Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Morning Church. If we haven't met, my name is Michael Tropea. I serve here as the campus pastor and get to open God's Word and teach today. So it is a gift that I get to do this.
First off, before I dive into the text, I just want to say just publicly how grateful I am to God for His response through you over these past couple of weeks. And so last week we talked about our giftings and putting them in the middle for the common good. And between last week and a few weeks prior when I shared about a need and our Grace Kids Ministry, over 120 people raise their hands and say Amen.
120 people praise God. Thank you for responding faithfully to the Gospel and to say, hey, I want to use my giftings as 1st Peter 4:11 talks about for serving others and to be good stewards of your giftings. And so I just want to say how grateful I am to be a part and to see people raise their hands for that. If we haven't called you this week, we will get back to you just to put you in the in the pipeline to be there. But just give us grace because 120 people is a lot to get to and but just grateful for God's work in our hearts here. A few things between not only last week and people's response, but I've just been grateful to God to see him work in different ways. This past week too. There was a kickoff of this new semester of boathouse over at UT Tyler and over 850 college age young adults there taking in the Word and coming to know Jesus in deeper and truer ways. So that's a beautiful ministry that gets a kickoff and I get to be a part of taking that in. And so just grateful to God for what he continues to do. And then of course there's week one of college football, you know what I mean? Like it's here and many of us are liking that, praising the Lord for that. Learn. That's the thing here in East Texas too. There's the love of football. But here we are a lot to be grateful for. This week we are diving into our third week of the series Everything is God's.
And the foundational week two weeks ago was talking about how everything is God's, everything is from him, everything is for him and through Him. And so we should have open hands to steward everything in our lives back to Him.
That was two weeks ago setting that vertical reality. And this last week we talked about our giftings and how that plays out for them to be used as God's very grace given to us, to be used to serve one another.
And this week, we'll be looking at something that we often lose and we can't get back and something we can waste. And what is that? Time.
We'll be looking at this idea of stewarding time.
And so I'll be painting it in two ways really quickly. We'll be looking at the first section of Psalm 90, and it paints for us the reality of time, because oftentimes we live as if we are eternal. And the psalm would say otherwise. And we'll look at that, but then we'll look at the stewardship of our time and how that is modeled through Jesus. And so we're gonna dive right in. So if you have your Bibles, if you're not turned there already, I'd get there.
But we are gonna go through it verse by verse.
And so I wanna set the stage for us as it relates to context, to what we're receiving today. You see, Psalm 90 is unique in the Psalms because it is oftentimes attributed as the oldest psalm there is, because. Because of the writer. The writer is Moses. It says, the man of God.
And so this predates David and the other writers over centuries.
And why that's important is because we must know where this could have fallen in the life of Moses and the life of Israel.
And if you know anything about Moses, wilderness experience. There was 40 years in the wilderness, and they were traversing the wilderness. And what. What Moses would have experienced is God's eternal faithfulness while watching an entire generation pass away over the judgment announced specifically in Numbers 14.
And for context, Numbers 14, Israel refused to trust God and enter the promised land. So God declared The unbelieving generation 20 years and older would die in the wilderness, leaving Moses to watch the judgment unfold over roughly the next 30 years.
And here's what we begin to peer into in Psalm 90 and verse 1 and 2, and how that relates. So we'll read it together. Actually, I'll read it. You don't have to read it with me.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.
So speaking about this reality of time that the. That Moses begins to establish out of the gate, here's this big idea from these few verses. It's a simple idea that God is infinite.
God is infinite. From everlasting to everlasting. You are God.
He talks about the eternality of God out of the gate. Because Moses wants those receiving this psalm that time doesn't bind God in.
God doesn't receive time, we do. He is outside of it. He is present within it, but he is above it and outside of it.
And this goes back to what we talked about a few weeks ago. It reminds us that he is the creator and sovereign over the entirety of creation. He speaks it into existence. He's not bound by it.
And think about how this would have mattered to Israel receiving the psalm.
You see, they would have been going through constant change. Generations were dying. They were wandering without a permanent home.
Moses himself would eventually die. But God was not changing. God was not aging. God was not weakening or running out of time.
The generation may change, the circumstances may.
Everything around them may feel temporary. But the God who was faithful before them would remain faithful after them.
That's why Moses can call him their dwelling place in all generations.
The security was never meant to be in the land. They weren't to inherit a leader or the length of their lives. It was in the eternal God who held every generation in his hands.
And so what Moses begins is to paint the picture that God is infinite.
God is eternal.
But what is important that he highlights next in these verses is this big idea that humanity is finite. We are time bound. And where do we get that? It says in verses three and four, three through six, you return man to dust and say, return, O children of man, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night you see, you sweep them away as with a flood. They are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers.
So Moses just got done in the preceding verses, saying, hey, God, you are everlasting to everlasting. You hold us now. He says, we in our humanity are time bound beings. We have an end.
We are in time.
He uses pictures here to describe this idea of time as dust. Yesterday, a watch in the night representing different time, dream that ends, grass that grows and then withers away.
You see, what Moses is doing is drawing a very clear line between God and humanity. And time bound references and examples are intentionally used here.
He wants to bring out the vastly different natures between God and man. One is eternal and the other is finite.
God is infinite, humanity is finite. And what else do we see as it relates to the reality of time?
This is where Psalm 97:11 comes in.
For we are brought to an end by your anger, by your wrath. We are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
For all our days pass away under your wrath. We bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are 70, or even by reason of strength, 80. Yet their span is but toil and trouble.
They are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you?
Well, Moses basically says, is this. Humanity is broken. It's jacked up, right?
It's broken like death now exists.
Sin needs to be dealt with. Judgment happens. Our years are numbered and they're hard, and soon our days are gone. Happy Sunday. Message for you all.
But this is the common human experience. Is this not not only our sin that we walk in, but look at these past two weeks in the news. What happened in Nepal.
So many lives lost at an incident like, that's not God's good design there.
That's brokenness and sin that entered into the equation. But it's toil, like the common human experience is brokenness.
You see, Moses has given us a sobering but necessary picture of reality, the reality of time in the opening verses. God is eternal. We are finite, and humanity is broken. God is not running out of time, but we have a set amount of it.
And this is not to make us feel helpless or hopeless or fearful.
He's telling us this because you will never understand the value of time you've been given until you understand that it is limited.
You will never understand the value of the time you've been given as a gift until we understand that it is limited.
Two weeks in a row. I'm bringing a prop. This is a record for me. But here we go.
You see, we as Grace, what Grace Kids does when we do family dedications here is our team gives these little containers full of little pieces of material to new parents.
And what happens now is they actually have the parents put the little pieces of material and these little things in them. And each of these balls represents a week of the child's life until they turn 18.
And so what I did this week, I saw it and I knew I was going to be teaching on this. And I said, you know what? Maybe I should take. This is for Abram. And abram is approaching 2 years old. And so what I did is I said, I'm going to take the 98 weeks that he has, which is 98 of these little balls out, and see what this looks like.
And so I did. And if you think about it, like, it doesn't look much different than when it was fully full, right?
I don't notice it. And in some ways what that causes me to do is, you know, I got time, I got time on my hands with Abram. I have so much time to, you know, for his young life while he's under my roof until he's 18. But here's what I did on the other end. I said, hey, let me see how much it looks like for my 11 year old daughter. Let me see how much time I have left with her. And I want to do this live for us today because it paints us a picture of something very sobering. I'm going to get this all over.
But here's the thing, this is about it.
What you realize is my almost 12 year old, I have less than almost a third of my time left with her.
I mean, she might stay longer, it depends, right?
Let's be honest.
But this paints a picture for me that is very sobering.
Like, where has the, like I remember when she was 2, but now the container is a third left.
Like that puts into perspective how limited my time I have left with her. And take your container, that could be your college years. And you could take that container and if you, if you made the increments, maybe a year at a time, you might only have a year left.
Or you may have three years and you're like four years and you're like, I got all this time, heads up, it's limited. Or that could be your marriage or your career, whatever way it looks like. What it made me realize is all these things are limited.
And when I understand my time is limited, it should cause me and us to be reminded of how much our time that we have is a gift from God.
Our time is not our own. It's God's to give and ours to steward.
And if it's ours to steward, then how does God want us and me and all of us to live the time he has given us in our parenting, in our marriage, and loving our spouse in our college or post college years, in our lives at large?
The reality is that God is infinite. We are finite. This is broken. But God gives us this gift of time that he wants to steward us to steward accordingly.
And this is where the psalmist and Moses speaks into the application that I want to look at. But show us how Jesus ultimately embodies the way we steward time and the remaining time we have together.
And so this is where we see Psalm 90, verses 12 through 17 come into play.
How do we apply this? How do we steward this reality of time? It says this. So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Return, O Lord, how long have pity on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil.
Let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.
In these few verses, Moses states how we are to steward our time. And we're gonna look at Jesus, how he embodies it that we can step into as well. And three things we're gonna progress through. One, live our lives intentionally.
Live our lives intentionally, resting in his love.
And how else asking him to establish his work through our lives. We'll look at each of those from these verses. So, verse, live with intention.
Live intentioned lives. Moses prays in verse 12. What? Teach me.
Like, teach me, remind me, convict me, Lord, to number my days, to know my finiteness, the limpidness, the vapor of a life that we get to live. The gift that my time is. Teach me to number our days. Why? So that we may get a heart of wisdom.
See, when we look at Jesus life, when you read the Gospels closely enough, you see Jesus who understood that his days had been given to him by the Father for a purpose. Yes, fully God, fully man eternal. But his human life was finite here on earth. And he understood that he had a purpose to glorify the Father.
Jesus, repeatedly, even within the Gospel accounts, speaks about his time here and his hour.
In John 9:4, he says, we must know the works of him who sent me. While it is day, night is coming. Establishing this idea of time, the limited window for the work the Father had given him to do.
And yet he knew his time.
And the most intentioned life ever lived. It wasn't rushed.
If we actually read about it. Wasn't rushed. You see, Jesus only had a few years of public ministry. Yes. Yet he wasn't running around frantically trying to do everything.
You see, he ate meals, he actually went to weddings. He stopped for people, he withdrew to pray. He invested into men and women.
You see, there were people he didn't heal that he could have, towns he didn't visit needs he didn't personally meet when people encountered him and wanted him to speed up to care for their issue, he didn't rush towards it.
Jesus wasn't trying to do everything that could be done. He was intentionally doing what the Father had given him to do.
He wasn't trying to get everything that could be done. He was intentionally doing what the Father had given him to do. And that's a word some of us need to hear when it comes to our time.
The lie that we can hear when we hear the words live intentionally can become cramming more into your calendar.
Throw off restraint, do whatever it is you want to do. I mean, we can go back to 2004 for those who were alive then and live the Tim McGraw song out and go ride a bull, right? That is truly living.
We can think it's like we need to rush to get everything in our calendar, to live with everything to experience in this life. But that is a lie.
You see, stewardship over time means asking God, what have you given me to do with the days you've given me?
What have you apportioned for me? Cause we have all different stories in this room with different things God will do, different careers we will walk in, different relationship statuses that he will give us different things. Health issues we deal with. But what have you caused me and called me to do with the time and the story you've called me to live?
What has he given maybe you as a husband or wife to do in your marriage like the Bible calls us to walk certain ways with it? Are we doing them?
Are we intentioning ourselves towards loving our spouse the way he's called us to?
Maybe it's in your parenting and intentioning rhythms. Are we intentionally informing our kids towards just temporary things, or are we intentioning informing them towards eternal things?
What has he given you to do with these two years, four years, six years, eight years? Whatever college and education he's given you, what has he called you to do? Is it just to cram homework in and just get through these years? Or what does he want to do through you in these vital years of your life?
You see, in looking at this container in particular, how do I make intentional moments to speak life in my daughter while I have her in my care?
Like, how am I showing up instead of looking at my phone with the time I have left with her and just engaging with her outside, hitting a volleyball in this current moment in time, how am I taking advantage of the time, the drives I have when I drop her off at school to pray with her to Laugh with her to point her towards Jesus.
You see, I've been asking something that I want to put before us.
Where have urgent things continually crowded out the things God says actually matter?
Where have urgent things continually crowded out the things that God says actually matter? In loving intentionally, my daughter, give me a heart of wisdom, Lord.
Teach me how to live with my time left in the container of whatever bucket it's in. More wisely. Jesus lived this way.
Moses calls us to be learners in being aware of our finiteness and to live with intention.
You see, we're invited into that with our time too.
But I love in reading the Gospels and looking at Jesus, he never became frantic in living intentionally.
How?
How did Jesus live with such intention without speeding up and cramming a schedule full? And I think that leads us to the second place here, second piece, to rest in his love. This is counterintuitive, like, how can I live with more intention and rest?
But this is one of the keys that I think we see and Moses points out to us in verse 14.
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have and for as many years as we have seen evil.
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love. That word in the Hebrew satisfy means filled. Having enough, having our desires fully satisfied.
Where do we see when we look at the life of Jesus? Where do we repeatedly find Jesus either early in the morning or in the middle of the demands of ministry? Withdrawing to quiet places to be with the Father, Satisfying himself in the steadfast love of the Father, or before his public ministry even began at his baptism. What did it say? This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.
Jesus lived and worked from the security of the Father's love. He didn't need crowds. He didn't need accomplishments. He didn't need approval or productivity to tell him who he was. He knew he was the beloved Son of the Father.
He was resting in the Father's love.
But why does this matter to the stewardship of our time?
Because whatever we look to for satisfaction will eventually start laying claim to our time.
Whatever we look to for satisfaction will eventually start laying claim to our time.
If our satisfaction comes from achievement, work will demand more and more of our time.
If it comes through approval, we'll struggle to say no because we want to make sure everyone else is satisfied. So we fill up our calendars and we don't say no if it becomes our entertainment. We will watch ourselves to death or doom, scroll for the rest of our lives and waste.
You see, if it comes through our children's success, more and more of the family calendar can become organized around helping them achieve.
Our calendars have a way of following our desires.
You see, I've gotten my first taste of this past couple weeks as we've recently entered the world of school sports.
And my daughter, now in seventh grade, is playing volleyball. And this was our week. We had a game Monday, game Thursday, tournament yesterday for three quarters of our day, like, and I love it. I'm not gonna be here to say, don't play sports and be in church all the time. That's not what I'm. I'm not dogging that at all.
None of that is bad. I love having watched my daughter gain confidence and begin to play.
But here's what is happening in my heart. I can already feel the pull.
I can already feel the pull. What else should we sign her up for?
Like, she's going to a hidden clinic tonight. What's one more thing?
What's one more thing?
How can she get better? She enjoys this. So maybe more will make her happier.
And without ever intentionally deciding it, something good can become demanding more and more of our time. Because I started to believe more of it will satisfy something in her or something in me.
See, the deeper question isn't, is this a good use of our time? But what am I giving?
What am I asking this to give me that only God can ultimately provide?
That's why Moses says, satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.
Before today has anything to prove about me, let me spend time with him and be reminded that I am loved by the Father today, fully holy. Not in what I do, not what I accomplish, not in my children's happiness or what I the career that I've chosen. But I am fully loved in the Father because of what Christ has done for me at the cross.
And when his love becomes a place where I'm satisfied and find my home in, I'm free to work hard and to stop.
To enjoy good things without needing more of them.
To say yes and to say no, and to leave some things undone.
And that's what rest is. Is being secure enough in the Father's love that I don't need my limited time to prove that I am enough.
Jesus lived from that love, and through Jesus, we can, too.
So how do we steward our time?
Live with intention, rest in his love, and satisfy ourselves there.
And finally, it's this.
Asking him to Establish his work through us.
Asking him to establish his work through us.
Moses prays in 16 and 17, let your work be shown to your servants and establish the work of our hands.
Like, notice the order there. Your work are hands. That's stewardship.
And that's exactly how Jesus, our forerunner in faith, lived. John 4:34, says, My food is to do the will of him who sent me to accomplish his work.
Jesus wasn't like, father, bless everything I've decided to go and do.
It was, father, I want my life to be about what you are doing.
And because Jesus lived that way, he wasn't only intentional. One of the things I see and I've seen throughout Scripture is he was interruptible.
Like, if you read the accounts and different stories, think about how many moments in Jesus ministry happened while he was apparently on his way to somewhere else.
Like, he's going to Jairus house when a suffering woman reaches out and touches him. And Jesus stops.
He's leaving Jericho when blind Bartimaeus cries out when Jesus stops. The disciples try to keep children away because Jesus surely has more important things to do and Jesus receives them.
Jesus was intentional enough to know what mattered and secure enough in the Father's purposes to be interrupted when someone was placed in front of him.
You see, that's important because sometimes we think stewardship means controlling every minute of our calendar.
But if my time belongs to God, God has the right to interrupt it.
You see, maybe that conversation wasn't on your schedule, but God wants you to enter in.
Maybe you see your neighbor outside and you're trying to get in your house really quick. But maybe God wants to use that for you to step into that conversation.
Maybe your kid or your child needs you when you had something else planned. Maybe a friend interrupts you because they've been wrestling with something and he has you go into it. Maybe God puts someone in front of you who needs encouragement, help, generosity, or simply your attention.
A few months ago, I mentioned as I was wrestling and processing, coming out of a conference that I went to and asking God, hey, just interrupt my time. And I was on a walk with my family outside our neighborhood, and there's a girl who came on one of those. I don't even know. They're not moped things, but foot things that were selling pest control. And she was crying in our neighborhood. And I was on a walk. I had my own plans. And my wife and I stepped into a conversation with this young woman and we invited her into our house for two and a half hours. We got to love her and share the gospel with her.
And she was overwhelmed by how loved she felt and was. Why?
Because that was the Lord's work through our hands and we were interruptible during that moment. And oftentimes I'm not.
The question becomes, am I so committed to my schedule that I'm unavailable for God to interrupt it?
We're not simply asking God to establish our plans, we're asking him to establish his work through us.
And Jesus shows us what that looks like perfectly. I glorified you on Earth. John 17:4 says, Having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, you gave me to do.
Not I did everything.
Not that I met every knee. Not I made everyone around me happy. I accomplished the work that you, God gave me to do.
That's stewardship of time.
The goal isn't to get to the end of your life having done everything. It's to be as faithful as you can with the story he has given you and the things he's placed in your hands.
It's not well done good in calendar servant right. It's not well done good in active and church involved servant.
It's well done, good and faithful servant.
Have you been as faithful with a time that God has allotted for you, however long that may be, however short or 70, 80 years?
Have you been faithful with your time intentioning yourself and resting in the Father's love?
We can go from this place and say, you know what Lord, I'm gonna live this way. I'm gonna take my parenting and I'm gonna work hard at doing this and I'm gonna take my college years. I'm gonna make them all about you. And here's what can happen in that. We can do it in our own strength, we can do it in our own effort. And here's what is eventually will happen. You will fail.
You will fail outside of the transformative work of Jesus Christ in your life and His Holy Spirit working through you and transforming you to live with more intention, you will fail.
But with him walking in step with His Spirit saying, lord, let my first thoughts be about you this morning and change my time and how I view things. Let me be interruptible. Let me rest in the saving work of Jesus today. And then he begins to change your heart to be and steward time as he called you to.
So the charge isn't, hey, go home, get busier.
It's not to fill every square on the calendar with something spiritual. It's this. Give your days back to the God who gave them to you a few weeks ago I mentioned, hey, what would it look like if you started your mornings opening your hands and praying before you got about going and doing the other things? And here's an added addition to that rhythm, because many of you have said, hey, I've been doing that.
But pray this prayer, Father, teach me to number my days and show me what matters to you today.
Start there.
See what he opens up.
Maybe he leads you to start in his word again faithfully. Maybe it's putting the phone down and being present with your family.
Maybe it's saying no to something good to crowding out what matters most.
Or it's creating enough margin that when God puts someone in front of you, you have the time to.
Don't ask, how can I fit more into my life? Ask God, what do you want me to do with the life you've given me? These are his days. Live them intentionally, resting in his love, and make yourself available for him to establish his work through you.
And he's the one who does it, not our own efforts. And I thought, what better way to celebrate communion today than to remember that it's not us who do the saving, it's Jesus that did the saving, and his spirit now works in us as we submit to Him.
And so what I would like to do is take these elements today as a corporate body, understanding that it's his work that was first worked for us.
And so here's what I want to do.
If you are a believer in Jesus, I want you to take communion today, understanding that Jesus stepped into our time and space, took on a finite body, and walked in our place for our sin, and died on the cross on our behalf. And we take the bread and remind it of his broken body and take this drink and remind it of his shed blood. But if you are not a believer in Jesus today, I'm asking you to not take these elements.
But I want you, as we take these elements, I pray the Spirit brings to understanding the gravity of the cross. And apart from him, there's eternal separation from a good, loving and holy God. But in him and in him alone, you will find life and freedom like you haven't been able to. And he wants to change you to steward time accordingly and steward your life for his purposes.
And so if you would, if you have your elements, we're gonna take them together. We're gonna go to 1 Corinthians 11, and it's Paul talking about the Last Supper, and it says this. For I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Church, family, let's take this bread together.
Thank you, God.
Thank you, Jesus.
In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.
The new covenant, meaning you don't have to earn anything you could never earn. He perfectly earned in our place, and it was in his blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again. Let us take the cup together.
Thank you, God.
God, I thank you.
I thank you that you are infinite. You are the Creator, sovereign over this whole thing. And you created us out of your love.
You created us to be in relationship with you, to find our home, to find our purpose in you. And we chose to disobey and go our own way.
And the world in which we live in and the heart, that which we were born into, is broken. And we see the effects of sin across all of it. But God, you sent in your great love towards us, your one and only son, Jesus, to take on our finiteness and to come into time and space, to walk the perfect record that we were supposed to walk, to live the life that we were supposed to live and ultimately take on the death that we deserve to take on.
To the breaking of your body, to the shedding of your blood.
And you didn't stay there on the cross. You defeated sin, death and the grave and rose again. And you've given us a deposit of your Holy Spirit as a guarantee to walk here and now until you come again or until we're with you.
And God help us number our days in this place. To know that we are limited, to know that it is hard, but to know that you are with us and help us to live our parenting with intention, our marriages with such grace and love, and our careers and everything you've given us to be faithful with, with intention, resting in the security found only through Christ and God, establish your work through our hands.
Let us be interruptible and to steward our time accordingly to what your plans are not our own.
And God, if there's anyone in here that doesn't know your great love and the relationship you want to have with them, I pray you cause their hearts to repent and believe that you are God, that you are Lord and Savior, and you want to show them true purpose. And meaning that is only found in you. Not through things in this world that are broken, but that is found only in you. And I pray that today, God, we need you.
Help us to steward our time, our giftings, the way you have designed us to. God, we need you. And apart from you, we can do nothing. We love you, we praise you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
As we were singing those lines and teaching through the Word today, we have been invited to live in remembrance with the time that he has given us, however short, however long.
Maybe for us that's this week, spending time with him is the first thoughts of our day. For him to lead us that out, maybe it's getting people around us in community to help us walk reordered lives by his grace towards stewarding a time. Or maybe that's him interrupting our plans, our calendars, our agendas to be in on his plans and his agenda in his time, whatever that looks like. My prayer for us is to be faithful stewards over time as we grow deeper into the heart of Christ.
One of the things I get the privilege of doing is, and we as a church family is, is commissioning people.
And one of the those people that are going to be going and leaving, and I don't necessarily like it, but it's good, is Kelly Leedy. And I want to invite her up here.
And I'm excited when God calls someone to steward their life, their time to go to the nations. And Kelly, can we welcome her?
And so Kelly, just share with us, hey, where are you going? And what has God kind of stirred in your heart and why you want to go?
[00:39:45] Speaker B: Thank you, Tropea. So I'll be in, I'll be in Italy for a year and I'm committing to a full year there. They invited me and I was like, yes, let me pray about it.
And the special thing about this program is that it's trailblazing, so it's reaching the unreached. It's for the last and the lost. So we get the privilege of sharing Jesus with people for the first time. So I'm really excited about that.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: And what kind of stirred you to go?
[00:40:08] Speaker B: What stirred me to go in that is the Father's heart, the immense joy he has and his delight in us. It's just, it moves me to respond in that way and I want to be active in it. And God has opened that door where I know the time is now. And at such a time as this, I'm going, yeah.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: First off, Italy. Rough, right? You know what I mean? Kidding. Totally. Kidding.
But I've had the joy and this is to walk with even my time here going into my fourth year with Kelly through watching God continue to mold, shape, challenge, refine and grow you in your heart. And it's just as much as it's a joy to see send you, it's a pain because you're going because the loss of that here, but we are going with you as well. And what is one of those ways that we can pray before I invite people up to pray alongside us? And what ways can we be praying or partner alongside you in these days ahead?
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Prayer that I'm sensitive to the Holy Spirit and that I just continue to be teachable and my meekness is really important. So I pray that I'm meek when I'm there.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: I would love to invite anyone who wants to pray alongside Kelly up here.
And we are grateful that we, as much as Kelly's going, we are going with her in spirit and we get to continue to pray with her. And so if you would do something for me, there's nothing magical here, just a sign of unity as a family. If you would raise your hand out and just pray alongside us and great, you guys are coming in good. We're family here. We can lay hands and we're commissioning just pray, praying over this. So would you extend your hand with us as we pray over Kelly? God, I thank you.
I thank you. You are such a good father.
I thank you that you love us and you've demonstrated that in Jesus Christ and sending Jesus and I thank you. You have been preparing Kelly's story for this moment for her to go to train her up, to deploy her to the nations, for her to declare your goodness and God, align Kelly's path and where she should go to be sensitive to your spirit and where it is leading the good news of, of you with who she needs to and continue to refine her heart.
God, I pray against the lies of the enemy that will want to distract and distort her.
God, I pray that she senses your love and your peace and your grace as she goes. And she knows she has a church family back here praying for her, going with her.
But God, continue to establish your plans through her hands.
God, I thank you for her stewarding her time for eternity and positioning that before others use her in amazing ways that we can stand here glorifying you because of what you're doing through her faithfulness. God, we love you, we praise you. We ask that you protect her and go before her and come behind her and with her God and all these things. We pray Jesus strong, mighty and precious name. Amen.
We love you, Kelly. We're going with you, Church.
Our heart is that you get connected here in some way. We'd love to connect with you out at Connect Central, but we love you guys. Have a great week of worship. God bless.
