Hope Fuels Faith And Love | Pastor Will Hawk | January 4th, 2026

A man in chains asks for one thing: an open door for the word. From that surprising request, we follow Paul’s greeting to the Colossians into a sweeping vision that can reframe a whole week. We talk candidly about why trying to “be more patient” on a Tuesday often runs on fumes, how starting with the supremacy of Christ changes our reserves, and why hope laid up in heaven becomes fuel for faith and love on the ground.

We set the scene in Colossae: a church likely planted through Epaphras, growing but pressured by Gnostic whispers of “secret knowledge” and the lure of legalism. Those old currents have modern twins—spiritual shortcuts and algorithmic certainties that promise answers without wisdom. Against that, Paul centers us on Jesus: supreme over all, sufficient for us, and the true head of the church. From there, we explore calling beyond church walls. Whether you’re a teacher, engineer, parent, or retiree, your daily work can be received as God’s assignment to serve. Scripture threads this theme—from Joseph and Moses to Esther and Jeremiah—reminding us our placement isn’t momentum or accident, but sovereign timing.

Grace runs through everything. We unpack five streams—common, special, justifying, sanctifying, and persevering—and how they reshape ordinary choices. We also get practical: praying with coworkers, interceding for churches we pass, and remembering persecuted believers by name even when we can’t pronounce them. Finally, we linger over Paul’s triad: faith grows as we look back at God’s works, hope grows as we look forward to Christ’s future, and love grows as we look around at what God is doing today. The simple question remains: where do you forget to look—and how might hope refuel your faith and love this week?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Colossians chapter 1, verse 3. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you. Since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God and truth, just as you learned it from Epiphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. This is the word of the Lord.

Gospel Spread From Ephesus To Colossae

Threats: Gnosticism And Legalism

Modern Parallels To Secret Knowledge

Supremacy, Sufficiency, Christlike Living

Paul In Prison: A Door For The Word

Calling And Work As Worship

No Mistakes: God’s Sovereign Placement

Grace: Common To Persevering

Praying Beyond Proximity

Faith, Hope, Love: Where You Forget To Look

Communion And Personal Application

Will Hawk 1:34

Amen. Thank you. Now, it would have been written from prison while Paul was in there after this sort of harrowing journey to Romans that you would read about at the end of the book of Acts. But one of the things that I want you to note, and I mentioned this a moment ago before we uh jumped into that video and prayed for Pastor James and Harlem in that area there, is that Paul is writing to a church that he had never met. He doesn't have faces to when I when I am writing sermons, faces come to mind, situations come to mind, prayers come to mind. The prayers that you guys submit every week on the prayer cards in the aisle, they come to mind. Paul is coming into this blind. Well, blind it would be if the Holy Spirit wasn't in this and leading him. But Paul is writing to a church that was probably a church plant of one of the churches he planted. Now, if you look up here at the screen, I've got a small map for you to check out. And what you will notice, let me see if I can zoom in a little bit here. So you can see where Colossae is over here, down to the bottom. It's not a coastal city. Much of Paul's church planting was him sort of pond skipping around the Mediterranean and planting a number of churches. What likely happened was that the church that was planted in Ephesus was faithful, continued to grow, and this person that Paul writes about, you'll see it momentarily, called Epaphras, he was probably someone who was converted by the work that Paul did in Ephesus. Now, the distance from Ephesus to Colossae is approximately the same from Columbus to Atlanta. Except, imagine you can't hop on a delta. Imagine that there is no car for you to drive. So, as odd as it may seem, what you're looking at is an incredibly encouraging reality in the first century church, that the gospel has spread from these little churches around the Mediterranean all the way inland, approximately a hundred miles, simply by word of mouth and by the work of the Spirit. Now, in Colossians 1:7, you will read, if you guys want, I don't have this on the screen, but if you want to just look in your Bibles or in your Bible journals, Paul tells the church at Colossians, you learned it. He's responding to the uh he's speaking of the gospel there. You learned the gospel from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. And the concept here is the Colossians are doing great, but they do have some challenges. They're under a little bit of pressure. Now, I wanted you to get an idea of what it would have looked like. I mean, this is a beautiful landscape, an incredible place. In fact, you still standing today are some of the structures that would have been around in the days of the early church. We don't always get this, but you're able to see this here. Now, there were probably a number of issues going on around the early church in Colossians. But what was it that caused Paul to write this letter? Theologians argue, but the two things that sort of come to the surface are number one, uh, sort of this theological philosophical belief called Gnosticism. Uh I'll just give you two little highlights of Gnosticism. One was there was secret knowledge. That's important for what I'm about to say in a moment, that only certain, look at me when I say this because it's important for the only certain people had this secret knowledge. You were not able to figure things out on your own. So you needed this guide, this spiritual guide. Now, we're in a churchy world, but in their day, imagine more of a shaman. Imagine somebody who had this secret knowledge, and with that secret knowledge, they were able to help you or hurt you, depending on how your relationship with them went. Gnosticism also would have had this belief that everything physical, this physical world is tainted by evil, and you need to get as far away from it as you can. That's one reason we think Paul wrote it. The second reason was because there may have been this sort of shaman-like leader with a lot of charisma that was trying to convince the Colossians to be Jewish or to be more Jewish. Hey, I'm glad you have some Jesus. The Colossians were Gentiles, they were primarily non-Jews, and so it would have been like this charismatic figure who had a little bit of secret knowledge in depth, which would have been their folklore anyway, in Colossians, looking at them and saying, I'm glad you found Christ. But if you really want to know how to love him, how to serve him, you need to also adopt all of these Jewish practices as well. To make it simple, there was probably a leader who had bought into legalism, was going to make a set of rules. He was going to be the arbiter of those rules so that he could lead the people. And to that, Paul begins to write there is one head of the church. Who would that be? Jesus. Not even Paul himself. One of the things that is fascinating about Paul is he doesn't need the credit. He doesn't want the credit. He has done more than anybody in his day as far as a movement goes, but he does not need to be the one who sits on top of it so long as Jesus is. Now, tucked into this sort of folklore shamanistic belief was something called prayer to the angels. This is uh an old little amulet that was found. This one in particular, I think, is supposed to depict Solomon on a horse, throwing down, uh like overthrowing a demon. But it would have been very common at this area for them to have these little tokens and have numerous names of angels from the Old Testament. They they may have bought into this idea that we need older Jewish principles in addition to Jesus. And so they found these amulets that have Michael and Gabriel and different names almost as though that thing would ward off evil. Now, I give you all of this context, not because I love history, even though I do, not because I find it fascinating, even because I do, but because I want you to wrestle with this concept. When we hear about these things, it seems how do I say this without sounding overly arrogant? Those ideas seem beneath us. If you've been coming to church for any period of time, spiritualism and mysticism, it's something that you kind of see as early old age religion. But can I tell you, we in our culture have the same mythologies tucked in? We pick different things. We may not trust this spirit that we cannot see to give us secret knowledge. I'm not trying to be cutesy here, I'm being serious, but we will pull out our phones and we will trust an algorithm to give us secret knowledge and information and then not fact-check it. And it doesn't matter if it's chat or if it's what's Microsoft's version. Yeah. Or if it's just a Google search. We no longer check our sources. We no longer go back to the word. We just assume that there's an algorithm that has access to this secret knowledge and we are able to go and get it. I just want you to understand, nobody around here is probably gonna wear an amulet with an angel's name to help them make decisions in their future. But I'd be willing to bet there's a person on every pew that before you try to fix a carburetor, before you try to do anything in your life, before you try to put together a syllabus or anything else, you pull it out and you ask this thing for some secret knowledge to make your life a little bit easier. See, we we may not be spiritists and we may not have shamans and we may not wear amulets, but humans have never stopped trying to find answers for hard questions in an easy way. And Paul writes to the Colossians uniquely in this. That's why I go into the history. The Holy Spirit inspired Paul's writing. There's no doubt, this is God's word, not Paul's word, but his mind is fascinating. Paul's. And the more deeply you know Christ, the more you have the cure to every cultural cancer you will ever find. Let me show you what I mean. You're gonna get tired of seeing this slide probably in the weeks ahead, but I think this will be good for your growth and development as a Christian. For you to appreciate, by the way, this is Colossians summarized, the whole book. This is it summarized very succinctly. I don't often say this, I would write this down. I would make a note of this, and you may be thinking, well, that's just a bunch of theology. What am I supposed to do with this? Let me help you. To be able to appreciate this, I need you to do something though. I need you to agree that there is a coworker in your life that is difficult. All right. Don't look at them. Y'all probably go to church with them, some of you. Raise your hand if you actively have a coworker that is difficult. I know that not everybody will. Okay. Raise your hand if you have a child that can be difficult. Don't look at them. Don't look at them. Okay. I've probably got 90% of y'all between co-worker, a difficult co-worker and a difficult child. If you have neither of those things, just think of a difficult person. Now I'm gonna go with co-worker, okay? I'm making this up. All right? I'm gonna go. Thomas isn't even here, okay? He's never here, is he? He's uh leading a youth leader retreat at the moment. Here is what most of us do that is theologically foolish. Theologically foolish. Foolish as a Christian. We get to work on a Tuesday morning, we wake up on a Tuesday morning, we get home from a long day of work on a Tuesday afternoon, and we look at that coworker who is difficult, we look at that child who is difficult, and then we say, I want to live like Christ. I want to be patient and I want to be kind. I want to be prayerful. I want to see the Imago Day created in this person. I I don't want to just think about myself and how they make my life hard. And we look at the end of this and we say, I want to live like Christ. And in that moment, in that place, we try and we wonder why the reserves are so thin. You're patient once, and then something else happens, and you're like, Well, Lord, I tried, I gave it a shot. Okay? You forgive once, and then it happens again. Jesus, did you not see me pray for this? If you decide to be a Christian in your life, in the moment it happens, you have not given yourself much, much fuel in the tank. I'm not saying you can't do it. The Spirit of God will step in, he will give you away. But do you want to have a higher chance of success in being a believer? Go a step back, give it a little time, give it a little thought. What that means is on my way to work, I'm remembering Christ's sufficiency. Christ has been all patient, all kind, all good, all generous. He has been all of these things. He is sufficient for me. Now, when I open the door to work, now when I open the door to my home, I've got more fuel in the tank. Now, I will tell you there's an even better way. The better way is to start at the supremacy of Christ. Since, I almost said, if, since Christ rules today, sits on a throne today, overlooks this world today, has given you the spirit today, since he has done all of this. Are there any surprises in my Tuesday? I'm asking a question, non-retorical. Are there any surprises on your Tuesday? None. He is absolutely supreme. No coincidences occur. Not only can I walk into work saying, Christ, you reign, I will then say, Christ, you are sufficient for me in the reigning over your kingdom. And now I will try to live like Christ. Every you've got to try to work from left to right. And if you walk into a situation and you try Christ-like living, I am proud of you. That is a good thing. I just need you to know it's theologically foolish. You are you are showing up to a drag race with your fuel tank on low. That would actually work. You're showing up to a NASCAR race with your fuel tank on an F1 race. Let me be a little bit more culturally appropriate, with your fuel tank on low. It's just foolish. I'm not saying you can't finish a lap. I want you to, as Paul would say, finish the race well. So whenever possible, work from left to right. Because this is going to be our question for the month of January. Does the supremacy of Christ, not just Christ like living, not just Christ's ability to be sufficient, does his supremacy over all things reshape what you call a good week at work and at home? While we are reading this, here is what I hope you find. Jesus invading your non-Sunday moments. Jesus invading your non-prayer moments. Jesus invading your non-quiet time. This is Jesus showing up at your lunch table. This is Christ showing up at your drive to work. This is Christ showing up at the water cooler. That is what Colossians is going to be. So I put this question in front of you. Now, let's see who's been paying attention. Where is Paul sitting as he writes this letter? Bonus points at the camp store. One, two, three. He said, Where do you go, team? All right, I love it. He is in prison as he writes this. And this is nope. Nope. That isn't it. Why do I have that slide there? Oh, I know why. That's right. That's right. I'm good. I thought I put my slides in the wrong order. Okay. I'll go back one. I forgot my transition. All right. Where is Paul sitting? He's in prison. Here's my question. If you were sitting in prison, what would you want? If you were sitting in prison and somebody came to visit you, what would you want? I can tell you three things I would ask for. Number one, can you give me a little bit of comfort? Can you bring me something? That's the first thing I would probably ask for. I don't know much about prison. Everything I know about prison comes from documentaries and my wife listening to Ear Hustle, which two of you may know what that is. That's what I know about prison. And then the movies, which I don't credit. So I would want some level of comfort. Did you know the church provided comfort for Paul while he was in prison? But when Paul writes this letter, he doesn't ask for one comfort. Here is what he asks for. Perfectly timed on the slides. At the same time, pray also for us. This is Paul and Timothy both writing, that God may. He wants one thing from them, one little comfort. Would you pray for us that God would do something on our behalf while we're in prison? And do you know what Paul wants more than anything else? Pray that God would open to us a door for the word. Are you kidding me? Look, if I'm in prison, I want beef jerky. If I'm in prison, I want better food. If I'm in prison, I want a book to read. Here's what Paul's saying. Hey, it's really uncomfortable here. Would you pray that God would open a door for us to leave? Nope. He says, I want every opportunity possible to tell everyone here about the goodness of Jesus Christ. Do you know how unbelievable that is? Put yourself there. Put yourself in prison. By the way, you've been given a sentence and you don't know when it ends. Somebody finally shows up to care for you. And what do you ask for first and most? That God would open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison. Please don't miss this. I am in prison on account of the fact that Christ wants the mystery of his gospel to go to these people. Help me to make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. He doesn't ask for comfort. He doesn't ask them to help him pass the time. This is how it opens. If you're following along, this is verse one and two, the very beginning. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae, grace to you and peace from God our Father. He's not asking them to bring books so he can pass the time. He never asks them to put up money or a bribe so that he can get out, because he is here by the will of God. No mistake that I am in prison. You see, Paul may be in jail, but he's still working. How can Paul see that this situation, him being in prison, is not a setback, but a setup? I want that kind of faith. I want my worst day at work, my worst interaction with a child, my worst day as a dad or a parent or a pastor. I want to look at it and say, that is not a setback. Christ is setting something up. Can I have a vision to see what that may be? This is the hope that Paul has. How does he have it? Well, it's how he started his letter. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Now, this word apostle means something. We don't use it much in our day and age, but for them, an apostle was somebody who had encountered the resurrected Jesus. Did Paul encounter the resurrected Jesus? Explain. And we know Peter, James, and John, right? Like, how did Paul see Jesus resurrected? On the road to Damascus. That's an actually very big story in the canon of Scripture. Because to be an apostle, you needed to encounter the resurrected Jesus. In addition to seeing the resurrected Jesus, so you could be a witness of the resurrection, you needed to receive instruction from him personally and be an established leader at the church. Now, let me tell you something about life as a pastor in 2026. I get a W 2 from the church. We're a 501 tax-free organization. So far, the government is still allowing you to give money to the church in a tax-deductible way. Don't know how long that will go on. Seems like it's going to continue at least for the foreseeable future for now. When I turn in my W 2, do you know what I put as my job? Pastor, Reverend, something like that. Okay. Do you think when Paul turned in his W-2, he put apostle on it? Do you think Rome honored the title of pastor or apostle? Christians were considered a sect. They were considered this odd religious whatever. It would be like me putting cult leader on my W 2 and sending it to the government. Do you think they would recognize that? Right? Cult leader, if you would just tax deduct all of my stuff to show me some benefits, do you think they saw Paul as an apostle? Absolutely not. Why does that matter? Because he recognized his job came from Jesus, not from the government. His job was not given to him by an earthly boss, it was given to him by a heavenly father. Do you think your job is any different? You see, Paul writes this way because he realizes the calling God has placed on my life is unique, but it is not unique for God to place a call on a life. I'm going to give out two of these books next week. This is Timothy Keller's Every Good Endeavor. Keller puts it this way: our daily work can be a calling. Can be. Doesn't mean it will be. You have to choose for it to be. Whether you're a teacher, whether you're a doctor, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a stay-at-home mom, your daily work can be a calling only if it's received as God's assignment to serve others. And it doesn't matter what your job is, to include making donuts, because I just happened to make eye contact with Colt. It doesn't matter what your job is if you see it as a calling by God to serve people around you. This is not what Tim Keller would want you to see. It's what Paul would want you to see. Being a pastor is not being a varsity Christian. Being an elder is not being a varsity Christian. Being on church staff is not being a varsity Christian. If I was in the military, should Jesus have less of my heart than he does now? If I worked in the medical field, should Jesus have less of my enthusiasm than he has now? If I was in education, would Jesus be a smaller component of my life than he is now? I hope not. I hope instead I would say, Will an educator of Christ Jesus by the will of God? Will a soldier of Christ Jesus by the will of God. I put this slide up because I want you to put your name there. Only if you're a Christian, by the way. If you're not yet trusting in Christ, I don't want to get you too many steps ahead. But if you are a Christian, you have never realized this, you are walking around with less power than the Spirit of God wants you to have in the very places that he has sent you. Your name, your job by the will of God. And your name may have retired next to it. Retired by the will of God for Christ Jesus, my Lord. You see, Paul knew this was his job, and he mentions it a billion times. This is who I am. I'm an apostle of Christ Jesus. Romans, Corinthians, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Timothy, and Titus. This is who I am. It's who God knit me together to be, to He has called me to be. I want you to see that Paul was built for this. But I want you to see that you're built for this too. I apologize for the sizing on some of this, but I had to squeeze a lot of scripture into a small space. In Genesis, Joseph looks at the brothers who had thrown him into a pit, basically tossed him in the trash, and he said, What you meant for evil, God meant for good. Do you know how easy it would have been for Joseph to think that God had forgotten him? He chose not to. In Exodus, the Lord said, I've seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. Moses, come here, I will send you to Pharaoh. And he's like, Me? And God says, I am the one sending you. When you get to Jeremiah, the word of the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I consecrated you, I formed you, I knew you, I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations. Esther, who knows, Mordecai would say, if you have not been in this position at this time for such a time as this, that you would take care of God's people. And this is Paul speaking of his own reality in Galatians. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. Now you may look at this and say, Well, I don't know that I'm called to be a preacher. Some of you are, and you don't know it yet. Well, I don't know that I'm called to be a missionary. Some of you are, you just don't know it yet. But some of you will clock in on a Monday to Friday. And I want you to not only see this, here's what I really want you to see. What I really want you to see is Moses say, Who am I? I want you to realize God calls people who feel absolutely insufficient. I want you to see that Jeremiah says, I'm only a youth. God calls people who think they're too young for the job that He is calling them to. Esther says, I have not been called to. Let me get your eyes on this, especially those of you who clock in to a Monday to Friday that has nothing to do with like Bible work, or you're retired. Do you realize there are zero mistakes? You are not where you are because of educational momentum. I put all these years in, I may as well finish out the degree. I've already put all these years in, I may as well work to tenure. I I'm already in this field so deeply that to move out now would just be foolish. You believe, potentially, that it is momentum that has carried you here. It is not. It is the supremacy of Christ. And it's not just the supremacy of Christ, but his sufficiency that even when you doubt, like all of these people did, that God has an absolute plan for you exactly where you are. This is the grace of God. And Paul wants you to realize it. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, watch this. He is writing to the saints. Does that mean believers or unbelievers? Believers or unbelievers? Believers to the saints and the faithful brothers. Is he writing to believers or unbelievers? What is the first thing he wants to give them, even though he's in prison and should be receiving? In Christ at Colossae, grace to you. Why does Paul want to give them something they've already got? Do believers already have grace? Yes. To be a believer, you have to receive grace. You have to recognize I can't live this life perfectly. Jesus did. You have to recognize I can't be good enough. I'm good once and I'm bad once. I'm good twice and I'm bad twice. I'm good on the outside, bad on the inside. Good with my words, bad with my heart. And then Christ comes and all of his thoughts, all of his words, all of his actions, perfect. And he says, Do you want God to see my life instead of yours when you stand before him? Grace. And Paul looks at people who have already received grace and he says, I want you to have more of it. I want you to have more grace. I want you to realize you never graduate from grace, Christian, even if you can explain it. Even if you have really fancy terms to be able to. Why? Because grace is not a thing, it's this new reality. And it has all of these different things that come from it. I'm going to give you a few. No takers, this is your moment. There's a thing in the Bible called common grace. This is a type of grace where God gives real and good gifts even to the unjust. This is a beautiful day outside, wind blowing and kites flying, a picnic on the ground, the tastiest food you have ever had. A medium rare steak with a little too much dale sauce on it. This is common grace. You do not have to be a Christian to receive this. This is happy hour at Sonic after a soccer game. This is common grace. A cherry limeade. And my kids will throw nerds in it. All right? This is common grace. I give you a number of verses, but I'll just mention Matthew 5. He makes his son to rise on the evil and the good. Crops rise for believers and unbelievers. Food in pantries for believers and unbelievers. This is common grace. There's another kind of grace, special grace. You see, when Paul offers them grace, he wants them to appreciate every good gift God has given. But he also wants them to appreciate the special grace, the grace that brings people to saving faith in Christ. Salvation is by grace through faith, for by grace you have been saved. This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. If you're a Christian right now, and you if you're a Christian right now, you die tomorrow, do you know what you inherit? Everything. Everything. New kingdom, new earth, no problems. It's yours. Do you realize what contribution you brought to that? Garbage. You show up with garbage and God gives you a kingdom. That is special grace. It is saving faith. But the Holy Spirit doesn't stop there. He gives us justifying grace. Not only do you have common good things, you have a special grace that has saved your soul if you're a Christian, and you have been justified. Not only has God rescued you from the flames, he declares that you are righteous. He doesn't say, I'm not gonna hold you guilty anymore. He says, I'm not gonna hold you guilty anymore, and I'm not even gonna see you as guilty anymore. I'm gonna see you as living this life. This is justifying grace. We have been justified by his grace as a gift. I only have two more. If you're getting bored, that's on you. This is God's word. But I know how you guys are with lists. It's a list of five. This is number four. Sanctifying grace. This is a grace that doesn't just pardon sin, it trains and transforms us toward godliness. This is what I was trying to teach you when I went from supremacy to sufficiency to Christ-like living. I'm trying to train you. What is that? Grace. I'm trying to show you you have not already arrived. I'm trying to tell you there's more hope and reserves of grace in the Holy Spirit that you may not be tapping into yet. It is the grace of God that appears, training us. There are more, but I will conclude the list with this: persevering grace. God keeps his children to the end. Even when they aren't sanctified as they should, even when they don't live like justified people, God keeps his children to the end. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. And who does Paul want to experience all these types of grace? All people. All people. The people who are like him, and the people who are different, the people at his church, the people at churches he has never met, the people not in church, the people who visit him in jail, and the people who put him there. He wants them to find grace. The people who comfort him and the people who make his life difficult. But he especially wants believers to realize that we never graduate from grace. And so he writes to them I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you. How great a struggle I have for those at Laodicea. How great a struggle I have for all who have not seen me face to face. Is he leaving people out? Paul doesn't just want all people to experience God's grace. Please don't miss this. Paul wants all people to experience all of God's grace. And there's no way I can open this book without pointing that out to you. One of the greatest gifts that I, as a preacher, can give to a Christian in the room who's been a Christian for more than 10 years is this. No mistakes, no coincidences, perfect timing. The very people who are with you and those who are not. So I will ask this now because I think Paul puts it in front of us when he's praying for all of these people. How connected are you to other believers in your church who you do not know? How connected do you feel to other churches in your city? They need your prayers. How connected do you feel to believers in the world that you will spend eternity with as brothers and sisters whose names you don't even not know, you couldn't even pronounce them if you wanted to? How connected do you feel to them? Paul somehow managed to. How? Well, it doesn't have anything to do with this proximity. It has everything to do with his prayer. He prays for people he doesn't know. If I were to encourage you to put this faith into action, I would say this. What would it look like for you to pray with believers at work? What would it look like for you to find one other person at work who happens to be a Christian and say, Could we get together once a week? Let's show up 20 minutes early. Let's pray over this place. What if you invite Christ into your Monday to Friday? What if you see where you are not as momentum, but as Christ's supremacy to put you there? You see, Paul was able to do this not because of proximity, but by prayer. What if you prayed with people at work? What if you prayed for churches as you passed them by? What if they were of a denomination that you don't particularly think well of? And you prayed for them anyway. It's fun watching y'all's faces on those, by the way. Because I can tell who like my theologically, I don't know if I do I really want to pray for the success of that? It doesn't seem very healthy. Pray. Pray for believers you don't know. Pray for those who, like Paul, are still working for Jesus in places where the world hates them. If you don't know where to go or how to pray, I would encourage you to just pull out your phone. Don't do it now. You'll kind of jack up our internet, but and go to persecution.com. Persecution.com is a website by Voice of the Martyrs, and you will notice that I just took a screenshot of their opening page when I pulled it up yesterday. Bottom right corner, what is the very first thing that you see on their website? Pray for us. They know you don't know them. They know you can't pronounce their names. They know you couldn't find them on a map. If I gave you 15 minutes in an atlas, if you didn't have a Google search, you can still pray for them. God knows where they are. Pray for them. Tim Keller puts it this way: the only person who dares wake up a king at 3 a.m. for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access. Unbelievable that you can go to the create. Do you realize right now you could pray? I'll do it. Father, I pray for the individual right now, not in our country, who is struggling with temptation and is about to fall into it. Amen. You think that does nothing? It goes to a king overseeing a kingdom. Who is not just supreme is sufficient and cares. What if you began to see the world outside of yourself? I I I want to close by telling you the fuel for this kind of living. It doesn't matter your status, it doesn't matter your job, it doesn't matter your circumstances. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you. May not know you, but we pray for you since we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints, because of the something laid up for you in heaven. Now I I'm sorry, let me get educational for a minute. This because matters. All of the things that come from it, since we heard of your faith and of your love, it came because of something. Bonus points of the campus story if you can tell me what word I've covered up. You got it in front of you. Come on. I've given you a cheat sheet. Hope. Now, I'll tell you another way you could have found it really easily. Faith, hope, love. These three abide all the time. What I want you to realize though is he heard of their faith. He heard of their love. What did their faith and love come from? What was the fuel for it? Hope. It's an amazing thing for a man in prison to write to a group of people and commend their hope. It was his hope that caused him to write this very letter. All of this faith, all of this love. Because they, the Colossians, believed in a new kingdom where Christ was supreme. And they saw it invading the world in which they lived. Your hope of Jesus' Lordship over tomorrow has a massive effect on how you live and think and act today. On Monday, do thoughts of heaven invade you? Let them. On Tuesday, do thoughts of a new kingdom where Christ reigns, and death and disease and brokenness are no more. Do they invade you? Invite them. This is going to be the question I put up as we move toward communion in just a moment. Faith tends to grow as we look back on what God in Christ has done. This is why in Exodus and in Samuel and in Joshua, God says, Remember what I have done. Let it build your faith. Hope tends to grow as we look forward to what God in Christ Jesus will do. Love tends to grow as we look here at what God in Christ is doing. Here is my question: where do you forget to look? I hope it's not all three, okay? I'll tell you where I forget to look. Hope for will is the easiest thing in the world. This is how God built will. He built Paul, he built Esther, He built you. And one of the things He built into Will, it's just pre-installed software for me, is hope. I can look at the future and I can see it. Man, I can see it so clearly. I want you guys to see it. That's like half my job. And one of my favorite parts of my job for you to see where Christ is going, for you to see what it is that he's doing. Hope is very easy for me. Faith is pretty easy too. Part of that is because of my job. I read your prayer requests. I see them come in, then I see God answer them. I see what God has done, so it gives me a lot of faith for what he will do. I'll tell you what's hard for will, love. I almost said a word I don't usually say. It wouldn't have been a cuss word. It stinks that that is the case. It is the case because I can see where I want to go. I can see what God has done. I don't have any time for today. I just kind of bebop in and I bebop out and I struggle to be present. But love is where you stand today. I'm just giving you wills. Yours is probably very different. Where do you forget to look? In the past, you're probably missing out on reservoirs of faith. And you wonder why you don't have more. Do you forget to look to the future or are you too scared to look to the future? You may struggle to find hope in life. Do you struggle to be present and look down at what God is doing all around you? You may struggle to love. You see, hope is the stimulating source for their abiding faith and love. Them believing in the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ to allow them to live. That is the fuel in their tank. The hope that Paul speaks of here, it's more than this disposition of the heart or an attitude of being optimistic. Hope is a reality. I know who Christ is, I know what he's doing. If he has begun something, he is going to finish it. He'll finish it at our church, he'll finish it at my job, he'll finish it in my marriage, he'll finish it with my kids, he'll finish it at my church. I just get to go along for the ride so long as I'm willing to take the seat. And so he closes this opening by saying, Of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel. I have so much hope for you, love for you, faith for you. It has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it's bearing fruit and increasing. This is Paul's hope. As it also does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He's a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the spirit. I don't know you, but I got so much hope for you. I can say that now. I don't know all of you. I know some of you better than others. I know some of you more than I like to. But I know many of you, there are a lot of you I don't know. I have hope for you. I have a lot of hope for you. I have hope that if you will find the supremacy of Christ, you will find that He is sufficient. When you find that He is sufficient, you will finally find godly living. But if you try to start there, I'd imagine you're pretty frustrated. And I am hopeful that you won't remain that way. So I I leave you with this question, which hopefully you've already begun to ponder. As the worship team comes up as we prepare for communion, where might you forget to look? And I'll tell you this, I'm gonna be praying on the other side for love. That's what I need. That's gonna be my prayer for the day, okay? If you want to join me, if you want to join the team, if you want to celebrate something, if you want to ask for prayer for something, there will be a group of us there. But take a moment, think where you forget to look, and then let's draw near to the Lord at his table and look where he is looking.