Sunday Setup – 2 Corinthians 1:1-11

[Music] Hey church family and welcome to the Sunday setup. This is a weekly time where we are coming on all of our social medias live Thursday at 2:00 and the goal is that we prepare our hearts and we prepare our minds to hear the word of God on Sunday morning. the passage that we build our service around and we prepare ourselves going into this weekend. So, in this video, it's uh very quick, very easy. What we're going to do is we're going to read the passage, going to give you some prayer prompts that you can personally reflect on. And this is a time that you can do this just in your daily rhythm of life. Maybe this is on your way home from work. This is on a break. It's when you're at the gym, when you have an AirPod in and only listening to your kid partly. that wherever you are that as you listen to this you can either grab a piece of God's word and follow along with us. Today we're going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 or you can just listen to the words of God and just kind of search in your heart and your mind of what he's moving in you and preparing you for what's happening this weekend. So, let's flip to 2 Corinthians uh looking at chapter 1. And we're going to be looking at 11 verses. And I just want to read these 11 verses. And then we have some prayer that we're going to reflect on a little bit in here. But it starts this in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, starting in verse one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will, and Timothy, our brother, to the church of God at Corenth, with all the saints who are throughout Aaya. Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction. Through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ, our comfort overflows. If we are afflicted, it is for your own comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. And our hope for you is firm because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you also share in the comfort. We don't want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction that took place in Asia. We were completely overwhelmed beyond our strength. So that even when we that we even despared of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would not trust in ourselves but rather in God who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a terrible death. And he will deliver us. We have put our hope in him that he will deliver us again while you join in helping us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many. Paul starts this letter to the church at Corenth and he starts it with just a spirit of thanksgiving for all that God is and all that God has done. And I want us to start this time with just responding with a prayer of thanksgiving is thank you God. Thank you God of that you are the God of so many things. Thank you that you are the God of look at this in verse one. Thank you that you are the God of Corenth that he is the God who governs our churches. He is the God who Paul is an apostle because of God's will is that he chooses his people. He calls them to himself so they can respond to do his will. The God who is gave us our Lord Jesus Christ in verse two and verse three. He is the God of mercies. In verse four, he is the God of comfort in our afflictions. That as you continue in this passage in verse 7, he is our hope who is firm. And we see that in verse 10 and 11 that he has delivered us from so many things. And our prayer prompt that we just want to start this is thank you for being the God of [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] God, we thank you that you are the God of the universe, that you are the God who saves us, that delivers us, that provides a different way, that comforts us in trials. Lord, you're the God that revealed yourself to us through your word. That God, you're still active today and speaking through your church. That you illuminate the word that you've given us, that we see in your holy scriptures, and you move through your Holy Spirit, through uh the lives of the believers that we get to be a part of. And God, we just thank you for the blessings that we do not deserve. We thank you for the grace that you so heartily give out and we thank you for the mercy for sparing us from that which we do deserve. God, I just thank you for all the prayers uh at Cross Church that are Lord being prayed right now that you hear them as we try to prepare our maybe that as we start to pray for uh what you're about to do in in the lives of those around us. And God, we are just thankful for it. But God, not only do we thank you, but also Lord, we pray that you begin to move in our lives and the life of our community. And in this second prompt that we really see in the second half of this passage of that you are this God of deliverance. And our next prayer prompt that we want to just pray to our Lord and and start this and you finish this out. you continue on this line of thought is God, please deliver blank. And that could be please deliver yourself from a sin, from maybe a stressor, from a depression. Please deliver your neighbor or your friend or some loved one around you uh from their lifestyle and they're thinking they're in right now and deliver them to a salvation in Christ is God, please deliver. Pray those prayers to our God. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Heat. [Music] God, we have so much to be delivered from. Lord, too often we might forget the sin and and the penalty of that sin that you've delivered us from at the moment of our salvation. But God, we read a passage like this and Paul, an Apostle Timothy, a pastor, that they had been praying continuously that you'd deliver them from the afflictions they faced, from the hardships they came upon, from their own sin that they often fell into. But Lord, they didn't stop there. They asked the church at large to join them in those prayers. And as Paul and Timothy invite Corinth to continue to pray for them, to continue to pray for themselves, to continue to pray for their city, Lord, we just pray for our spheres of influence around us. God, that we can just ask for deliverance in our personal life. That we can give up more to you. That we can see the need for you in our life, the need of deliverance, the need of comfort, the need of sacrificing our sin and wholly giving over to you. But Lord, that you can deliver those that are heavy on our hearts, our family members, our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and family that we know extended, those people at our kids' school, God, whatever interactions we have in our communities, in our cities, in our states, and our countries, Lord, that there just be a burden for those who don't know you. And Lord, we just ask for your deliverance in their life. For you to illuminate yourself in them, that they can see you and they could see the greatest need that they have in their life is to accept your salvation to deliver them from their sin. God, we just ask that you prepare the hearts of Cross Church as we go into this weekend and we study this passage, as we get to pray through this passage together this weekend, as we get to praise through it in worship, as we get to preach through it and then we get to go practice it next week. Lord, that your steps guide that, that you be in it, and Lord, that Cross Church represent you and honor you in a glorious way. God, we thank you for this time. We thank you that we can pray uh digitally together as a church family and God that you just show up in a big way this week and this weekend and we can make you known and in glorious fashion. Lift all this up in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you church family. We'll see you Sunday. [Music]