Video Transcript: Heart to Heart

In C.S. Lewis's book, The Silver Chair, there is a man who for a while is anonymous. He's anonymous to the people who meet him. They don't know who he is, but he doesn't know who he is either. Except for about an hour each night it comes back to him who he is and where he used to be, and where he still belongs. And a little band of adventurers are sent by Aslan, the Christ figure in the Chronicles of Narnia to go and search for him. And at last, he is set free because during that hour each night he's put back in his silver chair and wears a mask and is kind of brainwashed all over again. So that he goes through another day not knowing who he is. And when he's finally released, he mentions something, well, you're a Narnian Marsh-wiggle he says to Puddleglum. He says, Oh, you do remember Narnia. And the man says, Well, you may well believe that I remember Narnia for I am really a prince of Narnia. While I was enchanted I could not remember my true self. This is a very great danger among Christian people, and it's one of the reasons why Lewis wrote this particular part of the book that we not forget who we are, that we not forget our true self. 

Last week we focused on Christ in you the hope of glory. Who are you? You're a son or a daughter of the King and Christ Himself dwells in you. And it's very easy to forget that you're royalty and sometimes it takes a band of others sent by the Father to find you and help you know who you are again, and when the hearts of others communicate to you and to free you then once again, you realize Yeah, this is who I am. This is where I belong. Christ in you the hope of glory. Now, we talked at great length about that last week, but I want to remind you how this applies now to the Heart to Heart connections that Paul is talking about in this passage. The beginning of the passage is for. For I want you to know. Well, for is obviously connection to what came before. And it is Paul's knowledge that Christ lives in them. And his desire to see them grow up in Christ and the fact that he's struggling to bring them to maturity in Christ. And then he says, for I have had a great struggle out for you. And his heart is going out to their hearts. And in this heart to heart connection, you display that unique glory of Christ in you. He gives you certain gifts in a way of showing himself and you delight in the unique glories of Christ in other people. And you connect with each other in Christian Fellowship and communion, to share what Christ is doing in you to notice what Christ is doing in others. And as you share what Christ is doing in you and notice what Christ is doing in others the Christ life grows in you. You get together to battle against the hindrances to Christ within and to strengthen each other and as Christ in you connects with Christ in me then I grow in Christ's power and insight and love. 

So the passage we're reading today about the hearts of Christians connecting with each other is directly connected to what we just read about Christ being in us. And when our hearts connect with each other, then Christ in us grows and flourishes towards maturity. One of the best books that I've read on the whole idea of Christians connecting with each other is by Larry Crabb and the book is just titled connecting. And Crabb says in our flesh dwells no good thing and sometimes we're tempted to think we are just the sum total of our flesh. But if we're Christian, the flesh may still be with us, that old nature, but that's not all there is. In our flesh dwells no good thing. But Christians are more than flesh. We are now supernatural people absolutely forgiven, clothed in Christ's spotless apparel, and gifted with a new heart brimming with wonderful desires to do good. If you believe that the gospel has given life to both of us, then you can learn to release the power of that life within you to nourish the life of goodness within me. So the aim is a heart filled with Christ connecting with another heart filled with Christ and pouring that Christ's life into one another. 

Now as we consider this passage, I want to highlight kind of two main themes with some different things that are going on under those themes. One those main themes is that our hearts are to be battling for each other. This is a paragraph in Paul's letter where he's leaning into talk about various attacks on the truth of the gospel and not to get taken captive or deluded or deceived. And so his heart is battling for them and He wants our hearts to be battling for each other. 

And secondly, as part of that, we need our hearts bonded together in love. So the first part and last part of the passage is kind of talking about that battling for each other and the core of the passage the heart of the passage, if you will, is about our hearts bonding with each other. The battling involves empathy feeling for each other and not just knowing that somebody is there but entering into their life in such a way that you feel what's going on and and you groan for them when they're hurting and rejoice with them when they're rejoicing. 

Another part of battling for each other is wrestling in prayer. Struggling, praying for others, intercession. Another part is, as I've already said, identifying and seeing that Christ life in somebody else, and remarking on that and pointing it out and Christ's work and the vision that you see for them and encouraging them in that vision of who they can become in Christ and who they already are, to some degree in Christ. And then of course, battling for each other also simply involves warnings and protecting each other from attack. Sometimes you notice something that I might not and a warning could help me or I might notice something you don't and the warning can provide some protective armor against attacks. And then at the very heart of that is not just battling alongside each other but also bonding with each other. In good platoon or unit in the military even there's a there's an intense loyalty and devotion and love for each other and a willingness to do what it takes to help each other. And so in order to battle for each other, really the core of all that is a depth of love for each other. That you're going to be bound together in love to reach all the riches of full understanding. That's another part of the bonding, a bonding of mind and of conviction. And then ultimately it is again just a binding together in Christ. Christ is the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He's our protection. He's our joy, he's our life. 

So I want to look at these different aspects of being heart to heart. The first thing is simply battling for each other. And the Bible teaches that it is a battle. It is an individual battle where you need to put on the whole armor of God because our battle is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. But it's not just an individual battle. It's also a battle together. If you are going to deal with an attack about how brave or well armed you are, you're going to be in deep trouble if you don't have allies fighting with you, guarding your back, standing around you. And so we need to be battling for each other. One thing that involves is simply having a heart for others. Paul says I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those of Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face. Now these are people who Paul hasn't met. His friend Epaphras has been the evangelist to this particular city. And Paul knows everything about them from Epaphras, who's in jail with him somewhere else. So all he knows about them is that he sent Epaphras to minister to them and Epaphras gives him great reports of what the Lord is doing among them. And Paul's heart goes out to them. He's never met them and yet his heart is in tune with Christ's heart. That's the key. Christ cares about them so much. And the heart of Christ is at work in Paul. So that Paul's heart begins to care about them. And he cares about the hearts of other people who have Christ in him and so he wants for them to mature in Jesus Christ.

What Paul has here is something that I think most of us would rarely experience because we're not as mighty and mature in Christ as Paul is. The mightier you are in Christ, the greater your heart becomes for others, and in a sense, almost the less you need to know them to care about them. If you have a real heart for mission, you may never have met people and yet when you hear a missionary telling what's happening in their lives, your heart rejoices and you continue to pray for them, and that they'll grow in the word. And so our hearts are to be battling for each other. And part of that, then the first thing I wanna mention is just empathy, feeling when others feel. Paul says that I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you. And part of his struggle is when he senses that they're in a struggle. It makes him feel like he's struggling for them. And in one of his epistles to the Corinthians, the second letter, he talks about a lot of the things he goes through, you know, being whipped and pounded and shipwrecked and imprisoned and all that. But then he goes on to talk about a little different kind of suffering. He says, apart from other things, there's the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches who is weak, and I am not weak. Who is made to fall and I am not indignant. So when something bad happens to a church or individuals within these churches that he loves, he feels it himself. It hurts him. It troubles him. We've mentioned last week that Christ's sufferings are our sufferings, and Christ suffers when his churches are in difficulty or trouble. And if we have a heart of Christ in us, and we know the struggles of others, and we feel the pain of that struggle too. and when they rejoice, we feel the joy of their trial. Because just a little later, Paul says, I rejoice to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. He has joy when things are going well for them and he struggles when he senses that there could be a struggle facing them. 

Now another part of this struggle is intercession. We might wonder a little bit what does it mean to say that you're struggling in prayer or wrestling in prayer? Oh, Paul says, I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you. Or when he says in the previous verse, for this I struggle with all his energy that's working in me. The Greek word is agnoitzomai or agonize. That's where we get our word agonize coming from. It's wrestling or struggling or battling or fighting. And we get that same word in a couple of other places. At the end of Colossians he speaks of Epaphras, who is one of you a servant of Christ Jesus. He greets you and he's always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. So Epaphras is agonizing. He's wrestling. He's struggling in prayer, even though he's off in a jail with Paul far away from these people in Colossae. At the end of Romans, Paul asks for prayer. He says I appeal to you brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love the spirit to strive. Now I don't know why the translators did that. But it's the same word. I agonize or wrestle or struggle in Greek with a for whatever reason translated differently. But to struggle together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf. So there's this struggle of prayer, of going to God on behalf of other people. 

Here's an example from the diary of David Brainerd. Some of you may know who he was, others might not. David Brainerd was a missionary to American Indians. He died when he was 29 years old of tuberculosis. And his diary was edited by Jonathan Edwards and published along with some other observations of Edwards about David Brainerd. Anyway, David Brainerd as I said, died when he was 29. Ministered to one little band of Native Americans, made some converts and then died. But in his journal, he says God enabled me to agonize in prayer that I was quite wet with sweat though in the shade of the wind cool. My soul was drawn out very much for the world. I grasped for multitudes of souls. Another entry in his diary had a most fervent wrestle with the Lord tonight for my enemies. So he's facing opposition. And so he's agonizing and wrestling with God to bless his enemies. 

Now, this is the kind of language of somebody who is grappling or wrestling or struggling in prayer. It takes a great effort and a lot of energy on his part. And you might say, well, the guy that died at 29 and made a few converts. What's all this big deal of him wrestling for multitudes? Well, we should all wrestle for multitudes. But that's not quite the whole story. If you were to ask about the great missionary figures of the last couple 100 years, whether William Carey or a whole host of others who were the great missionaries to various parts of the world. One of the things that moved them into missions was the diary of David Brainerd. And so his prayers for multitudes were actually answered by God, bringing the Gospel to multitudes. And he did this with agonizing in prayer. We should not underestimate the tremendous power that God unleashes when we wrestle and when our hearts go out in agony for others, and when we bring that to the Lord in prayer. That may be for missions. That may be for somebody right in your own congregation who you know is going through a hard time right now and you pray, and you wrestle with the Lord. And as you do, it has a tremendous power. I remember sometimes in our life, particularly when our daughter was in the hospital and dying where I just didn't feel like praying anymore. But I knew that there were hundreds of people in our congregation praying for us. And it is a tremendous thing to know that when your energy is just… the prayers and intercessions of others are still rising for you. 

So part of battling for others is intercession, another is encouragement. Energizing the Christ's life and the power and the vision that God has put in others. Here Paul says he wants that their hearts may be encouraged. And of course Paul knew personally a great encourager, Joe encouragement, Joseph the man nicknamed Barnabas, Mr. Encouragement. And the Bible speaks of how when others would not accept the conversion of Saul as being real, Barnabas took Saul to them and said he is changed. He could see the Christ life in Paul when others couldn't. And he helped to identify that and to encourage Saul himself. And then later on when people were being converted from the Gentiles in the city of Antioch who got sent there. Well, Barnabas. And the Bible tells us what happened when he arrived and saw the evidence of the grace of God. That's a sign of an encourager. They see what God is doing. There's always a lot to look at in people's lives and not all of it is pretty. And if you have a bunch of newly born again, Gentiles. I'm sure there was a fair amount of messiness and of ungodly behavior and mixed up belief among them yet. There was plenty to see, but and Barnabas got there he saw the evidence of the grace of God. He had an eye for that, and he was glad. And he encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man full of the Holy Spirit and faith. So that Christ's life in him that Holy Spirit that filled him saw the evidence of God's grace in others, rejoiced in it, and then built them up and encouraged them in it. 

Now, the word encourage is the same as the title Jesus gives to the Holy Spirit. It's sometimes translated comfort. Sometimes it's translated encourage. Sometimes it's translated advocate. It's just literally somebody comes right alongside you, a paraclete. Paracleo is to encourage. Somebody comes alongside you, and they do a variety of things. The Holy Spirit is the supreme paraclete who comes alongside you and even lives within you and connects with your heart. But then he moves you when you're an encourager, like Barnabas and you are full of the Holy Spirit to come alongside others and see God's grace in them. And to say, Boy, I can see God at work in you know, stick with it. I see what God can make of you. And here's what it is. And I know Larry Crabb said when he was in school, one of his teachers said to him, you know, I think you can be a writer someday. And he turned out to write a whole pile of books. 

I remember reading about a person who when he was a kid, had made a terrible mess in the house of paint and paper, and when his mom got home it was a disaster. Now, I don't know if all moms will want to approach this the same way. But she said, you know, you could be a painter. And he went on to be a great painter. I remember meeting him, you know, when I was in high school, talking to my pastor one day and I was a math major. He said, David, you ever think about being a minister? Sometimes when you just look, you know, when you look at somebody and you see the Christ life, in you can encourage them to grow in the Lord. But you may also see possibilities and vision for them. And when you point that out, it can confirm something maybe they already suspected they had or the Holy Spirit has been laying on them. Or it may bring something to mind that they didn't really realize, but that the Lord wants to plant in them. 

And so encouragement is energizing others and mobilizing them. Again, to take Barnabas he helped Paul and introduced him to the other believers when nobody else would believe in Him. He helped the people at Antioch when a lot of people were still very skeptical about Gentiles being Christians. And then he went and got Paul when Paul wasn't doing a whole lot of anything and brought him to Antioch and mobilized him in ministry. That's what encourager does. An encourager is somebody who believes in you. He believed in Paul, not because he believed in him just in the flesh, but he believed in Christ in Paul. He believed in these people that and put their faith in Christ. And whatever else is wrong, part of being an encourager, is believing in somebody not because their flesh is so reliable, but because you see Christ in them, whatever else is wrong with them. And we need that desperately. Not just people to tell us okay, here here and here are what you need to clean up and straighten out. We may need that too. But we need people who believe in us, because we trust in Christ and he's living in us and they see Christ at work in us and help to really fire that up.

Crabb says what is the power within us waiting to be released? It's the actual life of God. The energy with which the Father and the Son relate to each other. It's a set of inclinations put in our hearts by the Holy Spirit and kept alive by his presence. It's a power that is most fully released as we develop a compelling and awe inspiring vision of who another person is and what he or she could become because of the gospel. Remember, Paul, at the end of chapter one says, This is what I'm struggling for, that you will be mature in Christ. So it's a vision of another person's maturity in Christ and of what their full flowering could be in Christ, and we need to help each other in those ways, 

Now to just get back. Another aspect is warning. That's another part of struggling for each other. And Paul says, I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. He's telling you about Christ and His riches and, and all these other things that he doesn't want anybody to fool them. Because he knows there will be attempts to fool them. Just to get back to the Silver Chair again. Right after Rilion rediscovers who he is and his set free, along comes this beautiful lady who has been ruling his life and keeping him under the spell. And now she's got him and she's got the others in the little group and she starts trying to work her spell and her lies again. And they're trapped underground and they're underground. There is no over-world up there. There is no sky, there is no sun, there is no Aslan and they're all…And they're losing track of who they are and where they belong and where they came from. And then, Puddleblum, who is one of them sticks his hand in the fire for just a minute to burn himself awake, and then he saves the day, and he declares that he won't believe what she says. And he's going to go on living in belief that there is an over-world and that there is a real Aslan. And at that point, then you finally see the true colors of the beautiful lady, she turns into a big serpent and tries to kill them and is herself killed.

Now that again is a picture of of this heart to heart warning and protecting one another. This little group, several of them are being deluded by her plausible arguments. And then one of them comes through and wakes the others up again. We need each other because even when you discovered Christ and put your faith in Him and have the life of Christ in you, you're going to come under attack for Satan comes to you as an angel of light or where he comes with all kinds of sensible sounding stuff. And you can hardly believe what you absolutely knew to be true a few days earlier. Suddenly it just doesn't make any sense anymore. And you wonder why is any of this Christianity stuff true? And sometimes the Lord will revive your faith directly. But very often, it'll be somebody else who comes through and helps to encourage you, to wake you up, to warn you. 

Now Paul says I don't want anybody to delude you that is fool you or trick you or  lead you astray with plausible arguments or with smooth talk or persuasive speech, it can also be translated. And so a part of being warned is not being taken in by attractive packaging. And these days, of course, religion itself comes with a variety of attractive packaging, and people evaluate truth not by reading the Bible carefully and listening for the truth of God, and not necessarily by focusing on Christ as the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. But instead, we focus on what we find impressive or persuasive. And so if you've got some advertisers or preachers who can make a really good show and a glitzy image that seems persuasive, it's not nearly as impressive just to have somebody speaking from the heart about Christ, if you're impressed by glitz. Or you go by size of crowd. And so if somebody can fill a former basketball stadium with 20,000 people preaching your best life now, then you believe him. Because he has a huge crowd and he has a TV show and he sounds he's got a wonderful voice. 

So you know, if there's a catchy soundtrack that happens to be your kind of music, then that may be your plausible argument. A lot of people pick their church based on the soundtrack. Or maybe the building. You like certain architecture, and that's what makes you feel a certain thing. And of course, there is just a smooth talk. The people who are very persuasive, and sometimes the persuasion is not coming from the Bible, but it may be coming from the latest studies and statistics that somebody has trotted out or just from general scholarly prestige. Now there's nothing wrong with some of with having a decent building or with being scholarly as far as it goes. But if that's your measure for what's true, and that builds you up in Christ, you're going to go very far wrong. 

The real treasure is Christ. And that's why Paul again and again and again and again, is bringing us back to Christ. The Christ through whom all things were made, the Christ who is the head over the church, the Christ who is the firstborn from the dead, the Christ who lives in you, he just goes again and again and again to Christ. And if you're looking for something besides Christ, you will fall badly. Too many Americans think they can take it for granted that they'll find Christ in the word of God and the church and now they can go for their own options taking it for granted. But of course, Christ and the word are going to be there. You better make that central and everything or you'll go astray. So we need to realize we need to protect each other. And we also need as we get to know each other to know each other’s and our own vulnerabilities. Because each of us has a little different weak spots and we might not recognize it in ourselves. Sometimes you know, your own children, the weak spots, and you can help point them out. Don't always be pointing out weak spots, be pointing out Christ in them and working in them, but also be ready to warn. A spouse often knows our weak spots better than we can recognize them ourselves. Close Christian friends can do this too and warn each other and build each other up. 

And then Paul says for although I am absent in the body yet, I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Now, when you read that verse, and you hear of good order, you might think well, yeah, they probably keep the council minutes well written and they run their worship services in an orderly fashion. And that's what good order in a church is. But good order is not referring just to having everything well organized. Good order is a military term about holding formation and about keeping in step with each other. And I've got a picture up there of a reenactment of a Roman military unit, and as you can see, they have shields in front of them, shields on the side, and the ones behind are holding shields over their heads. And that's so that when they marched forward and the arrows come raining down, as long as every individual person holds his shield and stays in order, the arrows can't get through. And Paul rejoices to see that they're all being bound together, and that they're holding up their shields and they're keeping them up on all sides, because any one individual would be very vulnerable. But it's pretty hard for the arrows to get through when they're all marching the way they're supposed to and keeping that formation and moving forward. And so Paul rejoices to see their good order and the firmness of their faith in Christ. 

We need to battle for each other and we need to do so through empathy, intercession, encouragement, warning, and then through holding formation, marching in order, being firm and strong in our faith in Christ not only for our own safety, but also for the safety of the people whom we love. And the key to that is at the heart of the passage, where the hearts are bonding together with each other. Bound in love, in the heart bound in understanding, in a shared mind or likemindedness, and in both of those being bound together in the love and the truth and reality of Christ and an intimacy with Him. 

Paul says that he wants our hearts to be encouraged being knit together in love. This theme comes up again and again again in this book of the Bible. We saw at the beginning of the book, he's delighting in the love that they have for all the saints. And their love in the spirit. Jesus said, by this, all men will no you're my disciples if you have a love for each other. And this kind of love is what makes Christianity much more believable to people. In a sense, one of the worst logical arguments against Christianity is that the church has so many hypocrites. You know, there's no logic to it, because if they are phonies, then there must be the genuine article too. So you know, it's no excuse not to be a Christian because you think most Christians you've met are hypocrites. But when you throw out the logic, the fact is that unless the Christ life is evident among those who claim to be Christian, it makes Christianity a lot harder to believe. If your family is constantly want to conflict and backbiting and misery and you claim to be Christian, it makes it a lot harder for you to be Christian. If your church is always after each other and not getting along, then, even though logically say, well, the case for Christ is as strong as ever. Just in terms of experience, it's very hard believe that Christ is at work among those particular people. And since they're the ones you know, best, who's to say He is working in anybody else. And so being knit together in love is vital for making the faith believable. And being knit together love is how we reflect the life of God that's in us. 

Jesus said the glory, he is praying to His Father, the glory that you have given me, I have given to them. Christ in you the hope of glory. The glory you've given Me I have given to them that they may be one, even as we are one. Our oneness is to reflect the oneness of Jesus and the Father and the Spirit. I in them, you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know. See there it is, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me. One of God's main demonstrations of the reality of Himself of His love is the reality of that love in the lives of his people. And so being knit together in love, being bound together in love tightly is a vital part of the Christian faith. 

And then being bound together in understanding. To reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding. It's not just a love where we feel for each other, but it's a love where we think together. A love where we explore truth together. A love where we're reaching fuller and fuller riches of understanding. One of the main reasons to come to church, one of the main reasons to have devotions every day, is to discover more and more of your riches in Christ and to keep you from living out of a mentality of poverty and impoverishment. You need to know the full riches so that you can live out of the mentality of abundance. 

Eugene Peterson tells a story of a couple he knew who adopted a five year old orphan girl from Haiti. And when they brought her home, they had supper together. Now, this family also had two teenage sons they were 13 years old and 15 years old, and they sat down to a supper of pork chops and potatoes and trimmings and everybody had a helping and then these two boys proceeded to wipe out everything else that was on the table by taking seconds and thirds and eating the whole thing. And this little five year old girl began to look very troubled and distressed. Not because she wanted any more to eat at that meal. But the parents got to thinking and they thought, You know what? She's scared. She thinks there's not any food left for tomorrow. She thinks that our whole food supply just got wiped out by these two young pigs. And so what they did was they took this little five year old orphan by the hand and they took her to the cupboard and opened it and showed her three loaves of bread and some cans of soup. And then they took her to the pantry and showed her all sorts of shelves stocked with canned fruits and vegetables and other stuff that they have stocked in her pantry. And then they go to the refrigerator and showed her the fruits and the vegetables and the juices and the milk and and all the food in the fridge. And then went to the freezer and showed shelf after shelf stacked with meat and other good stuff to eat. And by the time they were done with the guided tour, she wasn't quite as worried anymore that food was going to be in short supply. 

Now we Christians need to constantly do guided tours of the vast resources that we have in Jesus Christ to realize that all things are ours because we are Christ's and Christ is God's, as the Bible says. And so reaching the full assurance of understanding and in all those riches that we have in Christ is a vital part of Christian growth. Just to know how much to have and it gets rid of that spirit of competition and of a sense of being cheated. Sometimes that's an interrupter of a fellowship within family or also in a church. But when you live out of abundance of Christ in you and a full richness of understanding then you have a much more generous spirit where you're looking to what you can give because you already have so much rather than desperately trying to grab something for yourself. So bound together in understanding, reaching all the riches of full assurance of understanding.

And then bound together in love and bound together in understanding. The whole purpose of that is to be bound together in intimacy with our Lord Jesus Christ. The knowledge of God's mystery which is Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Now again, knowledge should not be reduced to having a lot of facts stored in your head. Here the Bible is talking about the firsthand direct experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ and of intimacy with Him. So God's equipped to see for the mind and a heart, a mind that believes and seeks Christ’s truth and to discover more and more of his treasures. A heart that trusts and really relishes and delights in Christ's love. And you get to know Jesus best not just in a one to one relationship with him. Although that certainly is vital and necessary. But you get to know him best in community with other people who have a like mind and a like heart where you're learning truth from them. Where you're experiencing God's love through them and pouring your love of Christ from your own heart into their heart.

As that happens, you're getting to know Christ in a direct relationship with him the head but also you're getting to know him through the other members of Christ's body. And so rooted and established in love, then together with all the saints, you get to know more and more how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and getting to know him. So the church is not just meant to be a place to hang out or to be buds, although certainly it is that. But it's also a place to grow in depth in relation to Jesus Christ. I'm very proud in connecting says. Imagine what would happen if parents were less concerned about keeping their kids off drugs, and more concerned with their children's battles to know God. So he thinks the main battle is not this or that problem, but bringing out the Christ life among those who are believers. So imagine if that was your main battle and your main goal was to know Christ and then help others to know Christ including your children. What would it be like if pastors worried less about whether their people were having affairs and more about whether they worshipped. Picture a relationship between friends that dealt less with their financial and romantic problems, doesn't mean you can't ever talk about those. But if it was less concerned about those and more with whether they're experiencing God. Perhaps as a result, I suspect I would likely include fewer kids on drugs, fewer affairs, and fewer nervous breakdowns and failed marriages. If if we were really cultivate each other's walk with God and knowledge of Christ, a lot of other things would come as side benefits. Seek first the kingdom of God and Christ's reign in your life. A lot of other good things will happen too. 

He says it's time for the people of God to enter the primary battle. We're all fighting to connect with each other not about our problems only, but about our desire to know God. Let people know that you're struggling for them, that you've entered the battle for their souls to more fully experience Christ. And one important piece of advice is to start small. Don't try to connect with all 180 or 200 or whatever people are in the building today. Start small. It might be with your spouse or your children. You might be with one or two or three close friends who you're comfortable with. And you can teach each other and build each other up in Christ. But we need to bond together closely with other people or we will fall. We need to love one another deeply from the heart as the scripture says, or we will get further and further from the experience of Christ in our lives. 

Hearts battling for each other, hearts bonding with each other. May the Lord give us that kind of Heart to Heart relationship with him and with each other. Onward Christian Soldiers will sing in a moment and it says like a mighty army moves the church of God, brothers we are treading where the saints have trod. We are not divided. All one body we one in hope and doctrine, one in charity. One in hope and doctrine. That's the like mindedness. That the full assurance of understanding. One in hope and doctrine and one in charity. Hearts knit together in love. May that become more and more a living reality among us where we march shoulder to shoulder where we're connected heart to heart, in our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Father, we thank you for our Lord and we thank you that you've redeemed us in Him. We thank You that You've given not only him, but each other, that we may stand together, that we may march together, that we may shield one another from the arrows of the evil one, that we may rejoice with each other in the wondrous joys of life and of walking with you and we may also mourn together and feel one another's pain when we struggle. And so Father build that reality more and more in us, help us Lord as individuals not to yield to the power of the flesh but to be guided by the spirit and help us as a congregation to to be mighty in the Holy Spirit. We pray in His name, amen.