Hopes for Sovereign Grace in 2025
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Benjamin Kreps:
Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director. Mark, Happy New Year.
Mark Prater:
Happy New Year, Ben.
Benjamin Kreps:
It is January 2nd as we're recording this podcast. So it's the first podcast of a new year 2025. Last week or a couple of weeks ago we announced about changes to the podcast, hopefully some improvements coming in this year including fielding questions from folks that are checking out the podcast. We've already started to get some questions.
Mark Prater:
We have, we received three questions, all really good questions. Two of them are from members of different churches and one from one of our pastors. So I was really encouraged to get a quick response and just a reminder to everybody, you can submit questions by going to the markkprater.com website and there's a form right on the homepage where you can submit a question and we will be answering those. We can't promise we'll answer every question, but we will review 'em and those we choose we'll probably devote some episodes to, or we might take an episode and do several questions. It kind of depends on the questions that we get. But I'm really encouraged that we received three already. And if you have questions you would like Ben and I to speak into, please submit those.
Benjamin Kreps:
Yes, please keep the questions coming. Grateful for those who've already submitted some, it will help us we trust to be able to produce content on the podcast that will more helpfully serve folks in our family of churches. But like I said, it is January 2nd as we're recording this at the beginning of a new year. Each year at the pastors conference, and last year was no exception, in November, you shared with us really an envisioning, some ideas to envision us about the upcoming year in Sovereign Grace. Things that God has put on your heart for our family of churches. We don't want to leave those behind as we enter into a new year. And so you have some hopes for Sovereign Grace that you want to share with us this year.
Mark Prater:
I do. These are hopes that I have that I pray about that I'm working in cooperating with the spirit of God to lead us in these directions. But I think the place I want to start is my overall hope is that we would be a family of churches that has an enduring faith for the good gospel work that the Lord gives us this year and in future years, depending on how long God allows Sovereign Grace to exist. And as you well know, Ben, that kind of enduring faith according to Hebrews 11:6, it pleases God. So, may all that we do this year in laboring for the gospel and in future years may it be done with an enduring faith, with an aim to please him as Hebrews 11:6 says. And so all that we would do in 2025 would give God glory. That's our ultimate goal is to glorify God in all that we do.
But that enduring faith really is expressed in some specific ways that I've been praying about. Now I just want to share a few of those for us as we start 2025. First of all, enduring faith to train future pastors and make any generational transfer of leadership that might occur this year in some of our churches and in the coming years. And if you look at scripture, it can be very humbling at times. For example, James 4:14 reminds us that our life is but a mist. We are here for a very short time and then we vanish, we vaporize like a mist. And so for the Christian, for the short time that we are here is given to this task of transferring the gospel to the next generation so that future generations not even yet born will hear the good news of Christ. I mentioned Hebrews 11 before, that's the wonderful chapter in our Bibles known as the Hall of Fame of Faith in that chapter. And Peter T. O'Brien in his commentary makes this wonderful observation about that chapter. He says, "it is noteworthy that in the list of Hebrews 11, attention is given not only to the faith of the Old Testament examples, but also particularly to the salvation historical events themselves. The examples are set in historical sequence so as to provide an outline of the redemptive purpose of God advancing through the age of promise until at last in Jesus' face, pioneer and perfecter, the age of fulfillment is inaugurated."
So we want to take what we do in Sovereign Grace and we want to lay it into redemptive history. And first of all, what you realize is Sovereign Grace is small. I mean we say that, we know that anyway just by numbers. But really we're small in comparison to all that God has done and will do in redemptive history. And yeah, we're playing our small part of advancing the gospel, the promise of God in saving sinners like us as we wait for the culmination of the age of fulfillment. That's where we fit in redemptive history. So let us use the short time we have, including 2025 to just equip the next generation to take this gospel and run with it and to equip future pastors as well.
And as we're recording this, one expression of that is Relay. Our young adults conference actually begins tonight and I'm so excited about it, there's a pre-conference that young men are going to that are interested in pastoral ministry. And then the conference is for 18 to 30 year olds roughly. And I just can't wait to be a part of that just to watch God work in the next generation. So we're taking some efforts that way, but let's continue to pray to invest into the next generation. So that's one expression of enduring faith.
Enduring faith for theological fidelity, which is really important not only because of the cultural influences that any church or any denomination face right now, but also given our current global expansion. And as we expand, we could be vulnerable to losing our gospel fidelity. And what we want to do is we want to have this enduring faith to remain faithful to God's word, which will not only strengthen us as a family of churches, it will help preserve and protect and even strengthen our unity as well. So just a reminder to members and especially to pastors who listen to this podcast, please utilize that Sovereign Grace catechism. We have a plan at our church, we're giving it to every member, every household in our church. And we're going to read through that together as a church family in the next 78 days. And we're going to memorize verses in that catechism as well. So that's not the only way to do it, but that kind of a utilization of the catechism does help strengthen our theological fidelity. So just a reminder on that.
A next expression, enduring faith to continue to plant churches, you know this Ben very, very well. It requires faith to send your best and it requires faith to give generously financially to the work of church planting. And we do all that to obviously reach more people with the good news of Jesus Christ. But it's that kind of faith and those kind of sacrifices that please God. And when a church prioritizes gospel mission and sacrifices for gospel mission and they feel those sacrifices, my experience has taught me that those are the kind of churches that actually flourish in gospel ministry when they do that. And you know that from sending your best just a little over a year ago. And yet how God has blessed your sacrifices at Living Hope. So, enduring faith to continue to plant churches. And please pray; in the next couple of years we plan to plant six churches in the United States, nine outside of the United States, a total of 15 over the next couple of years. So let's have an expression of enduring faith by praying for those church plants.
And then one other thing, enduring faith for joyful generosity. I mentioned this in a previous podcast last year. I just see God doing this wonderful unique work in our family of churches right now. He is stirring members and churches to give not just sacrificially financially, but joyfully. There's just a joy in giving and it's something that I see evidence of that I think is a unique, wonderful work of God that we can't take credit for. But that work of stirring generosity is very timely given the number of gospel opportunities he's giving us throughout the world that need that financial support. So in the coming year purpose to have an enduring faith, to give generously to your church, to your local church, and to our mission in Sovereign Grace.
And let me just wrap up with this. I started with just as a family of churches, us having an enduring faith that would sort of mark our lives. And in doing so in 2025, I want us to think about the generations to come that we will never meet who will be in our churches. And maybe we'll look back and say they had an enduring faith that was compelling. And I'll end with this quote from William Lane who's commenting on Hebrews 11 again. And he says this, "the author of Hebrews brings before his audience, a long series of exemplary witnesses to an enduring faith. The catalog shows that throughout redemptive history, attestation from God has been based upon the evidence of a living faith that acts in terms of God's promise, even when the realization of that promise is not in sight. Such faith is able to move beyond disappointment and the sufferings of this world and to bear a vibrant testimony to future generations regarding the reality of the promised blessings." And so I pray that we would have an enduring faith this year as a family of churches and that would leave a vibrant testimony as Lane says, for future generations to follow. May that mark us as a family of churches.
Benjamin Kreps:
Amen. The new year, there's a sense in which there's sort of an artificial nature to these kinds of evaluations or resolutions. We haven't even talked about that for an upcoming year. But I think a wise Christian, we'll take advantage of moments like a new year to evaluate and to pray and to think about what God has for us in the future. And so just even this beautiful, simple but transcendent category of pleasing Christ through faith-filled study and serving and sacrifice and so forth, that's a thrilling prospect. And my prayer is joining with yours as well, is that we would be a family of churches that we're really just in this upcoming year and in the days ahead, just banking everything on the faithfulness of God because some of these things that we're talking about; church planting, generosity and so forth, they do take faith and there is sacrifice. But we can please the pioneer of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ, through what may appear to some people to be sort of just ordinary Christian activity done in faith. We can please him and we can see him working in our churches.
So thank you, Mark, for your encouragement in this new year and we look forward to seeing you next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.