Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name. We celebrate that the curtain is torn in two, and we can have full access to your throne by the person and work of your Holy Son. Father, we come to you this morning with tons of individual, joyful praises and some concerns we can´t handle. We want to leave them all in your sovereign gracious hands so your will be done in earth as it is in heaven. We are honored in joining our voices to the chorus of every tribe, tongue, nation, and people, singing eternally your praises around your throne, and to the millions of brothers and sisters who are worshipping you today all around the planet as well.

We come to you this morning remembering and thanking you for many encouraging and challenging sermons preached from this pulpit in past months and also rejoicing for a completed joy and a mindful unity in Christ that we have renewed through Philippians. We praise you, our mighty God; you never change; your steadfast and faithful love brings us your gracious and just purposes for the glory of your name and the joy of your people. We thank you for our elders, for Nic, Chris, Kyle, Joey, and Nathan. We thank you for the past, present ,and future dedication they each one will give and that they love you and care for this church. Help us to imitate their faith as they walk with you. Please bless their souls, wives, and kids with surprising blessings from you. Help them to keep their first love for you and cause them to seek first your kingdom of God and your righteousness through their quiet time with you in your word and in prayer. Protect us all from the materialistic sense of success and give us, please, an ever-increasing sense of service out of joy in terms of faithfulness to you.

Father, while this nation will be celebrating this coming 4th of July a new anniversary of its independence, and while every American citizen is remembering the costly sacrifice of those brave people who died to make this land free from a foreign empire, we cry out that you sovereignly help many on that day to compare that sacrifice with the supreme value of the sacrifice of the Lamb who was slain to make us free from the slavery to the empire of sin and death. And to all of us, Father, remind us who we are in Christ to treasure our citizenship in heaven more than our citizenship in our native lands.

Father, creator and sustainer of the universe, we humbly intercede for the new families created this past week. We beg you for blessings for L&D and C&A. Please grant them more unity and purity as they begin to live together; please surround them with godly couples who can counsel them and guide them through their initial stages of their marriages. Please protect them from the evil plagues that threaten modern families nowadays. Please help our brothers D and A to lead and love their wives humbly and sacrificially as Christ loved the church; and please, help also our sisters L and C submit and help their husbands as the Scripture teaches that Christ willingly submitted to His Father out of joy, obedience and dependency. Help each new couple live for you and trust in you. Grant them many happy years together until you call for one or both of them. Help them to be united, content, and satisfied in you first and foremost and to honor and respect each other. And let them do it for the unsearchable glory of your Holy Name and the mutual pleasures you designed to occur within the bond of marriage.

We also come to you with an indescribable mix of thankfulness and sadness for saying bye to the W family. We know you are sovereign and merciful and it was your will to bring and keep them with us until today. We thank you for the huge blessing they were for us and we hope to have marked their lives with the love of Christ. We ask you for direction, provision and protection for our brother R as he leads his family to move. We especially intercede for S to continue being a godly wife and mom, to continue loving and obeying you; to continue developing Christ-exalting relationships, and for E, A, and C, that they can grow up in Christlikeness and abandon themselves in your loving arms through every season of their lives. Help them to settle down there and find together a faithful gospel church were they can continue to worship you and love and be loved by your people, as well as a good house and a good school where they can have good neighbors and friends.

Use our lives to see others come to know, trust, and treasure Jesus. Give us boldness for sharing the gospel with friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and classmates with a deep sense of honesty, urgency, and joy. Give us intentionality, clarity, and audacity to turn worldly conversations into godly conversations. Please, use our lips and brains to testify of your love and power to those you providentially put around us. Help us to win the mental battle to take advantage of every little opportunity we could have with one of them. Help us to feel empathy for their worth, dignity, significance, and value as you created them. We cry out, in the name of Jesus, to see and know of more conversions and baptisms of reluctant enemies of you (brought by your Spirit and through the preaching of your glorious gospel) to be willingful children of you. We know you can do this, Lord. Do it for the glory of your name, Lord!

We thank you that we labor alongside other faithful churches both locally and globally. Please, bless Iglesia Biblia de la Gracia in Franconia, VA; Iglesia Gracia Soberana in Gaithersburg, MD; Iglesia Bautista Hispana Gilford in Sterling Park, VA and Iglesia Bíblica Bautista Emanuel in Ashburn, VA with faithfulness and love to your word in the heart of every member. Help their pastors Josué Raimundo, José Mercado, Freddy Hernandez and Raúl Santamaría to keep preaching your word, only your word and nothing but your word. Please protect and bless our fellow brothers at Zion Church in Lucknow, India from the attacks of radical groups because of the advance of the gospel amongst hindu & muslim population. Please protect and help the pastor there and his family as they labor to advance the gospel in Northern India.

Father, as we pray these things we’re mindful of your saving, priceless, and undeserved grace toward us, who were once your enemies, yet in your infinite kindness, you demonstrated your own love in sending your eternal Son, Jesus Christ, to die on our behalf. Forgive us our sins, please God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done wrong, and by the good we have left undone. Help us to have the same repugnance you have about sin. Help us to have the same treasure you have for Christ. Help us to live thankfully and gratefully for who you are and what you have done. Help us to live out the joy, the delight, the assurance, and the peace we can only find in Jesus.

For all of these, Father, we thank you, we glorify you, and we beg you because you are our strength, our rock, our fortress, and our deliverer, our highest refuge, our shield, our stronghold and the horn of our salvation. We need you, as the deer pants for flowing streams.

And all of these we trust in your mighty hands, in the glorious and meritorious name of our, King, Master, God, Lord Jesus, Our Savior; Amen!