Okay.
How are you guys doing?
Is that amazing?
Amazing sharing time, amazing what God is doing.
If you are with us for the first time, we are working our way through the last book of your Bible.
It's called the Revelation of John.
Some people call it the Apocalypse of Jesus.
And we're working our way through some letters that were written to seven churches.
Jesus told John to write to these seven churches that were alive and thriving,
sometimes well, sometimes not so well, in what is modern-day Turkey.
Remember the first church we talked about?
The first church was Ephesus.
We said that was a church that, though they did everything right,
they thought everything right, they did everything right, everything was perfect,
Jesus comes to them and says they have one thing wrong.
They lost their first love.
They lost their love for Christ.
Their Christian life had become dull.
It just became mechanical.
They just did, did, did, but they didn't realize why they were doing it.
They didn't love Christ.
And we talked about how you can know if your Christian life is becoming dull.
We said sometimes the first indication is that we lose joy.
We lose joy of what God's done in our life.
We lose joy of looking at the cross.
We lose joy of thinking about what we were and what we are now.
We said another way you could tell if you're losing perspective in your life is that you see people differently.
I mean, you see people more as a burden.
You see people more as a hassle.
You see people more as an inconvenience.
You're just so busy.
You need to be doing things.
And they come up and they want to talk and they're going to take your time.
And, you know, it's just such an inconvenience.
You know, you always hear the pastors or people in the church sometimes say, you know, the church would be great if it weren't for the people.
And that's one of those symbols that you're losing your joy.
You're losing your perspective.
Another thing might be that you have this better view of yourself than you really are.
You start to think of yourself as more important than you really are.
I remember the very first church that I served in, we were talking about serving and giving and tithing and how we can serve as a body.
And at the end of this time, one of the older members came up and he said, you know, I'm a chief executive of this huge company.
And nothing that you're showing me on this list of how I can serve, nothing here is worthy of my time.
Nothing is worthy of my time.
My time is so important.
There's nothing I can do for your church that's even worthy of that.
I just can't do anything.
And as a young guy, I looked at him and I didn't know what to say, right?
Right?
Because I didn't know all the game rules and how you acted and what you did in this church because I was new to this church.
And all I could say was, well, I'll pray for you.
But what I wanted to say was I'm so glad that Jesus doesn't say that about us.
You know, I'm so busy.
I'm in heaven.
I'm controlling everything.
And I just got to do all these things.
And it's just really inconvenient for me to come down and put myself on a cross.
Because anyway, you're going to forget about me next week and you're going to do something wrong.
I mean, that's what I wanted to say.
But I didn't say that.
And in this message, Jesus says to the church of Ephesus, come back.
Remember what it was like when I first loved you.
Remember what your relationship was like.
Come back.
The next church we talked about was last week.
We talked about the church of Smyrna.
And we said the church of Smyrna is a church of bitterness.
It's a church that was being crushed.
And all this persecution happened into it.
And Jesus just comes to this church and he just encourages them to hang in there.
He just says, hang in there.
I'm with you.
Hang in there.
It's okay.
Hang in there.
No matter what happens, it's not going to even compare to what you're going to receive when you get in heaven and glory.
People were being martyred for their faith.
It was interesting.
Last week after this sermon, I got this email from a church that we work with in America.
And this is the email.
Hey, we'd like for you to prayer request for Dan and Marilyn.
They're missionaries.
They're working in the areas that have been taken over by ISIS.
And they're asking that we shower them in prayer.
ISIS has taken over the town they're in today.
And he said that ISIS is systematically going house to house to all the Christians and asking the children to denounce Jesus.
He said so far no child has.
And so far all of them have been killed.
But not the parents.
They want the parents to watch.
The UN has withdrawn and the missionaries are on their own.
And the Western missionaries are determined to stick it out for the sake of the families that they have been ministering to, even if it means their own death.
They're very afraid now.
They have no idea how to begin ministering to those families who've lost their children.
Yet they ask us to pray that God would give them a voice and hands to serve and help.
Even so, they're begging for courage to live out their life in such dire circumstances.
And like the children, accept martyrdom if that is what they're called to do.
These brave parents have told their children, they went to each of their childs and said,
Do you think we should stay?
And all the children said, Yes, we have to stay.
We have to take care of these people.
What if that means you being killed?
And all the children said, We're willing to do that.
So please surround us in your prayers and hope and perseverance.
The next day, a message came.
We lost the city of Karakush.
It fell to ISIS, and now they are beheading children systematically.
This is a city we've been smuggling food to.
ISIS pushed back the Pursh Megha, and they are within 10 minutes of our outpost.
And our team is working diligently.
Thousands are flooding into the city to escape.
The UN has evacuated the site.
Our team is unmoved, and we'll stay.
Will you pray for us?
Smyrna was a church that was being crushed.
You know that there are more people who are going to be killed for their faith these 100 years
than all the other 100 years put together in the life of the church.
And we as God's people, we need to be praying for them.
He encourages Smyrna to hang in there, even amongst the bitterness,
because at the end you're going to receive the crown of life.
You'll meet Christ.
Today we come to the church of Pergamum, however you want to say it.
It's the church, most people would say, of worldliness.
It's the church of compromise.
It's the church of struggle.
The word actually means to be thoroughly married.
And the idea is that the church was so thoroughly integrated to the community and to the culture
that sometimes people didn't know what was Christian and what was Pergamum.
Pergamum was this amazing city.
It was an ancient city.
It was built on this massive mountain.
It was a strategic city.
It had great military value.
Alexander the Great took over the city, and he stored all his riches in there.
The historians told us that he put billions and billions of dollars of gold
from all the countries and nations that he conquered.
Pergamum was a royal city, and it was loyal to Rome.
It was one of the few cities that Rome had given the right to capital punishment.
Most of the time, if you wanted to practice capital punishment,
you had to send the person to Rome to be killed, especially if they were a Roman citizen.
But in Pergamum, that wasn't true.
They were so loyal that the Romans gave them the right to kill whoever they wanted.
The symbol of this power was a sword.
It was a two-edged sword.
It was used in Calvary.
It was very sharp.
Pergamum became this amazing center for intellectual discussion.
Eumenes, he's an inventor.
He probably invented parchment, or he perfected it.
And so he got this idea of how to write on animal skins.
And so Pergamum had this library.
It was the largest library in the world.
There were over 200,000 volumes in it.
It was so significant throughout history that when Anthony wanted to marry Cleopatra,
he took the library and he gave it to her as a wedding gift,
and she took it down to Alexandria.
It was a center of politics and religion.
On its hill behind the city as you walked into it,
on its hill there were 50 different temples to different gods.
There were 50 different gods you could worship in Pergamum.
There was Zeus and Dionysus and Venus and Esclepulos.
And almost every week, we're told in the calendar,
almost every week there were two or three days of holidays.
I mean, if you think Hong Kong has a lot of holidays,
Pergamum had holidays after holidays after holidays.
In the ancient world, you could choose whatever god you wanted to serve.
Did you know that?
If you wanted to follow a god, you basically chose the god you wanted to follow
based on your preferences, based on your ambitions,
based on your desires, based on what kind of life you wanted to live.
I mean, if you wanted pleasure, you served the god of Dionysus.
If you wanted power, you served Zeus.
If you wanted money, you served Morgan Stanley or J.P. Morgan.
If you wanted wealth or health, you served another god.
But here, you could serve almost any god you wanted, and it was amazing.
And what worship usually looked like was this,
because we talk about it a lot in Scripture.
You would walk into the temple.
You would pay your money.
You would bow before the idols.
They would give you an animal.
You would kill the animal.
You would give the animal to the priest.
The priest would take the animal, and he would cook it,
and you would have this massive meal.
And after this massive meal was cooked, everybody would eat.
You'd have this massive meal, and then the temple prostitutes would come out,
and you would just have sex with as many temple prostitutes as you could.
So you paid.
You bowed.
You killed.
You ate.
And you had sex.
And that's how you communed with God.
And over and over and over this happened,
and often these celebrations spread out from the temple,
and they took over the whole city.
Pergamum was also this medical center.
It was this amazing place where people would go,
because the spas and the baths, everybody believed,
had this healing power, and so people went there.
It was the home of Galen.
Galen, if you know anything about medicine,
Galen is probably the second most famous medical person in history.
The first one is Hippocrates.
You take the Hippocratic Oath.
But the second one is Galen, and Galen grew up there,
and he ended up being the physician for all of these Caesars afterwards.
Galen is the father of anatomy and physiology and pharmacology
and pathology and neurology.
He created all these things and thought through all these things.
So it was this amazing intellectual place.
In this place, there was this temple.
It was to the God of healing.
His name was Asclepius, A-S-C-L-E-P-I-E-U-S.
Say that fast, really quick times.
Asclepius.
He was a snake.
So today, when you go in the hospital and you see a pole and you see a snake on it,
that's Asclepius.
He's the God of healing.
So last night, we were driving home after Eric's party,
and we drove beside an ambulance.
And on the back door of the ambulance, what do you have?
You have Asclepius.
There's a little rod there with a little snake there.
So doesn't that make you feel good when you get in the ambulance?
You're in a car with a pagan god symbol on the back of it, right?
He's the God of healing.
And he was a snake.
And it's interesting, his history behind him, because a lot of people said that he came from the Bible.
In Numbers chapter 21, there's a story.
And the people of God are going through the desert and through the wilderness,
and they're complaining about, God, we have to eat this manna again.
We have to hit the rocks and get the water, and it's so bad.
Why don't we just go back to Egypt?
And God just says, okay.
And God causes all these snakes to come out of the ground.
And so all these snakes in Numbers 21 are biting the people, and the people are dying.
And they start, oh, God, we're so sorry.
Please forgive us.
We're sorry for complaining.
And they go to Moses and say, Moses, please help us.
We're perishing.
And so Moses goes to God, and he intercedes for God, to the people.
And God says, okay, this is what I want you to do.
I want to make a serpent, a bronze serpent, and stick it on a pole.
And lift it up high.
There's some foreshadowing here.
Who else was lifted up high?
And so whenever somebody's bit by a snake, you lift it up high, and they look up,
and they see that they're healed.
And so he did that, and the people were healed, and God relented on the snakes.
Well, a little later on in 2 Kings, I think, chapter 16, you go into the temple of God,
and you see this pole on the snake there.
And now the people aren't worshiping as a symbol of healing.
They're worshiping it as a God.
And as an example, what we do as people, God gives us these great things that we enjoy,
and we use, and they're for our benefits.
But all of a sudden, we start worshiping him, and they become gods in our life.
And so this was Asclepius.
He was a very interesting person.
This is what you did when you went into his temple.
You went into his temple, and the temple floor was covered with snakes.
So you're sick.
You want to be healed.
You go into the temple, and you lay down.
You lay down, and you go to sleep.
And as you go to sleep, all the snakes are just kind of crawling all over you.
And then when you wake up, you feel better, or you have this dream,
and they tell you how to get healed.
So I don't know how many of us could last that long,
but if you wanted to get healed, you went into this temple,
and you had all the snakes crawl all over you.
And this is what Pergamum was like.
Can you imagine living there?
It was a center, again, of emperor worship.
It was the first place where Caesar, who was alive,
Dominion was the Caesar,
and he was the first Caesar who said,
I'm not dead yet.
I'm still alive, but I still want you to call me God.
And I still want you to call me king.
And so wherever you walk in the houses,
you know, we had these little Buddha shrines
where we go into people's houses and buildings and like that.
They had little altars to Caesar,
and you'd walk by, and you'd pick up a little incense,
and you'd go, Caesar is Lord.
But he changed it.
He said he didn't want you to say Caesar is Lord.
He says he wants you to say Caesar is Lord and Savior.
And so everybody did that.
And so you just walked into buildings,
and you'd pick that up,
and you'd go, Kyrie, Caesar, Caesar is Lord, Caesar is Savior.
And that's what you did wherever you went.
And if you wanted to survive in that culture,
that's what you did.
And so we get to this story,
and now God has planted this little church, Pergamum.
And it's in the center of all of those things.
I mean, life is difficult.
It's pressure.
It's intense outward persecution,
and all of these things going on in them.
And he starts off in this verse,
and if you look in your Bible,
or if you look in your bulletin,
he says in verse 12, this is what he says.
To the angel of the church of Pergamum, write,
the one who has the sharp two-edged sword say this.
Now make a note to yourself.
Whenever God starts a letter off this way,
it's not a good thing.
It's not a good thing,
because a sharp two-edged sword was a symbol of authority,
and it was a symbol of judgment.
And what it meant was that judgment was coming to them.
And everybody who read this letter would have been feared.
They would have been afraid.
They would have been scared.
They'd go, okay, what's going on here?
Something bad is going to happen.
It'd be like, so in college,
I had this roommate who was not very sharp.
And so he drove a car around,
and it was his dad's car,
and he figured that if he didn't register it
with the campus police,
that he could just get as many tickets as he wanted,
and no one would ever know whose car it was.
And so he got about 55 tickets.
And one day, I wake up Saturday in the morning,
I get a phone call from his dad.
And his dad says,
tell my son I'm coming.
The dad.
The one who owns the car.
Well, you know right away what's going to happen, right?
He says, I'm the one who's coming.
I'm the one who owns the car.
And what happened was that his car was taken away
because the dad removed it.
And in that same way,
Jesus is telling the church that I'm coming,
and I'm bringing judgment.
What we're going to learn is that this church
struggled with this idea of judgment.
They struggled with it in their culture.
They didn't want to be judged by their peers.
They didn't want to be judged by their work.
They didn't want to be judged by the culture.
They didn't want to be judged by Rome.
And so they basically just didn't say anything.
And what Jesus says here is by choosing
to live like the world,
you choose to receive my judgment.
It's very interesting.
I mean, we live in a culture here, right, in Hong Kong,
where outward perception is everything.
Perception is everything.
Truth means nothing.
It's only how you perceive.
If you perceived okay, that's okay.
But what's really going on in your life
or in your heart means nothing.
And that's the same with the church of Pergamum.
They were struggling with things going on inside of them.
Now, Smyrna, they were struggling with pressure
and things hitting them from outside.
But Pergamum is struggling with things going on inside of them.
They're struggling with pressure
and people making poor choices
and not walking with God
and not fearing the Lord,
but they're fearing Caesar
and fearing their peers
and fearing their friends.
And Jesus says that if we do this,
we risk everything.
We risk judgment from Him.
So I want to start off our time
by asking you a question.
Who do you fear?
Who do you worry about being judged by?
Whose judgment concerns you?
I mean, is there anything in your life right now
that if God were to look into it,
He wouldn't be pleased?
Is there anything in your life right now
that you would be afraid
of showing your community group?
The people in Pergamum were.
And Jesus says,
I know what's going on in your life.
I know what's going on in your hearts.
I know that you struggle with being judged
by your family and your work
and your peers and your spouse
and your society and your culture
and everything is slamming you.
But what He says is,
what you should worry about more
is being judged by me.
I think we forget that sometimes, don't we?
I mean, often we forget
that we serve a holy God
who's righteous and who holds the sword.
And we live lives that are worried
about outward perception
and how people see us.
And what He says to the church of Pergamum,
what He says to us is,
be careful.
Be careful.
Verse 13, He goes on
and He gives this huge commendation to them.
He says, I know where you live.
I know that you live
in the middle of Satan's throne.
I mean, they lived in the worst place in the world.
I mean, it was terrible.
And I know that you're there
and I know that you're facing these persecutions
and I know that outwardly
things are hitting you
and I know that you're holding to my name.
And when He says that,
it means you're holding to God's character.
You're holding to His values.
You're holding to who He is.
The whole to His name.
The name was everything.
That's why we pray
and we say, in the name of Jesus.
It means God's will be done.
And He says, I know you're doing all these things.
You're holding up under the persecution.
You're holding on to my name.
Even in the midst of Antipas being killed.
Antipas is a really interesting story.
You don't read a lot about him in Scripture.
You see some inferences to him.
But he was a doctor.
And we're told that he was a doctor
and he had been sharing his faith with people illegally
and people were coming to Christ.
And all of a sudden,
the authorities came on him and said,
we want you to stop this.
And if you don't stop this
and if you don't burn the incense
and praise Caesar,
you're going to be killed.
And Antipas said, okay.
And so what they did was
they had this big cow made out of bronze
and they stuck him inside of it
and they started a fire underneath it
and they cooked him alive
for the sake of Jesus.
And Jesus says, I see these things.
I see your faith.
I know you're hanging in there.
You're doing all these things.
You're holding on to my name.
My reputation is important to you.
You're not allowing it to be soiled
or hurt or damaged.
You're walking with me.
You're not giving up.
That's amazing.
One of the early church fathers said this.
He said, deny the faith
is saying that we believe that life here,
life now,
is greater than what God has to offer me.
He said, to deny Christ
is to say that the world
can offer you something better than Jesus.
So maybe that's a question
we need to ask ourselves starting off.
Who can offer us the best thing?
Who's it worth serving?
The people of Pergamum
held strong with the outside pressure.
They held strong with the persecution.
They kept to God's name.
They held on to him.
But in verse 14,
Jesus says something very hard to them.
He says, but I have these things against you
and these things,
there are some of you
who are teaching of Balaam
and there are some of you
who are teaching of Nicholas.
And Balaam told Balak
to put a stumbling block
before the sons of Israel
to eat the things sacrificed to idols
and commit acts of immorality.
Now there's a lot of history here
but I'm just going to fly through it
and what I'm going to say,
this is what happened.
The people of God
were going through Israel.
They're going through the promised land
to Israel
and they were just this locust
and the king of Moab, Balaam,
comes to this prophet Balaam
who is well known.
I mean, God actually spoke to him.
You read in passages,
go back tonight
and read Numbers 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.
Fascinating passages.
And so he comes to Balaam
and he says,
I want you to curse God's people.
And God speaks to Balaam.
He said, what does that guy want?
There's some people coming in,
they're tearing up everything,
I want you to curse them.
And God says,
no, they're my people.
Don't curse them.
If you curse them,
you're in trouble.
And so Balaam goes
and he says,
you know, I can't do it,
I'm sorry,
and the people leave
and they come back
and we'll give you even more money.
And Balaam goes this,
even if you were to give me like,
oh, 10 million dollars,
I still couldn't do it.
You know what he's asking there.
He's asking for 10 million dollars
because that's his price.
That's where he wants
to get bought out on.
And so they bring Balaam in
and Balaam tries to curse
God's people and he can't.
And so what you see
after four times is
Balaam comes to Balak
and he says,
I can't curse God's people,
but I tell you what I can do.
If you want to make
God's people stumble,
this is what you do.
You go hire those Moabite girls,
they're really hot,
they're really good looking.
Hire them
and they're going to come
into the guys
and spend time with them
and hang out with them
and flirt with them.
And then after a while,
they're going to take
into a ceremony.
And in this ceremony,
they're going to bow a little
and eat some food
and then they're going to have
something that's going
to be amazing.
They're going to have
all these relationships.
And if you do this,
God's people's hearts
are going to fall away from him.
And you know what happens?
It works.
Balak hires the prostitutes,
the women come in
and they basically
take the people of God's hearts
away from God
and the people start
to serve other gods.
and what you see there
is that God's people
make this choice
and they make a choice
of saying,
I can serve God
but I can also serve
whoever.
I can do this
for Friday through Monday
but on Sunday,
I'm going to do this.
And so what you see
is that there's people
in the church
who basically have hearts
that are divided.
And the problem
that you see
in the church of Pergamum
is that when John
comes and he writes
to him is this,
the problem is
is the leaders
say nothing.
The leaders
say nothing.
The leaders
are so fearful
of what people
are going to say.
They're so fearful
of what people
are going to think.
They're so fearful
of looking bad
and seeming bad
and narrow-minded
and against the culture.
They say nothing.
And Jesus says,
you know,
that's really interesting
because if you don't
say something,
I'm going to have
to say something.
And I'm going to have
to come in
amidst the church
and remove all
those people
who are serving
two gods.
You see what that says?
Leaders had a choice
and they chose
not to follow God
because they wanted
to serve other things
and other idols
in their life.
In the church,
we call that
church discipline.
There's sometimes
things happen
amongst the people
of God
and the leaders
and the elders
are called to come in
and say,
hey, you know,
this isn't right.
This isn't good.
This isn't the way
we honor the Lord.
This isn't the way
we make God's name great.
This isn't the way
we do things.
But the people
in the church of Pergamum,
they didn't understand that
because they were
so caught up
in living like the world
around them
that their lives
looked no different
than the people
who were in the temple
burning the incense.
And Jesus says,
you can't do that.
I was a young pastor.
Someone came to me
and said,
hey, you know,
your music leader,
he's incredibly gifted,
but he's in this bar
and it's an alternative
lifestyle bar
and he's drinking
and he's getting drunk
and he's talking about
all these other things
and this person
wasn't even in the church.
And they said to me,
you know,
is that way the church
is supposed to act?
And I went to all
the other elders
and teachers.
I said,
so what do we do
about this?
And they said,
you know,
that's just a really hard call.
Maybe we shouldn't
do anything.
But I kept thinking
about this church.
I kept thinking
about God's honor
and God's grace.
And I'm not saying this
because I'm so great
because I've had people
do these same things
to me.
People loved me
so much
when they saw
that I was wandering,
they came and they grabbed me
and said,
what are you doing?
And so I went there
and I talked to that brother
and he talked about
what was going on
in his life
and I'll never forget
his words.
He said,
you know,
everyone knew
this was happening
but you're the only person
who ever loved me enough
to come and ask me
what's going on
in my life.
The church of Pergamum
was conflicted
and John is saying
don't be that way.
Serve the Lord.
Trust Him.
Love Him.
Take care of Him.
He ends the passage
in verse 17
with this promise.
This promise is
if you will do
these things,
if you'll honor me,
if you'll walk with me,
if you'll serve me,
I'll give you
secret hidden manna
and I'll give you
white stone.
All these things mean,
all they are
is their symbolism
and what the symbolism is
is their symbolism
for intimacy
with God.
A relationship
with God.
You know,
I think the problem
with us
and with Tobin,
I think the problem
with the church
of Smyrna,
of Pergamum,
I think maybe
the problem
with some of us
in Watermark
is this.
We come to Christ,
we're walking
with the Lord,
but in the back
of our mind
we wonder,
is God really good?
Is God really going
to take care of me?
Does God really know
my name?
Does He really have
a relationship with me?
And because we wonder
and we fear,
we gather things
around us.
We gather stuff.
We gather money.
We gather resources.
All of these things
we do,
just like the church
of Pergamum,
because we worried
if God was good enough,
was He really going
to take care of us?
And the way
the story ends,
Jesus says,
if you have any doubt
about that,
all you have to do
is look at the cross
and realize
what I've done for you.
Do I love you?
You bet I do.
Do I care for you?
You bet I do.
Am I going to feed you?
You bet I am.
Am I going to have
a relationship with you?
You know I will.
And John
is speaking
to this church
and He's speaking
to us
and He's asking us
to examine our hearts
and to see
who we're serving.
He's asking us
to know people
well enough
around us
so that when they
are falling away
and they're doing
things that they
shouldn't do,
that we can grab
John and say,
hey brother,
what are you doing
about this?
He's asking us
to care about
His name
more
than our name
because the passage
says that the world
is looking at us
and they want to see
is our God
really God?
Is He really good?
Can we trust Him?
The church of Pergamum.
It was a church
that struggled
with worldliness.
It was a church
that struggled
with different things
they wanted to have.
It was a church
that struggled
with compromise.
Ultimately,
it was a church
that struggled
with love
because they didn't
know God
loved them
as much as He does.
Father,
we thank You
for this day.
We thank You
for Your goodness
and Your faithfulness
in our life.
We thank You
for Your Word
that never changes.
We thank You
for these stories
of these churches,
some of them
long dead,
not existing.
If we were to go
back to Turkey today,
there are 74 million people
and only 2,400 Christians.
And we wonder,
we wonder why.
Father,
I pray for our church.
I pray that we would be
a church that wouldn't
love the world
more than we love You.
I pray that we would be
a church that understands
Your goodness,
that we can look
at the cross
whenever we have doubt
and confusion
and realize that You're there,
You care,
You're involved,
You know us,
You're walking with us.
Father,
I pray for those
in our church right now
who don't know You.
I pray as they hear
these words
and they take part
in this community
and they listen
to the music
that they would
ask questions.
I pray that You
would open their eyes
to Your Son,
Christ,
and they would realize
that out of all the gods,
He is the only true one.
He is the only one
that will sustain us.
He's the only one
that will know us
and be involved
in our lives.
He's the only one
that goes through
the hard times
and the persecution
and the pain
and the suffering.
He's the only one
worthy of our praise.
Father,
I pray for us
as a church
as we sit here
on the western side
of Hong Kong Island.
I pray that we would not
fear our bosses
and our jobs
and our work
and we wouldn't worry
about the judgment
that's the past
more than we worry
about Your judgment.
I pray for our hearts.
I pray for my heart.
I pray that You would
speak to us of areas
that we need to be
concerned of
I pray that we would
come before You
as Your people
and as You
encourage them
in verse 16
repent.
Repent.
Turn away.
Confess.
Confess that Jesus is Lord.
So Lord,
we come before You
and we just worship You.
We thank You
for Your Son.
We pray all these things
in His holy name.
Amen.