All posts tagged prayer

1 Timothy 2:1-7 – Sermon Manuscript

-I hope the focus of seeing the church as a household is starting to take shape for you! Today we’re digging into the main body of the letter, the last 2 weeks were preparing us for today. As we dig into this week’s text, I want you to think about what goes into creating a healthy family unit. What is needed for a good family to exist?

-Husband and wife, some source of income to provide for what you need, the ability to be yourself without fear of judgment or being cast aside. 

-We could also ask the same question of a church, the household of God. What do we need? Bible! Some place where we can gather, seats are helpful. But with the church, what’s the first thing we should focus on? I’m guessing if we’d go around the room we’d probably come up with dozens of different proposals, but Paul’s going to give us something that I think is often assumed in churches, but is rarely given the focused attention that it deserves. Let’s read the text to see what Paul says should be the first thing in our churches:

READ/PRAY (1051)

  1. Prays for Everyone (1-4)

-First of all, this is where Paul says we should focus as a church, and to communicate the importance of praying, he uses 4 different words. One commentator said “The point is that there be an abundance of prayers appropriate to worship occasions and concerns, not a precise delineation of prayer types or techniques.” That being said, I think it is helpful for us to look at all these words, just keep in mind the focus isn’t the types of prayers, it’s that we pray:

-Petitions – often asking God to grant something, there tends to be a sense of urgency to these things. 

-Prayers – the most generic word used, most used word in the NT for prayer

-Intercessions – prayers on behalf of other people

-Thanksgivings – most used by us today, gratitude. One of the things that was pointed out to me a few years ago at an elder training some of our elders attended was how often Paul is grateful and thankful for people in the church. It actually changed the way I pray for you guys! If you didn’t know, the elders pray for our church members every day, I set it up so I get a reminder in my phone a 9 every morning to pray for a portion of our church members. I pray for other people too, but less intentionally and less strategically, so one reason to come to our membership class is I would like to pray for you more regularly! But since that elder training, my prayers have started with, “Lord, thank you for ___” I think we’re going on 2 years of this now, so every member has probably been thanked for at least twice!

-The focus of Paul using these phrases is that prayers should be commonplace in the household of God! All sorts of different prayers! Short prayers, long prayers, prayers for other people, prayers where you give thanks to God, church pray what you’ve got, when you’ve got it wherever you’re at! 

-But who are we supposed to pray for? I’ve got good news and bad news:

-EVERYONE – who’s left out of that? The opposite: NO ONE! That means there’s always more people to be praying for! And church, don’t ever stop praying for them. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen any fruit from your prayers, don’t give up! I keep hearing stories from people in our church who have seen family members responding to God in ways they never expected. This is why Paul said last week is so important: if God can save me, God can save anybody, so keep praying! 

-But Paul also gets specific: kings and all those who are in authority. The king at this point was Nero, who was ruthless in his persecution of Christians. If Paul can command the church to pray for him, then we should also be willing and able to pray for our political leaders today, regardless of the D or the R next to their name, they bear the image of God. 

-But notice why do we pray for them? For the flourishing of our communities so that the gospel can be more easily spread! This letter was written during a time known as the peace of Rome, a time where people could easily travel on paved roads throughout the Mediterranean. That ruthless empire that persecuted Christians also became the means for the gospel message to spread.

-But notice what we’re specifically praying FOR: a tranquil and quiet life, marked by godliness and dignity. Like the prayers, let’s look at each of those words:

-Tranquil and quiet. A peaceful existence.

-Godliness: piety (let’s recover that word! Means “the quality of being religious or reverent”) some trans. as: “to live as God has told us we should live”

-Dignity: “behavior which is befitting, implying a measure of dignity leading to respect” trans. “to act in the right way”

-Would you be content to live a life like that? I think that some of what’s going on in Paul’s mind is what God told Israel when they were in exile: 

-Are you pursuing the well-being of this community? Are WE pursuing that? We see a similar reminder to pray for the city where we’re sent. Have you ever considered this to be your political aim? Friends, whether you admit it or not, we are politically homeless in this world, because no political ideology completely aligns with what Jesus commands. This is part of the reason we have so many contentious discussions in our politics today, I see both sides appealing to Jesus in some areas, but then ignoring Him in others. The early church was known to be the best citizens, in fact by the 4thcentury, the Christians were persecuted and marginalized, but they lived the best lives! 

-Julian the Apostate (last non-Christian Roman emperor) quote. Friends, the true church throughout history has sought the good of every nation they live in. How are we doing at seeking the good of our nation?

-Part of the difficulty with this is I think we often jump to the big, bold ideas instead of what Paul commands here. One of the most quoted phrases I remember hearing is: William Carey quote – called the father of modern missions, served in India

-What if what God wants is a tranquil and quiet life instead of “global changers” I would argue that what’s far more effective in the cause of Christ is a bunch of normal people faithfully serving where God has them, being hospitable, investing in their community, working hard at their jobs but not being consumed by them. 

-My generation (Millennials) believe it or not has some exemplary traits (the focus has shifted to Gen Z because we’re all middle aged now), but 1 of the things I was trained in was to think about changing the world. We were supposed to not waste our lives, we were supposed to be radical, we were supposed to care about every social justice cause, we were supposed to kiss dating good-bye (look how that turned out), we were told to acquire the fire, and we did evangelism explosions. But most of us just ended up in normal jobs, with a mortgage and school loans. Or for those called to ministry, we’re not in mega-churches or preaching to stadiums. And Gen Z, you’re not off the hook! How many of you want to become influencers, or are following after the latest greatest influencer? 

-My kids call themselves “Dude Amazing” after Dude Perfect That’s Amazing, 2 YT influencers. 

-What if life is more far more boring than that? I listened to a podcast recently that said YT has made the once-in-a-lifetime mundane. We can watch people traveling any place in the world, we can see insane trick shots, and on repeat! Things that used to be special experiences are now seen as boring, so people need to keep upping the expectations to keep up their followers. And I would argue that’s some of where the church has gotten skewed in what we’re supposed to be doing, because we view the YT channels as competition. 

-Do we now live in an attention economy instead of a faithful economy? How much of someone’s worth is viewed in terms of attention by likes or retweets or views? Is that the best metric of success?

-Is a quiet and tranquil life good enough for us? 

-We’ll get to some of these things as we continue through this book, but one of the remarkable things about expectations for leadership in God’s household is how unremarkable they are. 

-What’s amazing about Christianity is not the Christians, it’s that we serve an amazing and remarkable God who is in the business of redemption and healing

-Are you ok with living a completely “normal” existence? Paul here says that pursuit is good and pleasing to God. 

-Zinz quote. Is it ok to just let God work in you? Is it ok to “just” be a faithful friend, parent, grandparent, worker?

-Paul ends this section with the reason we should lead these lives: because God wants everyone to be saved.

-Friends, we don’t need celebrities to be telling people about Jesus (in fact, they’re often the ones who lead people away when they don’t keep following Him, sticking with YT Rhett and Link “deconverted”)

-One of the miracles of Christianity is the way it becomes can work in any cultural context. Christians can be Christians in democracies, in totalitarian regimes, in monarchies. The message can be understood by people in any class or educational background. And that also means that the church needs everyone who is a part of the church to actually live out what they believe. It’s not enough to be a Sunday morning Christian.

  • Points to Jesus (5-6)

-Since God wants everyone to be saved, what is the means by which people are saved? There’s only 1 way, do you see all the “ones” in this verse? 

-Opposing the false teachers who were emphasizing the law, using it in unlawful ways, the law can’t save! The laws purpose is to condemn! 

-Every person I know is inconsistent in some way with what they believe and how they practice it. If you ever hear someone accusing you of things that you know aren’t true, memorize this verse and quote it to them: Neh. 6:8. 

-Have you ever heard of a NIMBY? “Good for thee, not for me” I hate to say it because it was a tricky time to navigate, but how often did we see this during COVID? For many people, you don’t even need to go to the 10 commandments, just use their own standards of judgment and eventually they’ll condemn themselves. 

-‘The intolerance of tolerance’ think of just how many secular ideologies make an “us” versus “them” mindset. Last week we looked at some of the modern accusations towards Christians of “inventing” homosexuality as a sin, but another accusation lobbied against Christians is that of colonialism (exerting influence over another country for exploitation). People particularly argue that Christian missionaries work to “colonize” other countries, but the evidence points to literally the opposite reality: countries that had missionaries in the 1800s are the ones that most people are thriving in today.

-But here’s the irony goes, at least for me, today. Today those who are actually moving forward with trying to colonize other countries is Americans and particularly American politicians who are going to other countries and telling them how “backwards” they are on identity politics, particularly towards LGBTQ issues. Last year, I read about someone from congress going to Japan telling a newspaper here that they were going to tell the Japanese they needed to change their approach to homosexuality. Isn’t that literally colonization?

-But not just in politics, we see the same thing in entire denominations! I was initially incredibly encouraged by the United Methodist Church, because they actually held to historical Christian teaching on gender and sexuality, largely because the biggest UMC churches are in Africa. In fact, the UMC in Africa came out with a STRONG statement.

-THIS is the quite literally colonization: exploiting another people group to advance your aims. And in opposition to that stands Jesus as the only one who was never inconsistent, who came to redeem humanity and reconcile the broken world to His Father. He perfectly obeyed the law because sinful humans never could, and then He proceeded to take the penalty for breaking the law on Himself.

-What does a mediator do? He goes between 2 parties to help them live in peace with each other. This is where we need to see that sin isn’t just a mistake or a slip up, in God’s eyes sin is cosmic treason against a holy and righteous God.

-I don’t think our world today really thinks of sin in those terms. I was reading an article recently that talked about the standards different cultures have are often determined in opposition to someone. So if Jesus is the standard of a culture, you’ll never measure up to that level of perfection, but for our culture today the standard for many is Hitler. As long as I’m not as evil as Hitler then I’m doing pretty well! Do you think that’s the best standard to compare yourself to? I think what we’re seeing here is we’re supposed to we’re supposed to aim at Jesus, not the lowest bar.

-Paul also doubles down on emphasizing the humanity of Jesus “THE man,” which may tell us that another piece of the false teachers was denying that Jesus was a man (an early church heresy), which I think is an important reminder for us today, too! Friends, Jesus was fully man. He experienced a real human existence, and was still perfect. That’s why He can be a mediator – a go between for God and man, because He’s the perfect God-man. He experienced emotions, temptations, He was sinned against, His friends betrayed Him, and in His darkest hour He was abandoned by his closest friends.

-That man, THE man gave himself as a ransom. That’s an interesting term, isn’t it? Could also translate is as deliverance or redemption, he’s emphasizing what Jesus did as an exchange, He gives His life and receives “all” which is most likely referring “to whoever seeks it, Jew or Gentile.” (Pillar, 156)

-A weird phrase to end on, with some debate about the best way to render the Greek text into English. “A witness of one’s own time”

-Paul’s emphasizing that this wasn’t a random accident that caught God by surprise, he says something similar in Rom. 5. 

-Friends, history has an end goal and an end point. Someday history will just become HIS story where Jesus returns to fix our broken world and we get to experience eternity knowing Him and being known by Him. All because Jesus gave himself as a ransom. 

-I also love the idea of “testimony” in other places that’s translated as “witness,” one of our core values as a church! Jesus was the first witness of the resurrection (obviously!) but now it’s on us to continue being witnesses:

  • Proclaims the Truth (7)

-A herald in the first century was a prestigious position that had both political and religious significance, they would share messages from the king. And that’s the privilege we have now today! We’re not apostles (those were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus), we’re not all called to be teachers, but we are all called to be witnesses.

-When I hear that, my mind jumps to a courtroom today, calling forth witnesses to testify to the truth of what happened. And that’s not a bad idea! If you were called on to share about the truth of Jesus, could you do it?

-And what we’ve seen in this text is being a witness (which is just another way of saying being a Christian) isn’t just about saying the right things, it’s also about living the right way, and living the right way with the right group of people: the church. He says “All y’all” will receive power, it’s not you individually, it’s we together. Friends, this is the way God has chosen to spread His message to the corners of the earth: through you and me together being witnesses. This is why we say at the end of every service: you are sent. We’re all sent into the world to continue witnessing about Jesus in all the areas that we work, live, and play.

-But it all starts with prayer. So we as a holy church, need to pray for everyone, point to Jesus, and proclaim the truth.

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by mikethestrand on September 21, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 21, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/09/21/1-timothy-21-7-sermon-manuscript/

Tales from the Trail – Sermon Manuscript

-THANK YOU!

-First of all to the staff & elders for picking up many things in my absence, particularly Micah for doing the bulk of the preaching while I was gone. Anyone become converted to his side of having your favorite book be Lev.?

-So appreciate this time, time with my family, time to reassess and reevaluate. And even when we were gone, we missed you all. So thankful for this church family that loves and cares about me and my family, it wasn’t easy to be gone! 

-It’s going to take me a while to catch up, so if I look dazed and confused for a few weeks, I probably am! I realize it’s going to take me a while to catch up with all of you, too, so I’m going to get our side of it out of the way now so when we sit down to talk you can just fill us in on what you did this summer.

-This is going to be VERY different from a normal sermon here! I just have some things to share with you about to catch you all up on our summer, as well as some things I’ve been thinking and praying through over the summer. Normally, we’re walking through a passage of the Bible, this week will be random wanderings and disconnected Bible verses, so bear with me today, we’ll get back into our normal rhythms next week.

-I have a couple sticky notes on my church computer monitor with verses that have been meaningful to me at various points during my time here that serve as a good starting point for sharing some of what I learned, and one that I’ve had on there since the beginning of this year is Psalm 16:6.

-Friends, don’t ever forget that God is good and desires good for us as His children. This doesn’t mean that everyday will be the best day ever, or that it always feels like things are “pleasant” but it means that God is in control and the outcome for anyone who is a child of God is “a beautiful inheritance.” This has been something I’ve been trying to remind myself of over this year, because I have so many things to be grateful for, one of which is you all.

-I haven’t shared much of this publicly before, but Cara and I came here in 2020 at a pretty low spot. The church we were coming from was pretty dysfunctional, and I’d had 3 failed interviews the year leading up to coming out here (nothing like you guys getting sloppy thirds) – interviewed at a large church in Chicago to be a worship pastor in 2019, and was told I wasn’t a good enough singer, thus ending my dreams to be on American Idol. But God used this to confirm that it was time for me to move out of music ministry and into preaching ministry.

-Then I had 1 phone interview with a church in La Crosse, and was told they loved my preaching and leadership, but wished I was 3 years older. Strike 2!

-Then in March of 2020, Cara, Calvin, Ellie and I flew to DC to interview about doing a church plant (which everyone called to be a pastor within 10 years of my age has wanted to do). When we landed, one of the pastors picked me up and said “not sure what this is going to look like now, the whole city just shut down” and I, foolishly said, “over a little virus? Are you guys crazy!?” So we went through the interview weekend, watched these 2 churches process shutting down in-person meetings, and then flew back to CO. A week later, they called me and said “I tried pushing as hard as I could, but my elders don’t feel like we can ask you to move across the country when we don’t know what this city is going to look like tomorrow, much less in 3 months.” So we went back to square 1. A month later, I got an email from South Suburban who asked me if I was interested in having a conversation about a position, and this has been just the right fit for us.

-We got to go back and visit with people from that church, and were reminded of how God has continually provided for us again and again and again. So when I say we’re thankful for this church, that’s not hyperbole or an exaggeration. I have a friend who pastors the EFCA church in Hastings (since 2018), who tried planting a church in San Francisco – 3x, each time failed. He said what his family needed was a hug from a church, and that’s how Cara and I came here, and you guys have welcomed us and our growing family, God has been at work in and through us together, and we’re just getting started! When I candidate, I shared that if you hired me, I was committing to AT LEAST 10 years, then the elders extended the contract to 15 years (to finish Psalms) which is actually going to take us 18 years (because of sabbaticals), so we’ve got 13 more years before we can talk about a sign and trade with another church! 

-I told a friend about the Psalms in the summer, and he said it was brilliant on my part to make sure you couldn’t fire me before we finish! 

  1. Our Travels

-Now onto what we did and where we went this summer!

-A highlight for me personally was getting to visit a number of other churches where I had no responsibility! If you were here last summer, you got to hear all about my big grand European escapade where I hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc with 8 other EFCA pastors from MN (and some others), well it’s time to hear about it again, because those are the guys I visited!

-John Stromberg at Elmwood in St. Anthony Village (shoutout to Tom & Kris)

-Clay Edens at Hope in Oakwood 

-Bryan Lair at Trinity City in St. Paul

-RCC at the resort (don’t worry, we didn’t take the eucharist, and the priest made sure the emphasize that his homily would be “short” don’t expect the same from me!)

-South Sub online (a poor substitute for in person!)

-(no picture) a Baptist church in Bismark, ND with my sister who played piano

-Siloam Springs Bible, EFCA in Siloam Springs, AR (Cara’s family) 

-Aaron at Resurrection in Burnsville 

-Mike Richards at CrossPoint in Bloomington

-Friends, there’s some great churches in our area that are faithfully preaching the gospel, that are loving their communities, and following hard after the Lord! I’m so thankful for the ways God has been working in all these churches to bring the pastors together as friends, and as encouragement in gospel ministry. If you haven’t realized this yet: life is hard, and no one should be going through life alone! I just listened to a podcast this past week on the need for pastors to have good friends, and I sent it to many of these guys.

-As far as our TRAVEL: we stuck around here while the kids finished up school, and I got in the way around the house a LOT (I’ll get to that with my next point)

-After school wrapped up, Cara and I spent a week in Mexico to celebrate our 10-year anniversary while my parents watched our kids. Everyone survived, but I’m not sure that my parents will sign up for that again. When we got home they told me “your house is busy!”

-This was what Cara looked like most of the week, and this is what I looked like

-I made the mistake of reading the 2 Jurassic Park novels while I was there (if you haven’t read them, they’re really fun science fiction books that the movies didn’t necessarily recreate very well) The reason it was a mistake was because this resort was in the jungle, and the dinosaurs kept trying to take my food! These things are TERRIFYING!

-As a special treat, my youngest sister and her husband joined us after a few days, and we enjoyed catching up with them and introducing them to the resort!

-Flew back for a week (I got sick), then we spent 2 weeks on the road!

-Bismarck (stayed with the same sister who was in MX), Medora, Bismarck, Mt. Rushmore, Colorado, Arkansas, Nebraska, home. If you can’t see the tiny font, that’s 48 hours of driving and 3,222 miles.

-As fresh as we got, in Medora we did the pitchfork fondue (which Charlie loved), Mt. Rushmore was a hit for the bigger kids, my highlight from CO was getting In-N-Out. Ellie decided it was the best cheeseburger she’s had, but Lucy prefers Wendys. It was so good, I got it twice!

-Were hoping to make it back to Cheyenne to see our old church there, but Thomas had other plans. Unfortunately, he had a respiratory infection where he wasn’t breathing well, and nurse Cara was very worried. We came home a few days early and took him to the ER, his blood oxygen was 90%, and they diagnosed him with cold induced asthma. But wait, we weren’t done! That was Saturday night, on Monday, Cara took Calvin in, and it turned out he had gotten walking pneumonia! Didn’t know you could get that in summer. AND THEN we had to talk Thomas BACK in on Wednesday, and it turned out he ALSO had walking pneumonia! Then that Thursday it was Charlie’s turn for tubes, and to round out the summer, Lucy’s getting her tonsils removed in a couple weeks!

-We had a great summer together despite all the sickness! And got to show the kids all sorts of fun things! 

  • Human Being vs. Human Doing

-It was hard to mentally shift from doing to being. The first week and a half I read at least a book a day to try to keep out of Cara’s way (she had her schedule with me at work, from taking the younger kids to the library, to grocery shopping, to naptime), meanwhile I was just trying to keep busy and keep feeling productive, which I realized wasn’t the best use of my time. I texted a friend and asked him how much of sabbatical is supposed to be realizing you’ve put too much of your identity in what you do and what you produce, and his reply was “that was my entire first sabbatical.” Which is NOT what I wanted to hear!

-I don’t know about you, but I often judge myself on what I’m able to accomplish or produce. Like one of the biggest struggles I have in ministry is that I can’t see my accomplishments. No one gives me an award for praying, I can’t measure my growth in holiness, and I would argue that one of the markers of God’s people throughout history is complaining and grumbling that God’s timetable doesn’t align with ours. I don’t know about you, but I felt like I would be FAR more sanctified by now than I am! What’s been amazing to me, is as I’ve talked to many older saints, the older they get they just realize how much more of a sinner they are than they were when they were younger. It’s like the sin goes far deeper than any of us would care to admit. Additionally, what happens when you put sinners in close proximity to each other? Your sin is going to come out, and potentially hurt someone nearby.

-An old joke: ministry would be great, if it wasn’t for all the people. But the reality is if it wasn’t for all the people, there wouldn’t be a need for ministry! And I really like this you all!

-I think part of the issue is that many times we end up judging other people based on our own doing-ness (don’t think that’s a word), but we compare the ways we’re strong to the ways others are weak, particularly when we think of the ways we’re gifted. We tend to view gifts through a scale: we give certain gifts higher priorities, but that’s not the way God views it. It takes all of us working together because we also have to deal with sin, and sin is the reason work is hard. A few things I processed about work:

-Work is good (Gen. 2:15)

-I think we have a tendency to view work as a result of the curse, not something God designed. Friends, when we get to heaven, all of us will be working! I am convinced that when I get to heaven, I’ll get to be a chef! I love cooking and using food as a way to spend time with people. Another pastor friend of mine thinks he’s going to be a driver! He loves chauffeuring people around and hearing their stories. Many of you will get to continue doing what God has called you to here, but without the problems, which is the second thing we see about work:

-Work is hard (Gen. 3:17-19)

-Where Adam used to be able to get fruit easily, now all his work will produce thorns and thistles. And that is life between Eden and eternity. We work hard and it doesn’t always seem to work out well, which leads to the last point:

-Work isn’t God.

-Honestly, the rest of the Bible is humans attempts to work their way up to God, either through a literal building to the realm of the gods with the tower of Babel, to creating entire civilizations where the emperor can feel like he’s in complete control of everything. But it never works! Think of the Roman empire, we have nothing that compares to it today. I spent $25 to walk on the path the emperor would take to look down on his subjects and claim to be god. Little old me walked that path!

-I shared a verse from Psalm 16 earlier, but that Psalm ends by saying:

-What is the path of life? It’s not looking to work as your source of worth and identity, it’s God’s presence that fulfills all the deepest longings and existential questions you’ll have. Blaise Pascal said we have a “God-shaped hole” in our hearts that can only be filled by God, which gets us to the need to: 

  • Guard Your Heart

-The second thing I really spent time praying over and processing was what it looks like to become more like Jesus, I shared before I left that I was praying over what a “Rule of Life” looks like for a church body. One of the books I read over the summer was titled ‘Mere Christian Hermeneutics’ by Kevin VanHoozer, who teaches at TEDS, our denomination’s school in Chicago.

-He has made it his life’s mission to determine what it means to be “biblical,” which is a phrase that often bothers me because people tend to use it as a sledgehammer to stop any discussion. If you just say someone is “unbiblical” you can dismiss them outright. I’ve been called unbiblical before because I don’t agree with someone’s interpretation of Scripture! Does that make me unbiblical? And if not, how do we determine what it means to be “biblical”?

-One of the things I’ve really wrestled with over the last 18 months has been the sufficiency of the Bible (fancy word that means it’s enough for Christians to grow in godliness). I’ve been a pastor long enough to see that just reading or even preaching the Bible isn’t enough to lead to true transformation, which has at times made me slightly disenchanted with my job! (remember what I said about work being hard!) This book reaffirmed for me that the way we are made more like Jesus is by knowing, studying, and meditating regularly on God’s Word. This is God’s chosen way of both speaking to us and changing us to become more and more like Jesus. 

-To that end, one of the things I’ve added for us is a weekly verse for us to memorize together, it’s on the bottom of the sermon notes.

-The title of this point comes from Prov. 4:23 “Above all else guard your heart,” which it may be better to think about guard yourself, Hebrew the word “heart” is trying to refer to your deepest desire, where we tend to view the beating muscle in our chest!

-But how do we do that? The foundation or starting point is God’s Word. But then it goes on from there to impact and influence 2 things: meditation/reflection on God’s Word, and prayer which is responding to God who speaks to us through his Word. A couple passages make this point really well:

–Psalm 1

-“Happy” I like that translation! I’ve actually had people at church tell me I shouldn’t use that word, Christians aren’t promised to be happy, and I completely and absolutely reject that idea. But it’s not happiness to do or be whatever we want. It’s happiness that can only come from living a life fully surrendered to God.

–Psalm 119

-Second, see the happiness again? How does it come? Following God’s instruction, and decrees, and seeking Him with their whole heart. That’s how you guard your heart! Following after God.

-Keller “If you understand what holiness is, you come to see that real happiness is on the far side of holiness, not the near side.”

-Friends: soak yourself in God’s Word! But then after you’ve done that, move on to respond to God in prayer!

-I practiced this quite a bit this summer (I unsubscribed from all my podcasts) and would often drive and pray (usually driving time is when I knock out all my podcasts). There’s a guy I’ve been reading as much as I can of over the last year named Kyle Strobel (if you’ve been in church for a long time, you’ve probably heard of his dad Lee Strobel who wrote a book called ‘The Case for Christ’) Kyle Strobel is the director of Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot who has done a lot of writing in what Protestant spiritual formation is as distinct from other streams of Christianity (Roman Catholic, eastern orthodox)

-2 BIG takeaways for me from my reading and praying this summer:

1- You don’t begin and end in prayer, you enter into something that is already taking place.

-Friends, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are praying for us 24/7, and praying in the ways we wish we knew how to pray! What that means is prayer doesn’t depend on us. You should be praying, you should be talking to God, but He doesn’t passively sit back and wait for you to begin praying – Jesus and the Spirit are praying for us all the time! 

-Do you believe that God answers prayer? Now sometimes the answer is “no,” but God does hear us and He does answer us. What should comfort us in the midst of that is that God knows WAY more than we do. Keller quote

-Think of this just in human terms: my kids ask for dessert EVERY night, and we often tell them no, which makes NO sense to them. I shared with them recently that when I was their age, I told my parents I was going to eat hot dogs for every meal when I grew up. Guess what I don’t eat for every meal now! God sees and knows things perfectly, do we trust Him?

2 – prayer is a place to be honest. 

-This is just as important as the first point, because what do you do when the answer is “no”? Do you continue praying? Do you give up? God invites us to keep asking, and then come to Him with our complaints and issues!

-I don’t know about you, but I think praying can be one of the hardest things to do, usually because every time I go to pray, my mind starts to wander, and I feel like a failure. But what if that wandering is God’s way revealing to us what we should be praying for? Like when you pray and start thinking about work, is it God’s way of showing that your work is too important to you, or there’s an issue at work that you should be bringing to Him?

-Kyle Strobel quote

-I heard a pastor onetime say “Pray what you’ve got” and I love that! Don’t put on a show, don’t try to impress God with your prayers, but I also think we should add to that: pray what you’ve got, when you’ve got it, wherever you’re at! 

-You can pray when you’re driving, at the grocery store, talking to a friend, mowing the lawn, but one of my hopes and prayers for us as a church is to become more fluent in prayer, to let prayer become more normal in our daily lives.

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by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on August 10, 2025

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2025/08/10/tales-from-the-trail-sermon-manuscript/

Revelation 4:1-11 – Sermon Manuscript

-I got forwarded an email this week from one of my uncles of my grandpa’s farm being featured in the local newspaper, and grandpa winning a fairly prestigious award! 

-It’s funny what they emphasize in the article. “electrically heated watering devices” and “The Strands have an ‘all electric’ farmstead”

 -Then grandma called me this week and told me about another article that came out about the same time and described her as a “progressive” woman because of all her electric appliances! 

-It got me thinking though, how would you describe electricity to someone living 200 years ago? Vines connected to large skinny trees that connect all houses together. If your house is connected to these vines you can get a mini sun in your house to be able to see at night! What a gift! That means you can work longer hours, sleep less hours, and get all sorts of mental health issues due to working too much. Do you think they’d have any framework for how to understand what we’re saying? 

-Or imagine trying to describe facetiming or skype to someone just 30 years ago. You get to SEE them and talk to them! My kids get frustrated and confused when my parents call me without facetime because they can’t see them.

-Take it a step further and try to explain Wi-Fi to someone who hasn’t seen a computer, or an iPhone (yes, not an android) to someone who doesn’t know what a computer is (so easy a caveman could do it)

-Now take that and multiply it by infinity and you’ll start to see the tall task in front of John today: trying to explain the infinite using finite words to finite people.

READ/PRAY

  1. The Throne (1-3)

-“After this”

-Not referring to time, just saying the next sequence of visions was moving from the letters to the churches to the next thing God wants to reveal to John.

-This also serves to set the stage for the rest of the book. Think of the first 3 chapters as the introduction, then this begins a new section where God is giving all the spoiler alerts as to how we should view the events of human history.

-“Open door”

-Can you imagine getting a glimpse of heaven like this? What do you think this looked like? Do you ever contemplate heaven? The words in here were written to the 7 churches, yes, but they’re also for us today to be reminded what heaven is like, to understand what God wants from us, and to have our hearts stirred by the reality that God is in control and worthy of our full allegiance and worship, not anything on this earth that tries to distract us. Focus on heaven!

-“The first voice” “In the Spirit”

-1:10 – same voice we read about in here

-“In the spirit” isn’t the first time this happened:

–2 Cor. 12:2-4 “2 I know a man in Christ who was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether he was in the body or out of the body, I don’t know; God knows. 3 I know that this man—whether in the body or out of the body I don’t know; God knows— 4 was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a human being is not allowed to speak.” 

-The big difference is Paul wasn’t allowed to talk about it, but John is commanded to! Similar to Jesus’ ministry where He regularly told His disciples to not tell anyone until after He was ascending to heaven, then they were supposed to tell everyone!

-“Throne in heaven”

–Isa. 6:1-4: God’s presence connected to the temple, Seraphim (6 wings), continually call the Lord “holy, holy, holy” The noise literally shook the foundations of the building! 

–Ezek. 1:26-28: brilliant light, rainbow 

-“Jasper and carnelian stone”

–Ex. 28:17-20: the priestly garments. A way of signifying the set apart nature of priests, which turns out was a reflection of God Himself! One of the things we see throughout this book is that God has designed earthly ideas to reflect heavenly realities. That will keep coming up in today’s text and the rest of the book!

-“rainbow”

-Can you see how John’s fumbling with words here? Rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald. Ezek. 1:4 “there was a whirlwind coming from the north, a huge cloud with fire flashing back and forth and brilliant light all around it. In the center of the fire, there was a gleam like amber.”

-Once again, we need to keep in mind the whole biblical storyline here. Does anyone remember when rainbows were first mentioned in the Bible? Gen. 9, right after the flood! What does God promise to do? Never again flood the whole earth. That is another way of saying God’s preservation of His people despite His right judgment coming.

  • Around the Throne (4)

-24 thrones, 24 elders (subservient to the main throne)

-Numbers are almost always symbolic in Rev. so some people try to argue they’re humans who have earned their crowns and white clothes by being faithful unto death like God promised to the churches.

-Others argue that they’re angels, and the number refers to standing in for the 2 12s God used in His renewal plan of the world: 12 sons of Israel and the 12 disciples chosen by Jesus.

-Another argument is like the 24 orders of the priests (1 Chron. 24:4-5)

-I think this is meant to be similar to the letters to the churches, a heavenly representation of an earthly reality. (We should probably flip that around: a heavenly reality of an earthly representation) Just as the 7 churches had corresponding angels, here the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples have corresponding angels. 

  • The Throne (5-6a)

-Zoom back to the throne. What comes from the throne?

-Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody “Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening”

-Very few things more frightening than a huge thunderstorm. I remember driving with a friend in WY (the part of WY I lived in was flat, literally opposite corner of the pretty Jackson Hole side, more like Nebraska) we saw a big storm coming in from MILES away and he commented “can you imagine people coming here in covered wagons and not being able to pull out your phone and see where the end of the storm is?” These pictures start to show what the part of Wyoming I lived in look like. Close to mountains, but you can’t see them! 

-This ditch was almost dry before this storm came through, this was the aftermath of a pretty good-sized storm. But aren’t storms terrifying? Even today when we can easily see the trail of the storm when it’s passing through the power is incredible! 

-Similar to Isa. 6 noisy, loud, smoke filled the temple, Ezek. 1:4 “there was a whirlwind coming from the north, a huge cloud with fire flashing back and forth and brilliant light all around it. In the center of the fire, there was a gleam like amber.”

-God’s people saw similar things when He met with Moses in Ex. 20

-“Seven fiery torches”

–Rev. 1:4 where the 7 spirits showed up before. Not saying there are 7 literal spirits, referring to the complete perfection of the one true God

-“like a seas of glass” not a sea of glass, closest John can get to trying to describe it

-Separation between the throne and everything else. Often the sea in early times (and probably should today too) is viewed as terrifying, full of chaos

-An impossible barrier for us to cross. But there’s also a significant theme of water throughout the Bible that I think needs to shape the way we think about a sea here. 

–Gen 1:2 Creation, spirit of God was hovering over the water

-Gen. 7 (flood) 

-1 Kings 7:23-26 Bronze sea in the temple 

-Finally seeing the waters of baptism as another picture of the way we approach God (Rom. 6, 1 Peter 3)

-This separation between the throne is only accessible through the waters of baptism, which is the first act of obedience to demonstrate your new faith in Jesus Christ, which means we now have access to this throne! 

  • Around the Throne (6b-11)

-“Four living creatures”

-All sorts of proposals: 4 Gospels, astrological signs, divine attributes. Representative of the created world (again, just as the churches have divine representation, this represents all of creation serving the one true God)

-Midrash (Jewish commentary on the OT) comment on the book of Exodus: “Man is exalted among creatures, the eagle among birds, the ox among domestic animals, the lion among wild beasts.” Taking the “cream of the crop” as a stand in for all creation.

-Similar to what we see in Ezek. 1, 10, specifically we learn that these are Cherubim, angels (Ezek. 10:15). They guard God’s presence, are found in the most holy place where God is enthroned as king, were sewn into the curtains of the tabernacle, carved into the walls, doors, and frames of the temple – so where God’s presence is you find Cherubim. 

-Covered with eyes, 4 directions, signifying that they are vigilant in protecting God and carrying out His commands

-“Day and night they never stop” more lit. never rest.

-This is what they do 24/7. There’s no down time, no breaks. And think of the repetition of this. They never stop saying:

-Why do we think repetition is such a bad thing? My first role in ministry was music, thankfully people don’t have any strong opinions about music! GK Chesterton Orthodoxy

-Did you know that God loves repetition? Do you know that He doesn’t get tired of hearing people worship Him? I think this is hard for us to admit sometimes because we’re the ones that get tired of it. I have a friend who grew up in the Caribbean who told me the reason they repeat words and phrases for so long is because it takes that long for those realities to start to reach into their hearts. If we can’t regularly reflect and be moved by the realities of the gospel and who God is something’s wrong with us, not the repetitive words.

-“Whenever”

-glory, honor, and thanks – acknowledge that God alone has and contains all these divine truths. 

-Elders join in 24/7. It’s not just the 4 creatures, it’s also the elders who are worshiping God all the time, without any breaks. 

-Fall down – prostrate themselves. Just as we need to realize that there are spiritual realities and implications to our lives, we also need to realize that we are complex creatures who are called to love the Lord with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strengths. Or as we see in Deut. 6 to love God with all our “muchness” That means there are certain physical responses that are appropriate to use in our response to God. There’s a reason we stand when we sing, there’s a reason we bow our heads when we pray. These physical responses help our bodies match the reality of what we’re doing, and God intended it that way. There are all sorts of physical descriptions of faithful ways to worship God in the Bible: sitting, kneeling, standing, shouting, crying, silence, raising your hands, raising your head, staring at heaven. All of those don’t always have to be present in worship of God, but if they’re never used I wonder if we’re being faithful to worship God with everything we have and are?

-This gets us to what the elders are doing: Cast their crowns – who gave them the crowns? Rev. 2:8 “Be faithful to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.” 

-This is important: when we worship God, we’re not worshipping Him with anything we earned by ourselves. From the very breath in your lungs, to your skeletal structure, to the muscle and skin tissue covering your body, all of that is a gift given by God. 

-The only appropriate response to understanding who God is, Him revealing Himself is to worship Him. Think of what Paul reminds us of in 1 Cor. 4:7 It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is NOTHING! 2 chapters later he says: how do we glorify God with our bodies? We use them to worship God!

-Look at what they say:

“You are worthy to receive” Roman phrasing used to welcome the emperor or government officials. By referring to God this way, it undercuts the whole imperial cult! Caesar isn’t Lord, Joe Biden isn’t Lord, Putin, Kim Jong Un, Netanyahu, none of them are worthy to receive this glory and honor and power. Why not?

-They don’t reign cosmically. In the scheme of things where there are millions of galaxies, more planets than we can ever know about, none of these countries make a dent in all of the created order. They didn’t bring anything into existence and they will someday die! But not God.

-Weird word order: created and exist logically makes sense, but this is making a theological point that everything only exists by Him, and they only come into being by Him

-Someday, anyone who is in Christ will join with the 4 creatures and the 24 elders in worshipping God 24/7, using everything they have and are to honor, praise, and glorify God.

-Some really bad ideas about what that means. What if I don’t like singing? Are we just going to be playing harps on clouds all the time? 

-There is going to be continuity and discontinuity between heaven and earth, and I think there’s going to be a lot more continuity than we often think about. We have a picture in the Bible of what our resurrected bodies will look like and how they’ll operate in Jesus’ resurrected body. He was able to eat, walk, talk, be touched. His disciples recognized Him! But there were also some unique things, like walking through walls, disappearing. 

-When we get to heaven, we’re all going to have jobs to do! We’ll be able to continue learning new things, practicing new skills, and all of them will be tools that will be used to worship and glorify God. And here’s the best part: we have eternity to explore these things! So if it takes you 100,000 years to learn something, don’t worry, you’ve got eternity to keep learning and worshipping the Sovereign Creator 

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by mikethestrand on March 17, 2024  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 17, 2024

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2024/03/17/revelation-41-11-sermon-manuscript/

Are You Crazy Busy?

I got and read Kevin Deyoung’s new book yesterday, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book About A (Really) Big Problem which has since then dropped in price to $7.99. This is a very quick read, which is really helpful when I’m so busy!

The book is broken up into 3 main parts: the problem plaguing many in the Western world today (being too busy), followed by 7 plagues of busyness, and finally, a “what now?” conclusion chapter. The introduction set the stage for this current dilemma with some very helpful questions (like “Do you check work e-mails and phone messages at home?”) as well as some statistics that I had often pondered but never had concrete answers to (like the fact that our annual hours have increased from 1,716 in 1967 to 1,878 in 2000, which is an extra hour every day compared to the British, and 2 more hours a day than the Germans and Italians).

The meat of the book are 7 diagnoses Kevin suggests we need to use to self-evaluate. The most impactful for me were chapters 5 – ‘You Can’t Serve Others without Setting Priorities’ and 7 – ‘You Are Letting the Screen Strangle Your Soul.’ I far too often just say yes to everything that comes my way, and while this can be for very good things, is it always the best use of my time? Absolutely not! Kevin says, “Efficiency is not the goal. But if Jesus is any example, God does expect us to say no to a whole lot of good things so that we can be freed up to say yes to the most important thing he has for us.” I know for many people in my generation (early 30s even in to high school) the threat of technology invading our lives is a constant struggle. Even during youth group I see a majority of the students on their cell phones (always in their Bibles, right?). I just this week turned all the notifications off on my cell phone which has honestly been such a burden lifted off me (I’m planning to blog on that later).

The final chapter, while very good, seemed to be adding just one more mandate onto an already busy life – the need for prayer and devotions. While I agree this is something that needs to be the utmost priority in our lives, I don’t think it should be because we need to, but because we want to spend the precious time in communion with our God.

While this is a very good book about the busyness of our current lives, it felt a bit unfinished to me. As Kevin admits in the beginning of the book, “I’m writing this not because I know more than others but because I want to know more than I do.” David Murray has written a very good addendum to this book with some practical steps people can implement in their own lives in order to get rid of some of the busyness in their own lives.

“A man may preach from false motives. A man may write books, and make fine speeches, and seem diligent in good works, and yet be a Judas Iscariot. But a man seldom goes into his closet, and pours out his soul before God in secret, unless he is serious.”

-J.C. Ryle ‘A Call to Prayer‘

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by mikethestrand on September 26, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on September 26, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/09/26/are-you-crazy-busy/

Praying for Your Church

One of the things I’ve learned in my past year of ministry is that it’s not very much a job in the typical sense of the word. My last job I worked from 7 until 4 and then left my job there and tried not to think about it until the next day when I would begin work again. Now when I go home I’m generally thinking about issues related to church, reading books about church or spending time with people from church. This bothered me at first-even my personal times of prayer were dominated by praying for the church. God has recently been revealing to me that this should be the pattern for everyone in the church. We all should be praying for the church.

Many of Paul’s letters have this theme in them, “without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers,” Romans 1:9-10, “I give thanks to my God always for you,” 1 Corinthians 1:4, “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,” Ephesians 1:16, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,” Philippians 1:3-4, “we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you,” Colossians 1:3, “we give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers,” 2 Thessalonians 3:1, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,” 1 Timothy 2:1, “I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day,” 2 Timothy 1:3, and finally, “I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers” Philemon 4. Reading trough this list I think it’s safe to say that Paul both modeled and encouraged prayer among the disciples for the body.

How can we pray for the body around us? The most obvious answer to that is to pray that God will keep us from sin. The world is constantly bombarding us with temptations to give in to sin (2 Corinthians 13:7, Hebrews 13:18). The second thing we can pray for the body is for physical healing (James 5:14). A third thing we can pray for in the body to grow in the wisdom and understanding of God, which means maturity (Colossians 1:9). One thing I don’t always see people understanding is that this also needs to be prayed for pastors and leaders in the church.

Paul repeatedly asks for prayer for where God is leading him (2 Thessalonians 3:1, Colossians 4:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:25, 2 Thessalonians 3:1). And the most explicit example is in 1 Timothy 2 where Paul writes, “I urge that supplications prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way,” (italics mine). Pray for the pastors, elders and deacons who are in your church that we may faithfully lead the people that God has entrusted to us. May all of us remember to pray for our churches that God’s name may be made great and He would get all the glory.

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

Romans 8:26

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by mikethestrand on March 18, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on March 18, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/03/18/praying-for-your-church/

Children’s Bible Reading

Sorry I’ve been gone for a while! December was a crazy month.

I found a fantastic guide today for children’s Bible readings here. This is something I was always told to do growing up, and even saw it modeling in my parents but wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. This breaks the Bible down into very manageable portions (just a few verses at a time) and then asks a specific question about the text and includes room for prayer items. This would be a great way to give kids opportunities to practice writing as well!

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by mikethestrand on January 11, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by mikethestrand on January 11, 2013

https://pastormikesmusings.com/2013/01/11/childrens-bible-reading/