Practically Sanctified

1 Timothy 2:1-8 “First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying) as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension.”

The Year of Jubilee is about freedom: freedom from the past; freedom for both land and people to be restored. When you think about it, things were always leased or borrowed, not bought and sold. When you understand the truth of that, you come to realize the truth that you and I are stewards. The stuff we have is not really ours. Anything we have when we are born is a heritage, and anything we gain in life is a blessing; both gifts from God our Creator. As stewards we look after the things we have on behalf of God. The question is how we can better utilize our gifts and strengths, our possessions and time for the Kingdom of God. We start by having the best foundation possible.

We were at Pike Lake yesterday. They have cabins for rent on the south side of the park and I got talking to the Charlotte, the lady who manages them with her husband. They are little 2 room cabins made of finished logs – really quite charming. Late in the season last year they had an arson pour gas inside a cabin and light it on fire. The cabin was a total write off, but when I went to look at the site I could see the concrete foundations were in good shape and the camp manager was ready to rebuild. When you have a good foundation it makes all the difference in the world. The CN Tower, located in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a communications and observation tower standing 553.3 metres (1,815 ft) tall. Construction on the CN Tower began on February 6, 1973 with massive excavations at the tower base for the foundation. By the time the foundation was complete 56,000 t of dirt and shale were removed to a depth of 15 metres in the centre, and a base incorporating 7,000 cubic metres of concrete with 450 tonnes of rebar and 36 tonnes of steel cable had been built to a thickness of 6.7 metres (22.0 ft). This portion of the construction was fairly rapid, with only four months needed between the start and the foundation being ready for construction on top. To build the main support pillar, a hydraulically-raised slip form was built at the base. This was a fairly impressive engineering feat on its own, consisting of a large metal platform that raised itself on jacks at about 6 metres per day as the concrete below set. Concrete was poured continuously by a team of 1,532 people until February 22, 1974, during which it had already become the tallest structure in Canada, surpassing the recently built Inco Superstack. In total, the tower contains 40,500 cubic metres of concrete, all of which was mixed on-site in order to ensure batch consistency. Through the pour, the vertical accuracy of the tower was maintained by comparing the slip form’s location to massive plumb-bobs hanging from it, observed by small telescopes from the ground. Over the height of the tower, it varies from true vertical accuracy by only 29 millimetres. You can look around Saskatoon today and see several sites where they are pounding long piles into the ground that will provide a solid foundation for the building. Most of us have heard about the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I think you can guess why it is leaning. They have tried several things to help straighten the tower and fix the problem of a poor foundation. Unfortunately it is a very hard thing to do. The most time on any project needs to be the foundation, because if you have not got that right, it doesn’t matter how good or expensive or elaborate a building you put on top – it will always be in rough shape and dangerous because of the bad foundation.

So here we are celebrating the Year of Jubilee that God has announced for us. It is a year of transition, a year of change. We need a foundation, and as children of God there is always only one foundation: Prayer. Prayer for the follower of Jesus is like water to a fish. It is the environment we live in if we want the abundant life Jesus talked about. Prayer is what connects us to the spiritual world around us. Prayer is what frees up the Spirit to work in and through our life.

And so we lay our foundation. When you put in a foundation you do some very specific things in a certain order for it all to work. You dig the hole, you put in the forms and rebar, you pour the concrete, and then backfill when all is set and dried. As the body of Christ we are going to be very specific about our foundation. The house we are building is a spiritual house. People are going to be introduced to Jesus. People are going to be challenged with the Word, to grow in their faith. It is time to start, so let’s roll up our sleeves and put the shovel in the ground.

Monday – The first thing we are going to do is to dedicate our homes as lighthouses of prayer. Lighthouses have a bright light, a beacon for those out on the water in the darkness. The lighthouse brings both joy as sailors know the harbour is near, and relief as they warn of shallow waters. So we, in our lives, dedicate our homes as beacons of hope. We do this by very specifically committing our house or apartment and our life to the Lord. We commit to praying regularly for our neighbours. Those prayers are focussed on their needs, which could be physical, social or mental, and spiritual. Try keeping a prayer journal where you have 4 columns: Name, Need, Date started praying, Date answered. One group did this for a semester at university, and they saw 25 people make a decision to follow Jesus that year. They started to refer to their journal as the Book of Life. So we pray for people that they would find safety in the Harbour of Heaven, as it were. The second thing we consistently pray for are opportunities to share our faith. Some people say that the biggest part of prayer is that it changes the one praying. Yes, and no. It does change us, but it also changes the spiritual climate of a place. 2 Corinthians 4 says that the god of this world has blinded the eyes of the unbelievers. One of the reasons your neighbour isn’t a Christian is because Satan is blinding him. He can’t see the truth. Now is the time for you to step in on his behalf and ask God to open his eyes that he may see. Not only do we pray for that healing of spiritual sight, but we pray that we may be used to be a guide to that person. And you know what? If you just ask and speak in sincerity of heart, you can’t mess it up. God draws people to Himself, but He so much wants to use us in that process. Meditate on Ephesians 6:10-20. We are involved in changing the spiritual climate of this city. We are involved and on the front lines of spiritual warfare. So sharpen your sword of the Spirit and repair the shield of faith, for we have a job to do. So on Monday, dedicate your house as a lighthouse of prayer in this city. As you do that, include our church. Commit our church in your prayers as a lighthouse to the community around us and a spiritual lighthouse to this city.

Tuesday – On Tuesday we will spiritually cleanse our homes. We started this process on the Monday by dedicating them as places of prayer. In a sense Monday is the decision, the choice. What follows the choice or intention is the tossing out of the garbage. Simply spend time asking God to reveal any unclean thing that is hanging around. Meditate on Psalm 139 and Psalm 51.It could be something physical that we have been hanging onto when we should have given it to God earlier and given it away. It could be something in us, like a bad attitude, a judging heart, bitterness, or a little closet of selfishness we have been trying to keep hidden from Jesus. It could also be a sense of oppression from Satan as he tries to lean on us and squeeze the joy and the life from us spiritually. Claim the promise that greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. As you spend some time in prayer in renewal of your spiritual walk, pray also for our church. Pray that our past would no longer weigh on us today, for we are in the Year of Jubilee. Pray that Satan would have no more influence or oppression over this church, its ministries, or its members. We are an oppression free zone – OFZ if you will. Take the spiritual duster to your house and life, and your community here.

Wednesday – On Wednesday we will prayer walk our neighbourhoods. EM Bounds, a Methodist Pastor in the late 1800’s, stated that “talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.” Ed Silvoso describes prayer evangelism in his book by the same title as “simply talking to God about our neighbours before we talk to our neighbours about God.” The third stage of this foundation we are building is to go out into your neighbourhood for some fitness. Stretch not just your leg muscles and get some cardio, but stretch your spiritual muscles and get some spiritual cardio. As you walk, simply bless each house you pass. Pray for the people connected to the house that God would bless them spiritually and draw them closer to Himself. For many people it will mean salvation. For some it will be to go deeper with their personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Thursday – As a body we will have a day of prayer for our community, our church. Sign up for a half hour time slot. We can have more than one person praying at the same time, but find a slot in your day where you can talk to God. It may be two 15 minute times if your day is full. You may want to fast at lunch and include that discipline as part of your prayers for the church. If you cannot pray between those hours, sign up for one of them and then pray in the evening – God is outside of time and He can backtrack your prayers to earlier in the day. He’s God – He can do that! We are simply going to pray that God would visit us in a special way over the next year. Pray for some or all of the following: The Board and Church leadership for wisdom and direction, Pastor Steve (Bonnie, Ben and Heather) for health and wisdom, Bonnie for her Writing ministry, Pastor Debbie (Don and Dori) in her ministry with Chaplains, Church Programs: Upward VBS August 9-13, Men’s Bible Study, Women’s Ministry, Sunday School, Seniors’ Ministry, Your Best You ministry and Divorce Care this fall, Pray through the church phone book for each family, pray for the prayer items in the bulletin including the missionaries, pray for our church’s finances this year – that we would not have a deficit, pray for a release from all the things that hold us as a congregation back whether they be physical (ie, location), social (lost friends and splits), mental (ie, focusing on tradition over ministry), or spiritual (ie, Satan oppressing us from stuff in our past), for more help in leading our ministries (Jesus said to pray for workers), for evangelism and people meeting Jesus through our church , for the spiritual integrity of our people and our church, for Jesus’ 2nd Coming, and take time to listen to see if God has a message for you and our church.

And you know what? Feel free to make this a weekly habit for the summer! Prayer is our foundation. Prayer connects us to the Holy One. Always take the time to pray – everyone can pray.

Acts 17:16-34 “Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,”–because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean.” (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.)
So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD ‘ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” So Paul went out of their midst. But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.”

Salvation, or The Gospel, or the Good News is this:
Admit you are a sinner  Romans 3:23
Believe that Jesus died for your sins John 3:16
Confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, or Leader and Forgiver Romans 10:9-10

Peter sums it all up in the story of Jesus in Acts 2:14-36, 38. You can talk also about Steps to Peace With God, the 4 Spiritual Laws, or the Roman Road which looks at several verses through Romans to define the process of salvation. Next week we will talk about what happens at salvation. We acknowledge that salvation is a process, but it is also an event, when an ultimate decision is made.
For those who personally experienced salvation in time gone by the call is to Holiness; but Salvation when viewed in 2nd or 3rd person is evangelism. The Truth is, people need to hear the story of Jesus. How do they hear this wonderful story? The buzz is out that people who don’t know that story won’t come to an event to hear it. The church is not able to attract people like they used to, and if all our evangelistic efforts are based solely on an attractional model, we just won’t see much happening. If the people won’t come to us, we need to go to the people. The Emergent church emphasizes this, that to impact the world we have to go live in the world. We have to be the light in a dark place. This is not new. I grew up in a church that believed and taught this. Yes, we did events, but we also were challenged to take our faith with us everywhere we go.
Evangelism used to start with asking two questions. James Kennedy in Evangelism Explosion called them the 2 diagnostic questions because the answer people give you enlightens you to where they are at spiritually.
1. If you were to die tonight, would you go to heaven?
2. If you were to die tonight and were asked at the gates of heaven, “Why should you be let in?” what would you say?
These are great questions and I still use them. Evangelism used to start there, and in a Christian culture people understood them even if they were far from God. Today we don’t live in a Christian culture. Many non-Christians have little of the childhood Sunday School that you and I had. Immigration adds more and more people to the mix, and they bring other religions and cultures. How do you and I share the Gospel with them? What has to happen now more than ever in that pre-salvation place people are in? Let me share 2 thoughts with you.

Love - You, more than ever before, have to live a life of love before your neighbours, unsaved family and friends, and strangers. This cannot just be an act; it has to be authentic. You have to love your neighbour as yourself – now where have I heard that challenge before?
You have to invest time and energy into those relationships. If you spend all that time with Christians you will never lead someone to Jesus. Take advantage outreach events like the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast and the Blades Family Faith Night; but those things should be just part of an ongoing dialogue about spiritual things. You earn the right to have that discussion when you live a life of putting others first (read “love”) because you surrendered your own life to Jesus . You are being transformed yourself by the renewing of your mind and heart by the work of the Holy Spirit in you. You are becoming more like Jesus in holiness which expresses itself as love.
Your neighbour hears you gossiping about someone; and what have you just done for the credibility of your faith and witness? You take advantage of someone and as you brag about it you are pushing that non-Christian even further away from Jesus. You keep the same vices and addictions as non-Christians and so they believe God is powerless to change. Perhaps we ourselves have come to believe that – a form of godliness but without the power. We don’t have to be perfect, but if you are constantly extending love rather than judgement, grace rather than self-righteousness, friendship rather than control, people will begin to understand the love and grace of God. They will begin to ask questions about why you are different. Are you different because Jesus is in your life? Is that increasing Christ-likeness happening in your life?

Authenticity – You have to be real and authentic. People aren’t as concerned about how good you are as they are about how real you are. Who wants a bleached out sanitized and sterilized life? Yet that is what we often pursue as the church, thinking perfection is what it is all about. In pursuing that we become institutional because we are pursuing the Law. The Law sucks the life out of our faith experience. It quenches new believers enthusiasm and causes the older saints to revert to a judging position rather than a vital discipling position. We are pursuing Jesus. We are meeting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. And one great truth about God is He accepts us as we are. Again and again we see Jesus approach and accept people where they were at – and in doing so was able to transform their life.
Zacheus was a thief disguised as a tax collector. Jesus had lunch with him and Zach responded to the truth of Jesus by repaying 4 times the amount he had stolen from people as restitution. The adulteress stood alone before Jesus with no accusers, and Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” The Samaritan women was given the Living Water and she told the whole town about Jesus. The list goes on, but the principle is to be real in your faith. We want people to experience salvation because we know how important it is. Most of the people don’t know how important, so they aren’t going to listen to us unless we truly love them as people. You can’t fake love. You can’t do love out of ulterior motives, out of an agenda. People know and they don’t respond if all you are is a salesman. We are ambassadors – we have a message to share. Be real as you do that. I want to leave you with 2 practical things you can do today. Love and authenticity are lifelong pursuits. They are changes that happen over time.

Pray – Today you can pray. Everyone can pray. Make that list of 5 or 10 people who need the Lord and keep it near you day to day. Pray for those people often, that God would draw them to Himself. Pray for opportunities for yourself or other Christians in their life to be used to share the Good News. Pray for the Lord of the Harvest to send workers into the fields which are white and ready for a spiritual harvest.

Initiate spiritual conversations – Lastly, we need to be able to talk to people about spiritual things. Even though we don’t start with those 2 diagnostic questions, we can start with spiritual things. The Soulchat.ca program is one tool that the BGEA is offering us as a church. They are showing 3 commercials on TV programs over the month of November. Your neighbours are likely going to see them. The grocery clerks will, as will the people in your family. They are short, funny, and have a memorable hook line: “I got a guy for that!” “I can hook you up!” “I know someone”. We are going to give you some cards with soul chat on them as well as our church information. Those commercials are going to send people to the website where they will have an opportunity to read articles and videos and connect to a local church like us to get questions answered. We don’t have to wait for that phone to ring, though. You can hand one of those people near us a card and ask, “Have you seen the soulchat.ca commercials? What did you think?” As you listen and respond, what a perfect opportunity to ask them about spiritual things without any threat. You have a common place to come from. We can do an event at the end of November where you could invite them to come for a discussion
Here are some other questions you can ask:
Have you read much of Jesus’ teachings?
What would you say is the most foundational thing in life?
Do you have spiritual beliefs?
Who is a spiritual person you admire?
Do you know who Jesus is?
What are your spiritual questions?
If you could ask God one question, what would it be?
I don’t believe in a God like that either. Let me tell you what I believe.
Have you ever gone to church?

The Great Commission is not just a Great Suggestion!  Start with prayer, and go from there. Let God lead. He has promised to provide the words when you need them; but what you need the most is just your story of what God, what Jesus has done in your life. Maybe you realize He hasn’t done much yet. If that is the case surrender yourself to Him and let Him continue that marvellous work in your life that He started so long ago. Today is the day of salvation. What are you doing with Jesus today?

Matthew 6:9-13
9 Pray, then, in this way:
‘Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]‘

We all have stories of our fathers. Maybe he was present, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was involved, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was, then wasn’t, or vicey voo. When I was a little kid, my dad worked on the fire department. They had a bomb scare and they asked for a volunteer to go out in equipment and hook things up so they could take it to a safe place to blow it up. My dad volunteered for 2 reasons. As a fire fighter he had enough insurance on his life so that his family would lack nothing if he died in the line of duty. More importantly he knew that nobody else on his shift was a Christian. He figured his life was expendable over another’s if it meant they would spend eternity in hell. Fortunately, all went well, and he is still alive today.

As we celebrate Fathers’ Day I want to speak to the men. My message would not be any different if I was just speaking to ladies, so you can listen in too and apply it where you will. What does it take to be a good father, or a good son? What dynamics do we need to relate to our heavenly Father? I like to work on genealogy so I think of generations that go by and how one influences the next. I want to talk about our heavenly Father. Jesus had a unique relationship with His Father and when He prayed to God Jesus said some very specific things. It is to this I want to speak to today. Let us go through the Lord’s prayer and see what is called of us to be good sons, good fathers, and good men and women of God.

Worship – Verse 9 “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.”
Worship is about position. Everybody has a sense of who they are in relation to the people around them; to the world; in a spiritual sense as well. Sometimes this sense is right, or pretty accurate, and sometimes it is off. Some people have a very inflated sense of who they are to the world. They are medieval in the sense that they think the universe revolves around them. It may not even be their fault in a sense. They may feel that way because other people have told them that. Our Celebrity Culture forces that upon people; but it is still a decision to listen to those people and allow ourselves to believe it. Whatever the case, they focus way too much on what they look like, and what others think of them. At the other end of the spectrum are those people who think so poorly of themselves that they also care too much about what other people think and how they look. And they may be that way too, because of what other people have said about themselves. Both extremes are people focus on themselves: the first in pride, the second in shame.
A real man not only eats quiche, but he recognizes who he is before God. The root of his identity comes not from his job or abilities, and not from his relationships or friends, but from the truth that the Creator of the ends of the earth made him for a very special reason. Not only was he created for a special purpose, he is also loved more than he will ever know. That is our basic problem as people – we don’t grasp how much we are loved by the eternal God. If we could somehow understand the depth of the incarnation and the strength of the resurrection, our lives would be changed. That is true worship. We focus so much on our short-comings when we should be focused on God’s sovereignty and grace and love and holiness. If we could understand who God is, and give Him His due, we would much better see our place in this world. That is why Jesus started this prayer with these words, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. And that is why we sing the words “Our God is an awesome God”.

Victory – verse 10 “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Victory is about goals. It is about accomplishing something very specific. In any conflict both sides are trying to accomplish something. Sometimes it is to overcome something or someone else, sometimes it is just to survive. In every sense of the word as Christians we are in a conflict. What is unfortunate is we invariably look at the wrong place for our enemies. We think it is other people, that there is an “US” who is righteous fighting against the “THOSE” who are unrighteous. That is not our battle. That battle and those decisions are God’s.
Ephesians 6:12-13 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”
Our battle is a spiritual battle, and the thing at stake is the very soul of those people. When we talk down, when we ignore them, when we consider them beneath us we are doing that to Jesus, for He created them. The man of God has to respond to the call of God to take the freeing truth of the Good News of Jesus to the world around him. God has a plan, and we can walk in victory in that plan knowing God is in control. There are a lot of problems in life: financial, relational & political. We follow a different drummer than the one who is the God of this world. Regardless of health or wealth, of life or death even, we pursue the Lover of our soul who draws all men to Himself. We want to see Jesus’ love shine all around us and so we sing “Shine Jesus Shine”.

Dependence – verse 11 “Give us this day our daily bread.”
When you think of a man’s man, what do you think of? Often people think of a guy like Grizzly Adams. A man of great physical strength, of great emotional fortitude. Ethical and moral standards sometimes are less important, and as you look at the celebrity culture you find that many of these heroes are regular people. Money and fame does nothing but give them room to indulge in the excesses of life. The other thing about Grizzly Adams is his independence. He is the king of his mountain, and fierce animals nor the evil of men will overcome Him.
It’s funny then that in this prayer in a simple sentence we see dependence highlighted. The man of God is told to depend on an unseen and untouchable force for his every need; not the strength of his own 2 hands, nor the wisdom of his mind, nor the fortitude of will. We are called to ask of our Heavenly Father for all we need. But what if we don’t get what we think we need? I go shopping with Ben (who is and invariably he looks at things through his eyes. He sees things at his level, things in the moment that he is sure he would love to have and play with. He sees all the pretty colours and diagrams, and blazing pictures of the toy in cartoon action. He knows it will not really be like that, but it will be pretty close. And here I am with my full 46 years of earthly and fatherly wisdom saying, ”No” because I understand the fallacies of advertising and the weakness of plastic. I know, to an extent, the values of not just looks, but playability. I also know the dangers of certain things, that a flamethrower really isn’t a toy.
How often, though, are we like that 8 year old, thinking we know what we want and whining and complaining when we don’t get it. Have you ever heard a kid tell his or her parent that they hate them. There was a court case in the States where a 14 year old boy tried to divorce his parents. How many people do you know have walked away from the church and God because they did not get what they wanted? God is our Father, and seeks to give us wonderful gifts, and to provide for us all that we need. He asks us to pursue Him and His righteousness, and let Him bless us with all these other things (Matthew 6:33). That is why we sing “Seek Ye First”.

Forgiveness – Verse 12 “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
There is a transition in this prayer, not unlike the 10 Commandments. The first part of this prayer is about our relationship with God. It has to do with who we are before an eternal, omniscient and all powerful God. It is about our vertical relationship, personal integrity. The second half is about how we conduct ourselves among our fellow man, our social integrity; about our horizontal relationships. This verse about forgiveness goes hand in hand with who we are before God. It is based on the character of God, the agape love which is at the heart of our faith. Anyone who hurts another in the name of Jesus is a lie. Go to any of the social media and you will find people turned off faith because of something someone did to them, or to humanity in the past. What they don’t understand is that calling yourself a Christian doesn’t change you. Following Jesus is what changes you. There have been far more secular rulers who have conquered lands in the name of themselves, than “Christian” kings who have pillaged and killed and maimed. A man who holds bitterness and hate in his heart will do bad and unnecessary things because what is in you will eventually come out, regardless of the name of his religion (including atheists).
The call for the man of God is to love. Remember those verses in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8? Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails… Where does it say in those verses that there is a cut off point? In our relationship with God, His love is everlasting. There is only one thing that can prevent the love of God reaching you – that is rejection. If you reject God, you continually turn your back on the Holy Spirit’s promptings and nudging in your life, you tread on dangerous ground. Seek the forgiveness of God for all you are not and all you are that shouldn’t be, and then extend that to another. That is why we sing “He Paid a Debt”.

Following – Verse 13 “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
There are many people who have followed a leader who turned out to be bad. Both in the financial world, the political world, the celebrity world, and the spiritual world. The call of the Christian, the chief aim of our life is to follow Jesus. God is in the process of making His children into the likeness of Christ. And so here we are, as Hebrews 12:1-2 says: Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. We are following Jesus. We pray, then, for guidance and direction. We know that He is a loving God. His promises are full of things for our success and fruition as His beloved children. We know that with Him by our side nothing can befall us that has taken Him by surprise, and nothing has befallen us that is so big we cannot get through with Him.
1 Corinthians 10:13 says no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
And so we follow. We don’t need to be afraid, God is with us: Emmanuel – my favorite name of God. Fear should not even be part of our vocabulary because of how great and awesome our God is. We follow a God who leads us like the shepherd, keeping us out of dangers way, leading us to food and water, and rescuing us when we go astray. We can trust in Him. While this world is filled with chaos, and even our lives can be filled with the chaos of sickness or stress due to financial or relational issues, we can walk in the calm assurance that God is Sovereign and in control. I speak not because emotions are bad or wrong, but because the truth and reality of God is bigger than those things. That is why we sing “God Will Make a Way”.

Surrender – Verse 13b “[For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]”
When it all comes down to it, who is God and who isn’t? Who sits on the throne of the universe, and, more importantly, who sits on the throne of your life? The man of God recognizes in the grand scheme of things who’s who and what’s what. There is recognition that God is at work in the world. He no longer fights God for control, but rather goes out in the power of God to do the work of God. He allows the power of God to work in him, producing holiness, a character alignment with Jesus Christ.
Matthew 16: 24-26 “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”” Discipleship is costly. Following Jesus takes effort and initiative. Let your pride die with mine, let the things go that hold you back from God, and join with me as we follow in His footsteps. That is why we sing “Be Unto Your Name”.