sensitive as it was before. And so what Paul says here, these false teachers, their consciences have been seared have been cauterized. They have lost sensitivity to the Word of God and to the Holy Spirit.

Now here in Langley, lower mainland, you know, do you guys have cults like JWs and Mormons? Right? And when you talk to them, they are so sure that they are absolutely right. And you are wrong. Isn't that true? Yeah.

And, and this is what Paul's talking about their consciences have been cauterized have been seared. When you share the Word of God and you pray for them. It takes it's a miracle when any of them actually get saved.

Now verse three, move along here. Look what it says. Forbidding people to marry and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

Now down through the history of the church, down through the centuries of the church, there's always been false teaching. In the first century of the church, Paul was always dealing with a group called the Judaizers. Have you heard of this before? They were the Judaizers.

And they forbade people from certain foods. They demanded Gentiles to live like Jews. In fact, their idea was you had to become Jewish before you could become Christian.

And you had to follow the Old Testament law or parts of it before you could really truly believe in Jesus. And so Paul, once again, he, what he does here is he lays out a theology of food in the next two verses. And he says in verse four, for every creature, and he's talking about, you know, animals that we eat here, all right.

For every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving for it is, for it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer. So just to put this in modern day language, what Paul is saying in these two verses is ham and bacon are back on the menu. Thank the Lord.

I'm glad you're excited about that. Well, the struggle in the first century church was with legalism, working to get God's favor. It undermined grace.

You see, the doctrine of grace is there's nothing that you can do to that would make God love you more or love you less. He just, he loves you not because of who you are. He loves you because of who he is.

That makes sense. That's what grace is all about. It's about who he is.

He knows who you are. We're a hopeless case. And Paul here was battling legalism, undermining grace.

And so Paul looks at these false teachers and their teaching and he says, you know, they're talking about physical food and how you eat this food or don't eat that food and somehow it makes you more holy. And he says, you know what, that's bad doctrine. That teaching is bad doctrine.

And believe it or not, it's actually spiritual junk food, that kind of doctrine. In fact, there's good spiritual food. And there's bad spiritual food.

There's good doctrine and there's bad doctrine. And so Paul's here says, talking about physical food, all food is good. And he says, marriage is good.

And so he goes on in verse six, if you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ. Look at this nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine, which you have carefully followed. It says here in the King James, New King James, you've been nourished in the words of faith.

You've been nourished in the word of God. Guys, listen, I don't know of any other food that the Christian can grow by other than the word of God. This is the only spiritual food.

Now, you know, if miracles could make you grow the spiritual, the children of Israel would have been spiritual giants. I mean, listen, I think we need more of the supernatural. I think we need to see more miracles and all these certain the works of the spirit.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big believer in that. But they saw the 10 plagues of Egypt.

They saw the parting of the Red Sea. They saw a pillar of fire by night, cloud by day. They had supernatural provision every day for 40 years, manna from heaven.

And still they did not believe. Miracle after miracle. But it didn't cause them growth.

The only spiritual food that will help you grow is the word of God. And good doctrine emphasized in the word of God. Now, the false teachers that Paul was dealing with, that Timothy was dealing with, they were teaching about food.

Don't touch this. Don't touch that. And Paul was basically saying, look, Timothy, theologically, there's good, healthy food.

And theologically, there's junk food. Don't feed on the junk food. Is there junk food in pulpits nowadays sometimes? Do you think that's still around? I think that I think so.

We'll talk about that in a minute. You know, if you want to be a good spiritual athlete, you have to watch your diet carefully. An athlete, he eats the right food, she eats the right foods.

Careful about what their diet consists of. They use vitamins. They avoid liquor and drugs and especially junk food.

And the Christian is to be nourished and brought up in the truths of the faith, the word of God. Hold on to those things, Paul says. Now, in the next couple of verses, which we've already read, verses 7 and 8, he's going to talk about godless myths and old wives tales or profane and old wives tales.

Do you think there's things being taught nowadays that we could maybe call godless myths and old wives tales rather than the word of God? I'll tell you, folks, I remember the first time I went to India and 150 pastors there. I couldn't believe how the prosperity gospel had affected all of them. Can you imagine Creflo Dollar and Ken Copeland being your mentor as a pastor, the guy you want to base your ministry on? Can you believe that? And you're quite a crowd this morning.

You're taking it all in. And, you know, I was kind of mad when I first saw that. All these guys talking about how God wanted to make them rich.

And then the Lord spoke to my heart and he says, you know, these guys, they've had no training. They've had no education. They just, you know, felt the call.

And God really did work in their life. And they truly are saved. And they just went out and started doing stuff.

And then, you know, they look around and they see the stuff in North America going on. And they just sort of adopted it. And then they're always talking about getting rich and all that.

And so what the Lord did was he put it on my heart to start working with these guys and training with these guys and taking other pastors from North America over and doing. And so we developed something called the Discipleship Training Seminar. And the result was incredible fruit.

You know, we got them to start memorizing things like Luke 9.23. No one can be my disciple unless he deny himself, take up his cross and follow me daily. You know, and you start memorizing that and you start saying to yourself, you know, 20, 30 times a day while memorizing, okay, deny myself, deny myself, deny myself. That sounds kind of like the opposite of that other gospel, doesn't it? It really is.

It's a different gospel. It's a different version of the Bible that's being preached out there nowadays. And we saw, we've been seeing amazing fruit.

So anyways, let's go back to the text here. These first six verses were all about doctrine, good doctrine and bad doctrine. The false teachers had false teaching about physical food itself.

Yet Paul takes that and he turns it around and he says, hey, doctrine itself is like food you get nourished on. Be careful of what you're eating. Be careful of your spiritual food.

Verse seven, which we already read, but here we go. But reject profane and old wives tales and exercise or train yourself toward godliness, which is Christ likeness. Godliness means Christ likeness.

Verse eight, for bodily exercise profits a little. But godliness is profitable for all things having promise of the life that is now and the life that is to come. When you go to Ephesus nowadays, it's a city of ruins.

It's an archaeological wonder. It's in the country of Turkey. We were there about nine years ago.

Usually we love doing Israel tours. We've done about five of those ourselves. But we decided one time to do a footsteps of Paul and the seven churches of Revelation tour.

Does that sound exciting? Yeah, we went to the seven churches of Revelation and one of them is Ephesus in Turkey. And as you walk through this amazing city where nobody lives, but it's the ruins are there. You walk down the main street that Timothy would have walked down, you can actually see some of the spaces where the gymnasiums were.

You can actually walk into them and stand there and you know that this was a gymnasium 2000 years ago during Paul's time and during Timothy's time. And I imagine that Timothy as he walked down the main street, he would look at that gymnasium and these words would ring in Timothy's mind. Timothy, train yourself, exercise yourself towards godliness.

And every day he would walk by and he'd be reminded by the Holy Spirit of Paul's words, train, exercise, gymnasia, yourself to be godly, discipline yourself to be godly. Now guys, I have a question for you. Are you ready for this question? What do we usually call this building? But what do we call this on a Sunday morning? It's a church.

It's got another name. You know what it is? God's gymnasium. Every Sunday morning, you're showing up to God's gymnasium.

And Timothy, this is what Paul says, God's gymnasium, the church is God's gym. And that is where you train yourself to be a spiritual athlete before the Lord. Now, this morning, guys, I would suggest to you that there are certain disciplines of the Christian life that are non negotiable.

There are certain disciplines within the Christian life that while some people would call them basic, I would call them absolutely essential. What would those disciplines be? Well, number one, being in the word on a regular basis. Number two, prayer on a regular basis.

Number three, fellowship with God's people on a regular basis. Number four, witnessing to non believers. Those are four core disciplines that are non negotiable.

Now, if I were to draw a picture, I would show this little picture here that we call the wheel. Have you ever seen this before? Okay, it's actually got six little elements. Christ is the center of your life.

Like on a wheel on a car, that's the hub. That's where the power comes from. And then the outside rim where the rubber hits the road and day to day life where you live life every day.

That's the Christian life in obedient action to the Word of God and to Jesus. And the way that you allow the power of Christ, who's the center of your life, his power to flow into your life so you can move forward is for you to be what? In the Word of God. That's the foundational spoke and then to be in prayer.

And as you do that, you are in fellowship with other believers, you're and you're being fruitful. But the other thing is that you reach out to non believers. And so you do you know what I call these six elements? This is the ultimate six pack of the Christian life of the spiritual Christian athlete.

This is your six pack that we are supposed to be working on. And so in order to be a disciple, thank you very much. In order to be a disciple of Jesus, we need to have proper grace based discipleship in our lives.

When I say grace based discipleship, grace based discipline, some people sometimes people get a little careful they go discipline. I don't like that word kind of smells like law a little bit. You know what I mean? You know, I don't like I know I'm not supposed to get into the law.

I go no, no, no, no, no, no. Discipline is something Paul talked about lots of times. And this is what Paul was hitting at here in these verses.

Train yourself to be Christ like to be godly in these disciplines. Take the same serious commitment that a professional athlete does in his sport, but apply to your Christian life. Don't get sucked in by all the bad junk food that's out there.

Verse eight, take a look at verse eight. He says physical training has some value in this life. But godly training has promise in this life and forever.

The payoff is out of this world. And I think what he means here and some people have always looked at this and said, Well, physical training means nothing. Well, actually physical training.

It is beneficial. We all know it's beneficial. It's good for you.

But spiritual training, if you really understood it, and what it does for you, it's so beneficial and so amazing that it just makes physical training look like nothing. Train yourself, exercise yourself to be godly. You know, nowadays, our society is concerned about the development of the body.

It's just taken over our society, so many different levels. And for the most part, it has very little concern about the development of the soul. And when it does think about the development of the soul, the last place that they would think to look is the Christian church.

And I think the reason for that is because we don't talk about discipleship anymore. I'm not this church. I know this church does talk about discipleship.

But a lot of churches, we just don't talk about the spiritual disciplines anymore. And we need to. Now, verse nine goes on and it says, This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance.

And to this end, we both labor and suffer reproach or strive, because we, we trust in the living God, who is the savior of all men, and especially of those who believe. Now, do you see those words, this is a faithful saying, you see that in your word in your verse there, this is a faithful saying, this is a trustworthy saying, there's five of them in the pastoral epistles, which are first, second, Timothy and Titus. This is the third faithful saying something that Christians were supposed to, you know, speak as a creed in their midst.

And we've lost that in the modern day church. In fact, when I talk about these things, people look at me and they go, I've never heard of this before. What do you mean the five faithful, faithful sayings? Well, this was the creed in the early church.

And this is the third one. And most scholars believe that when he says this is a faithful saying, he's talking about two verses before where it says train yourself to be godly, exercise yourself towards godliness. And so and then it goes on and it talks about God is our savior.

He's the savior of all men. He's the savior of all women. And I think the argument here is look, God has saved you.

Not so that you can now sit around and be lazy. And just sort of wait around. No, God has saved you.

And now he wants you to become like Jesus. God has saved you for a purpose to become like Jesus. And God has saved you for a purpose to go out and tell the world that he is the savior of all men.

And he says this deserves full acceptance, unconditional acceptance. And then he goes on in verses nine and 10. I want you to notice these athletic words.

Do you see where it says we labor? Do you have that in your Bible? You see it? It's a verse where it's a word under worth underlining or circling. We labor. You know, we exhaust ourselves.

We toil to exhaustion. That's putting everything into it, man. And then it says in the King James, it says we suffer but other translations say we strive.

And that word strive or suffer. The original word there is the Greek word agonizo. Now, does that sound like an English word? What does it remind you of? agonize, agony.

And you know, when you look at professional athletes, and they're just running man, you can see the agony on their face because they're, they're just putting it all on the field there, right? And this is the language he's using to talk about the Christian life versus spiritual slothfulness. And so we strive to tell people about our God, the living Savior, who's the savior of all men and all women. You see, Paul preached salvation.

But he also preached discipleship. And if there's one thing I want you to leave with this morning, it's this thought. Are you ready? Salvation is free.

But discipleship is going to cost you everything. There's no getting away from it. No one can be my disciple.

Unless you deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. Verse 11. These things command and teach.

Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Let no one look down on your youth, Timothy. You know, back then, if you were 40 years of age or younger, you were considered a young man.

And because Timothy was a young man, a young age, he was considered a young man. That would have been thrown at him, especially by the false teachers that he was always in battle with in Ephesus. And Paul says here, Nope.

Don't let them do it. Tell them to knock it off. Tell them to, you know, stop in their tracks.

And then he says, be an example. Verse 13. Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.

Till I give attention, give attention. That word means devote yourself to it. Devotion.

Training as a spiritual athlete involves devotion. Devote yourself to the word, to the reading of it, to the teaching of it. Verse 14.

Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the eldership. Do not neglect your gift. Do not neglect your gift.

You know, back in school, I was involved in some of the high school sports, volleyball team and the basketball team. And I had a friend who sort of went through the grades with me and I wasn't the best of the team or the worst of the team, but he was always the best of the team. He was a natural born athlete.

He had the genetics of an athlete. He was born with a gift genetically. And I can remember doing those participation runs.

You remember, I'm dating myself here a little bit, but you remember across Canada, they used to have the awards, participation. What was it called? I can't remember. You had the bronze.

You had the silver. You had the gold. And then the ultimate was what? The award of excellence.

And I had one of those, but only because I stole it from the gym teacher's office. And I sold it on my jacket and people said, I didn't know you had that. And I just didn't say anything.

I was a rotten kid, but that's another sermon. Anyways, I had usually a bronze or a silver, but my friend, he would have the award of excellence and more than just one on his jacket. You know, we used to wear those things around on our jean jackets.

Remember that? You'd sew them on, man. It was like something. Unless you had bronzes, then you didn't sew them on.

But here's the thing. This guy, I mean, I remember us going on jogs for, you know, like a couple of kilometers. We'd come back and my lungs were burning.

And they say, teacher would say, walk it off, walk it off. And I would just collapse on the ground and say, okay, I'm ready to die now. And he would just stand and walk around a bit.

And within a couple of minutes, he wasn't panting. And within five minutes, it was amazing. His heart rate would go back to, you know, closer to normal.

And his recovery was amazing. And then he got into the high school teams and he was just like the best, better than everybody. And we played other schools and he just, you know, shone and it was amazing.

But then he started to get into the drinking scene and the drugs and the partying. And he was still better than the rest of the team. But I look back on it years later and I thought to myself, what if he had have developed his gift? Where would he have gone with that? Where would that have taken him? He neglected the gift that was in him.

And there are people nowadays who have ability to do and be great, but because of neglect, they'll never know. And maybe even people here this morning, you have a gift. And maybe we'll never know, because it's being neglected.

Verse 15, let's finish off here. I mean, that's actually one of them. This was written 2000 years ago.

You know, now athletes will tell you, you know, most of the battle is in the mind. Meditate, focus, focus, focus, be diligent, give yourself wholly. Let everyone see your progress.

And then he says, take heed or watch your doctrine closely. Watch your life closely. Training involves self-examination, training like an athlete.

Watch your health. You chart your progress and you see where you were last month, the month before that, even last week. And you're always kind of examining yourself.

Anybody here fans of the Olympics? You guys watch the Olympics when it comes on? What was the last Olympics? I think it was China, wasn't it? And then it was weird. It was like the year before. I know nobody said everybody says China.

There was one in China. I think it was last summer. And then what's weird is the year before that, instead of two years, it was a year before it was aware in Japan.

Yeah, because of all this pandemic stuff that was going on, everything was all messed up. I usually like watching the Olympics. I'm really amazed when I see these people, how they just train four years, eight years for one sport.

And by a fraction of a second, you know, the guys are skiing down the hills and they're going around the poles. What's that called? Slalom, right? And yet a fraction, a fraction of a second makes you first or second place. And they're training four, six, seven years.

Olympic athletes labor and strive for gold medals on Earth. We as Christians will one day receive something like golden crowns in heaven. Athletes want the world to see those gold medals hanging around their necks.

The flag comes down, the band starts playing their national anthem, right? Believers are to cast their crowns and their achievements at the feet of Jesus. Very different. Earthly rewards are for a short season.

Do you remember who the gold medal winners were in Nazi Germany before World War Two? Does anybody remember any of their names? It's a flash in the pan. Listen, that's earthly rewards short for a season. Heavenly rewards have benefit now and for all eternity.

Your race is not against other Christians, but against yourself. You're not competing against the people that are in the chairs in front of you, behind you or to the side of you. You are competing against yourself, believe it or not.

What did you do with the talent that Jesus gave you? You know, there's a parable about that in the New Testament, isn't there? What did you do with the talent that the Lord gave you? Did you bury it in the ground? Instead of coming in first, you're being called to come in the best that you can do and be. Not because it'll make him love you more or less, but because he's calling you to be fruitful. And it gives him glory when you do that.

And for all of us, this is a goal that we can reach for. You're not trying to measure yourself against other people. And the natural tendency for all of us, for all of us is the tendency towards spiritual sloth.

I'll let you in on a little secret. My flesh does not want to do anything spiritual. Even as a pastor, after all these years, my flesh, when I get up in the morning, I don't feel like reading the word of God.

I don't feel like praying. I don't feel like going to church. Sometimes I'm the pastor.

I don't feel like witnessing. I can come up with all kinds of reasons or be busy. My flesh is the enemy behind the lines, always trying to trip me up.

It doesn't want to do anything spiritual. And that's why Paul says, I'm aware of the new man that's inside, born again, new creation, desires to do all these wonderful things. But then I have this old creation body until the resurrection or rapture.

And it's pulling me the other way. And I have to discipline myself and be ever so aware of the pull, the tug of war going on in me, even when I wake up first thing in the morning. Folks, make your life count for the gospel.

Amen. Invest your time, your treasure, your talent for his purposes. Life goes fast just like that.

And I would encourage you, you know, partner in the Great Commission and visit my wife afterwards and invest yourself time, treasure and talent in missions in the Great Commission. Be a part of something bigger in this world. I'm going to ask the worship team to come up and let's just bow our hearts before the Lord.

Father, we come to you right now and we pray. We ask you, Father, that you would just speak to our hearts with this word, that you would challenge us to train ourselves to be godly, that we are in God's gymnasium right now. And Lord, the benefits profit now and forever in ways that we can't even imagine right now.

We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.