1 Timothy 6 (Part 2)

We're in Timothy chapter 6, we're picking it up in verse 11. And we're going to read through the end of the chapter. So follow along with me as I read, here we go. “11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be (glory, excuse me) honor and eternal dominion. Amen. 17As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. 20O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” 21for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.” (ESV) Let's pray. Father God, we thank you so much for the opportunity to gather together, to dig into the scriptures together, and we pray for your Holy Spirit to bring light and understanding to our hearts, because we want so much more than just to read these words. We want to embrace them. We want to understand them. We want to put them into practice in our lives. So we pray that you'd give us all that we need to accomplish that. It is our desire, Lord God, to serve you with a whole heart. And so we ask you to be with us in a special way in Jesus name, we pray, amen. Amen. I don't know if you noticed or not as we were reading through these verses, but these are chock full of action words or phrases. Paul is finishing out this letter to young Timothy by basically saying “Do, do, do.” And that's what action words, of course, are all about, they're about doing, right? You remember your verbs in school, they're ‘do’ words, right? Action words. And there's a great deal of it going on here. Paul probably could have just said, “Timothy, take action.” But instead, he gave some very detailed and specific kinds of insights into what kind of action a young man like Timothy needed to be concerned about. So, I took all the action words or phrases and I'll put them on a slide, so you can see them here. Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them ● Guard ● Avoid Flee, pursue, fight, take hold, keep, charge them, guard, and avoid. Those are the things that Paul is talking to Timothy about. And we're going to be looking at them here this morning. You can see the first one on the screen there, is flee. Let's see what that's all about. Look at verse 11 with me again in your Bible, it says, “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things.” So the first thing we ask, of course, is what are "these things?" Well, it's really largely everything Paul has been writing to Timothy about that is of the world or of any kind of false teaching or whatever. He mentioned, you'll remember earlier in the chapter about being puffed up with conceit. He talked about engaging in quarrels, endless quarrels about words and their meaning. He talked about people who actually go around believing that being in the ministry or being godly is a means of gaining wealth. Remember, he talked about that? We talked about that last week.

And, you know, he just dealt with the general danger of having a love for money that surpasses, you know, one's love for God, He says now to him, “Flee these things,” which is really just a fancy way of saying turn around and run for your life, get away from these sorts of things. Let me just say, fleeing is easy. Remember Forrest Gump? Run, Forrest, run! Remember? Forrest was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he knew what it was to run for your life, run for safety. Running isn't difficult to understand. It's not difficult to comprehend. Can I just tell you, it is incredibly difficult to do. Running away is a difficult thing to do because we don't always recognize what we're facing as a danger. If we knew it was a danger, you'd like to think that we were smart enough that we would know to take off and get out of the way of that thing. Because there's a proverb, let me put this on the screen, it goes like this. Proverbs 22:3 (ESV) The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. That's a great proverb. I like that proverb. There's a lot of wisdom there. But notice it talks about the prudent who has the ability to discern danger when he sees it and then says, I got to get out of the way. I got to get out of the path of danger, right? Well, that's really what fleeing is kind of all about. But once again, I'll tell you that fleeing is easy. Recognizing the danger and then doing it is not quite so easy. So the specific action, you know, your specific action in fleeing may depend on what kind of danger you're facing. Because different dangers are going to require a different response, right? Remember when Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians? You remember what the city of Corinth was all about? Place of great sexual immorality. So what did Paul say? He said, 1 Corinthians 6:18 (ESV) Flee from sexual immorality. Run away from it. Get away from it as quickly as you can. Like I said, running is easy or it's easy to understand, doing it is tougher. And there, you know, there are two biblical stories that always kind of come to mind when I think of this idea of running. And the first one is from the Old Testament.

Joseph, the son of Jacob as a teenager, sold into slavery by his brothers. Eventually, he winds up owned by a man named Potiphar, who puts him to work as a servant in his home. But Potiphar's wife eventually takes kind of a shine to Joseph, who's a good-looking young man, and she continues to proposition him over time. You know, that's a very challenging thing for a young man to deal with, particularly a young man who's far away from home, and going through a time in his life when hormones have to be, like off the scale, in terms of just sexual awareness and desire. And here's this woman who is trying to lure him into bed. And we read from the story that eventually she just came at him. She literally came at him and grabbed his clothes and said, come to bed with me. And what did Joseph do? He fled. Didn't he? He just ran, he ran out of the house, left his clothes behind and ran out of the house. And that story is kind of forever fixed in my mind as a perfect illustration of what it means to flee from sexual immorality. (Genesis 39:6-12) Of course, the other, and that's not the only thing we have to flee from, but the other story, of course, that comes into play related to this is David, King David. The Bible tells us that he was home when the rest of the army was out fighting the battles. He was up on his palace patio, what do you call it? Balcony or whatever, looking down upon the houses in Jerusalem. And he sees this beautiful woman who's bathing, but David didn't flee, you know? And we read some pretty sad results from that particular event. (2 Samuel 11:1-4) And as you think about the areas in your life that are challenging to you and perhaps cause you to struggle most, it's wise for you to come to the Lord in prayer and ask the Lord, what does fleeing look like for me? You know, it's one thing to say, flee from sin, or flee from these things, but what does that look like in your personal situation, with your personal sinful issue, because we all have something in our lives? So what does that look like? Lord, show me what that looks like for me to flee. Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them

● Guard ● Avoid The next word that we see as the action words given from Paul to Timothy is the word "pursue" there. We're still in verse 1 excuse me, verse 11. He says, “But as for you, O man of God, flee these things (and here's the next one, and) Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” So in addition to fleeing from the bad, we are to pursue the good. To pursue means to run after, to run after something. And he lists those 6 things that we are to run after. I think we understand what pursue means, don't we? You know, I had to pursue my wife before we, well, we went to high school together and I told the story in the first service, but it was tough because my wife was dating a guy when I kind of realized that she was the one. And so I had to pursue her, but it wasn't an easy pursuit. Because the guy who she was dating seemed to have so much more than me. I worked during the day at a gas station and at night in a radio station. So I split my time working that way and I made very little money. But I used to drive home on this road, and I saw this car that I thought would really impress the girls. Guys, some of you guys will know what I’m talking about, it was a 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner. It was beautiful and it had a for sale sign in it. And I kept driving by this guy's house, and seeing this Roadrunner, and I wanted that car so bad I could taste it, but I couldn't afford it. Do you want to hear what he wanted for it? I went and talked to the guy. Are you ready for this? This is 19…well, it was just after Noah got off the ark. This would have been 1976 or 7. Yes, I’m old. Anyway, I went and talked to the guy who wanted 1,100 bucks for this car. I don't even want to think about what it's worth today. Well, I was like, oh, I told the guy, I really want to buy your car. I just, I'm going to have to work, you know, to get the money together and stuff. He's like, yeah, whatever. So days go by and I drive by his house and it's gone. The car is gone. Oh, I missed my opportunity. Guess who bought it? Sue's boyfriend. He's driving her around in my car. I was livid. Beautiful 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner. I was driving a 1966 Ford Fairlane 500. I mean it was cool, but not as cool. Anyway, so I had to pursue her. I had to pursue her and convince her, you're going to marry me. It was a difficult pursuit, but I stuck with it. And that's what we have to do as it relates to the things that Paul is telling Timothy to pursue. We have to pursue with a desire that causes us to stick with it, even though we know we might be behind on this thing, but we're going to pursue this anyway, you know. It means making something your goal. Let's look at the next word. Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them ● Guard ● Avoid The next word that we're dealing with here, the action word, is fight. Look at verse 12 with me in your Bible. He says, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” And I think this is an important statement for us to read occasionally, and to be reminded of, because the Christian life, and I find that Christians struggle with this, the Christian life is, among other things, a battle that needs to be fought. You guys get that? The Christian life is a battle that needs to be fought. And the reason I emphasize that is because I got to tell you the vast majority of communication that I get from Christians conveys to me the fact that these people, many people, most people I'll even say are shocked and dismayed at the fact that their life is challenging to walk out in Christ. You know, I mean, people write to me or talk to me and it's like, what is this? What? I'm going through all these challenges. I'm going through all these problems. And they seem genuinely astonished that they should have to be going through these. As if someone promised them that the Christian life would be easy or problem free. And I’m kind of like, I don't even know what you're asking me because, you know, one of the most common phrases people say to me is, Pastor Paul, I'm struggling with sin. And I get the impression that they truly believe they shouldn't be. You know, it's like, well, what did you expect? Because, you know, and I also tell people, hey, don't worry that means you're saved because, you know, I don't know about you, but before I got saved, I didn't struggle with sin. I just did it. Then when I got saved and the Holy Spirit started convicting me, then it became a struggle, then it became a challenge, then it became something I wanted to get away from, you know. It wasn't the way it was before I was saved. But anyway, it's kind of interesting. And then I, and I tell people I know you're struggling with sin because so am I. And we all will continue to do so until Jesus comes back for us or He takes you home. You will not cease to struggle with sin. Aren't you glad you came this morning? This is just wonderful news, you know? But it's kind of like crazy. It's like people don't think they should. And I'm not suggesting in any way that we shouldn't worry about sin. I'm not encouraging you to be casual about your sin. And I believe with all my heart that God wants us to walk in victory related to sin and the dominion of sin in our lives. And I believe that He will. If you've got an area in your life right now that continually causes you to stumble and fall, you need to bring that, confess it to the Lord, bring it to Him, pray about it, find scriptures that address that issue directly, and meditate on those, and commit them to memory, and you need to find freedom in Jesus Christ. However, let me say this, on the day you do find victory over that sin, there will be another battle to fight. There's always going to be something. And the Lord might give you a respite, you know, for a short time. But then, this life is a battle. That's why Paul said to Timothy, “Fight the good fight.” The fight is going on, the battle is going on. But I want to be clear, you know, I've kind of related the fight here to dealing with sin in our lives. I want to be clear that, you know, all of the battles that we engage in are not... It's not just related to temptation and sin because, you know, sometimes it's something else. Sometimes the battle involves dealing with just the darkness of this world, right? I mean, do you ever get just kind of overwhelmed? When you look at this world and you see the darkness and deception. And people just blindly following the narrative as if they were lemmings or something. And we battle, we battle those things. Sometimes we're doing spiritual warfare against the enemy of our souls and his minions who have, you know, come against us for some reason or another. And sometimes we're battling in prayer. The battle is just on your knees. Which is, by the way, a great place to fight, I find, you know. But whatever battle we face, we know this, the battle belongs to the Lord, amen? The battle belongs to the Lord. (1 Samuel 17:47)We need to remember that He's given us what we need to be able to fight. Next action word.

Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them ● Guard ● Avoid Take hold. I like this. I really do. Look at verse 12 with me, he says, “Fight the good fight of the faith. (Again and then) Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…” That's another way of Paul saying, take hold of your calling. And your calling guys, is to be Christlike. Did you know that? People say to me all the time, Pastor Paul, I just don't know what my calling is. Well, I'll just tell you right now, your calling is to be Christlike. And you know, anything else beyond that, the Lord will show you in good time. But for right now, we got to work on that one. I think sometimes we're waiting for this great calling, you know, and whatever, and we're still kind of working on the first calling to be Christlike. He says, this is the eternal life to which you were called. Take hold of it. And it's interesting, isn't it? It gives you the sense that there's an action that Timothy needs to take up. Because you see, it's one thing to be saved. I mean, you guys know salvation is a free gift. It's the gift of God by the grace of God through your faith and his finished work on the cross, right? (Ephesians 2:8-9) That's where salvation is founded. But do you know that it's possible to be saved and not really take up the eternal life to which you've been called. There's a lot of people who kind of live in the wilderness. They live in that gray area. And they got their fire insurance alright. They got that worked out and they believe that Jesus died on the cross. But there's still a lot of compromise, and a lot of just kind of living for self and following the ways of the world. And the ways of the world are bankrupt. And they're not going to do any good in your life. And we need to take hold, and that means to both know and understand, and walk out in obedience to the calling on our lives to live after Christ, right? By the way, I'll just tell you that I find, and this is just my personal observation, but I find that the people who are really taking hold of their life in Christ, taking hold of the eternal life to which they've been called, and that Christ likeness are the people who are saturating their hearts in the Word of God daily. Daily. I mean, saturating, making the consumption of the Word a priority in their lives. I find those are the people who are actually taking hold in that very significant way. Next action word is, as you can see highlighted there. Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them ● Guard ● Avoid Keep. Beginning at verse 13, he says, “I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display in at the proper time…” So Paul exhorts here Timothy to keep the commandment. And he's not talking about some Old Testament random commandment, like from the law that Timothy had to keep. He's talking about something quite different, but he's really dealing with this idea of ‘holding on’ and that's what the word means here, to keep. And that's the most important thing we need to take away from this passage. That what you've been given, you need to hold on to and keep. But I want to stress the only way we can keep what God has given us is in the power of the Spirit. You cannot overestimate your need for the power of the Holy Spirit to keep what you've been given to protect you and to keep and so forth. All right. Next action word or phrase in this case is… Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them

● Guard ● Avoid Charge them. I want you to look at verse 17 and following with me: “As for the rich in this present age…” Oh, let me just stop for a moment. Who here is rich, wealthy, stinking wealthy, just over...? I never get any hands when I ask that. Unless some people want to be spiritual and say, well, I'm rich in Christ. That's not what we're talking about. We're all rich in Christ in that sense. But you know what's interesting about the idea of wealth and considering yourself wealthy? No one does. No one really does. But you need to understand something, compared to the rest of the human beings who are inhabiting this planet right now, you are wealthy. You, and I'm talking to you, you are wealthy. If you have a place to live, a roof over your head, and a vehicle to drive around, and you eat three square meals a day, you are rich. Because there's a lot of people that don't have those things. A lot. Sometimes we have to be reminded of that. You know, you guys know that we've been, we started supporting an orphanage in Kenya. And I got on Google Maps one day because I wanted to kind of see the area that, you know, where the orphanage was and where the little community was that there's a Calvary Chapel that is helping us support this orphanage by transferring funds and overseeing the operation of the orphanage and that sort of thing. The Calvary Chapel is just slightly north of Nairobi. So I got on Google Maps and then I got onto Google Street View. And I drove around, I virtually drove around this little suburb of Nairobi called Guthruai. It's just non-stop trash. Just trash. Trashy homes, trashy places. It's rare to find someone with—wearing shoes. And they don't have the things you have. I share that with you for this reason. As we read through these verses again, don't pass those off and think, well, that's for rich people. It's for you. It's for you. It's for me. This is for us. Are you ready? Verse 17: “As for the rich in this present age, charge them (there's the action words) not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasures for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they might take hold of that which is truly life.” And that's why I love this passage so much because it's such a good reminder. First of all, what a pastor is supposed to do is to exhorting and charging his— the congregation. And by the way, the word "charge" carries two connotations, one to instruct and one to order. That's why it's a stronger word than just "tell." It's charge, right? It carries that connotation of, I'm not just going to tell you, I'm going to order you. I'm going to order you. So, here's Paul, writing to young Timothy, he goes, yeah, talk to the people in your fellowship who have a lot of money and charge them, order them to be generous, not to be haughty, but to lay up treasures in heaven and so on, and not to put their focus on their wealth and that sort of thing. So, I think it's kind of a fascinating sort of an exhortation. Do not trust. It shouldn't surprise us at all. We're supposed to use what God has given us, the blessing that he has given to us, to be generous to others, and lay up treasures in heaven. The next word highlighted is… Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them ● Guard ● Avoid Guard. We've already mentioned that this is very similar to the word "keep." In fact, you know, I looked up the Greek for guard and keep, you know, I found out that sometimes keep is translated guard and sometimes guard is translated keep when you bring them into English. So it's kind of interesting. It's a very similar sort of thing. But what Paul is saying here to Timothy related to guarding is in verse 20. Look with me in your Bible. He says, “Oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.” Now, he's talking specifically here to a young man who is a church leader, who has been given a deposit, which is essentially the gospel. It's the message of the gospel. It's the truth of the Word of God, and he's saying, guard it now. And now convey it to others without pollution or without any kind of removal of anything. See we're not to take away from the word. We're not to add to the Word of God. We're to keep it pure, right? That is the way we guard that deposit to pass it along. If you hand this off to somebody else, make sure it looks just the way it did when you laid hold of it. Right? Don't mess with it. Don't mess with the Word of God. Don't add your own little creative nuances, yeah, well, I think it means… Who cares what you think? It's what the Bible says that is the most important thing. We don't pass along personal opinions about what we think it means. That's extraneous, and really not helpful. So, then the last word that we're looking at here today, this action word is… Paul’s Action Words to Timothy ● Flee ● Pursue ● Fight ● Take hold ● Keep ● Charge them ● Guard ● Avoid Avoid. And that of course means to turn away from something, to avoid it, you know, like avoiding an accident. You think about an accident, you know, somebody's swerving into your path or whatever and you move out of the way to avoid having a, you know, a collision or that sort of thing. Timothy is to avoid or to turn away from various things. Notice he says, “First of all, from irreverent babble…” That's how the ESV puts it. The new American Standard Bible says “worldly and empty chatter.” And it's just talking about meaningless talk. Remember, Timothy is a church leader and he's to be conveying the truth of God’s Word. And so he's saying to Paul or Timothy, just don't waste your time talking about things that are just random and unnecessary. You know, just talk about things that are truly going to make a difference in that person's life. He also tells him, “... to avoid contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge…” “Contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.” You see, Paul's writing this toward the end of the first century. And we didn't know it at the time, but there was a belief system that was in its infancy. And it was later called Gnosticism. It's from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge.

And Gnosticism eventually kind of blossomed into a belief that it is, you are saved by your knowledge. And that kind of knowledge is something that only a select elite few are ever going to really lay hold of. And that's why Paul says, “It's falsely called knowledge.” Because knowledge is actually from God. All knowledge comes from Him. He's the source of all knowledge. (Proverbs 2:6) And yet, this is falsely called knowledge. Why? Because it contradicts the gospel of Jesus Christ that says, no, we're saved by grace through faith, right? This is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God. (Ephesians 2:8-9) So, Gnosticism contradicted the gospel of Jesus Christ. And you know, in the end, Gnosticism was just another version of salvation by human effort that plays into the pride of man. That's all it was. And then there's one other danger related to it. Verse 21, he outlines it here, he says, “...for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.” And the Greek word translated ‘swerved’ here is an interesting word that used to be used to describe an archer who missed his target. He was aiming at the target, but the arrow swerved, and he didn't hit it at all. And he says that there are some people who've gotten into some of these weird ideas, and they have swerved from the faith. And then Paul's final word in this letter, the last four words in this first letter to Timothy are: “Grace be with you.” I want to tell you a couple of things about this. First of all, the word "you" in this sentence is plural, which essentially means Grace be with you all, right? But what is also interesting is that, you know, there are basically two biblical definitions for grace. One of them is unmerited favor, but there's another connotation that goes along with grace and that is the favor from God, the grace of God, which gives us the power to do. That's why we talk about, you know, somebody who is called into the missionary field and we think, I don't know how that person can live in those kinds of conditions. We say, well, he's got the grace to do it. And what that means is he has the power from God to do, right? Grace is the power to do. Why is that an important way to end this letter? Well, good grief, he's just filled this last half of chapter 6 with action words. Do words. Do! Do! Do! And do you know there are people who get nervous when we start talking about doing as a believer. There's a young gal that has been corresponding with me for a number of years and she's really struggled with this. She told me, she said, every time I read something in the Bible that says,

"do this," she said, I get really nervous. Because her tendency is to go toward legalism. And so anytime there's a do thing in the Word of God, she's kind of like "aaahh." She thinks it's tied to her salvation. And that could be a dangerous thing because there's a tendency in human beings to read what the Bible says when it says “do,” and to forget that you can't do in the power of self. In fact, Timothy was never expected by the Apostle Paul to do these things in the power of Timothy. Never. Paul never had any expectation that Timothy was going to pull himself up by his bootstraps and do these things. Now, Timothy, get busy and do it. That was never Paul's intention. That's why he ends by saying, “Grace be with you.” The power to "do" be with you. Let me share with you what the Apostle Paul said in Romans chapter 7, related to trying to do things in the power of self. He says, Romans 7:18 (ESV) I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. He says, because, you know, I've got the desire to do what is right, but I don't have the ability to carry it out. I don't have the ability. He's talking about Paul, Paul the Apostle, I don't have the ability to carry it out. Do you guys understand that relates to your Christian life? You're called to be a Christian, right? You're called to be Christ like, right? Are you called to be Christ-like? Yes. Do you know you can't do that? You can't. You can't do it. You can't be Christ-like. The flesh cannot be Christ-like. Paul says, I want to, but I can't. So what's the exhortation? Now we go over to Ephesians. And we end with this: Ephesians 6:10 (ESV) …be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. That is what the Apostle Paul always elevated as the means to do. The means to do. There's a lot of things that we Christians are given to do. We have action words that go along with many of the exhortations that we receive in the Word. Don't ever for a moment sit there and think that I'm telling you to get out there now and do it in the flesh. Because you can't. Do you know it's one of the most freeing things in the world to tell the Lord, I can't do this. But you can enable me, you have the power, the unlimited resources, you have the strength. And by your strength, I can do all these things that you've called me to be and to do. It's only going to happen through you, through your power flowing through me, your Holy Spirit moving powerfully in my life. And I got to start seeing it because in the flesh, I'm just not getting it done. All right. That's a very freeing thing. Once Christians get a hold of this idea of grace being the power to do, it's a very incredible thing that can begin to take place. And they start living their life in a very different sort of a way. It's very powerful to see. So, let's stand and pray about that. We're going to have some folks down front to pray with you as we close. So if you have a prayer need, don't be bashful. Just come on down and we'd be happy to pray with you. Father, thank You so much for this lesson from 1Timothy. As we finish out the study of this book, Lord, we're reminded that there are many callings upon our life and there are callings to do. You've given us many things to do. Action words that we need to walk in, to walk out, to take hold of, and to live this Christian life that you've called us to live. But, Lord, we're just going to tell you something right here, right now, in the total confession of sincerity. We can't do it in the power of self. I can't do it. Paul can't do it. I can't live the life that you've called me to live. But, through your Holy Spirit, living in me, empowering me, enabling me, Lord, I can do. And so in the name of Jesus, give us the power to do. We lay these things at your feet in Jesus' precious name. And all God's people said, amen.