You're listening to Sermon audio from Providence Baptist Church. Be sure to check out pbcfringford.org for more information. If you have a Bible and I hope you do, if you'll turn to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. And we're going to be dealing primarily today with verses 3 through 6. So 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 3 through 6. Today's message is living for the kingdom. And as I spoke about last week, as we're walking through these kingdom pieces, what we're wanting to talk about is how then do we begin to pray for these kingdom pieces to show up in our lives. And so today's focus is as we're looking at Scripture that teaches us what it means to live for the kingdom. We correspond that hopefully with our prayers that Lord help me live for the kingdom in such a way that we're going to see here in the Scripture today. And I thought about it today, or this week, like where else in the Scriptures does it talk about living for the kingdom? And one of the most primary places that your mind might go to is Matthew 6, 33, when Jesus is teaching and he's teaching about clothing and food and all these things. And he says, "Don't worry about all those things. Don't be anxious about all those things." But he says, "What, seek first the kingdom of God, prioritize the kingdom of God and your life." When you do that, God will add all these things that you need, not that you want, but that you need to your life, right? And I think that's such a difficult teaching by Jesus sometimes because we know that elsewhere in the Scripture it says things like you make sure you provide for your family. We know that elsewhere in Scripture it says, make sure that when you work, you work heartily with everything as to the Lord. And so Scripture's not teaching that we just kind of sit back and do nothing and just wait for God to pour stuff on us. We have a responsibility as well, but what Jesus is teaching in that is in those things that we're called to do and how we're called to live, prioritize the kingdom of God. I think about a person like George Mueller, who I've referenced many, many times over the last almost seven years, began orphanages in Bristol, England in the 19th century. And his biographies are chock full of story after story after story of where he or the orphanage or the kids or someone in his ministry had a need. And he did not advertise that need. He simply prayed about that need. Had Facebook been around when he was living, he would not have gone on to Facebook and gone, "Hey, we need something for the orphanage." He just prayed about it. There's two stories out of his biographies that are probably my most favorite. The first is that he woke up one morning and the kids were being assembled in the orphanage ready to eat breakfast. And one of his workers came to him and said, "We're out of bread, we're out of milk, we're out of everything. We don't have anything to give the kids to eat." And he said, "Get them up, get them dressed, get them to the table. We're going to start praying that the Lord will provide." And so these kids who had already been outcast, who'd already no family outcast of society, get at tables with empty plates and empty cups, just looking at one another. And as a result of his prayers a few seconds later, the door, there's a knock at the door. It's a baker from the town. It tells him that he just felt prompted in the middle of the night to wake up and start breaking bread and he delivers these batches of bread to the orphanage. And then just so happens that shortly after that, there's another knock on the door and a person traveling along with a milk cart, the cart has broken down. They'll have a lot of refrigerated carts back in those days. And so the milk's going to go bad. Could the orphanage use these ten gallon cans of milk that he has? There's another one that he talks about that the boiler went out in one of the orphanages and it was beginning to be the part of the cold season. The North winds were blowing and they knew it was going to be out for several days while repairs were laid to it. And so he began to pray two things. He writes. He began to pray for a south wind, not a north wind and he said, "I prayed that God would give the workers a mind to work," meaning that they would work over and above what was really required of them in their job. And he talked about the fact that sure enough, the day before the repairs were to start that the boiler would be shut down, the winds shifted and came from the south. And that first day of work, they got to the end of their work day and the foremen and the managers said, "You know, we'll be back tomorrow. We've got this much left, so on and so forth," and the workers whom remember Mueller had prayed that God would give them a mind to work, said, "No, no, no. We want to stay through the night and complete this," and they did. And he writes in his journal about that when in particular he said, "Here, then, is one of our difficulties which was overcome by prayer and faith." Do you think? One of our difficulties was overcome by prayer and faith. There are some who believe that over the span of his life and his ministry, all the things that were given to him, donated to him, were prayers that were done for free, so on and so forth. It's likely that in today's money, Mueller saw more than seven million dollars come into his life and the life of those kids through prayer and faith. That's living for the kingdom, folks. That's prioritizing the kingdom and everything that you do. And so today, our challenge is that as we pray, what we're getting ready to learn from 2 Thessalonians 1 is that we begin to take that challenge on in our lives, that we commit ourselves to such faith, and it's difficult, I know, it's troublesome, I get it, but Hebrews tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God, and so it's something that we should be striving for as we strive to live for the kingdom. So if you would stand with me in honor of God and his word, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, we're going to be reading verses 3 through 6 today. Paul writes, "Dear brothers and sisters, we can't help but thank God for you because your faith is flourishing and your love for one another is growing. We proudly tell God's other churches about your endurance and faithfulness in all the persecutions and hardships you are suffering. And God will use this persecution to show His justice to make you worthy of His kingdom for which you are suffering. In His justice, He will pay back those who persecute you. Pray with me if you would. Father, we do thank you again for the time that we've had, for Sunday school classes that have gone on, for our praise and our worship and our time of prayer, all the things that have been done, Lord, I pray that they've been done that are pleasing to you and glorifying you. And as we take a few moments today to open up your word, may definitely the truth of your word and the power and presence of your spirit and our midst changes. May we fully commit to not just hearing the word but then responding to the word. May we not be like the man who looks himself in the mirror in the book of James and goes away and forgets what he looks like. May we be people who look into the word today and we walk away being reminded of who we are and you and what that then is meant to look like in our lives as we pray that we might live for the kingdom. It's in your son's name, we pray, and we ask all these things today, amen. Now, if some of your translations have a comma at the end of verse six and going into verse seven, the new living stops at the end of verse six as translators work through the scriptures, they try to find places that they believe are the most definitive breaks and so on and so forth. So that's why from the new living, it maybe looks a little different than what you're reading out of today, but we're just going to go through verse six nonetheless. And so three things we want to learn today, first is this, that living for the kingdom is visibly noticeable. If you and I are living for the kingdom, it is visibly noticeable. Look at verse three again, if you will. Dear brothers and sisters, we can't help but thank God for you because your faith is flourishing and your love from one another is growing. There are two specific exhibitions or demonstrations of the spirit at work in this church and the spirit of work being in them living for the kingdom that are noticeable. And the first is this, that Paul says your faith is flourishing. The faith of course is that great biblical teaching that I believe in God and I believe in the sun, I believe in the Holy Spirit, I believe what has written about them and said about them is true. I believe that they are active. I believe that they are engaged. I believe in the vital specifics of the Christian doctrine, the virgin birth, the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the coming and the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. Faith is all of those things, right? But faith is not just belief. Faith is also then belief that's then put into action. One commentary that I read this week put it this way, faith is the hand that grasps. And so you can have faith in something but not hold on to anything. You can have faith in something but not see it tested in your life and mind. And so I want us to consider for a moment as we walk through these scriptures, consider the things that you say you believe about God, that you believe about Jesus, that you believe about the Holy Spirit and his work. Consider the things that you say you believe about God's Word. And then let us all consider how much of that do we actually put into practice every day? Do we reserve it just for a few special moments or a few moments where we think we need it the most? Or is it something that we truly are, as Jesus said, seeking first the Kingdom of God, prioritizing the Kingdom of God in what we know about who God is and the faith that we have in him. And this faith is something in the church at Thessalonica that was very apparent to all. And the letter of 1 Thessalonians, if you want to skip back maybe a page or two in your Bible. I want to read to you from 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 3 and verse 8. Paul writes in the first letter to the church, "As we pray to our God and Father about you, we think of your faithful work, your loving deeds, and the enduring hope you have because of our Lord Jesus Christ." In verse 8, he says, "Now the Word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Macedonia and Achaia, for wherever we go, we find people telling us about your faith in God." We don't need to tell them about it, he says. In 1 Thessalonians 3, beginning in verse 6, "Timothy has made a trip there and has returned to speak to Paul about what's going on." And Paul says this, "Now Timothy has just returned, bringing us good news about your faith and love. He reports that you always remember our visit with joy and that you want to see us as much as we want to see you. And we've encouraged in the midst of our troubles and sufferings, dear brothers and sisters, because you have remained strong in your faith. It gives us new life to know that you're standing firm in the Lord." So faith in the church at Thessalonica was already very well established. It was so established that other people were talking about it too, Paul. He wasn't necessarily having to go tell other people about their faith and what was going on. It was a very evident, very visible demonstration of their living for the kingdom. And so yet here in 2 Thessalonians Paul says, "We thank you or we thank God for you because your faith is flourishing." So what does he mean by that? His idea of flourishing is that it's not coming as it's expected, but it's coming over abundantly. That as much faith as he and Silas and Timothy thought that this church had as referenced in the first letter to Thessalonians, now he's hearing that their faith is even greater. It's the difference between planting tomatoes and expecting tomatoes that come out this big and getting tomatoes that come out this big. It is a flourishing. It is an overabundance. It is a pouring out. And so it's very important for us as we talk about living for the kingdom that we keep this kind of flourishing in mind, it is very, very dangerous for any of us who are in Christ to ever think that we've arrived at a level of faith or love or compassion or forgiveness or any of the other things that the scriptures teach us about who we're supposed to be, that we've made it as far as we can go this out of heaven. The Spirit is always at work in the lives of those who are in Christ to take us above and beyond where we think we are capable of going. And in terms of faith, that was the case here for this church in the city of Thessalonica. Their faith was very well established, but now it's flourishing even more. The second demonstration is this. He says, "Your love for one another is growing." Love here is that word agape, that word sacrificial, without condition love. It's deeper than just a fileto love, which is the love of a brother. It's a deep love. It's the love Christ has for us. And it's very important that this is being played out in the church, right? Because the demonstration of faith often is demonstrated in love. Within the body of Christ, this is why Paul puts it in another letter in Galatians 5-6. It's important within the church, he says, is faith expressing itself in love. Now again, I want you to go back to 1 Thessalonians for just a second, just a page or so over. 1 Thessalonians 3, 11-13. And this is a segment where Paul is basically kind of closing out this segment of the letter with a prayer. And look at what he says, "May God our Father and our Lord Jesus bring us to you very soon. And may the Lord make your love for one another, and for all people grow and overflow, just as our love for you overflowed. And may he as a result make your hearts strong, blameless and holy as you stand before God, our Father, when our Lord Jesus comes again with all his holy people, amen." So in the first letter to Thessalonica, Paul prays that their love would grow, just like their faith, even greater than what it already was. He prays that it would become abundant, and that's what happens because he says in 2 Thessalonians 1 at the end, "Your love for one another is growing." Let me just ask us for a moment. Hopefully you pray for us as a church. Hopefully you pray for other churches as well, not just for us. But when you pray for a church, be it our church or another church or all the churches, how do you pray? I'm guessing most of you probably pray like I tend to want to pray, "Lord, help us grow in numbers, Lord, help us grow spiritually in our maturity, Lord, help us reach out to the community more," so on and so forth. But how often are we praying like Paul prayed for the Thessalonica church that we would grow in love? Because the reality of it is I believe the more that would exist within our community of faith, the more all those other things would naturally become a byproduct. I thought it was interesting, interesting, that the first day of our prayer journal this week was about love. And here's what it said in case you missed it. Day 15 was out of 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 through 12, "About brotherly love you don't need me to write to you because you yourselves are taught by God to love one another," and then here's what they said in this journal. Any problems in a church can be overcome by love. Love often causes dissensions to be settled. Love prompts the church to serve the poor. Love moves us to do missions and evangelism. Love leads us to give more financially, work with children, paint the nursery walls, or build a new building for the youth. Love is the greatest motivator to church service of all types. What a coincidence I think that the first entry in our weeks of prayer this week was centered around this kind of love, because we now see in this letter that their love for one another is growing. And it is a visible demonstration to those around them that they truly are living for the kingdom of God. We might think that faith is growing and love is growing because things are easy for them. Look at verse four as we talk about point number two. Point number two is this, that living for the kingdom is inspirational, and here's what verse four says, "We proudly tell God's other churches about your endurance and faithfulness in all the persecutions and hardships you are suffering." The faith and the love in the church at Thessalonica is not growing because things are easy. It's growing because things are tough, and we know a little bit about what was going on in that church from what Luke records in Acts 17 where he basically talks about in verse one, Paul and Silas begin to travel through these various towns, Paul goes into the synagogues and he teaches and he uses the Scriptures to reason and so forth. And then here's what it says in Acts 17 verse five, "But some of the Jews were jealous, so they gathered some troublemakers from the marketplace to form a mob and start a riot, and they attacked the home of Jason who was hosting Paul and Silas, searching for them so they could drag them out to the crowd, not finding them, they dragged out Jason and some of the other believers instead and took them before the council. Shouting, "Paul and Silas have caused trouble all over the world, and now they are here disturbing our city too, and Jason has welcomed them into his home, they are all guilty of treason against Caesar, for they profess allegiance to another king named Jesus." Like these believers in this city were being dragged before councils simply for hosting Paul and Silas in their homes, and they were being dragged before councils that had the rights to imprison them, kill them, take their homes, take their businesses, take whatever they wanted to take, and bear in mind that what that verse seven said is the reason that they were doing this, the reason they were being brought for the council is because they were teaching and preaching that there was another king that superseded all kings who demanded allegiance of all people, and his name was Jesus. These are serious, serious charges, right in his commentary on this passage says this, the Messiah devotees or the Christ devotees were seen as well known religiously motivated social deviance opposed to the Roman Empire. See Rome was okay if you believed what you wanted to believe so long as you didn't upset the balance of Caesar. Rome was okay for you to believe what you want to believe as long as you abide by all the Roman laws and profess all your allegiance to Caesar, but that was not the way of the Christian faith then, and it's not the way of the Christian faith now. And so they were being brought before this council, they were being dragged out of their homes, and in this Paul says we are proudly telling other churches about your endurance and faithfulness because of the persecutions and hardships you're suffering. Warren Wiersby says it this way, he says, "A faith that cannot be tested is a faith that cannot be trusted." And so their faith which is flourishing and their love for one another which is growing is being tested because of the hardships and the persecutions and the difficulties that they're having, and yet it's inspirational. I will tell you brothers and sisters in Christ, the way a believer or the way a church responds to tough times will either strengthen another person's faith or soften their faith. I was watching that South Carolina LSU football game yesterday and close game and coming down the wire and really it kind of ended up looking like whoever made the last big play was going to win. And I remember hearing the announcers talk about one team is going to go away from this and they're going to be spurred on by the victory and by their overcoming adversity and the other team is going to walk away from it and they're going to feel very bad about themselves. We're not sure what the rest of their season is going to look like. And I thought, man, how true is that in the lives of believers as well? The two believers put in the same exact situations, hardships and sufferings and difficulties and persecutions and everything else. One believer likely comes out of that stronger, one believer likely comes out of that weaker. But it's important for us to be reminded that the stronger believer that comes out of that stronger is an inspiration to other people. As Paul says, we proudly tell, we boast, I think, is what some of your translations say. We boast of what's going on here in this church. And listen, you don't boast about things that aren't inspirational. I have a confession to make. I watch parents and kids with toddlers sometimes and when they put them on a slide and usually like it's a slide that starts about this tall, little plastic slide, maybe in their home, backyard or whatever, and that one parent will put the kid at the top and the other parents at the bottom to catch him and they let him go and they slide down and they catch him and they, oh, great job, great job. And I'm like, no, gravity. I know I'm a cynical, horrible, heartless person. I know. But like, you could boast about that toddler if they were like fighting off a pack of wolves crawling up the slide and sliding down it, you know, like one child said here and the gravity does the work, right? We boast about things that are truly inspirational and that's what Paul's doing here for this church. And I believe he's saying that they're telling other churches, even though in first Thessalonians he said we don't have to tell other churches. He's telling them because other churches and other individuals were likely either going through the same thing or they wanted to have those stories and those testimonies and those witnesses stored up. So when it happened in their lives, they could look back on the city of Thessalonica and the church and see what had gone on with their faith and their love. And understand this, when you and I truly commit to kingdom living, your life becomes an inspiration. We need the stories of George Mueller because we need to be reminded that when we don't have it, the first step is to pray for it. We need the stories of Elizabeth Elliot, who served with her husband Jim in the forest and the villages of Ecuador and after her husband and other missionary partners were killed by these people, Elizabeth stayed behind and lived among them because she knew they were worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need her story when we see people in our lives that we think I don't want nothing to do with y'all. We need her story as an inspiration. We need the stories of guys like John Wycliffe who in the 14th century really kind of began the first translation of the scriptures from Latin to common English and who was condemned as a heretic. So much so that 40 years after his death, they had his bones brought up from his gravesite and burned them to ash. We need his story to be reminded that when one people say this is what you should do and God says that you should do another that you follow God's will. We need the stories of people like William Carey who stood up in England and challenged fellow preachers and pastors that they needed to go to the ends of the earth and do missions and evangelism and so much so that one pastor stood up and said when God pleases to convert the heat then he'll do it without consulting you or me. And we need the story of William Carey who didn't let that detract him, didn't let that stop him but became a person who would be known as the father of modern missions. We need all these stories of inspiration and guess what? We need yours too. When you commit to live for the kingdom what you're committing, what you're saying is that you're going to commit to live in such a way that you're going to seek the kingdom first, you're going to make the kingdom your priority and as such then when you invite God to move in your midst there's going to be a testimony, a witness, a story that you're going to tell that's going to be visibly demonstrable in people's lives and it's going to be inspiring to them. And when you and I live for the kingdom that happens. Third thing is this, living for the kingdom is not always easy, we've already kind of talked about persecutions and hardships and so forth but look at verses 5 and 6 and God will use this persecution to show his justice and to make you worthy of his kingdom for which you are suffering. In his justice he will pay back those who persecute you. I thought about it this week and I looked through the scriptures and I might have missed something I fully confess that that's a possibility but I tried to recall is there any place in scripture where God's people commanded to pray persecution away? Is there any place in scripture where God's people commanded to pray for suffering and hardship to go? Paul tried it and what was God's answer? My grace is sufficient for you. Now we are called to pray for peace and comfort and strength but we're called to pray that God take us through things not that God removes things and so here in this church in Thessalonica what Paul is saying is he doesn't say and God will take this persecution away from you and make you live an easy comfortable life. God will stop them from dragging you out of your houses because you've kept us there. God will take the rulers who are around you who are fighting against the faith and he'll move them out of their positions of authority and he'll make everything easy for you. No he says God will use this persecution to show his justice to make you worthy of his kingdom for which you are suffering and in his justice he will pay back those who persecute you. Paul teaches two things here. In the first part of verse 5 and then verse 6 he says that going through this persecution and this hardship and the suffering allows God to demonstrate his justice. You know I think this is backwards. There's no doubt about it. If I was witnessing a robbery today I would not think well I'm just not going to do anything in that way when the guy gets caught and he goes before the judge, justice will be served. And yet God oftentimes lets things play out. You and I think differently because you and I are focused on the here and now. This moment, how it affects me in this moment, how it affects someone else in this moment, God is always thinking in terms of eternity and it's likely that the church at Thessalonica in between these two letters had begun to ask the question, has God left us? Has he abandoned us? We did all these things. We brought Paul and Silas in our homes. We got drug before the city council. We were threatened with all kinds of things. We went to jail. Was all the faith that we had for nothing? And it's a question that most likely every believer asks at some point or at multiple points in their lives. And so what Paul is teaching here is God is using this that's happening to demonstrate his justice but it's not going to be right now for the church at Thessalonica. And listen, for you and me it might not be right now for matters of persecution or suffering or hardship but it's coming one day. Paul is speaking here of the great reversal of the world system. The world is controlled by the aggressor and the proud and those who are mighty in their own strength. God's kingdom is controlled by the make and the humble. And to borrow from Psalms 20 verse 7, those who don't trust in horses and chariots but instead trust in the strength of their God. This is what the kingdom looks like. And so inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul is writing to the Thessalonians and today to us to say be reminded God is keeping the books. God is watching. He knows what's going on, good and bad in your life. He knows what's going on, fair and unfair. He knows what's going on whether you deserve it or not. And he's keeping score, he's keeping the record and he will one day repay those who have rejected him and he will repay specifically those who have rejected him and persecuted his children in the process, brought hardship upon his children in the process, brought suffering upon his children in the process. But it is the day to come, it is not today. Oswald Chambers ties all of this back to this idea of faith. He says faith is the deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. I want to read that one again because it's so good. Faith is the deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. You don't have to raise your hand but have anybody ever wondered what God is doing or not doing? If you ever questioned his ways, Oswald reminds us what Paul is reminding us that our faith tells us that even if it's not going our way, even if it's not going as we planned, even if it's not peaceful and easy living, God's still with us and he still has a plan. And that first part of that plan was he would use this persecution to show his justice and the second thing was at the end of verse 5 and to make you worthy of his kingdom. The fact that they were going through hardship and suffering and persecution was demonstrated in their lives because they were in the kingdom of God. Some try to twist this and say that suffering is needed or required to enter the kingdom of God. There's even a passage in Acts 14 verse 22 where they talk about the fact that through many tribulations one must enter the kingdom of God or through many sufferings and I don't want us to get that twisted right because we're not reducing the gospel to if I suffer a lot here I'll be rewarded in the next life. That's not the gospel. That's far eastern religion, that's Middle Eastern religion, that if I just go through enough bad stuff here in the next life it'll change for me. That's not the gospel. And what Paul's saying here is it's not that they're going through these things in order to attain the kingdom. They're going through these things because they have attained the kingdom. The faith and the love and the endurance that they have that's being demonstrated means that the kingdom has taken hold in their lives and that they are prioritizing, that they are seeking first the kingdom of God and when you and I do that there will be hardships and there will be difficulties and struggles and yes maybe even persecution of some way shape or form and I want to say it again we don't attain the kingdom by suffering but by attaining the kingdom we suffer. When we prioritize living for the kingdom first and the reality of all that is this you can't make any sense of suffering on this earth unless you have a cause behind it. You can't make any sense of suffering on this earth unless there's a bigger picture, a bigger plan, a bigger understanding and what the gospel provides us is the bigger picture and the bigger understanding. It provides us first of all that you and I are called to go through this because our Savior went through this, that His faith in the Father grew as the God-man, that His love for all people grew as He ministered to them and He shared with them and as He brought the kingdom to them that He did not shy away from suffering or persecution, He prayed one time if it's possible take it from me and I kind of assume He may be heard of something very similar to what Paul heard was the Father saying my grace is enough for you and so His prayer went okay then if this is the way it's got to be done this is the way it's got to be done, He didn't shy away from it but He embraced it all the way to the cross all the way to His death and He did so knowing full well that that did not mean the fullness of the kingdom would come immediately. Jesus as the Son, Jesus as the God-man went through what He went through with the full understanding that there was still yet to come a day when God's kingdom that He had inaugurated that He brought that He began there was still to come a day in the distant future when it would come fully upon this earth and so He willingly went to the cross. This is the way Hebrews 12, 2, and 3 says it, we do this, we run this race of life by keeping our eyes on Jesus the champion who initiates and perfects our faith because of the joy awaiting Him He endured the cross disregarding its shame and now He seated in the place of honor beside God's throne. Think of all the hostility He endured from sinful people and then you won't become weary and give up. Say how do I live for the kingdom in this fashion, how do I live for the kingdom in this manner, how do I endure suffering and hardship and persecution and do it all with an eye towards a day that is coming but is not yet here you look to Jesus, you look to the one who started and began and perfected the faith that you have and you look to Him who grew in faith and grew in love and endured hardship and endured suffering and endured persecution and who trusted God and still trust God as the Son to know that His Father is going to have a day where He writes all wrongs to where all will have to give an account for their lives and all will have to give an account for what they did with the Son but it's not yet, it's not now unless before I finish this sentence the sky is burst open. This is how you know you're living for the kingdom because you can go through all of this with an eye to eternity not an eye to the immediate and I want to put one more thing in your head here for just a moment. When God does return to write all wrongs, when He does return to show His justice what that means is that you are going to have a loved one, a family member, a neighbor, a student, a fellow student, a co-worker, I can guarantee there's going to be somebody in your life that on that day it's going to be too late and that we sometimes selfishly God come back now, God come back now, fix things now, fix things now, understand that it is a good thing to be praying for but understand what we're praying. That when that happens all who are not found in Christ are done, lost forever, consigned for an eternity to pay the penalty for their sin that Christ took and so we should not so callously ask that God return but we should understand what it means when we ask that He return and we should also understand what it means if He doesn't. That means that you and I still have a life of inspiration to live. You and I still have a life to endure hardship and persecution and suffering. You and I still have a life to grow in faith and to grow in love and to grow in endurance. You and I still have opportunity until He comes back or until we take our last breath to live a life that in some way inspires someone else and they don't get inspired by how many homes you have, they don't get inspired by how much your 401k holds or they don't get inspired by your prestige or your social status, they get inspired when they see the kingdom and life in your life and my life and the persecution and the sufferings and the hardships that come and you become like that college team yesterday that persevered through it and came out victorious on the other side. That's how you inspire people and you and I do that and we make the kingdom the priority and live for it. Thanks for listening. If you have any thoughts, questions or prayer concerns please email us at pvcfrankford@gmail.com. [Music]
