To Do What Is Good

So it’s 86 days. 86 days until our baby is going to born.

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That is, my wife and I. We’re pregnant.

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86 days, theoretically, and we should have a baby.

Now that's big news.

As you can imagine, we're sort of feeling like life is going to change a lot soon, but it also changed in the past.

What, six or seven months ago, something really big happened, we found out we were pregnant.

And in the future, something massive is happening, but right now, we're sort of waiting.

We're in the middle period.

I think life can be a bit like that.

It feels like you're waiting.

Maybe most of us, some of us, spend our entire lives either looking back at the past, at the things that we did when we were younger, or the regrets of the past week.

But if we're not looking back, we're looking forward to the future, to the next thing to be looking forward to.

Never really living in the present.

The present can feel like we're just waiting.

I think it's the same with Christianity.

If you are a Christian, a follower of Jesus, then something massive happened in your past.

You were saved by grace.

You were born again.

You became a child of the living God.

And something massive is going to happen in your future.

You will die and pass into glory, and God will remake the heavens and the earth, and bring them together in Christ.

So massive thing in the future and massive thing in the past, but here in the present, sometimes Christianity feels like we're waiting.

What do we do in the waiting?

What is Jesus' purpose for the present tense?

What would he have us do right now?

In between the past and the future, in this present moment, what is our purpose in life?

I suppose that's another way of asking the ultimate question.

What is the meaning of life?

What are we here for?

Where have we come from?

Where are we going?

What are we supposed to do when we wake up tomorrow morning?

What is the meaning of life?

This passage that we're looking at in Titus chapter 2, I think is a really good place to answer that question.

Because when we think about what the meaning of life is, that has to say something about our past, where we've come from, the things that we've done in our life.

It has to say something about our future, where we're going, where this world is going, but it needs to also speak into the present and inform us when we wake up tomorrow morning and wonder how we're going to live our lives.

What is the meaning of life?

Easy question.

That's our question this morning.

And I think Titus chapter 2 is a good place to answer it.

Before we jump into the answer to that question, a bit of background for context, we are in a four week series in the book of Titus.

This month of July, we looked in the first week of July at the first four verses of Titus, Titus 1 verses 1 to 4, a message titled, To Further the Faith.

We asked five good questions.

Who, what, where, when, why?

And I won't answer those questions again because you can catch up on the website or the podcast on that sermon.

Last week, we looked at power.

It was a little bit awkward.

I felt a bit awkward talking about it, but we looked at the introduction, the distortion, the redemption and the perfection of power.

That is our Lord Jesus, who perfects power by his love.

Today, we are in a message titled, To Do What Is Good, if you're a note taker, in chapter two.

Within the passage that Alex has read for us are some of my favorite verses in all of scripture.

Let me read it again, verse 11.

Paul writes to Titus, for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

That's a good answer to the meaning of life.

Because in that passage, those three or four verses, especially, we have the vision of Jesus for our past, our future and our present.

We're going to talk about the meaning of life and it will begin with our past.

So Paul says in verse 11, for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

Notice past tense, the grace of God has appeared.

Now before we talk about what grace is, because it's one of those Christian words that we use a lot, but maybe we don't have a very good idea of what grace is, we have to go a bit further into the past and ask why the grace had to appear.

And Paul says the answer is for salvation.

The grace offers salvation to all people.

Now, salvation implies the need to be saved.

So what do we need to be saved from?

Well, that would depend on the context, right?

You think for the survivors of the Titanic, salvation means another boat coming alongside.

If you're a baker in trouble, salvation is your neighbor having some self-raising flour to spare.

If you're a teenager who's just blown their first tire, salvation is dad coming to help you swap the tire.

But when we're talking about this kind of salvation, we're talking about ultimate salvation.

The biggest salvation that human beings need is the type of salvation we're talking about.

And what is that?

Well, let me ask you a question, don't answer this.

But as in, answer it rhetorically, in your mind.

Do you think this world is perfect?

Is there anything you would change about this world?

If you could.

I'm guessing, don't, no show of hands here, I'm thinking 99% of us say this world is not as it should be.

We all feel this, something is wrong.

People aren't supposed to break down in their bodies.

Relationships aren't supposed to fracture.

We know this world is not as it should be.

And yet, when we think about what this world would be without God, I don't think we can give a good account of why this world has gone wrong.

If you take God out of the picture, then frankly, this world, broken as it is, is all that we should expect to see.

Because the strong eat the weak.

Survival of the fittest.

Life is a contest of power.

Of course, there's brokenness.

Of course, there's violence and injustice.

But when you put God into the picture, as the Bible does, we have a very good answer for why this world is not the way that it should be.

And all throughout the pages of the Bible, one three-letter word is used to sum up that complex reality, and that word is sin.

The Bible gives a compelling answer to why the world is not as it should be.

Because it begins on page one with a loving and good God who created humankind to know him, to love him, and to love each other.

But human beings rebelled against God.

They chose to love themselves over God and others.

And the relationship between God and humanity was fractured.

The relationship between humankind and other humans was fractured.

And so now, in this broken world of sin, we are both victim and perpetrator of brokenness.

That's what the Bible says is wrong with this world, sin.

Now, every philosophy, every religion, every way of life is offering some kind of way forward out of this problem.

And we don't have time to go into all the different answers, but the different answers that all the religions of the world give are some variation of try harder.

Whether it's follow the particular eightfold path to enlightenment or give this sacrifice or try this, do this, the solution to salvation, the need for salvation in every religion in the world is try harder.

Human beings have to work themselves out of this place that we find ourselves in.

But Christianity is different.

There's this old story, you know CS.

Lewis, the author of the Narnia books and many Christian books.

The story goes that he was a professor at Oxford University in the UK.

And in the big office rooms of Oxford, one day all the Oxford professors were having a debate about what makes Christianity different to all the other religions.

And we actually, six weeks ago, we stood outside CS.

Lewis' office in Oxford, the place where this conversation happened, which was awesome.

But all the different professors are saying, what makes Christianity unique is it's older than all the other faiths.

It comes into being before.

It's like, yeah, maybe, maybe.

No, no, what makes Christianity unique is the teaching of Jesus.

No one ever taught like him.

And all the different professors have all these different ideas about what it is that makes Jesus and Christianity unique.

And then as the story goes, CS.

Lewis walks in to the room, and they say, hey Jack, they called him Jack.

Hey Jack, what do you think makes Christianity unique among all the religions of the world?

And he said, without even slowing down, oh that's easy, grace, grace.

Now that's a very Christian word, but it is grace that makes Christianity unique in the entire world, out of all the religions in the world.

So back to verse 11, Paul says, the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

This word grace is the Greek charis, which means the unearned favor of God, the generosity of God, the gift of God.

In John 1 verse 14, John writes that Jesus came full of grace and truth.

And when you read the Gospels, that is the first four books of the New Testament, you see Jesus truly is a human being who is unlike any other human being that's ever lived in the history of this world.

He was full of grace.

Every teaching, every interaction, every healing, every deliverance, every parable, every action of Jesus' life was full of grace.

He would be walking down the road and would see a blind person sitting on the side of the road in poverty and destitution.

And out of grace, he would bend down to that person's level and heal them and transform their lives.

That is grace.

Now, no matter who you are in this room, you have experienced grace.

And the way that we know this is theologians distinguish between different types of grace.

The first type of grace they call common grace.

And that is the grace that holds the universe together.

Matthew 5 verse 43, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be children of your father in heaven.

He causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

That is common grace.

The fact that the sun rose over there this morning is the grace of God, making the sun rise on all of us, the righteous and the unrighteous.

When the rain falls, it doesn't only fall on the Christians.

God is gracious to all humanity and that is common grace.

But there's another type of grace and that is what the theologians call saving grace.

It's the grace that we sung about earlier.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind, but now I see.

This is not the grace that causes the sun to rise.

This is the grace of God entering and crashing specifically into your life.

The saving grace of God.

And so Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2, it is by this grace, by saving grace, you have been saved through faith.

And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

We see this grace, the unearned favor of God, all throughout the life of Jesus.

Every interaction was full of grace and truth.

And of course we see it on the cross.

We see it when he gave his life in our place, when he took our sin on him, that we might have his life and perfection.

That was an act of amazing grace.

That is the saving grace that has dealt with our sin.

And so now we can answer the question of our past.

In the meaning of life, our past is grace.

Our past is grace.

And so the good news for you this morning, I don't know if you've heard this before, or if this is truly new to you.

The good news of Christianity, of Jesus, is that you are loved by God the Father, the one who made you, the King of the Cosmos.

You are loved and accepted, and you can be forgiven of everything you've ever done wrong.

Your entire past dealt with by what Jesus did on the cross, and you can be set free from addiction and bondage to this life that is not really life.

Loved, forgiven, and freed in Jesus' name.

That is the good news.

That is the grace of God.

Now that gives a heck of a lot of meaning to our life.

To know that our past is covered by the grace of God is the basis of our meaning for life.

Our past is grace.

What about our future?

Skipping to verse 13, Paul says, While we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, to redeem us from all wickedness, and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

Now, notice the future tense.

The future appearing of the glory.

That while we wait, we are waiting for this glory to come in the future.

Now, glory, that's, I'm sorry, that's another one of those Christian words that sometimes we just throw around.

But the Greek word behind glory is doxa.

And it has kind of three senses.

It means brightness, as in light, brightness, weightiness and worthiness.

And I think holding those three words together gives us a good picture of what glory is.

It's brightness, weightiness and worthiness.

We almost struggle to define glory because that's what glory is.

It's beyond human experience.

It's weighty and real and bright and worthy.

And that idea of glory appears throughout the pages of the Bible.

Have you ever read the bookends of the Bible together?

So Genesis 1 and 2, Revelation 21 and 22.

Have you ever read those chapters next to each other?

Try it this week.

I've read about this in a book a couple of months ago, and I've done it a couple of times every few weeks.

It's awesome.

Genesis 1 and 2, Revelation 21 and 22.

And what you do when you read those two bookends of the Bible together, is you notice the start and the end of the story, and the way they relate to each other.

And when you look at Genesis chapter 1 and 2, you see that one of the dominant words of that chapter is good.

Do you remember, God created light and He said it was good, and then He created the expanse and He said it was good.

Six times, God creates and He said, it is good.

And then on the seventh time, He creates humankind, that's us.

And He puts the image of God on us.

He makes us in His image and He says, very good.

Seven times, good appears in Genesis.

And then you go from the start of the Bible right to the end, and you read Revelation 21 and 22, and the word that I'm struck by is glory.

Glory is one of the key words at the end of the story.

We read in Revelation 21 verse 22.

I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it for the glory, remember, glory is brightness.

The glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp.

The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor, that's the word glory, their worth, what they value, their glory into it.

On no day will its gates ever be shut for there will be no night there.

The glory in honor of the nations will be brought into it.

Glory is where the story of the world is going.

It goes from good to glory.

That's the narrative arc of the Bible in two words.

From good to glory.

From the good garden to the glorious city.

That is this book.

Good to glory.

And that is our future.

We are destined for glory.

Our lives are heading towards glory.

And the picture that Revelation paints of that glorious future is a world with no more tears, no more sickness, no more suffering, no more death.

That's the glory that we are intended for.

That's where God is taking this world.

We are destined for glory.

Now, some of us might be feeling that that's hard to believe right now, because this present tense is so un-glorious.

This world is so full of darkness and sickness and disease and tears and death, that it's hard to imagine the glory that is to come.

But Paul writes in Romans chapter 8, he says, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

Our future is glory.

And so I don't know what life is like for you right now.

I'm certain that in this room of 150 people and those joining us online, we have the full spectrum of human experience.

We have people on mountaintop like just loving life, and we have people who are at the very bottom of the valley.

I'm certain that we are, that's the community that we are in this room.

And yet when the Bible talks about glory, it always applies it the way Paul does in 2 Corinthians.

He says, therefore we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away in this broken world, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

And so we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

We are destined for glory.

And Paul and the writers of the New Testament think that that is a comfort for us.

It is a comfort for us, and it's the brokenness of this world that we are destined for glory.

God is remaking this world from the inside out, and one day we will be with him in glory.

Our past is grace, and our future is glory.

Which brings us to the present.

Now this is the bit in Christianity that sometimes we feel a bit lost in.

Remember, there's big news back in the past, the day we got saved.

Big news in the future, when heaven comes back down to earth.

But in the present, are we just waiting?

Are we just twiddling thumbs, waiting for the future to happen?

What does Jesus have to say about the present tense?

Titus, chapter 2, verse 12.

Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.

Notice the present tense.

Grace teaches us.

Present tense, process, ongoing process.

Grace teaches us in this present age.

The past tense was that the grace of God has appeared that deals with our past, and our future is glory, but our present is marked by the grace of God that teaches us to say no and to say yes.

In other words, to use Paul's language in Colossians 3, to put off the old self and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge, in the image of its creator.

Grace teaches us in the present tense.

Now, I remember specifically the moment in time that this idea came home to me.

I was 16 years old, which would have put it at 2017, and dad was taking me for a driving lesson.

I was almost 17, so I almost got my license, but I needed a few more night hours, so dad took me on a drive.

And you know when you're driving, when you're new to driving, you're like, 98% of your conscious brain is focusing on driving.

Check the mirrors, watch the pedal.

Which pedal is it again?

Indicate when I have to, make sure the headlights.

You're like, everything is conscious, nothing is automatic.

So dad chose that time, while we're just having some father-son bonding time, to ask me one of the most profound questions in all of life, when I have 2% of my brain available to process it.

He said, who uses more grace?

The sinner or the saint?

Who uses more grace?

The sinner or the saint?

And with my 2% of brain capacity that I had left as a 16-year-old learning driver, I started to think, well, it's a sinner or the saint.

So the saint is someone who's a Christian, they've been a Christian for a long time, the sinner.

It's got to be the sinner, right?

Because the sinner has their whole past that needs to be dealt with by the grace of God.

And so I said, well, the sinner.

And then he dropped one of the most life-changing bombs on me.

He said, no, it's the saint.

Because the saint has learnt how to use the grace of God to be transformed in their character.

They live the life they live because of the grace of God.

And at 16, I was captivated by this idea.

Because I think, I think I, I never got emotional in a sermon before.

I was captivated by this idea because I inherited a strong past tense Christianity and a future tense Christianity, meaning something big happened then, something big happens now.

But I wasn't entirely sure what the present tense is for.

And God used that moment to teach me what the purpose of my life is, what the purpose of your life is.

And so, when I was 18 years old, as Mike said, I did the preaching farm for the first time, March 21, 2019, and I preached this message.

It wasn't this passage, but I preached this idea.

Because I was so captivated at 16, that I had to make my first message be about this idea.

And since then, the driving idea of my life, I've been preaching now for 7 years, has been to tell people the good news that the grace of God has appeared, is the grace of God that is infinite, inexhaustibly rich, is available for you and I to grow in grace and good for God's glory.

Grace hasn't only set us free from our past.

It has done that, praise God.

But the grace has appeared that teaches us how to live well, how to deal with anger, how to love people.

That is a captivating vision for life in the present tense.

Grace teaches us.

And for me, it was Titus chapter 2 that awoke this idea.

So let me read it to you again, Titus 2 11.

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.

It deals with all of our past, but it teaches us now to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.

While we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

Grace teaches.

It teaches us in the present to live different lives.

We're talking about nothing less than the transformation of character, that we would be formed into people of love.

That's what grace does.

In essence, it's what Paul says at the end of that sentence, forms us into people eager to do what is good.

What is good.

And so now we can step back and give an answer to the meaning of life.

How's that?

Life is a journey from grace to glory to do what is good.

Now, that's one Christian answer.

There's a lot of good Christian answers.

I'm putting it to you from Titus 2.

Life is a journey from grace to glory to do what is good.

Now, if you think that's feels, you feel a bit ikky about that, bit un-gospely maybe, let me read Ephesians 2.

This is the bastion of grace alone Christianity.

Paul says, it is by grace you have been saved.

Hallelujah.

Through faith, not from ourselves.

It is the gift of God, not by human effort, not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus.

Why were we created?

To do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

And we might say, the God whose grace enables us to do those good works.

Not to earn our salvation.

It was grace, it is grace, it will always be grace.

But that grace teaches us how to live a different life.

Our past is grace.

Our future is glory and our present is good.

Our past is grace, our future is glory and our present is good.

Now that is an idea that appears all throughout the letter to Titus.

Eight times by my count, the phrase teach what is good or love what is good or do what is good appears.

So one verse eight, an elder must be hospitable.

This is in green, all the times this phrase appears.

That's Titus.

One verse eight, an elder must be hospitable, one who loves what is good.

One verse 16, rebellious people are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.

Two verse three, older women are to teach what is good.

Two verse seven, in everything, Titus sets an example by doing what is good.

Two verse 14, Christ gave himself for a people that are his very own eager to do what is good.

Three verse one, remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good.

Three verse eight, those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.

Three verse 14, our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good.

Are you seeing the picture here?

Titus is only a short letter.

Eight times Paul drives home this idea that God cares about the kind of life we live.

Yes, he saved us by grace.

Yes, we're destined for glory, but the present is for the transformation of character to do what is good.

Life is a journey from grace to glory to do what is good.

So as we finish, practically, what does that look like?

What does it look like for us to be a community of 150 people in the room doing what is good?

The fact is, we all live very different lives for the other 167 hours when we're outside of church.

We live very different lives.

In fact, in half an hour, we're going to go out those doors and go north, south, east and west to very different families, very different jobs, very different marriages, very different universities, very different lives.

So what does it look like for all of us to do what is good as the grace of God empowers us?

What does it look like for all of us to do what is good?

I think Paul points us in the right direction in verses 1 to 10.

He says, You Titus, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine.

Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled and sound in faith, in love and in endurance.

Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.

Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands so that no one will malign the word of God.

Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled in everything.

Set them an example by doing what is good.

In your teaching, show integrity, seriousness, and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.

Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted so that in every way they will make the teaching about God, our Saviour, attractive.

Now, long passage, three quick thoughts.

Paul is not endorsing slavery.

He's well aware that he lives in a first century context where slavery was real.

And this part of Titus is not the place where he dismantles slavery.

He does that in other places, the Letter to Philemon, for instance.

But in this context, he's just assuming that that's the way the world is and inviting slaves to do what is good.

Similarly, I think, with the talk about the women.

I don't think that we have to read Paul as saying that women have to be at home and can't work.

Certainly, we know he's working in a context where that is what the women did.

And so, he is being descriptive of the state of Crete, rather than prescriptive, as though that's the societal model we need to have for all time.

And if you think that that's the societal model we have to have for all time, why don't we now re-institute slavery, if Paul says it?

I think that kind of argument breaks down.

So, the third thing is, it would seem like Paul is dealing with some gross stereotypes and generalizations.

Do older women drink a lot of wine?

Maybe, in his context, are older men always unworthy of respect?

Maybe, in his context.

But this is his point.

Next slide.

Do what is good.

Do what is good.

And then, next slide.

He applies it to the older men.

Be temperate.

Be worthy of respect.

Because he knows older men who are not temperate and are not worthy of respect.

Older women don't get drunk on wine and be a gossip.

Because he knows older women who are getting drunk on wine and being gossips.

Younger men, slaves, younger women, he is applying the gospel, the idea of doing what is good, to all these sorts of people.

Which brings us to this next slide.

I think that's Paul's point, right?

Paul is helping us to apply this idea.

You're all seeing if your occupation is up there, aren't you?

There's dentists, there's dentists, doctors, carers, nurses.

Paul is applying this idea.

He's teaching us how to apply this idea.

The fact is, this room is full of old men, old women, young men, young women, kids, people from all across the world, all sorts of jobs.

He's telling us we all should lock our compass on the true north of God.

His grace, his glory, and his good.

Now, that will look different for all of us, for a mother caring for her two children under four years old.

Good looks different from the 50-year-old architect, but we're pointing in the same direction, doing what is good.

So, accountants, do what is good.

I am not an accountant.

I don't know what good means in the accounting world.

Be ethical, be gracious in the way you relate.

I don't know.

There are accountants in this room.

Builders, do what is good.

Creatives, do what is good.

Teachers, doctors, nurses, mothers, fathers, students, programmers, kids, older men, older women, younger men, younger women, do what is good, because the grace of God has appeared that is teaching us how to do what is good.

And Paul says that that picture is compelling in this broken world.

When they see us, we architects and teachers and nurses and parents and pastors, when the world sees us doing what is good by the grace of God for the glory of God, that is a compelling witness.

That's what Paul says.

Life is a journey from grace to glory to do what is good.

So, for my wife and I, it's 86 days until our entire world changes.

Hopefully 86, less frankly if we could choose.

86 days until our world changes, but you best believe we are not waiting until that happens.

There is work to do now to fit out the nursery and get ready.

For all of us, we are not waiting until the day the Father has set that Jesus will return, because there is work to do for his glory today.

Amen?

The grace of God has appeared that teaches us to say no to ungodliness and yes to godliness.

So, as I pray to close, let me remind you that you are about to enter the mission field, the mission field of your school, university, workplace, family, marriage, friendship circles.

That's the place.

End this place, but that is the place where 167 hours out of the week, the grace of God is forming us, teaching us to be people who do what is good.

Can we go one slide back to the one with all the arrows?

Let me pray for us and then we'll worship together.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your incredible saving grace, that in your kindness, in your mercy, you saved us when we were dead in our sins.

We could never earn your favor or your affection and yet you freely give it to us in Christ.

And so we thank you that we are loved, forgiven and freed this morning.

And I thank you that you have destined us for glory, that you're so good that you are working all the evil of this world into something good in the end.

And we thank you, Lord, that your grace has appeared that teaches us today how to be godly, how to say no.

And so, Father, I pray for the accountants, the bankers, the dentists, the kids, the mothers, the older women, the politicians, the creatives, the doctors, the carers, the nurses, the younger women, the cleaners, teachers, artists, slaves, students, managers, younger men, musicians, builders, lawyers, older men and fathers, and everyone in between, Lord.

We lift ourselves up to you, asking that you would go with us into our weeks.

Your grace would empower us to do what is good for your glory, because we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

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