How?

Pastor Cameron calls us to put Jesus first by intentionally living as His disciples and taking seriously the call to make disciples of others.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Cameron Lienhart

Cameron is the Senior Pastor of Conduit Ministries

What is Conduit Ministries?

We are all about helping people get closer to Jesus.
Sundays @ 9 AM & 11 AM - 120 Delaware Ave in Jamestown, NY

♪♪♪ Heavenly Father, this morning I pray that you would open our minds and our hearts and our ears, that your Holy Spirit would bring forth the word that we each need to hear today. As Pastor Cameron delivers this sermon, that you would be his divine editor, that he would be in alignment with your will, and that he would speak not his thoughts and his wisdom, Lord, but from your wisdom, Lord. God, we ask that all this be for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Good morning, Conduit. How are you this morning? Good. It's good to see you all. We talked last week about the nature of, or like the what would be the, what would be the foundation of all the other things that we do. We're going to come back to that a little bit today. But I wanted to talk today, today we're going to talk

In kind of like a couple different directions. And what I mean by that is like sometimes sermons can take some different forms or formats. Sometimes they're like highly,

Highly expository, which is a fancy word of saying like kind of a word by word, line by line study of a particular portion of scripture or a particular set of verses. Sometimes they're a little bit more topical, which means you take one topic and you kind of look throughout the scripture for these themes and you pull them in together and you preach a sermon around that topic. Others can be more inspirational or I think you get the point.

This sermon today is going to be a little bit of all of those things, I hope, part maybe inspiration a little bit, part exhortation and part vision for not just the new year here in 2026 as we move forward, but as far as like the vision of what it is and what we should be as a church focusing our efforts on and hopefully maybe my heart is that it would give you a little bit of some context around why you see things like oh there's a men's breakfast every other Saturday and there's a women's ministry and there's a women's breakfast on the other Saturdays or and then there's a small group ministry or there's a Wednesday evening Bible study or there's conduit kids or there's this like why? What is the point? I don't know about you, but I need something else to do like I need a hole in my head.

And so the question of well is the is the church just trying to keep a lot of activities going and keep everyone involved because that's what we do or is there a actual reason that we try to offer these opportunities, these experiences, these communities and is that reason rooted in something more than just wanting to keep calendars and schedules full? And I hope to be able to answer that question this morning. Last week we talked all about the supremacy of Jesus. Jesus as the first and the last, Jesus as the agent of creation, Jesus as the one by whom and through whom and for whom all things were created, Jesus as supreme in everything, Jesus having the authority in our lives, in the church, in the world, in all of the cosmos, Jesus is the Lord. Jesus is the Lord not just as a another way of referring to God, but Jesus is the Lord as in his title and the authority that he holds to be a Lord means to have supreme authority. I talked about that last week because not only is that the foundational

Truth of our lives as followers of Jesus is that he has lordship in our lives, but I talked about it last week because I knew that I was going to talk about this, this week, and I know I'm going to talk about what I'm going to talk about next week, next week, needing to say the first things are first, that Jesus is supreme, because when we come to this week here, when we begin to talk about like, well, how then does the revelation of Jesus being supreme, the Lord of our lives, what does that have anything to do with how we function or what we focus on or who we are as a community of people here as a church? You can't have, there are, well, your first things need to be first. And the first things that are first is always Jesus. Churches, communities of faith, Christian churches, I should say, are built upon the revelation that Jesus Christ is Messiah and Lord. There's no other thing that the church can successfully or faithfully be built upon than the revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. In Matthew 16, Jesus was talking to one of his

Disciples, Peter. Peter, who would arguably be the most prominent or prevalent disciple of Jesus, went on to lead the church in Jerusalem after Jesus' ascension back into heaven. And Peter, or Jesus asked Peter kind of this probing question about who Peter believed Jesus actually was, because the answer mattered. Because if for Peter, Jesus was a great teacher, then maybe what Jesus would have told Peter to do with that revelation is go start a school after I leave and teach everyone in that school all of the principles that I had. Or if Jesus was just kind of like some political leader that had a really narrow ideology, maybe Jesus would have told Peter, yeah, Peter, that's right. That's exactly who I am. Go start a political party to fight against the Romans. Who Jesus was determined what Jesus told the earliest disciples to go and do. And so he asked Peter this kind of probing question. He said to him in Matthew chapter 16, Peter, who do you say that I am? It's an apt question. It's an appropriate question, not just for Peter then. It's an appropriate question for you now. Who is Jesus to you?

Is he inspiration? Is he moral or ethical teacher? Is he some kind of general nebulous spiritual guide? Or does he sit on the throne of your life?

Is he, as we talked about last week, your savior, the one who has ransomed you for your sins? The one who offers you eternal life? But what about you? Who do you say that I am? He asked and Simon Peter answered, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Home run. Got it. Target. Hit. Bullseye. Okay. Jesus replied, blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Now it's been, it's been popular, more popular in some Christian denominations than others to assume that what Jesus was saying here was that, hey, Peter, you got it right. And on and on you, I will build my church. Great job.

But what we believe is that when Jesus tells Peter, blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah, because this was not revealed to you by man, but by my father in heaven and is, and you shall be called Peter or you should be called Cephas or the rock. And on this rock, I will build my church that Jesus was not talking about Peter himself, but was using somewhat of a clever word play here to describe or to, to proclaim that the, that the revelation of Jesus Christ as Lord and savior would be the rock that the church would sitting upon, not the will or strength or strategy of man, but that when Peter himself said you are, you are Christ, the son of the living God. Yes, it is this foundation that the church will be built upon Peter and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Now I want to be clear with you about what we are trying to do here.

And when I mean here, I mean at conduit ministries and in the Jamestown, Chautauqua, Warren County, Pennsylvania region, larger region that you all come from and that we are in ministry too. I want to be clear about what we are trying to do here in this church and through this church, because sometimes it can either become unclear or it was never clear enough to begin with. Because we can all, we can all gather or we can all surmise our own kind of like individual ideas about what it is, why, why, why we are here, why we exist, what we should be all about. Our goal here at conduit is to disciple people to Jesus Christ so that they live like him, they love like him, and they serve like him.

Now this is not just something that we pulled off of a plaque that we saw at Hobby Lobby,

Although I'm almost positive it's probably there, but is the heartbeat of what we believe that it means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus. And I want to be as clear as I possibly can about this. This is our goal here. This is why we exist as a church, is to build to make disciples of Jesus who live like him, love like him, and serve like him. That you become more and more conformed to the image and lightness of Jesus Christ through your time here, through your life here, through your learning here, through your community here, through your worship here, through everything here.

But when we say things like disciple of Jesus or discipleship, we also run kind of the risk. Obviously we run the risk or danger of saying, "Well, I don't even know what that means."

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? We don't really use that term too much in modern day. There's been some more contemporary authors and pastors who have tried to kind of do away with the word disciple because it doesn't really have a modern equivalent and to substitute it with the word apprentice. I don't have any real issues with that other than Jesus actually uses the word disciple, and so I think it's probably pretty important. But we can understand at least in the same way what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. And if you work in the trades or anything like that, you've ever been an apprentice of a journeyman or a master, you kind of understand then what that means. But maybe you haven't. And maybe you're kind of like many of us saying like, "Okay, I can get on board with the understanding that the goal here is to become a disciple of Jesus." But what does that mean? Discipleship is not just a transfer of information. That is often,

Especially in the last couple of, really in the last generation of the Christian church, that's been kind of like the main push of discipleship, is discipleship ministries are all the ministries where you learn the information. It's where you get all of the, you check all of the boxes of the theological doctrines that you need to know and understand and believe in, and that's what discipleship means. It's the transfer of theological information from the Lord's, from the God's Word into your heart. Now, I don't have a big problem with that. I think that's a big part of what it means to be a disciple is to learn.

But discipleship is more than just the transfer of information. I think you probably know this. I think you probably understand by now that you need more than just more information to experience true life change.

That if information was all that you needed in order for your life to be transformed down to its very foundation, then all of society would be better for it. But it seems to, at least from the chair that I'm sitting at, that the more information that we try to consume, the less like Christ we become.

And so the question is, if it's not just information transfer, what is it? It's not just that. It's an actual apprenticeship to the person of Jesus.

Not information about him, but an actual following of him. You think about it. This is exactly the way in which Jesus called his first disciples. In Mark chapter one, verse 17, he called his disciples, not by saying, "Hey, come and learn this stuff." What did Jesus say? "Come and follow me." "Follow me."

"Learning his teaching?" Certainly. Did they? Sometimes. But also learning his way of life. Practicing his habits.

Taking upon themselves the same types of habits that shaped their desires and their character. Seeing what it meant to listen to the Heavenly Father.

Actually participating in the life of prayer. Knowing what it looked like to actually practice the Sabbath in the spirit of that law, rather than just the letter of that law. It became an opportunity for the disciples to see exactly what it meant like. Or what it meant to follow God.

Discipleship is, we could say, faithful imitation of the one who is the master. Faithful imitation. Certainly a narrow path, a small gate, but it is the way. If I had to give a somewhat comprehensive understanding or definition, I should say, of what a disciple is or who a disciple is. I would say this. A disciple is, here we go, a person who by grace is apprenticing their whole life to Jesus Christ, being formed by the spirit within the community of the church for participation in God's mission in the world.

A disciple is one who is empowered by God's grace to bring their whole life in a consecrated alignment with Jesus himself. Doing so within, through, or through empowered by the community of those who are also doing it, the church, so that we may go out and participate in the mission of God in the world. Discipleship is not just about what God in Jesus Christ can do for me.

How life improves for me. What the gift of salvation does for me. What it has offered to me. But it is about preparing our hearts or our responsiveness in mission to a world that does not yet know him.

And this is what the church does. And this is what I told you last week we're going to be talking about today. The church makes disciples. This is the commission of the Lord given to his disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28, verses 16 through 20. So we often call this the great commission. It says this, then the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. Verse 17, when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. Verse 18, then Jesus came to them and said, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

In moments or periods of time where the mission of the church is up for debate or has come up for debate, we would do well to return to these words of Jesus. Not necessarily exclusively, but in like very clearly in verse 18, Jesus, before giving the commission, before saying, here's what I want you to do. He re-establishes what we talked about last week in making sure that the disciples understood who it was that was telling them to do that very thing.

I had a conversation with someone this past week who I asked to do something. It was pretty inconsequential. It was not a big deal. It would not have been a big deal if they said no to me.

But what I had learned later is that someone else had also asked that person to do that very same thing.

And they said no to them. And so when I asked, they said yes. And that's not about me. What I want you to say here, or I want you to see here, is that

There are reasonably all of us, people have different levels of authority in our lives.

If you say something to me and my wife says something to me, there's a great disparity in authority that people have in our lives. There are people that you allow to speak into your lives more because they have established relationship or trust or wisdom. And then there are people maybe who are complete strangers where you're like, why would I listen to you above anyone else? And this really is the like, even how we should approach what Jesus himself here says, because he tells the disciples, he builds the foundation of why it is, why the mission that he's giving them is not up for debate and will not be argued when he says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Do you know what the translation of the Aramaic word all means? What Jesus said here, all authority, you know what it means? It means all. Yeah, there's no like, you don't, you don't gotta go to seminary, grad school, you don't gotta read a commentary. It means all. All means all, right? And so what Jesus is reestablishing here is his lordship of authority. All authority on heaven and earth belongs to me. Therefore, he says, go and make disciples of all nations. It's important here to not run past many of these words because we, those of us who have been in the church for a long time, maybe have this, have this scripture memorized, can kind of like zip right past them without considering the implications even of each word or command to go. What the church does, those who are followers of Jesus, the gathered community of the church, we go, meaning that what the church does must be active and not passive. We take the mission of God to make disciples of Jesus Christ and to baptize them in a Trinitarian way and teaching them to obey his commands. We take it as an,

We take it as an active pursuit that we must do. Not something that we are just kind of like, well,

We'll post, we'll post our hours on our Facebook page and maybe our sign. Maybe do a little bit of advertising or something like that. And we'll just kind of like retreat to the safety of our block walls and nice tall ceilings. And if anyone wants to become a disciple, I suppose they can come and search that out for us or search that out for themselves.

Core and critical to the mission of the church is its nature to not be passive in the locales that it is in, but to be active to engage those who are not yet disciples. We must take that seriously. And we ignore it to our peril. We ignore it to the peril of like the ultimate, like the health and vitality and longevity of the body that God has created here. When we, when we stop doing the very thing that the one who has all authority in heaven and earth has told us to do, then we lose the abiding life giving connected source within us.

Jesus goes on to say go. And he says, then make go and make disciples.

Now, the nature, the very, the very nature of what it means to make requires, requires some attention to the building of those things to make means to build, to make means to construct, to make means to maybe in a little bit more sterile way, it means to manufacture. Not in some way, not, I'm not talking about like the impersonal way. What I'm talking about here is that the nature of making requires building, which often requires time.

It requires strategy. It requires systems. It requires plans. And these things are not antithetical to a more spirit led ministry of just running off vibes.

But they display an intentionality and a diligence towards the calling and towards the goal of going and making disciples of Jesus Christ. To have a plan, to create a system, to make a pathway, to clear the way. These are not antithetical to spirit led ministry. These are showing that we are making room for the spirit to come in. And we are ready for the overflow and the outpouring of the spirit in this place. We have structured ourselves in such a way as to anticipate that God will move, to know that God will move.

We do not build ministries here simply to be busy bodies, but because we believe that it is part of the process of making and building. Go and make disciples of all nations. We've talked about this already. A disciple is a person who by grace is apprenticing their whole life to Jesus Christ being formed by the spirit within the community of the church for participation in God's mission in the world. And then he says, I want you to baptize those people in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I mean, this is again another example of it is popular and contemporary. For those who want to challenge traditional Christian theology, how can God actually, Jesus isn't God if God is God and the Holy Spirit is God. What is this trinity thing you're talking about? Jesus certainly understood in some sense, at least, right? Jesus certainly understood and had the means by which to proclaim a Trinitarian formula in his baptism, right? Baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we'll get into the trinity in a later sermon here coming up in the next few weeks.

But suffice it to say, there is a strong theological component here that we must hold as Christians, and that's the belief and understanding of a Trinitarian God. God is three in one. And then Jesus goes on to say, "Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you." Like I said, that discipleship is not just all about the transfer of information, but it's not not about the transfer of information either. That there is, that we must become students and pursuers of God's Word, not because information changes us,

But because we believe by faith that the Spirit of God empowers his Word to create transformation in our lives. It doesn't have the same, like it doesn't have a commentary on the Bible, does not have the same transformative power as the Word of God itself, okay? A TikTok or a short about the Scripture does not have the same power to transform as Scripture does itself. Obedience, obedience to God's Word. Listen, I don't understand why this has become so unpopular to say. Obedience is the mark of a surrendered life.

In fact, the word of God says that those who love God obey his Word. Those who love God obey his commands. Not because they are afraid of not obeying his commands, but because there is joy in obedience to the life-giving power of God's Word. Obedience becomes a response of our lives that are surrendered. I am joyfully obedient to God's Word because of the extraordinary grace that has secured me in hope for the future. That it is life for me. That the Bible is a wellspring of life that will bring fruit into my soul. It will transform my mind. It will transform my relationships. It will transform my life. The question kind of is, I think, is a natural question here when the commission is, okay, Jesus saying, "All authority on heaven and earth given to me, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Jesus is like that last little stanza in there, "Surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age." The question that I came away like even rereading that again this week was, who actually

Makes disciples? Does God make disciples? Or do we make disciples? Yes. That is the correct answer. Does God make the disciples? Or do we make the disciples? The answer is yes. There is certainly a commission that the Lord gives to those who are following Him to go and make.

But you don't need to read very far into the New Testament, or you don't need to read or look even very far into your own heart to recognize that if the task of making disciples is all up to Cameron Lionheart, y'all are in trouble, like big time, okay? Would you read this really, this is really important verse. It's likely going to be a pretty, a pretty big theme verse for us this year, Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2. Paul says here to the Romans, he says this, "Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will." I want you to understand this here about the process of discipleship and the transformative nature of it. Number one is that discipleship is a process of God's grace, meaning that God empowers and ultimately is the

One who changes the contours of the human heart. It is not me. You do not change yourself.

If you could change yourself, you would have or you should have, right? We do not change ourselves. Change is affected in our lives only through the grace of God upon us. God empowers change into our lives. It is His mercy that draws us to Himself and the mercy of His word in our lives that changes and transforms us. So what Paul says, "Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, " what? "In view of God's mercy to offer yourselves, offer your bodies as living sacrifices." It's like, listen, it is because of God's mercy that you can even be empowered to make a decision to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. You couldn't do it otherwise.

So discipleship is, one, a process of grace. God empowers it in His mercy, but it is also, listen, discipleship is also a process of personal consecration. You must consecrate your life onto it. You must offer something. What Paul says here, "In view of God's mercy,

Offer your bodies as living sacrifices." Holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Anyone ever want to know what God's will is for your life? Yeah, maybe. Then you will know. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

So the question that this verse leaves us in is this, I think. If God is drawing you to Jesus through His mercy, will you offer your life in consecration and surrender to Him? If God is drawing you to Jesus, if you're being drawn to follow Jesus, will you offer your life in consecration and surrender?

See, listen, discipleship is critical because we are, this is a little bit more commentary

Than it is expository here. This is, like I said, it's going to take many different forms here. Discipleship is critical because we are always, always being formed.

See, it's not, like I said, it's not just about learning more truth, but by being formed by the life and person of Jesus Himself.

Contemporary pastor here, many are familiar with him, John Mark Comer says this, "If we are not intentionally being formed by Jesus Himself, then it is highly likely that we're unintentionally being formed by someone or something else."

If we are not intentionally allowing Jesus to form our lives, then it is highly likely that we are unintentionally being formed by something else. We are being formed by our culture. We are being formed by our habits. We are being formed by our desires. We are being formed by consumerism. We are being formed by busyness. We're being formed even by comfort. We are being formed. And if these things shape us more than Jesus shapes us, we become shaped away from Him rather than towards Him. And listen, we do not drift in good directions.

Left to our own unintentionally of formation, we will be formed towards darkness and hardness and the world rather than Christ. See, the truth of the matter is, is that you are being formed. I'm not being, like, I think for myself. Yeah, everyone says that, so you obviously don't.

Right? I'm independent. I have my own opinions and preferences. No, no, you don't. You are a product of what you have allowed your eyes, your mind, and your attention to gaze on for too long.

Show me your social media feed and I'll show you exactly what you believe. Right?

The question is not whether or not you are being formed. The question is, what are you being formed by and who are you becoming in the process?

What exactly is it that is forming you now? What are the things that develop your heart more than anything else?

What are the places, the people, the voices? What are the mediums or the means that you are most often formed? Where do you see your heart change the most? Where do you see your mind change? What do you see affect your speech the most? What is forming you? See, it's our contention, my contention, that Jesus' great commission in Matthew chapter 28 is the invitation to be formed by Jesus so that you can live like him, love like him, and serve like him.

Much of formation is also what we're going to call this year counterformation, or consider as counterformation. Our culture is a formation machine.

It is a formation machine. It is purpose built to transform you into happy little consumers, followers, and ideologues. It is so good at it.

We must recognize the power of formation that exists in our culture and intentionally engage in practices that counterform us away from the world and into the kingdom of God.

The church and all of Christian life must have a significant counter practice, a set of habits, rhythms, and community that intentionally undo what the world has formed and reform in us the likeness of Christ.

Spiritual disciplines, things like prayer, and fasting, and Sabbath, and communal life, and generosity are not merely duties of the Christian faith, but counter rituals that form us spiritually in the opposite direction of worldly formation, and we must take them seriously.

This should present in our lives, listen if you want to take this seriously, this should present in your life as an active rejection of all things that deform the image of Christ in you or conform you to patterns, habits, or affections of the world.

When you are living in an echo chamber of the world, the response of the disciple that becomes informed of this reality should say, "I now reject all that has been forming me into the person that looks less like Christ today than I look like tomorrow, yesterday."

Listen, I don't want to play the grumpy old man. I don't want to play the grumpy old man that thinks that technology is ruining our minds and our culture, but it is.

It's become difficult for me even to hold my tongue in a pastoral and or prophetic way often. Social media, podcasts, shorts, reels, TikToks, whatever, listen, it has made us lazy in our discipleship to Jesus.

And the enemy has snuck in and has formed you, formed us, formed you and your beliefs and your thoughts and your theology and your ideologies to a worldly algorithm that has you trapped in an echo chamber of your own unbreakable opinions. I am clearly right about this thing. There is absolutely no information whatsoever that I could possibly encounter that would change my mind upon this, correct? You're right, because you have so fully hardened your heart to the algorithm of the world that not even the word of God can break through it anymore.

We stand in danger. This is probably the most pervasive form of worldly formation that exists.

We must actively pursue counterformation if we hope to break free from its grasp. Last question that I'll leave us with, any question for prayer? Will you follow him?

Will you follow him? Will you let God's word break the commitments that your flesh has made with the world?

Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. Will you let God's word break off the commitments that you have made with the world to offer your body to it and its desires? Will you allow God's word to break the patterns of your mind and to transform it?

And by God's mercy, will you let Jesus renew you as you follow him? Now, all of this is to say, like I'm gonna close here with a worship team, you can come back up right now. All of this is to say, last year,

Last year, we had two main focus of our year. It was experiencing the presence of God through prayer and Sabbath, all right? This year, we're gonna be pursuing radical forms of discipleship, formation and counterformation. And what you will see and experience by God's grace and by God's mercy and our very best efforts is ways in which staff, pastors, leadership team, ministry leaders are working to create and to develop systems, structures, strategies and pathways for you to experience transformation through discipleship to Christ. And so that those who are not yet here in this room, but that we believe and are praying that God is working on their hearts right now here, right now, even right now, right? We'll find that this is a place where they can come and meet Jesus and their life could be transformed through faith in him. Their minds can be transformed through his word and they can find a counter-formational life through the following of Jesus. Next week, I'm gonna share with you kind of like four pillars of communal life or of conduit. Like what are, if we were to build everything on four pillars, what would we build them on and why and what does that look like? And then in the following weeks,

Even after that, we're gonna get even a little bit more uber practical about how we see and understand that all of these things we've talked about this week, last week, the following, the coming week, how we see these things kind of trickling down into the life of our church and our leadership and even our physical space, right? As most weeks we're fighting for parking spots and we're fighting for places to sit and we're, not really, but you know what I'm saying, like how does all of that inform what we're gonna be doing and believing? So let me pray for us and we'll go back into worship. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you, Lord.

Thank you for being our Lord. Our desire, Jesus, is to follow you. To be formed to you.

To reject all of the ways in which we have seen and experienced the world forming us.

Lord, we reject anything that stands in way of our complete consecration to you. Like Paul said in 2 Corinthians, we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take every captive thought and make it obedient to Jesus Christ. Lord, that's what we want. To demolish every argument and pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of you. Lord, we take every thought captive,

Every attempt of the world to form us and we make it obedient to Christ. Lord, would you make us this year a body of believers who is being transformed more and more each day to live like Jesus, to love like Jesus, and to serve like Jesus in his name we pray. Amen. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all of the saints to grasp how high and how long and how high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Condo, you are loved. Have a great week. We'll see you next time.