 Good morning. Welcome to Monday Morning Prayer here at the Radiant City Center in downtown Kalamazoo. Thank you for those who braved our short spring and summer and now our back in winter time here in Kalamazoo. And for those who are joining us online, we welcome you here as one family and one heart. As we come together and we worship the Lord, we agree with who God is. We sing of His faithfulness, His worthiness, His glory, and it stirs our hearts so that as we worship we can also agree with what God says He wants to do. We're going to be praying through scripture this morning, this hour that we have together, that we are coming together before the Lord. And so as we're singing songs, we are pulling, not just our own thoughts and feelings, we're pulling scripture into our worship. We're singing the worthiness of who He is and we're going to be praying out of scripture as well. And so I encourage if you have your Bible, if you're in a place, if you're online with us and you're in a place you can have your Bible open to, to be singing phrases, to be singing the words of God because all we are doing is saying who God is through scripture and agreeing with what He says He wants to do. So as the singers sing and as the musicians play, I encourage you to sing what they are singing, to sing your own song but to repeat their phrases as well as we come together in one voice, the Lord moves. So I just want to open this time together with reading through Psalm 84 and I want us to meditate on the house of the Lord. It's where we're at right now, not just this building, not just these four walls in this geographical location, but as a body, as a church. We are as bride, we are as church. And I want us to meditate on the beauty of the house of God that we are here right now. So Psalm 84 says, how lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the will of God. Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young her altars. O Lord of hosts, my king and my God, blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise. Blessed are those whose strength is in you and whose heart are the highways to Zion. And they go through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools and they go from strength to strength. Each one appears before God and Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold our shield, O God, look on the face of your anointing. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a son. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you. This is the word of the Lord. Father, we thank you that you are here in this place. This morning we are not in vain gathered in a room, but we are here to dwell and to rest in your house. We are here to see your face, to sing your praises, to give you the honor and the glory and the worship that you are due. You alone are worthy. You alone are worthy of our praise, of our song, of our prayers. God, as we begin for this next hour, as we begin to sing, let the worthiness of Jesus, the worthiness of your son Jesus, begin to take root in our heart and begin to stir up a flame right now. That it would change everything. It would change what we sing about, what we pray about, what we think about. That we will give no rest until we find a dwelling place for you. Where we can make an altar before you and sing of the worthiness of who you are. So we enter into this time of worship and prayer together with one voice and one accord. Lovely is your dwelling place, God. More beautiful than anything this world can offer. More beautiful than anything this world can offer. No idol compares. No precious medal or reward. No false loves. I'd rather be a day in your house, than a thousand elsewhere. We look upon you in your holy and beautiful habitation. Lord for house, completely set apart is your name. Worthy is your name. We are the one thing that we seek. The one thing we seek. We declare this in our soul. Face of distraction, confusion, in the face of idols and culture, our attention. Worthy of our gaze, worthy of our time, of our money, of our heart. Everything else is lost. Right now as the musicians continue to play, there is a grace in this moment. A grace in this moment. The Lord is inviting you. He's drawing after you. You lay it down. Will you lay it down at his feet? He is saying something specific to you. Will you lay it down at the feet of the worthy one? Take a moment. He's inviting you right now. Not annoyed with you. He's not disappointed. There's a smile on his face. There are tears in his eyes. As he's saying this over you, his arms are open, ready to receive. You can trust him. He is worthy. His heart is for you. He showed his love for us on the cross. He showed his love for you. Not selfish. In humility, his life down. You too him right now. Trust me. I'm not like your other gods. I'm not like your other idols. Who demands but does not give. Who demands and abuses. We respond to what you have freely done. We respond to the love of the worthy one. He already gave everything. He laid everything down, humbled himself. Being obedient to the point of the cross. Our laying down does not earn anything. Our laying down doesn't prove anything. It's a response to you. It's a response to the love that you have shown us. When we were alienated and separated from you, when our pathway led only to death, you came in love because you were the only one worthy. You were the only one who could take our sin on your shoulders and bear it before your father and make a way for us to enter into your holy, beautiful dwelling place to have communion with you. So as we continue in our worship, we offer our song of praise as an overflow, not to stir your heart, not to try to convince you to do something, but to offer our song as your body, your church, your bride, the one that you died for as an offering of your holiness and of your worthiness in the name of Jesus. Worthy of it all. Give everything to you. Our response to you. We cannot sing these words from our soul and not let it change us from the inside. It would be a terrible thing to sing this and nothing change and nothing happen. As we've been singing how beautiful and sweet it is to die to the world and self and sin, to die with Jesus, to be buried with him and to be raised as a new creation, new life. The old has gone and the new has come. The old man is dead and the new man is alive. The least that we could do is to give you everything in response. You are worthy. You are worthy. And we cannot sing this and say this and expect nothing to change. In this same vein, in this same mind, we're going to be turning our attention to Colossians 1. I want you to keep the cross as the center of your gaze as we are praying through Colossians 1. As we think and meditate on the worthiness and the holiness of Jesus that he laid everything down for us, becoming obedient to the point of death on the cross so that we could be broken from the chains of sin and death. So that we could be freed to lay down our lives before him. Not freedom to do whatever we want, but freedom to be able to live in Christ. We were once hopeless and bound in our sin, unable to give our lives to him, unable to live in righteousness. But our chains have been broken and we are now slaves to righteousness. We have been freed to give everything we have to his feet because he is worthy and he is holy. So the least we could do is offer up our time, our attention, the gifts that he has created inside of us, the resources that he has given us to steward, our love and our song we give to you. So Colossians 1 starting in verse 9 it says, And so from the day that we heard we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom, the wisdom from God and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, that we'd be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and impatience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share the inheritance of the saints in light and delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Father, we ask at the beginning of this prayer meeting for our hearts to be stirred for your will, for a revelation of the worthiness and the holiness of who you are, that we would be filled with the knowledge of your will and understanding of what it meant for you to lay down everything on the cross for us. And as you begin to fill our hearts with an understanding of the holiness and worthiness of who you are, we ask that it would help us walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, that we would walk fully pleasing and that the fruit that we bear would be good fruit, good work, and that it would help us increase in the knowledge of who you are, that you would in turn strengthen us with all power according to your glorious might, the same glorious power that you use to raise your son from the dead, which you use that strength to raise us from the dead, raise us from our despair and brokenness. Us who were once bound in sin and shame, you have taken your glorious might and qualified us to share in the light of the inheritance of who you are and delivered us from the domain of darkness, transferred us into the kingdom of your son. You have given us redemption and you have given us forgiveness all from that glorious might. So as we begin to pray through this, we thank you for the revelation, even that small revelation we received this morning. And so we ask right now, through that revelation, would you begin to reveal things that need to come to the surface, things that we need to lay down, give us the grace to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord in Jesus' name. We want to be the church. Hearts knit with yours. Good fruit to be our declaration, like yours. This is the cry of our hearts. Want to be like you. It was your plan. You did not send your son to die for us so that we could go on and live our own lives. But you sent your son as the first born, as the first fruits, as the example, the radiant glory, the exact imprint of your nature and your son's words to this world was follow me. Follow me. Do what I do. Walk like I walk. Talk with words of love and compassion, but truth and authority. Go out to the ends of the earth. Make disciples after me. Follow me even to the point of death, even to the point of the grave. But if you follow me, my Father in heaven will raise you up like he raised me. That same glorious power and glorious might that effectual calling, that down payment, the seal of promise with the Holy Spirit, he will call us forth as a new creation. So God, we ask right now is you are drawing out of us things that we need to lay down. You are exposing in your kindness and in your mercy areas of our life that we have not fully laid down to you areas of our life. We might have held back either out of shame, either out of fear, either out of pride, or either out of selfishness. We ask that in your kindness, as you begin to expose those things, that you would give us grace and strength, grace and strength to lay it down with joy and thanks. We would lay it down to the Father's because we know that you alone are worthy. You alone are worthy and we don't need to hold on to these things. You have qualified us to share in a greater inheritance. You have qualified us to share in a greater life, a life worthy to you. So we ask for strength, strength in our inner man. We ask for grace, grace to say yes to your calling in the name of Jesus. Patience with endurance, patience, joy and thanksgiving. We say yes. We lay down our fear, our shame, our pride and our selfishness and we exchange them for something beautiful, exchange them for life and life everlasting. I want to close with reading a little more of Colossians when we've been praying for what is this inheritance? What are we saying yes to? And as we follow after the Son, we meditate on this worthiness and holiness. In verse 15 it says, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning. He is the firstborn from the dead that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, us who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present us holy and blameless and above reproach before him. If indeed we continue in the faith stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that we have heard and has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven. Father, we say yes to your son. We lay down our lives before your son, the worthy one, the image of the firstborn. We lay our lives down. We look to the cross. We follow after your son. And we lay our lives down at the cross, at the feet of Jesus. And we hold nothing back as your church. We want to be a church holy and blameless without compromise, without spot, without wrinkle. We want to be white and radiant before you. We don't want to be a church that follows after culture. We want to be a church that creates culture. We want to be a church that says, yes, when things are hard, when we need endurance, you give us grace, when we need patience and joy, you give us that. We lay it down before you right now. And we say yes in the name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Thank you for joining us in prayer this morning here at the Radiant City Center. We are going to be continuing to pray morning, noon and night here downtown in Kalamazoo. You can join us Monday through Friday at 8 a.m. Thank you for spending this hour with us in one voice and one accord. Continue to keep the cross as the filter and the lens of which you live your life. In the name of Jesus. Amen.