There’s a pull in all of us to take the kind of strength the world respects—talk tough, take no prisoners, own the other side—and call that faithfulness. Does the way we fight for truth actually looks anything like Jesus?
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Uh-oh. Well, if you heard what I said last week, or if you got our newsletter this morning—which I don’t send out very often, but I sent one out this morning—you might be thinking, but that doesn’t look like Jim Crenning. Well, we need to… Yeah, just a little bit. You know, just something new for the New Year.
We need to be praying for our brother Jim. He has a nasty stomach bug. Those are never pleasant. And so he was preparing to share our New Year’s Eve message with us but called me this morning and said he couldn’t hold food down, and so here I am. He is going to share that message. We’re doing a little switcheroo. We’re going to actually do our steadfast message, our Monday night message tonight. Let’s just pretend it’s Monday night, and we’re all live streaming tonight. And then tomorrow night on steadfast, we will hear Jim’s message that he was going to preach tonight. So we’re just swapping the two days.
Which means we’re picking up in our series that goes along with 12 Days of Christmas. We are going through this year the fruit of the Spirit and how those gifts that God enables us to give out to others are there, and we take the joy of Christmas, and we give it out to everyone else throughout the year. So if you haven’t already, you can download that devotional at littlehills.church/devotional. And tonight we’re going to look at Days 7 and 8 of that. It starts on Christmas Day, 12 Days of Christmas, if you were wondering, and so it starts then, and then we go through.
As we think about that, we’re going to think about two really important aspects of how we reflect the joy of Christmas to other people. We’re going to think about faithfulness, which is today’s aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, and we’re going to think about gentleness, which is tomorrow’s. And these are challenges, I believe, for all of us. We all are going to experience times where we struggle to properly show gentleness, and we’re all going to experience times where we struggle to properly show faithfulness. Some of us might be better at one and worse at another.
But as we look at them, and they’re right tucked there together as we think about what God brings out in our lives, I think what we start to see is, wait, this is a gift set. It goes together. And the one enables the other, and vice versa. They’re together to enable us to be whom it is that God has called us to be.
So let’s go ahead and pray that God would guide us tonight. We’ll also pray for Jim and the others in our church who are sick, and then we will jump into God’s Word. Let’s pray.
Father, we do pray for those who are ill tonight. We pray for Carolyn, we pray for Jim, we pray for Hayden. Lord, would you provide healing? This winter has clearly been a rough winter already, Lord, and we pray that you would help us to be all healthy in the new year, that you would protect us and you’d protect this church, and that you would continue to enable us to do your work, even as we all face the different illnesses that go around.
And Lord, most of all, we pray that you’d help us with the illness of sin. Because even as we receive your forgiveness, we still struggle to show faithfulness. We still struggle to show gentleness. We find, as we were thinking about in yesterday’s devotional reading, how instead of showing goodness and generosity, what do we do? We deteriorate the creation. And Lord, would you help us to instead be those who, by your strength, build it up. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Has anyone here gone bowling in recent times? I’m not raising my hand because I haven’t. How many years has it been? Five, six years? And before that, it had been like 20. I don’t bowl very often. But when I do, I don’t bowl very well.
However, there is a way. I found a trick. You know you can go online, you can find one weird trick to do this or that. Well, I know the trick to doing a just amazing job bowling. You just need to get those bumpers put in, right? You put the bumpers in the gutters, and you’re golden. Put those right in. Yeah, I remember the only time I ever got to bowl with bumpers was we had a kindergarten class field trip to the bowling alley. And I think they didn’t want everyone in the class crying, so they put the bumpers in. Because it’s really depressing when every time you throw the ball, what does it do? It goes off into the one gutter or the other gutter. It’s just like, oh, come on. Anyway, so they put the gutters in.
This game isn’t that hard. You just throw, and it bounces off the little gutter guard and right into the pins. Perfect, right? But you take those out, and suddenly it’s much, much harder.
What are you going to do if you’re a bowling purist? Are you going to say, well, I want the bumpers in because I can do so much better with it? No, you’re going to say part of the point of the game is that it needs to be harder. It needs to be the real game. We don’t want the game that’s just easy. Well, maybe we do. I don’t think we have any bowling aficionados here, so maybe you’re thinking, what are you talking about, Tim? Put in those bumpers. I like it that way. No? Okay. We do have at least one purist here.
Now, I did try to improve my game by playing Wii bowling, and I hurt my shoulder that way, so I don’t think I’ll do that anymore either. Needless to say, bowling and I have some issues. But the key thing is, what makes it a real game? Well, you need the challenge, right? That’s why you need the challenge. You have to know how to throw the ball. You need the gutters. You don’t want the bumpers in because you need the real game. The question is, in life, what is the real game? And in faithfulness, what is the real game?
And in our present moment, much like the time that Paul is writing to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians, the real game is a matter of debate. And some of the people that are opposing Paul have said, you know, Paul, you’re too gentle. You’re always putting those bumpers in. You’re not playing the real game of faith, Paul. You need to get serious. And they’re saying to the people that have been listening to Paul, you know, that Paul fellow, he’s a guy that bowls with bumpers. You don’t want to listen to him. Listen to the people who are playing the real game because that’s where it’s at. That’s what Paul is going to address here.
And you might say, well, why are we going to talk about that the week after Christmas? This is Christmas Sunday. Shouldn’t we be joyful? Well, as we are going through the fruit of the Spirit, it’s notable that the word gentleness that Paul uses here is the same one that he uses when talking about the fruit of the Spirit. When Paul talks about his own attitude towards the Corinthians, he refers to himself as someone who wants to treat them gently. And I believe very much Paul is thinking in the terms of the fruit of the Spirit because here’s something we know about the Corinthians. The Corinthians are difficult people.
So when Paul talks about gentleness, when he talks about the fruit of the Spirit coming out like that, and you’re thinking, well, I already know what I’m going to say to this sermon. Yeah, gentleness is good unless you deal with people like the people I know. You deal with the people I know. You don’t need to be gentle because those people—if Paul were addressing those people—well, Paul was addressing those people. In Galatians, Paul was addressing those people. In the letters to the Corinthians, Paul was addressing those kinds of people, the difficult people, people like us. And so when he talks about gentleness, that’s what he has in mind.
And so when we think about how we take Christmas joy out—that’s the theme of this series that we’re doing on Monday nights—how do we spread joy? A key part of that is to understand what the Bible means by gentleness and faithfulness because then that’s going to affect how we share that joy with people in this world. And let’s get started. Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 10, verse 1—
And speaking of someone should be gentle on me, I left my remote control. Jackie? Thank you, Jackie. Yes.
I, Paul, myself, entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away.
Paul says, you know, I know what you guys are hearing. But yeah, Paul talks a really good game. He writes all these letters, and he gets into the theological point, and he says we’re wrong when we’re not holding to the things we’re supposed to hold to. But look when he comes. He’s just this big soft teddy bear. He’s wimpy.
There’s actually a ministry that has a big online following that made its whole theme of November not being wimpy. And it appeals. Now, most of us like when people are gentle towards us, but there’s also a great appeal, I believe, for almost all of us to people who are not. There’s a draw to authority, something that we do as human beings. We might rebel against authority, but then what do we do? We recruit someone to be the authority and rebelling against the authority. We like authority, and sometimes we like to be the authority. And sometimes we like to be that authority, but we certainly like authority structure.
And so even as we rebel, even as we reject certain authority, whether it’s a political authority or authority at work or at school, whatever it might be, we still want that. How do we know that? Well, because we keep going back to it. What do you see oftentimes? You see a country, they’ll be on the news, they’re having a revolution against some tyrannical government. They overthrow the government, and what do they do? They appoint a new tyrannical leader. Why? Because they’re looking for a new authority. They get rid of the bad guy, and then we need someone to tell us what to do.
We talk about that in all sorts of ways, about having authority. Sometimes it might be the underdog that’s going to speak authoritatively. We have all these phrases that we use in our culture, like, I’m going to tell my truth now. What do we mean when we say that? Well, we mean, I’m going to say what I believe is right. Usually means don’t bother me with facts because it doesn’t matter. I know this is right. I’m going to tell my truth, and you are going to listen to my truth. Speaking with authority. Maybe we’ll speak truth to power. Maybe we’ll own the other side.
What are we talking about? We’re talking about speaking authoritatively. We’re talking about not speaking meekly, not speaking gently, but setting the people who are wrong in their place. Paul here, as he’s writing, he’s also looking to set people who are wrong in their place, and yet, even as he does so, he talks about his desire to arrive in Corinth as someone who comes gently.
Paul doesn’t desire to come and have a reckoning. Paul doesn’t want to come and say, okay, now let’s humiliate my enemies. Paul wants the people who oppose him to come and see the truth so that there isn’t any of that at all.
Why would Paul be that way? Because Jesus was that way, too. Think about what we were talking about last week. This is where we get back to Christmas here. What did Jesus do when he came into the world? He came as a baby in a manger with no authority, no armies. Yes, he had all the authority in the world, but he didn’t represent it. He didn’t enforce it against the people that opposed him. As he was teaching, and people grumbled and mumbled and told lies about him, what did he do? He could have just said—he didn’t even have to say anything. He could have just thought it, right? Just kill them all. Down. They’re done. Bring down fire from heaven. Open the earth up. What did he do? He spoke to them. He corrected them. He called them to himself.
Sometimes today, I think, what we think of as gentleness is the idea of being a pushover. Whatever. I’m not going to hold any firm opinions. Jesus held firm opinions, but Jesus came gently. And Paul could be strong. He wrote strong, strong things. We often soften the way he writes them when we translate them into English because they’re so strong they would make us uncomfortable. But he wanted to come gently.
That ministry I mentioned—I’m not going to mention it by name—but there are a bunch of ministries you can find that have been on the quest for biblical manhood. And the interesting thing about the quest for biblical manhood is that it usually involves a lot of plaid. Nothing wrong with plaid if you like to wear plaid. But it involves a lot of plaid. Yeah, David. See, David has found it. Yeah. David has found it.
Okay, so all we need to do, guys, if you want to—uh-oh, sorry, Ellie. Guys, if you want to find the ultimate goal of biblical manhood, just go to Sam’s and get some plaid. We’re golden.
No, what also accompanies that? Well, all kinds of things. Like this ministry that I was referring to, they put out videos where the guy was shooting off flamethrowers and drinking hard liquor and so on with the idea of somehow conveying he was a manly man by doing it. And often that means not taking any prisoners, but in other words, someone opposes you and what you’re saying is the truth, you know, get rid of them. Be done with them. That’s what they’re conveying is, okay, now we need a world of manly Christians.
Paul doesn’t fit that. Jesus doesn’t fit that. Because here’s the thing, when I see people talk about that, what they usually mean is how can we look like what is strong in the world? And we can name off things. Maybe it’s having big weaponry. Maybe it’s talking tough talk. Maybe it’s using less refined language to show that you can. Maybe it’s being violent. Maybe it’s really owning the other side on Twitter, X, whatever it is. You know, it’s those sorts of things. That’s what the world says. This shows toughness. If you can insult people, if you can mock people, oh, now you’re tough.
Now Paul, Paul could be sarcastic. Jesus could be sarcastic. But it doesn’t dominate them. A lot of the people we elevate today, their dominating feature is their sarcasm and their mocking nature and the way they speak about people that is uncharitable and unkind. Let’s be very clear. This is not of God. It’s wicked. And Christians should have nothing to do with it. And yet we find it so appealing because we’re just drawn in to the fact that they speak with authority. And we have this messed up notion of what authority is.
Now you can be a very biblical manly man and wear a plaid, but you don’t have to. You can wear a snowman sweater. You can wear a hoodie. You can wear a nice dress shirt. And likewise for the ladies here, you can be a biblical lady. I haven’t seen the equivalent movement, like women with flamethrowers in the church or something. Maybe that’s coming. I don’t know.
Essential oils. You don’t have to have essential oils to be biblical. It all comes down to actually modeling after Jesus, looking like Jesus. What are we thinking about? We’re thinking about what Jesus gave us on Christmas Day—that he came into the world. If we want to look like Christians, if we want to be godly men and women, what do we want to look like? We want to look like Jesus. And every time that we move to what the world says is authority, every time we say, I’m going to reject gentleness in this case because I know that I’m not going to have authority in the world if I look gentle. What are we falling into? Well, we’re falling into the problem that we’re talking about in day seven of our journey through the fruit of the Spirit. We’re falling into the trap of being unfaithful.
Because here’s the thing. When we speak in a way that is unloving, when we speak and we don’t represent Jesus, when we act and we don’t represent Jesus, we are being unfaithful, no matter how much we think we’re defending.
One of the things that we’re reminded of during the pandemic—I’ve mentioned this before, but it continues to strike me when I think about this church. This church formed when we couldn’t meet. And I’ve heard people say, well, it wasn’t really a gathering of God’s people because it couldn’t meet. And I challenge anyone who would say that to actually look at the people of this church and how God has brought this body together and say that, and actually look at what God’s doing here.
Now, it’s good that we are meeting in person. I’m glad that we’re here in person. I’m glad that our online family joins us live so that we’re all together at the same time, and it’s not just we’re going and downloading some videos and digesting them on our own times table all the time.
But I think a lot of what we associate with having authority as a church was a church building. And even sometimes when people find out where we are, oh, you’re not in a church building, you’re just in a strip mall. Well, yeah, but the authority isn’t how big the steeple is or how impressive the worship center is with high-tech sound or anything else. The authority is God’s word. The authority is Jesus working in the church, the Holy Spirit being there. That’s what gives us our life’s blood. There’s nothing else.
And when that was all stripped away and suddenly we couldn’t be together, we had to actually reckon with where is the real authority. And here’s what we need God to do. We need him to strip away all the times we grab onto the authority structures of the world, the harshness of the world, and have God also show us where that isn’t where we find our authority. And that’s what Paul is talking about here. But all we really need to do is look at the baby in the manger and say, if that’s true authority, if that’s how you save the entire world, then why do I think I need to do something different simply to live faithfully?
Now, the danger there, and some people will say this—I’m not saying anything unique, but some people will say this—and what they mean is, I don’t ever want to stand up for anything that’s right. I’m just going to say everything is right because that’s gentle. And that’s why I said faithfulness and gentleness go together. Take a look at verses 2 to 5 of 2 Corinthians 10. Paul says,
I beg of you that when I am present, I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against someone who suspects us of walking according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.
I like what one commentator said in reflecting on this. When we think about how we’re going to interact with other people—and that’s a great thing to do on New Year’s Eve is we think about the whole year ahead and everyone we’re going to interact with—the commentator said in relation to what Paul is saying here, he’s being very clear. When he talks about gentleness, he’s not talking about a condescending softness. What does that mean? Well, if you think about it, sometimes, I think a lot of times, we think that we can be gentle by just acting like the differences don’t matter, like the problems don’t matter, like the things we do wrong or someone else does wrong don’t matter.
That really is condescending. We’re looking down at the other people that we’re telling to be gentle in those cases and saying, you can’t handle the real stuff, so let’s go ahead and be gentle. Let’s have the baby toys. That’s not what Paul is saying here either. He’s calling them to actually turn back to the truth, to actually do what he’s taught them to do, to actually be faithful to Jesus because what he wants them to understand is that he wants to have gentleness towards them, but there’s actually something at stake here that matters, and they need to hold to that. We need to hold to that.
Listening to different Christmas playlists over the Christmas season—I love doing that. I’m still doing that, and yes, I’m going to keep doing that for a while longer. It’s not even Epiphany yet. Come on. We need to listen to more Christmas music. Anyway, I’ll hold boldly to that.
But listening, I was listening to one song. I hadn’t listened to it closely before. It’s a newer song. It’s not a particularly great song, but one of the things it does—it lists off, most of it’s about Christmas—but then it lists off a bunch of other holidays that fall in the approximate same time of the year that are of different religions and cultures and says, however you say it, they’re all the same thing.
What struck me there wasn’t just me as a Christian wanting to say, no, Christmas is different. I thought, the only person who would say that is someone who doesn’t actually believe in any of it. Because what you’re saying is none of the things that any of them claim, none of the things that are claimed about any of the holidays that different religions observe has any true content to it that’s different than any other.
They’re not all the same. Now, Jesus himself, we can find in scripture, observed Hanukkah, for example. Hanukkah’s in that song. Nothing wrong with observing Hanukkah. Hanukkah isn’t about Jesus’ birth, though. And Christmas isn’t about keeping the oil burning in the temple for a week. They’re different holidays. And yes, because Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, yes, because he was raised up as the descendant of David, absolutely, when we look back and we look at what happened when God preserved the people in the past before Jesus, what do we say? Yes, it is of God, but it’s not the same thing. It’s a different day.
It’s as absurd as if I walked up to one of you and referred to someone else’s birthday and said, you know, they’re all the same. No, I wasn’t born on that day. It’s not the same. It’s condescending. And Paul wants to treat the Corinthians better than that. He’s not going to claim that everything’s the same. He wants to be gentle, but he wants to respect them. He wants to be gentle, but say, you deserve to actually wrestle with the truth. Because in a weird sense, think about how harsh it is to say to someone, you’re not smart enough to understand the differences. It’s all basically the same. Or I’m not part of—I don’t observe that holiday, but I’m going to tell you it’s basically the same as the other holidays. It doesn’t matter.
And that might seem extreme in a way, but we do that a lot of times. When we wrestle into pursuit of gentleness, we end up thinking, well, I’m not going to actually say what is true because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. And I can say I am guilty of this. I don’t like confronting. I don’t like speaking when I know I’m going to say something that people don’t want to hear. And I struggle with this a lot, and I have struggled with this a lot.
What’s the temptation? Paul could have here said, you know, I want to come to you gently, so I’m going to say, yeah, those people are distorting the gospel of Jesus. Yes, you’re not living in a way that’s pleasing to the Lord, but you know what? God loves you. Just go about your business. It doesn’t matter. Because I just want to come, and we’ll have a nice time together, and it’ll be great.
But Paul didn’t think so little of the Corinthians to say that. Paul, because he wants to be gentle towards them, Paul, because he actually loves them, is going to tell them enough of the truth to say, you’re wrong on this. That’s something sometimes I struggle with when I’m on the receiving end. I think all of us do, is to hear sometimes when we are told that we’re wrong, it’s not because people don’t love us.
I don’t know that the people reading Paul’s letter when they first read it thought, oh, this is like a Christmas card. I love opening this. I wish Paul would send this more often. No, they were thinking, oh. Okay, what’s next? I don’t know if I want to know.
But here’s the thing. Paul loves them. And here’s the thing I believe as they read it. When Paul said, I want to come to you with gentleness, they’re not hearing a rhetorical device that maybe Paul is deploying to somehow soften himself. No, they know. Paul wants to just be here and love us because he actually has been here and he’s loved us. And because of that, when he’s speaking boldly, he’s speaking boldly in gentleness.
That’s what we see over and over again with Jesus. Jesus would tell people when they were wrong, but he told them they were wrong with a desire to restore. He told them they were wrong with a desire for healing. He told them they were wrong so that they could know him.
And here’s the challenge when we decide, gentleness isn’t for me. I’m going to just be bold. I am going to be prophetic. I am going to find that authority structure and I’m going to hold to it so that no one can accuse me of being faithless. I am going to be faithful.
Here’s the problem with that. If we aren’t living like Jesus, if we aren’t acting like Jesus, if we aren’t loving other people like Jesus, then we’re not being faithful. We’ve lost the battle before we even started it.
Paul can do otherwise for the reasons he lists here as he goes through this chapter. He says here that he’s not fighting a war with flesh. Yes, he walks in the flesh, he says.
Verse 5. Verse 3, rather. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. Yes, I’m a human being, he says. Yes, I have flaws. Yes, there’s problems and I struggle.
And I have to believe as Paul’s writing this and saying, I’d like to be gentle that Paul is writing this thinking this is the last thing I want to do. I love these people. But Paul’s speaking what he knows is true—that they need to hear. He’s speaking it to restore them for further gentleness. He’s speaking it in a way that’s intended not to wound but to restore. He’s speaking it because he loves them.
That’s what Jesus modeled. So here’s the question. Are we having the mind of Christ in what we do?
And this is, as I was preparing the devotional a few weeks ago that we’re going through, it struck me this is the heart of what we need to, I believe, be challenged as Christians, as the church, especially I think this is a struggle for us as the church in the United States right now as we go into 2024.
Are we going to trust that the battle is a spiritual battle and so it’s won and lost not because of how clever we are or how harsh we are or how big a flamethrower we can hold, but it’s won and lost only in the power of God. That’s the only thing that’s going to win it.
And so a little baby in a manger can defeat the utter powers of hell and our best, most clever, most harsh, most strong, most brilliant, most well-populated and spread and broadcast and published stuff will fall flat because we’re battling with human weapons against the spiritual.
Do we have Jesus’s mind?
Matthew chapter 11. Jesus says:
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Jesus says he’s gentle. He says we need to follow him. He says he’s the way, the truth, and the life. There’s no… He’s also the light, but that wasn’t what he said there. He says these things. He’s strong. He doesn’t just let people… He doesn’t run into people and say, well, just speak your truth and it happens to include me and I’m really happy about that. He doesn’t know your truth needs to be me because I am the truth. He says, as you follow me, I’m gentle.
And that’s genuine gentleness.
We have the stereotype of gentleness. We have the poor generic imitation gentleness. It’s the off-brand. The flavor’s kind of weird. Maybe it’s expired too. Kind of going a little rancid. And you think, well, this will do. Or, I don’t want anything to do with gentleness. It stinks.
Jesus’ gentleness is true gentleness. Gentleness woven with faithfulness. That we stand for what’s true. That we do what is true. We do what God’s called us to do. But we do it in such a way that it pains us when it hurts. It pains us…
Paul is not taking pleasure in hearing and saying the things that he’s saying. He’s not going to say more than he has to. And he desperately wants them to hear it so that he doesn’t have to say it anymore. He wants to arrive and this just be bygones. Be bygones. You’ve heard it. You’ve responded to it. God is working. And now let’s just go ahead and enjoy the fellowship that we have.
That’s what Paul wants. That’s what Jesus wants for us. That’s what he wants us to show to the world.
Are we showing to the world that if you turn and follow Jesus, you can be a part of us and we’re not going to beat you down for what you’ve done before? We’re not going to constantly remind you of that. Are we showing that, yes, you need to look like us and sound like us and have everything straight and then you can know Jesus and then we’ll accept you? Are we saying, no, Jesus, his yoke is light and gentle. And then we’re going to help each other to get through the things where we don’t fit? And that’s what he wants us to be and to do.
That’s the challenge for each of us as Christians. It’s the challenge for us as the church. It’s so much better than being bold but fading. And that’s what we find oftentimes.
When we muster that boldness and we get that metaphorical flamethrower out, we can run it for a time, but you know what? It runs out of fuel. And then we go back and we realize we haven’t been faithful.
I’m not sure that’s exactly how you hold a flamethrower, but we’ll go with it.
And when we replace all the truth, when we replace any kind of standard with just the softness of this weird off-brand gentleness of the world and we hand everybody baby toys when they desperately need something more, that’s not satisfying.
We need to be boldly like Jesus, boldly like him who came into the world, never flinched at speaking what was true, but loved people even when they were messed up.
His point wasn’t worldly power. It was rebuilding the world that he made. He could have done it our way, but he didn’t. He didn’t want us to do it that way either.
Boldness does not equal faithfulness any more than gentleness does by itself. We have to be faithful and we have to hold on to the truth. You put all that together, and what do you see? We should look like Jesus. We can make it that simple. We desire gentleness, but we remain faithful.
This is a lot easier said than done, isn’t it? I thought as we closed this study tonight, let’s just take a few moments in silent confession, because here’s something I can say boldly. I think probably all of us have had some thoughts and words and actions that have not been gentle. We’ve had thoughts and words and actions that have not been faithful.
But our gentle and loving God, our true God, will take those and let us set them before him, and he forgives them.
Let’s spend a few moments in silent confession now.
Lord, we struggle. Sometimes we want to be too bold. Sometimes we just want to put the bumpers up and not actually talk about anything hard. Sometimes we do both at the same time somehow. I don’t know how I do it, but I’ve managed to do that and I think that’s a trap we can fall in as well.
But Lord, what it really boils down to is we don’t model your love and your gentleness and we don’t model your faithfulness. We fail over and over again, and we ask that by the power of your Spirit, as you bring the fruit of the Spirit out in us, that you would help us to actually show those things, as you do.
And Lord, if there’s someone listening online or here that hasn’t yet experienced your gentleness, Lord, we pray also that tonight would be the night to feel that gentleness, to realize that the true fight is a spiritual battle and that you are the one, the only one, who can take that on, that our boldness is just going to burn out.
Our gentleness, when it’s just covering up the truth, is just going to go rotten. But when we actually follow you, we bring life to ourselves and to others because we’re not giving of ourselves, we’re giving your Spirit and your love.
Lord, would you help us to do that this coming year? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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