For the Sake of the Gospel by Karla DePriest & Phil DePriest December 7, 2018 ยท Centerpointe Apostolic Church (Murfreesboro, TN) Kind: teaching Scripture: Colossians 4:3-4 Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/karla-depriest-phil-depriest--for-the-sake-of-the-gospel Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page. Free to copy and share with attribution. ------------------------------------------------------------ Good morning. My name is Karla DePriest, and I'm Phil DePriest. Welcome to day 6 of 21 Days of Breakthrough Prayer with the Pentecostals of Murfreesboro and Like Bridge Church. I'm glad you could join us. We encourage you to go back and catch up on the previous days if you haven't already. I hope that you not only read today's devotion, but that you read every scripture reference, please. Today's writer is probably correct when he states that we love it when God answers our prayer in ways that make our life more pleasant or pain free. No, the concept behind the daily prayer in the Lord's Prayer has a lot to do with scriptural things, instead of like wholewheat, or why it wasn't like that. We do live in a culture, and I tend to embrace this, that has an aversion to suffering. It seeps into our prayer life, and we pray to escape suffering, rather than embrace discipleship. Yeah, and it's conditionally, reading the Scriptures will find that more often than not, they were praying for the spreading of the gospel, to further to the gospel. Say, that's true. And if we pray Bible prayers, we will pray for boldness, will pray for fearlessness, to deliver the gospel to those in our lives, you know, we love. We believe in the power of prayer to heal, to deliver, and to bless. But if we pray for healing, and folks are healed, all right, come on. If we pray for deliverance, and folks are delivered, yes. If we pray for blessings, and folks are blessed, come on. And yet the healed, the delivered, and the blessed are not given gospel truth. What have we accomplished? Come on now, we need to review our prayer journals. I did. And we need to make sure our prayers align with Bible prayers, prayers for the sake of the gospel. We should listen to ourselves pray as well. If this is our own words, we might be surprised already come out of their own mouths. That's true. I'd like to give a quick testimony, and a shout out to my Tuesday prayer ladies. Months ago, Maria Rogers requested prayer for a neighbor of hers that was seriously ill. The ladies prayed. We prayed not only for healing for Judy, but we prayed that Judy would receive the gospel. When God answered our healing prayer, Judy came, Judy repented, and Judy received the baptism of the Holy Ghost in a Sunday service. The next Tuesday, she was baptized in the name of Jesus. This is what happens when we pray for the sake of the gospel. In Colossians chapter 4, verses 3 and 4, Paul in prison asked the church to pray. He didn't ask them to pray that he would be released from prison. He asked that God would open a door for him to minister, to declare Christ. And in one translation it says, to make the gospel clear. Let's pray that prayer today, that we would carry the gospel. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you so much for this day, that you give us another day, that we can live in the joy life with you. We pray, Lord God, that you did help the gospel. We all know around us, it is a gospel people around us, they would be able to understand, to hear the words. We pray that your kingdom would come, and the lives of people all over this world today, because of our prayers. We pray this in Jesus name, amen. Thank you for joining us for day six, For the Sake of the Gospel. Take some time today to read the devotional and those scripture references, if you haven't already. Join us live again tomorrow at 7 a.m. for day 7, as we discuss The Secret Gospels. This great closet. Okay, have a good day.