We open the word of God to the
book of Romans chapter 13 beginning at verse
8 and reading through the end of the
chapter verse 14.
I think these are good verses for us
as we walk into a new year.
Romans chapter 13 beginning at verse 8.
Owe no man anything but to love one
another for he that loveth another hath fulfilled
the law.
For this thou shalt not commit adultery, thou
shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou
shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not
covet.
And if there be any other commandment it
is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Love worketh no ill to its neighbor, therefore
love is the fulfilling of the law.
And that knowing the time that now it
is high time to awake out of sleep,
for now is our salvation nearer than when
we believed.
The night is far spent, the day is
at hand.
Let us therefore cast off the works of
darkness and let us put on the armor
of light.
Let us walk honestly as in the day,
not in reveling and drunkenness, not in immorality
and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ
and make not provision for the flesh to
fulfill its lusts.
As Christians we do know what time it
is.
It behoves us to live as those who
are waiting for the Lord.
Dr. Vance Havner tells the story of the
farmer who was lying awake in bed one
night and the clock began to chime.
And as the farmer counted, the clock chimed
fifteen.
And the farmer jumped out of bed and
ran through the house saying, wake up, wake
up, it's later than it's ever been before.
I think Paul had something like that in
mind when he wrote these verses in Romans
chapter 13 and that knowing the time.
Paul is telling us that you and I
are living in a very wonderful, needful time.
The Apostle is reminding us that our salvation,
the completion of our salvation, is nearer than
when we believe.
That's logical, isn't it?
The coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is
certainly closer to us today than it was
back in Paul's day or even thirty years
ago when I was saved or whenever you
were saved.
Our salvation, the return of the Lord Jesus,
is nearer now than when we believed.
Now this being the case, we have some
responsibilities.
The fact that Jesus Christ is coming again
is an encouragement to us to keep on
going.
It's an encouragement to us that the best
is yet to come.
Don't quit.
The fact that Jesus Christ is coming back
again keeps us going.
It keeps us from collapsing.
But it also lays upon us some definite
responsibilities and there are at least four of
them.
I want to share them with you today.
As a church family and as individual Christians
as we begin this new year, it's a
year of responsibility.
Our Lord Jesus Christ may return.
Now we pray that he will.
I pray that our situation here in this
earth is not so pleasant and so wonderful
that we don't want Jesus Christ to come
back.
I pray that our only reason for wanting
him to come back will not be deliverance.
I trust we want to see him.
I trust the coming of the Lord means
more to us than deliverance from our physical
burdens and our spiritual problems.
I trust that we want to see him.
I'm sure this is true of many of
you.
There are many of you who are saying,
oh, that I had wings like a dove,
that I could just fly away and be
with him.
Well, until that time comes, you and I
have responsibilities to carry and to fulfill.
And Paul gives them to us here.
And Paul is saying to us that if
we do fulfill these responsibilities, we will be
ready for his coming.
You say, well, Pastor, isn't every Christian ready
for the coming of the Lord?
No.
No, if that were the case, Paul would
never have written these words.
Every Christian who's truly born again and therefore
is a Christian is ready to go to
heaven.
We go to heaven because of the grace
of God.
It's faith in Jesus Christ that takes us
to heaven.
And so every truly born again person is
ready for heaven.
But I fear that there may be some
of us who are not ready to stand
before the Lord.
The writer of the book of Hebrews tells
us that our God is a consuming fire.
Paul writes and says, knowing therefore the terror
of the Lord.
I trust that no one here will look
upon the return of Jesus Christ and the
judgment seat of Christ lightly or carelessly.
To me, it's a very awesome thing that
one day I shall stand before God and
I shall give an account of my life
and my ministry.
Responsibility number one is in verse 11.
It's time, says Paul, to wake up.
And that knowing the time that now it
is high time to awake out of sleep.
For now is our salvation nearer than when
we believe.
It's time to wake up.
As you read your Bible, you discover that
sleep has many different meanings to it.
Of course, there's the natural meaning to sleep.
When God was going to give Adam a
wife, he put him to sleep, performed the
first surgery, the first anesthesia, put him to
sleep and gave him a wife.
When he was going to make a covenant
with Abraham, he put him to sleep.
A deep sleep came upon Abraham.
It's interesting to read in the Bible that
sometimes God uses natural sleep as a means
of blessing.
But that's not what Paul's talking about here.
He's not writing to people who are asleep
on their posturpedic mattress.
He's not talking about natural sleep.
Nothing wrong with that.
Natural sleep is a good thing.
It's an awful thing when a person can't
sleep.
It's rather amazing that you walk into a
drugstore and you see shelf after shelf of
medicines to help people sleep.
Ecclesiastes says the sleep of the laboring man
is sweet.
At the end of a busy day, it's
a beautiful thing to be able to sleep.
Doctors tell us that sleep is the closest
thing to death.
That when we are truly sleeping and resting
as God wanted us to when he made
us, the systems in our body are very,
very close to death.
But Paul's not talking about natural sleep, nor
is Paul talking about Christian death.
In the Bible, death is pictured as sleep
for the believer, not for the unbeliever, but
for the believer.
The word cemetery means a sleeping place.
It's the Greek word which means a sleeping
place.
The Latin word is dormitory, but nobody ever
sleeps in a dormitory, but they do in
a cemetery.
When a Christian dies, his body goes to
sleep.
His soul doesn't go to sleep.
His soul goes home to be with the
Lord, absent from the body, present with the
Lord.
But the body goes to sleep.
This is why when one of our loved
ones is called home, though we weep because
it hurts, we realize that nobody's afraid of
sleep.
When the Lord Jesus Christ comes to one
of his children and says, all right, you've
suffered long enough now.
I'm just going to put you to sleep.
And so the body goes to sleep and
the soul goes home to be with the
Lord.
This is the assurance that we have, but
Paul's not talking about that.
The sleep that Paul is talking about here
is spiritual lethargy.
The sleep that Paul is discussing here is
the coldness or the lukewarmness, the apathetic attitude
of believers.
He's talking about spiritual dullness and lethargy, the
thing that happens to you when you're sitting
in a room and the air is heavy
and there's no ventilation.
Maybe you've had this experience in lectures in
school and you're sitting there looking at the
instructor and you're getting heavier and heavier.
He's talking here about spiritual lethargy.
Now he uses the same illustration in 1
Thessalonians when he writes to the church there,
just about the same idea.
He says this, but of the times and
the seasons, brethren, you have no need that
I write unto you, 1 Thessalonians 5, for
yourselves know perfectly that the day of the
Lord so cometh as a thief in the
night.
For when men shall say peace and safety,
then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail
upon a woman with child, and they shall
not escape.
But ye, brethren, are not in the darkness,
that that day should overtake you as a
thief.
Ye are all sons of light and sons
of the day.
We are not of the night nor of
the darkness.
Therefore, let us not sleep as do others,
but let us watch and be sober-minded.
For they that sleep sleep in the night,
and they that are drunk are drunk in
the night.
But let us who are of the day
be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith
and love, and for a helmet the hope
of salvation.
And so the opposite of sleep is alertness,
being awake, being sober.
And so our first responsibility as we walk
into this new year is the responsibility to
wake up.
You know, it's a tragedy when Christians go
to sleep.
Do you ever go through your Bible and
pinpoint the people who missed out on blessing
because they went to sleep?
Now, there are some people who got blessing
because God put them to sleep.
I mentioned Adam and I mentioned Abraham.
I'm thinking, for example, of Jonah.
Jonah was running away from God and disobeying
God.
Jonah didn't want to be a soul winner,
and Jonah went to sleep.
And while he was sleeping, a storm came.
And you would think that a landlubber like
Jonah, a Jewish prophet, would have been hanging
over the rail in that storm.
But he'd gotten into a spiritual stupor.
The pagan sailors were up on deck praying
and making sacrifices and pleading that some God
somewhere would send peace.
And here's Jonah sound asleep.
That's a tragedy of spiritual lethargy and dullness.
You don't know the danger that you're in.
And someone says, well, pastor, I've got peace
in my heart.
It could be peace and it could be
spiritual lethargy.
It could be an absence of alertness and
awareness.
I think, for example, of the greatest Bible
conference that was ever held, the Mount of
Transfiguration.
Three people to listen, Peter, James, and John.
Three people to minister.
Jesus, Moses, Elijah.
The greatest speakers in the world.
Jesus, the Son of God.
Moses, the great lawgiver.
Elijah, the great prophet.
The greatest subject in the world.
They discussed His decease at Jerusalem.
And what are Peter and James and John
doing?
Sleeping.
I wonder how many times you and I
have gotten into spiritual lethargy and God's wanted
to talk to us, we couldn't hear.
I think of those same three disciples in
the Garden of Gethsemane.
You know, when you're going through some kind
of difficulty, you want somebody with you.
I'm so happy that the people of the
Moody Church stand with each other.
And when someone's going in for surgery, there
are some of the friends to pray.
I thank God for the way you people
hold each other up in prayer.
And Jesus said to nine of His disciples,
eight of His disciples, now you stay here
and you three, Peter, James, John, you come
in and pray with me.
He said, the Son of God needs somebody
to pray for Him.
He asked them for that.
He was going to go through the awful
agony of Calvary.
And here's Peter and James and here's John.
And He says, now pray with me.
And they went to sleep.
We wonder why God doesn't do things for
us.
It's because we're sleeping instead of praying.
I wonder if someone listening to me right
now this morning was sleeping when you should
have been praying.
In the parable of the tares, Jesus said,
while men slept, the enemy came in and
sowed the weeds.
And while Christians sleep, the enemy gets into
the church.
And while Christians sleep, the enemy gets into
Sunday school classes.
And while Christians sleep, the enemy begins to
plant dissension and trouble and false doctrine.
And Paul says, now look, as you walk
into a brand new year, wake up.
What is it that puts us to sleep?
Why is it Christians are sleepwalking?
They come into a service as though they're
hypnotized.
Why is it Christians go to sleep?
What happens to us that we go to
sleep?
I think sometimes we go to sleep because
we're breathing the wrong atmosphere.
I can recall only twice in my life
I went to sleep in a school room.
I'm sorry that both of these were at
seminary.
In one case, that room was so hot,
the sun was just beating through the windows.
And I'm sorry to say the lecture was
just a little bit dull and I was
tired and I just sat there and little
by little my head began to go down
and I had to pull myself up.
This happened once in chapel.
The seat that I had in chapel was
in the horse latitudes.
I couldn't even see the speaker.
And it was hot and it was drowsy
and I went to sleep.
And I'm embarrassed about that.
I don't brag about it.
Sometimes the atmosphere we're living in is heavy.
It's not the pure breath of heaven that
we sang about.
Oh breath of life, come sweeping o'er
us.
Sometimes you and I get into some of
the places where we're not supposed to be.
And we're breathing an atmosphere that's poisonous, that's
heavy, that puts us to sleep.
I think sometimes the Holy Spirit of God
just has to come blowing through to clear
away the smog.
Some years ago out in Los Angeles, a
heavy smog moved in.
And they couldn't do a thing about it
and there was a whole city waiting for
the wind to blow.
This happens to our churches sometimes.
We get apathetic, careless, lethargic, dull, and the
Holy Spirit of God has to begin to
blow.
Sometimes our drowsiness comes from the wrong kind
of eating.
I'm sure this last holiday season more than
one person overate and then went and sat
down and before long you just got a
little bit heavy, a little bit heavy.
Overeating will do this.
Sometimes we Christians get involved in the things
of the world and we feed the flesh
and we get dull and careless and sleepy.
I'll tell you what puts people to sleep
more than anything else.
You get into the darkness.
If you're in the light, it's kind of
hard to go to sleep.
I can recall when we were flying overseas
a few years ago, got to be about
10.30 and I was tired.
And of course they, about that time, began
to show a movie.
I didn't want to see a movie, I
wanted to go to sleep.
So I closed my eyes, but there were
changes of lights all the time.
And finally the movie was over and I
thought to myself, well praise the Lord I
can now go to sleep.
Then the sun came up.
It's a very difficult thing to go to
sleep in the light.
When a Christian starts walking in darkness instead
of walking in the light, how easy it
is for a Christian to go to sleep.
I'll tell you something else that makes people
go to sleep.
Nothing to do.
Just sit around and before long you get
tired and drowsy.
You know those Christians who are busy ministering
to God's people, those Christians who are busy
trying to win souls, they don't have time
to go to sleep.
They don't have the desire to go to
sleep.
They're busy doing something.
You say, but it's possible to do too
much.
Well, God says let's not be weary in
well-doing.
In due season we shall reap if we
faint not.
We get tired in the Lord's work, we
don't get tired of the Lord's work.
And Paul says to us, wake up.
Wake up to the opportunities that are around
you.
Wake up to the needs that are around
you.
Wake up to the burdens and wake up
to the dangers.
You get excited anymore and people think you're
crazy.
Don't get too excited.
You might turn somebody off.
Well, I'd rather be turned on by the
Lord and turn somebody off than be sleeping.
And God never called the church to go
to sleep.
God called the church to get out and
fight and serve.
And the time has come for us to
wake up.
Now, the second responsibility we have, according to
the Apostle Paul, is given to us in
verse 12.
Wake up.
Clean up.
It's almost a picture of somebody getting up
in the morning and stretching and saying, oh,
I better wake up.
I've got to get to work today.
I've got to get to school today.
Taking a look in the mirror and saying,
man, you better take a shower and you
better shave and better clean up.
Paul says, I have the responsibility as I
walk into a new year of cleaning up.
Now, he talks in verse 12 about the
night and the day.
He says, now the night is a picture
of sin.
Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, said
Jesus.
Neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds
should be reproved.
When people want to do dirty, sneaky, sinful
things, they do it at night.
One of the signs of the brazenness of
this present age is that people are doing
boldly in the light what they used to
do very stealthily in the darkness.
It's time to clean up.
It's time for us to put aside the
works of darkness and to put out of
our lives those things that displease the Lord.
Look at them in verse 12.
The night is far spent.
The day is at hand.
Let us therefore cast off the works of
darkness and let us put on the armor
of light.
Let us walk honestly, becomingly, as in the
day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in
immorality and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
He's saying, take off the dirty clothes.
Now, in the Bible, garments are a picture
of character.
For example, Isaiah 64 6, all of our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
And so when the unsaved person comes to
stand before God and he brings all of
his religion and all of his good works,
God says, I'm sorry, it's just rags.
Well, Lord, what can I do?
Take off those rags and let me give
you the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
That's why you have a verse like Isaiah
61 10, where he has dressed me in
the robe of righteousness.
He has clothed me the way a bridegroom
is clothed for the wedding.
Now, if you're a Christian, this means at
some point in your life you have repented.
You've taken off the dirty clothes and you
have received Jesus Christ, which is the garment
of righteousness.
But now, says Paul, it's possible for us
as Christians if we aren't careful to get
dirty clothes.
I don't mean we lose our salvation.
I mean that we go back to the
things of the old life.
And this is why in almost every letter
Paul writes to the churches, he warns about
sin.
He wrote to the Corinthians and said, some
of you are getting drunk.
You're suing each other.
You're fighting each other.
One is building this clique and one is
building that clique.
Christians, not unsaved people, Christians.
He writes to the Galatians and he lists
that long list of the works of the
flesh.
He was writing to Christians.
Now, the works of the flesh are manifest,
which are these.
He talks about adultery and fornication and lasciviousness
and fighting and anger.
Christians.
I spoke at Pacific Garden Mission on New
Year's Day.
And during the invitation, I was walking around
pleading with the men to give their hearts
to Christ.
I stepped up to one man there and
he looked like he was interested.
All during the message, he just looked at
me and listened.
I thought maybe God has prepared this man's
heart.
I said, sir, would you like to become
a Christian?
He said, not on your life.
I said, well, sir, if you don't receive
Jesus Christ, it means that you go to
hell.
He said, I'd rather go to hell than
be a Christian.
You know, I don't know how a person
gets like that.
I don't know his story, but I've known
people like him.
He got into a church someplace where he
was told about the Lord Jesus and about
being saved.
And he saw Christians fighting with each other.
He heard about Christians who were living for
the devil in the world.
And he said, if this is what it's
all about, I don't want it.
Now, my friends, let's not close our eyes
as in the night.
Let's be open and honest.
It's time for us to wake up and
it's time for us to clean up.
It's time for Christian people to realize we
cannot wear the old grave clothes.
When Lazarus came out of the tomb, Jesus
said, loose him, let him go.
Paul says the same thing in Colossians chapter
3.
Seek those things which are above.
Now, put off these things, anger, wrath, malice,
and put on love and peace and kindness.
We Christians walk around like we're perfect.
And God looks upon us and says, I
think it's time for you to clean up.
That's what John means when he says, and
now my little children abide in him, that
when he shall appear, we may have confidence
and not be ashamed, ashamed before him at
his coming.
You mark my word, there are going to
be some settlements made at the judgment seat
of Christ.
It's time to wake up.
It's time to clean up.
Thirdly, it's time to dress up.
The night is far spent.
The day is at hand.
Let us therefore cast off the works of
darkness and let us put on the armor
of light.
He's picturing a soldier.
Here is a soldier who has been careless
at his post and he suddenly wakes up
and says, oh, it's almost dawn.
I've gone to sleep on the post.
Wake up, clean up, and dress up.
Now, it comes as a shock to some
Christians to discover that we are soldiers.
The Christian life is not a playground, it's
a battleground.
Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the
grace that is in Christ Jesus.
No man that warreth entangleth himself with the
affairs of this life, that he may please
him who has called him to be a
soldier.
There are many pictures of Christians in the
Bible.
We're compared to sheep.
We're compared to children.
We're compared to stones.
We're compared to branches in a vine.
We're compared to students in a school.
We're compared to vessels, lights, salt.
Here, he says, you're soldiers.
That means there's a battle going on.
Now, some Christians have no idea there's a
battle going on.
The hosts of hell are warring against the
church of Jesus Christ.
And do you know where the devil is
working?
Not outside, inside.
We drive through the streets of Chicago like
any other city, and we say, oh, the
devil's got a place there, and the devil's
got a place there.
I want you to know that when Paul
writes about the work of the devil, it's
not outside in the narcotics dens, and in
the nightclubs, and in the gambling places.
He says the devil is inside the church.
And you and I have got to dress
up, and put on our armor, and pick
up our sword, the sword of the Spirit,
which is the word of God, and fight
the battle.
Now, we put on the armor for protection.
I think he's talking here about the kind
of thing you and I should do every
single morning.
I make no apology for saying this.
You and I are not going to win
the battle and get the job done unless
every morning we come to God, we report
for duty, we pick up the sword of
the Spirit, we feed ourselves with the word
of God, we equip ourselves with the truth
of God, and we walk into the day
wearing the armor.
It amazes me how some Christians can go
day after day and week after week never
starting their day with prayer, never starting their
day with the word of God.
They wonder why they fail.
It's time to dress up.
I suppose the greatest explanation of this is
over in Colossians chapter 3, where he gets
right down to brass tacks.
Verse 8, But now ye also put off
all these, that's the cleaning up, anger, wrath,
malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth,
lie not one to another, saying you've put
off the old man with his deeds, you've
put on the new man, who is being
renewed in knowledge after the image of him
that created him.
Now verse 12, Put on therefore, here are
the clothes that we're supposed to wear as
Christians, tender mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness,
longsuffering, forbearing one another, forgiving one another.
If any man have a quarrel against any,
even as Christ forgave you, so also do
ye.
And above all these things put on love,
which is the bond of perfectness.
Dress up.
Each one of us today before we came
to God's house dressed up.
You would have frozen to death had you
not.
There's nothing wrong with a person standing in
front of a mirror and adjusting his tie
or combing his hair.
For some of us it doesn't take very
long to do these things.
A person wants to look his best.
Man does look on the outward appearance.
No one glorifies God by having bad breath
and body odor.
And no one glorifies God by looking sloppy.
If we took time to dress the outer
man, how much more important it is to
take time to dress the inner man.
It's time to wake up and it's time
to clean up and it's time to dress
up.
And finally, we have a fourth responsibility.
It's time to grow up.
Verse 14, put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ and make not provision for the flesh
to fulfill its lusts.
Grow up.
You see, as you grow older and grow
up, your clothing changes.
Somebody says, well, I sure can't wear last
last winter's suit.
This is a bit tight for me.
I've gotten bigger.
He says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
When David put on Saul's armor, he couldn't
walk.
It was too big for him.
When you and I put on the Lord
Jesus Christ, I wonder if he fits.
Now, to put on Jesus Christ means to
receive Him by faith, to appropriate all that
He has for you.
It means His peace becomes your peace and
His love becomes your love.
It means putting Him on, clothing yourself with
the Lord Jesus.
But He's also saying to us, you better
grow and grow and grow that you might
get more of the Lord Jesus and that
He might get more of you.
Some Christians never do grow up.
Paul had this problem in Corinth.
He said, I'd love to deal with you
as with adult people, but I can't.
I can't.
I've got to deal with you as babies.
There's only one way to teach babies.
Spank them.
Little babies do not understand logic.
They do not understand values.
The only way to teach children when they've
disobeyed is to spank them.
And Paul had to spank the Corinthians.
You see, the way God deals with me
shows me where I am spiritually.
If I'm close to the Lord, He just
has to look at me and I get
the message.
If I'm a little farther away, He talks
to me and I should get the message.
But you know, if I won't listen to
God speak, then I've got to feel God
spank.
God says, okay, Wiersbe, I can't deal with
you as a mature person.
You're acting like a baby.
There's only one thing left to do.
Spank you.
And Paul says to you and me, as
you walk into a new year, wake up
and clean up and dress up and grow
up.
You know why some Christians don't grow?
Paul tells us in verse 14, they're making
provision for the flesh, but not for the
spirit.
Paul is saying here, the only way to
grow is to feed the spiritual life and
starve the flesh.
Oh, we spend time feeding the flesh.
It's not hard in the city of Chicago,
if you own a TV set or even
a newspaper, to feed the flesh.
In fact, without those things you can feed
the flesh, just use your imagination.
A dear friend of mine now, home with
the Lord, was blind.
And I made the statement one day when
we were having dinner, I said, you know,
it's tragic that you're blind, but it saves
you from some of the temptations the rest
of us had.
He said, are you trying to kid me?
I face the very same temptations with my
imagination that you face.
Feeding the flesh.
And Paul says, make no provision for the
flesh.
Don't feed the flesh.
Don't feed the ego.
Feed the Holy Spirit.
I can't get away from the fact that
what Paul is saying is this.
You're a soldier.
I'm a soldier.
This church is a company of soldiers.
Our job is not to fight each other.
Our job is to fight the enemy.
The battle is not in here.
The battle is out there.
But alas, too many Christians are not equipped
for the battle.
And therefore, he gives us these four responsibilities.
Jesus is coming.
When he comes, are we going to be
asleep?
And while they all slumbered and slept, behold,
the cry came, the bridegroom cometh.
And they woke up.
And half of those bridesmaids were not ready
to meet the Lord.
If the Lord Jesus would come back today,
would he find us sleeping, careless, lethargic, or
sober, alert, awake?
He says, wake up.
If Jesus came back, would he find us
in dirty garments?
He says, clean up.
If Jesus came back, would he find us
in the armor fighting the battle?
He says, dress up.
If Jesus came back today, would he find
us pygmies, little children, midgets, or stalwart soldiers
who have fed on the word of God
and grown in grace?
He says, grow up.
Jesus is coming.
And when he comes, we'll stand before him
and we'll discover the kind of soldiers that
we've been.
As we walk into a new year, I
think it's good for us to remember the
time is short.
The Lord's coming is near.
Wake up, clean up, dress up, grow up,
and you'll be ready.
And for those of you who don't know
Jesus as your savior, you aren't ready.
And the only reason Jesus has delayed his
coming is to give you a chance to
be saved.
It's the only reason.
He would have come back a long time
ago, but Peter tells us that the Lord
is delaying his coming because he's long suffering,
not willing that any should perish.
And so if you don't know our savior,
our loving invitation to you is to come
and trust him and be saved.
Gracious Father in heaven, I want to thank
you for speaking to my heart from this
word.
And I pray that you'll use it to
speak to all of our hearts.
I pray, Heavenly Father, that as a church
family, we'll be awake and alert.
Oh God, awaken us out of sleep.
Help us to realize we don't have time
to waste.
Cleanse us, oh God.
Dress us in the armor of light.
And even though it's darkness in this world,
help us to live as children of light.
And I pray, Heavenly Father, that you'll help
us to grow.
Oh, that you might not have to deal
with us as with little babies.
We don't want to be ashamed when we
stand before Christ.
We want to receive a full reward.
We want to have an abundant entrance.
We don't want to be saved as by
fire.
Oh, I pray, Father, accomplish your will through
this word in this church.
In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.