Called to pray - Outreach

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Good morning. I've already done that, haven't I? I'm Pastor Doug, one of the pastoral team here. I should have said that before. Pastor Dave is away on leave having a break. He'll be back on Monday and Pastor Dylan is preaching in another church. He's been asked to preach up there, which is exciting for him. So we've been praying for them as they rest and also send the word out as well. What's the most exciting times in the life of the church? Is it getting to morning tea? Because that's pretty exciting. Because that's, you know, the church is gauged on its morning tea. One of the ones that really excites me is baptisms. And on Easter Sunday we have six baptisms. Resurrection Sunday we have six baptisms. And when I text that through to one of the young fellows who's getting baptized, I text it through in such a way that I said to him, is this going to be okay? And his reply was, bless his little heart, reply was, wow, to be baptized on the same day that Jesus resurrected, that's awesome. Isn't that good? So we've got six of them happening. There's room for more. I don't know, but you could fit probably 10 in that baptistry. So, oh, not at all at once. Oh, there's water limits in there. But if God is laying that on your heart like you've been prompted by the Spirit to step up and be part of the, in obedience to God through baptism, then please let us know. We'd love to sit and have a chat with you. And it all started with one person who came and saw me and said, I've been convicted by this pastor, Doug, and long overdue. And we had a good time of fellowship about it and looked at God's word through it. And then it just grew from there. So praise God for that. And what I love about baptism in particular, and I emphasise this point, is it's the testimony you share. And that's what outreach is about. It's about the testimony, what it's God done in my life, that I want to be a physical witness or an outward sign of an inward change. So I would encourage you to be praying for those guys. We're going to put their names up soon in the bulletin so you can pray for them. So I believe that the evil one will not be impressed when someone else says, no, I want to stand up for Jesus. It's how I want to show it. And so we pray there. It was interesting, Linda, when we were singing Trust in a Bay, how you said, please don't sing the first chorus. Ann and Dwayne lead us through that. And I couldn't help, but I'm sitting there quietly in prayer on my seat, and I hear, turn your eyes on Jesus. Around us, it was quite funny. Obviously, people love singing that one, and they didn't listen to your direction. Let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, as we open your word, that it's a lot of opportunity to engage in you. Father, it's one of the foundations, Lord, of our faith. Lord, it's the foundation, Father, of how you teach us and what you left for us. And Lord, we pray that as we engage in your word today, that you'll teach us again. Lord, if we need rebuking, Father, we come before you with humble hearts. Lord, if we need affirmation, we thank you, Lord, for that as well. And all these things, Lord, we just pray, Father, that you'll speak to us, teach us and show us your love and grace. And Father, we ask these things in your name. Amen. So, we're called to prayer, and now we've been doing this, as I said before, for quite a few weeks now, and God is moving through things. He's talking to people. I've had private conversations. Don't think, too, that if you send something through to the office about what God's taught you, then I'm going to get you to come up and share in public, because that can be quite frightening for people. But do you want to encourage you with that? Have your Bibles there. We're reading from Acts 13, 1-5, and then Matthew, as well, and Matthew 6-33. And around about there in the Scriptures. We're going to have a look at those later as we go through. But what I thought we might do is just have a look at how this all fits together for us as a church. I want to encourage you that what we put up around the church is not just emblems or it's not just badges of this or sayings that we have. It's actually a heart and a faith walk that we do. And so we have up on stage, and it's been there quite a while now. It's done to gather the dust, move it, and show it around. But we have our goal, which is to be an intergenerational church, but that comes out of our committed to growing for God and committed to going for God, with our values of informed, transformed, in-reach and outreach. And we have our missional statement, which is Kabbutchah Baptist Church, intergenerational church. He wants to honour God, the Father, through the teaching of His Word, transforming of the Spirit in our lives to be in fellowship with one another and to reach out for Jesus. And our verse is John 15, 8. This is from where my disciples are. The Father's Gloricide, to bear much fruit, to show you are my disciples. And if we're going to do that, we need to embrace that wholeheartedly. And so, God, what's this about? So I thought I'd go through and explain. So first of all, committed to growing to God, I put these in bundles. I like to think things in pictures. Some people do, some people don't, very sort of visual person. But I thought about committed to growing in God as our informing, our transforming, and our outreach, our in-reach. And we're in those is basically, we look at what happens in church. Mission ministries happen within the church, and missions happen outside the church. So if you've got a program going in church, a thing happening then, and you've got mainly people who are coming who are on church, you're a mission. And so you're missional in your understanding. Your key one, your first one is missional. But you can't do any of that unless you've actually engaged with God through being His Word and being transformed and then being encouraged by brothers and sisters in Christ. It's a very powerful thing. That's why Jesus deserved, and God developed the church, the body of Christ. Arms, toes, legs, arm pits, everything. All the smelly bits, all the parts that do smell good are all part of the kingdom of heaven and part of the body of Christ. And our challenge is that when we start to seek out what God wants us to do, we can just say, well, the building's pretty full. It's full because people are coming to know Jesus. If people all the time coming in, we have about 10 hour average a week coming through the doors who just either want to find a place to fellowship or a place to find out what's this God thing about. And that's pretty awesome. We should be excited about it. We should be humbled by that because God has put us in this place for such a time as this to do His way, to do His will and all we say and do. So from those three comes outreach. And outreach is how we relate the gospel. We're going to talk about that in a moment to the outside world. Sometimes that's frightening because if you have this cliche in your head of the street preacher, turn or burn or you're going to hell, you need to know Jesus. If you don't know, but if somebody doesn't have the words, we struggle with it, but we can still have an impact in our local area, in our local front line, our coal face by just living our life of faith. It's challenges in itself. But the key thing about outreach is not so that we can go, wow, 25 people came to Jesus this week. Oh, we had 10 baptisms last month. The whole idea of outreach is to people to come to know Jesus and commit to growing in God. The next growing in God, being informed, being transformed and then going to worship as well. So you see the picture that God's put in place is pretty cool, isn't it? When he said to the church in Acts, this is what I want you to do, he wasn't going out and saying, listen, Phil, I want you to big note yourself. He said, I want to grow the kingdom of heaven with people that need to hear the gospel. And how do we do that effectively with the church? Well, one of the ones he's called us to is prayer, which to me prayer is like the currency of the kingdom of heaven. It's the currency which we deal with. It can be translated over, it can be transformed into different types of understanding. People will come to you in your area of contact and might say, can you pray for me? And you don't go, what church do you go to? Well, what's your faith? Yeah, sure, I'll pray for you. It happened to me in the football club. All those years of ministry and gatton at the Hawks is that you'd be standing there helping someone do something and someone come up and say, can I have a word? What's up? What's going on? And they say, can you pray for me? I'm just having this at the moment. I don't say, well, you're Catholic, are you Lutheran? I haven't seen you in church lately. I say, yeah, sure, let's pray now. And you pray for them on the spot. And I'm sure your lives are peppered with those opportunities you have of praying for people. One of the great challenges I had in my teaching time was that in the back of my classroom I had the words pray up on the board. In the old days we had charts and we had like, you know, Nikos and things. I just wrote pray and the kids used to come into class and say, sir, what's that about? I used to jokingly say, and please forgive me, I used to jokingly say, pray that I don't kill you. But what I meant was, then I'd preface that by saying, I've just been reminded to pray every day and pray throughout the day. And those sort of things, you don't know how to do that anymore, I suppose, in schools, it was a state system and I'll probably be cancelled for it now. But it's interesting how God works. I encourage you that when we come to him with prayer when we think about it and we live our lives as the evangelist in the outreach only because we've been built up in the life of the church and we can reach out, is that people come to know there was a young lady in one of those classes. She was in grade seven with me in the mid-90s. And I ran into her about five, six years later, she was in Coles and she was a checkout person in Coles. And as I went through, that was the day before self-serve, so all the millennials, I'm sorry about that cultural reference there, but she was serving me and I looked up and I said, oh, it's Jody. She said, hey, Mr. Bean, how are you going? It's like a 23-year-old young lady. And I said, oh, I'm going okay. I said, what are you up to? And she said, oh, I'm just about finished law school. I'm just doing this to fill in so I can pay some bills. I said, oh, cool. We had a bit of a chat and never saw her again. Dear Mr. Bean, I'll give you an emotional. The things that you said in the classroom had an impact on my life. And I didn't actually preach the gospel to Jody. I just prayed for the kids and I just was there for them. She said, I have just finished up as on the law firm and I'm stepping out of my own and God has called me to help the disadvantaged because I'm a believer in Jesus Christ. He's my Lord and Saviour. Doesn't that give you goosebumps? That when you actually, you don't even think about it. It's all the glory to God. It's nothing that I did. It's God put you in a place and that is what outreach is about. That's why it's such a passion of mine. Is it to take us into the coal face and say, Lord, how can I use this? And when we have a look at what this means, outreach or mission is a deep desire to speak to gospel. In 1 Peter 3.15 it says, but in your hearts, on a God, I'm sorry, on a Christ, the Lord is holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. You've got to have a love, a deep desire to speak the gospel in any way, shape or form. It could be a kind word, it could be a kind action. It could be paying for someone to check out. It could be just saying, get out, how you're going. It could be a smile in the face, in the midst of all the turmoil. That is the evangelism that we call to, outreach we've called to. It's to live the gospel in 2 Corinthians 5.12. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors. Therefore, God, as though God were making his appeal through us, we implore you on Christ's behalf, Paul said, be reconciled with God. We're Christ's ambassadors. Where is representative? Where are the ones out? There were people who would say, oh, is that what church is about? Or is that what Christianity is about? Another story, and I do apologise. I haven't got any recent ones because I haven't been here long enough yet to annoy people in this town. But I was with a guy and I was the headstrap of our footy club and I was helping him out one day on load. And he said to me, he said, you know, Doug, you don't come across as a typical priest. And I said, why is that? I just don't put on the airs and graces. I never swore, thank you, Jesus. But he said, you're just a bloke. I said, does that encourage you? He said, yeah, it does. And his wife and him still contact me today. And she's been through breast cancer and I'll be praying for her and for John as well. And it's just one of those things that it doesn't matter what you do, God can use you on your space. But you've got to be prepared to give an answer. You've got to be, oh, I can't think of it now, I'm too stressed. Satan doesn't want us to be victorious in outreach because he wants people not to know about the gospel. And if we just step outside a little bit of that and say, okay, Lord, just give me a word. You know this person's going to ask me something. Please just give me a word so I can walk away and say, yes, I've contributed to the kingdom. And God will do that. He will give you a word. He will help you to understand what it means to be born again in Jesus Christ. You may not be the person who does the 1% of the harvest. You might be the 60% of the cultivator. You might be the 30% of the preparing work that's done. The 39%, sorry, 16, 30, so yeah, 1%. Not only that, it's to love with the gospel in John 17, 23. Jesus, we've talked about this before and we love this John 17 and John 15. It's awesome stuff to read and just ponder on. I and them and you and me, this is Jesus speaking, so that they may be brought into complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as they have loved me. Because we represent Jesus in outreach, in our community, because we've been transformed and enriched, because we've been prayed for and being encouraged, then when we're out doing things, we're not only over his ambassadors, but there's a unity about it. When people say, where are you from? I'm from that church on the corner of Granton Torrance Road. That's great conversation the other day in the National Bank. I had to go in and for some reason we had our homelands through the National Bank. We sold our house in Gatton and we bought the house in Cabulcha all under the view of the bank and yet our address on my ATM card is Gatton still. It's coming to the end of its life. So I went in to change my address and I met a young lady there and I've got concierge now and walk around the bank and she asks you what you want and she tries and helps before you go to a teller and she did some stuff for me. She helped me out, but she had this tattoo on her hand here and she had several tattoos just lightly like handwriting ones, but this one had triple four on it. Do you know what triple four means? Apparently it's a symbol for good luck. And I didn't know this and I said, oh, I just noticed when you said, please forgive me, I don't want to be intrusive but I said, your tattoo on your hand there, I said triple four, what does that mean? And she told me it means good luck or good fortune. I said, oh, okay. I said, that's awesome. I said, I'm a Baptist pastor and I believe that Jesus is good luck and good fortune. I had to use those words so she understood and she went, oh, that's lovely. But I had to say it. I wasn't worried about the outcome and I said on the corner, Grant and Torrance Road just up the road, oh, oh, she's gone and all these people in the bank turned around and looked at me going, who's that lunatic? It helps you if you've got a trolley with your shopping bags in it because I fit that mold of the old guy now. And we have a love for the gospel. We have the unity of the church. We let people know where we're from. I used to have this saying in youth group years ago and we were going on an outing and some of you guys might be here, might remember that. But the saying was, remember who you are and who you represent. So you are a believer in Jesus and you represent Kabbutt, your Baptist church. So anything you do out there reflects on us. So if you want to take a pickle off your hamburger in Maccas and throw out the windscreen at the screen, you're representing the church. The pickle throwing church. We don't want that. So some of them come up with this idea they picked on another church like Burp and Gary Baptist. So I used to say, who do you... remember who you are? Yeah, we're believers in Jesus. Who do you represent? Burp and Gary Baptist. And I said, that means everything you do down there is going to reflect upon poor old Burp and Gary. We had to cut that one off. The fourth one. Outreach is an expression of our inner peace with God. So outreach is our expression of our inner peace with God. If you haven't got peace with God, you need to know God. You might have something to share but you just need to pull it in and say, do I really know God? And this is a great place to start. This is where the true message of the gospel comes in. Because you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. I'm going to encourage you today to do something about it. Today. Before the service ends even. Got to somebody and say, listen, God spoke to me today, I need to... How do we do this? And anyone in this room will help you. Because most of them will say, what? Go see the pastor. No. They will say, yes, I will help you. In Romans 15, may the God of hope fill you with joy and peace as you trust in him. So you may overflow with the hope of the power of the Holy Spirit. The expression of the inner peace. People see the joy in your heart and your mind and they go, what's this about? You are a weirdo, why? And you tell them. Because Jesus is my Lord and Saviour. Whatever name you want to put on it. Whatever badge you want to wear. But let people know. If you're in the traffic and you cut somebody off, I do not know the international Christian sign for I'm sorry. But it certainly isn't the middle finger. It's not that one. If you're doing something in your life, can I encourage you? Because we are part of God's mission into the world and outreach is what we're praying into. Praying, Lord, how can you use this church? Remember that. That you have an inner peace that you can share with somebody else. Another quick story. And I do apologize for all the football club references, but that wasn't my mission field for years as well as the church out in Gatton. But there was one of the in the football club out there, the secretary, the treasurer, lovely lady and I believe her and her husband on a journey getting close and close to God. And she was said to me one day, she said, Doug, you need to go. Can you go and speak to those group of guys over there? And I said, why me? She said, because you're always calm. I've never seen you lose your temper. I went, oh, thank you Lord for not being a bad witness because I have lost my temper at times. But not the footy club. People watch what you do. They see the inner peace. You have an inner peace in you. You have to believe that and grab with both hands and say, yes, Lord, I thank you for that. And when it comes out, it expresses itself in such a way that people say, oh, wow. So that's what it's about. It's my encouragement for you today. So there's two things, two Bible verses. Passages we're going to look at real quickly just to, as we go through, is my throat. In Acts 13, one of my favorite passages about just how God works through His Spirit. So in Acts 13, well, just above Acts 13 and Acts 12, 25, we're going to read through 13 down to five. Just follow me if you can. It's not on the screen. You're going to have to use your apartheid or your Bibles. When Barnabas and Saul had finished their mission, they returned from Jerusalem taking with them John, also Mark. Now in the church of Antioch, there were prophets and teachers. Barnabas and Simeon called Nigah, Lucius of Cyrene, Maninon who had been brought up with Herod and Tetrarch and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said to them, set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. The other two, sorry, the two of them spent, sorry, sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Selecia and sailed from there to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salimus, they proclaimed the Word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper. Great thing about this passage is it tells us that prayer prepares us and leads us for a kingdom impact. So it prepares us for that. So in verse 25, outreach was on their mind, mission was on their mind. They just returned from a mission trip. They just returned from doing what God had called them to do, obediently living by faith. They returned to the church to have a break. They would be, oh, I'm so tired being so busy lately. I just need to sit down, send someone else out on the next mission trip. Then the church went into worship. And as they were worshiping, there was a deep desire to worship. So obviously it wasn't like, oh, we have to do it. They were engaged in worship, it says in verse 2a, the desire to worship and pray. Then in the second part of 2, it says they got clear revelation from them. What a great blueprint to have. Worship, fast, pray and then wait for God's revelation. We don't know the distance of time. The Bible doesn't tell us that. We are such an instantaneous generation now, an instantaneous culture, that we want things done straight away. God in his time will answer and show us the way. And so they pray they had clear revelation. And then it says in verse 3, they obeyed and acted. So they set off, they prayed hands on them, they sent them off. Do you know how far it is from where Jerusalem to Cyprus? 392 kilometers in a leaky boat. They said, that's where we need to go. God send us outreach. It came from being in fellowship. It came from being informed. It came from being transformed. It came from being in fellowship and then that was sent. When we're praying for what God wants for the future of this church, we need to ask God, reveal to us what you'd like, Lord. What are you saying to us? I believe that every person here that God has spoken to has a message to share with the rest of the church and that's why I encourage you to send them in. We want to just have some fun with them and sit and go, wow, God's doing good stuff before we share it with the church. It might sound selfish, but I just think it's a great opportunity for us to be encouraged. It's interesting too that they, in verse 4, not out of their own volition. So it wasn't something they did. They didn't say, right, let's do a fundraiser. Let's sell cakes in the foyer of the church. Let's make sure our visas are right. Let's make sure the boat's safe because workplace health and safety is very important. And the winds through all that, it just says that God provided for them. The Holy Spirit sent them. So it wasn't their volition, it wasn't their intention. God provided that for them. Are you prepared for that? Are you prepared what God is going to say in your life? Because when you are prepared, you will step out in faith, sometimes uncertainly, sometimes shakily, but God will bless you and give you favour as you follow Him. And it says there, they step out and they spoke. They stepped out, they went to Cyprus and they preached the word to the Jews in the synagogue. That's what I called to do first to say, you guys you've been around thousands of years you know God, Yahweh but did you know His Son, Jesus do you know Him personally? You know what Jesus has done for us? Here's my testimony. Jesus walks with me every day. I don't get a perfect, I'm a bit broken down, I have bad habits but He loves me nonetheless and I know that, He will never let anything snatch me out of my hand. You know I think we're so fearful sometimes that Satan will have the victory that we don't step out. We fear that sometimes Satan will snatch us out of the hand of God because we don't trust in Him. Keep praying church, keep praying. Keep saying Lord what is it you want us to do? And let us have that sense of the unity of the Spirit. Second passage is over in Matthew Matthew 6 33 it's an old little bit of goody we sing a hymn about it but this is the challenge for it but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well I'm pretty sure some of you are humming the hymn right now that comes at the end of a passage when Jesus speaking in the Sermon on the Mount talking about do not worry, God will provide for you how much more does my Father love you how much more will I give you provision how much more does I love you more than the beast of the field and He paints this great picture then He comes down to seek first the kingdom of God well for us, I believe this is what God's calling us to do now we seek first the kingdom by prayer, meditation and the Word before you do anything, first seek the kingdom Surin Kiergaard has a phrase that he uses that says, should I I will feed the poor no, first seek the kingdom of God I will help people at church no, first seek the kingdom of God I'm paraphrasing, I will do this no, first seek the kingdom of God everything you first seek the kingdom of God just because you have a good idea doesn't mean it's God's idea if you put it before the foot of the cross and say, Lord is this what you want us to do seeking Him first then you'll get an answer, yes, no or wait a while so prayer, meditation and the Word it also aligns us when we seek first the kingdom of God into His will it's less about me and more about others we become acutely aware of our limitations when we seek first the kingdom of God we first seek God's kingdom before doing anything we work out how much we need or how much we don't have how much we need to rely on Him it means to be obedient humility and being authentic and lastly He reveals the expanse of His provision all these things will be added unto you His favour, blessing and doors will open when I left this church and the church prayed over me and sent me out just like this passage of Scripture God gave me a vision and in the vision were two things the first vision was that I was going to be having morning tea with the mayor the mayor was pretty hard to get access to and I said really and the second was that the back row of the church be full of football players we prayed into it we didn't understand it two weeks got to invite to the mayor so I want to put my photo in the paper and said this is a new in your country town anyone who's been a pastor in a country town will know when you usually make a bit of a noise a little bit at the start because I want to know who the new guy is who took their parking spot near Coles or whatever and what we were interested in and the mayor rang me up and said oh you're the new bloke in town he said I want to catch up for a coffee and I went oh yeah thank you lord went up and sat with Steve Jones and the valley had just come out of a time of the floods with 22 people who died in the Lockyer Valley and it left a terrible scar on the place and Steve was like front line driving a machine into the flood waters to rescue people those sorts of things and he said to me that he said I've been praying for Mayor's Mayor and our whole of our counsellors that we'd be able to cope in this time he said I've never felt so in touch with God in my life he said I just wanted to meet you he said because you're one of that mob aren't you I said no I'm a Baptist I said yes I am and I'm sitting there in awe of this thing that God has just done and then through a series of circumstances God's hand working two years after I was in Gatton one of the people from the footy club approached me and said would you do a blessing service for us and I said oh yep no worries but what's a blessing service yep I'll do that so the church put on a barbecue and people just poured the love on these guys we invited the footy club to come we had about 15 there and I'm standing up there preaching in the back row of the church football players God will do it if we put our heart out to him he will come through but we can't just sit still and say oh we're a great church we're doing something we need to put our heart and soul into what God wants we need to reach out and step out in faith God is speaking to you today about something specific please share it please encourage others because when we walk with God we not only fulfill the great commission we do it to a great degree that people will be saved wholeheartedly and people will come to know Jesus as part of our values of outreaches everything we've poured in so call the prayer effective for the kingdom we have our hands and hearts open to God are you able to do that without reservation hands and hearts open to God not conditional not based on your illness not based on your financial situation just hands and hearts open to God open your ears to our God open your ears to hear God that's what we've been saying in prayer Dave and Dylan and I for the last several weeks is that prayer is not speaking prayer is listening Peter Lord wrote a great book about it listening to God God what are you saying here and writing it down it's acceptance and obedience and obey there's no other way it's about a spirit of unity as well so we have roughly 300 people here 100 and something members we can have 100 and something different opinions different thoughts different revelations but I don't think we will I think God will bring a unity through because we've been faithfully asking what is he laying on our hearts and it won't be solicited won't be hey let's you and I go talk to Pastor Doug about this one person comes to see me someone goes and sees Dave we sit down for coffee what's God being saying to the church and we start sharing oh wow God's will is to see his provision so don't worry about how much it's going to cost don't worry about what the outlay is don't worry about facts and figures if you're in God's will and he will make it happen and believe that with all my heart soul and strength and above all it'll be glory to God people in this area this district Bellmere, Moorrafield, Upper Caboche will all say the same thing wow God is good because that's what he's called us through we're going to sing the song Waymaker Worship Team if you'd like to come up we're going to close in prayer please have a think about the words we've sung some great songs this morning Lindel Spirits worked well with us this morning and done a great collaboration with us all but just have a think about what it means to have a God who's prepared to go before us but also walk beside us a God who'll make things happen when his children are beaten I'm going to ask all the people who are on the morning tea team don't leave till the end of the song people on the coffee cart don't leave till the end of the song I want you to worship God wholeheartedly for the entirety of the worship service we know your faithfulness people won't grumble if you haven't got the tea or coffee they're not worried about missing out on that wonderful morning tea you've prepared please I encourage you to stay and worship all the way through and even sit down after the song and pray we know your harder service it's okay we won't be disappointed let's pray Father we thank you Lord that you're a God who knows the mission and Father has called your church to that purpose I thank you for each person here today and those listening at home Father that have heard your word and Father are engaging in it how you see it for them individually personally Lord because you're a personal God you're a God of relationships Father if you continue to pray and go into the next few weeks of praying and seeking you as well we'll confront the various dubious topic of fasting and Lord what that means for us Lord just help us to understand that through your Holy Spirit Lord I thank you for the encouragement that we've received as a church already Lord people sharing what you've laid on their hearts and Father how have you been able to pray as a church Lord we pray for Tuesday morning you'll just continue to show us your way there as well Lord we just ask you continue to Lord be our way maker Father true to your word help us to first seek the kingdom Father that we might pray and fast before we send out that we will be children of God Father we thank you and praise you in your name Amen