Almighty God and Father, I simply pray this
morning that you would grant mercy and kindness
to us as we live in these difficult
days, that we might know you and your
Son, Jesus Christ, and be filled with the
Holy Spirit to live and endure until the
last day.
Give us strength, we pray, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Please be seated.
There are Bibles coming down the aisle.
If you'd like a Bible, if you've brought
your Bible, go with me to Revelation chapter
20.
Revelation chapter 20.
I want to pick up this verse that
you'll find in chapter 20, verse 11 of
Revelation, which in many ways is a parallel
to the Daniel text that was just read
to us.
From Daniel chapter 7, but here it goes.
In Revelation 20 and verse 11, And I
saw a great white throne, and him who
sat upon it, from whose presence earth and
heaven fled away, and no place was found
for them.
And I saw the dead, the great and
the small, standing before the throne, and books
were opened, and another book was opened, which
is the book of life, and the dead
were judged from the things which were written
in the books according to their deeds.
And the sea gave up the dead which
were in it, and death and Hades gave
up the dead which were in them, and
they were judged, every one of them, according
to their deeds.
And death and Hades were thrown into the
lake of fire.
This is the second death, the lake of
fire.
If anyone's name was not found written in
the book of life, he was thrown into
the lake of fire.
It is these kinds of scriptures that are
presented before us continually in the pages of
scripture.
This verse 11, we're standing here in the
throne room of the Almighty before the great
throne.
It said the great white throne and the
ancient of days is seated upon it.
So great is his holiness and his majesty
that earth and heaven flee away.
They cannot even stand in the presence of
the Holy One, and they can't even, it
says in verse 11, find a place.
But the ones who do stay are called
the dead, the great and the small, who,
if you look carefully at verse 12, the
dead are standing before the Lord, and the
books are opened, and there's another book called
the book of life, and the dead are
judged according to their deeds.
Now, this is it.
This is the moment that I would say
we have got to speak of a day
that is coming when the ancient of days
comes, when the Son of Man comes in
the cloud of glory, when everyone who has
ever been born, great or small, will stand
before the ancient of days, and judgment will
be rendered.
And it says here there are books that
are opened, and what ends up invariably taking
place is that you and I and everybody
ever born are going to be in this
day when the court is seated and the
books are opened.
Now, this is a moment that's coming, and
it has always been impressed upon me that
my job in this work has been to
prepare people for this moment.
Now, I'm going to pause and put this
sermon on pause for a few minutes.
I'm really wrestling with something.
It was articulated in the man a few
weeks ago who, after I was done preaching,
announced to me he was an atheist, a
pagan man.
But he had been in the church, and
he had heard me preach, and he came
up to me, and he said, I find
you a motivational speaker.
What you say is quite positive, and you
reinforce belief in ourselves.
I wish I'd had a CD of the
same sermon in my pocket to give him
and rethink it.
I don't think I mentioned any of those
things, but this is what he said to
me, and this is what I want to
present to you.
The dangers of the times that we're living
in, I thought, were captivated by this man's
comments.
Motivational speaking.
I have been in TV.
I'm watching TV shows where sometimes I can't
distinguish the preacher from the info commercial man.
Something's happening.
Something's engaging here that I want to uphold.
There are six principles.
No, I didn't read a book about this.
I'm living it, and I'm living in the
generation of it.
People want to have this sense of a
positive future.
They want a sense that when they're coming
into the rough world that they're living, that
there's a positive nature of what's ahead of
us.
And so our messages and the message of
a motivational speaker is always to be positive
and is to be personally, point two, affirming.
Everybody wants to be personally affirmed.
Get with the program.
The third thing is we all want to
see tomorrow morning when we wake up that
there are possibilities.
We might not see the possibilities, but we've
got to have somebody show us the possibilities.
Maybe it's in the area of finances.
Maybe it's in the area of weight, diet
plans.
Maybe it's in the area of personal happiness
or inner peace.
Maybe it's in the area of relationships.
Maybe it's in the area of self-affirmation
or needing to belong or needing that spot
in that place where we've got purpose in
life.
We've got to see possibility.
Maybe you need to see possibility in parenting.
So we'll do an eight-week series on
parenting just so that you can be having
that sense of possibility.
As I said some months ago, all of
us have got the plates spinning.
Everybody's got all these plates spinning.
We want to come into an environment where
one, there's a positive future.
Two, I'm personally affirmed.
And three, that there are possibilities out there.
Point four, and this is the critical one,
that you've got to tell me that there's
something good inside of me that's got the
potential to make those possibilities realized in my
life.
And that's what motivational speakers do.
They come and they tap that area in
us which says, you can do this.
I came in.
I didn't think I could.
I'm overwhelmed by life.
But I'm here to say to you that
there's something good inside of you that can
rise up to the moment.
See the possibility.
Be affirmed and know that your future is
positive.
And that brings us to the fifth point,
that there will be results that will come.
Prosperity will be yours in finances.
Weight reduction will be yours if you just
stay with my program for 10 to 12
years.
You'll have personal happiness, spiritual happiness.
You'll be affirmed.
You'll be blessed if you just buy my
product $49.95 over the next 15 years.
This is exactly what the world is doing.
It's selling us things.
It's constantly selling us things so that we
can somewhere find in us the blessing to
rise up on the day and to move
out.
It always leads to the sixth point, action.
Motivational speakers always move us to action.
There's something to do.
We are provoked or promoted to do something.
And that's what motivation means.
It means you've come in.
You're thoroughly depressed.
You're on the edge of divorce.
You're 50 pounds overweight.
Your finances are a joke.
And you need somebody to show you a
positive future, that there's a personal affirmation somewhere
in it for me.
There are possibilities where my life can be
changed.
Possibilities and that potential resides inside of me.
And in that, I'm going to see change.
I'm going to see results.
I'm going to see prosperity.
I'm going to see something.
And I'm going to rise up here and
I'm going to act today.
That's called motivation.
Motivational speaking is that moment when we are
encouraging it.
And the point is today, it's come into
our churches.
That you cannot separate the preachers from the
motivational speakers.
There's this familiarity.
Why is that?
Well, I think there's a couple of reasons.
All of us want those six points at
the end of the day.
That's what we want.
We've got sort of an addiction to wanting
to feel good, to have something going on
inside of us where we're affirmed.
I've got to stand up today and know
that in me is the potential for a
positive future and possibility.
You've got to tell me that there's a
certain craving, a certain addiction for this kind
of thing.
And so it makes our appeal.
It makes this kind of wanting this this
allowance to come into our churches, because that's
what people are wanting to hear.
And so it's easy just to give it.
I have been with very strong Christian leaders
that cannot separate preaching from motivational speaking.
People who call themselves mature in Jesus Christ
cannot tell the difference.
Why?
Because by the time you're done with motivational
speaking, you feel good and you walk out.
And the thing is amazing in our churches
is we coat it with scripture.
We put the name of Jesus on it,
and therefore we stamp it as the gospel
when it's not.
It's not the gospel.
That's the problem with it.
Underneath it, it's moving against the gospel.
It's doing the very thing, the very opposite
of which Jesus came to do himself.
But it's come.
And I am finding that leaders are being
sucked into leaders.
Creatures are being sucked into it.
Why?
I'm going to tell you why.
I'm telling you this.
I know this better than any of you.
Church of the Apostles would be double the
size if we went with this program.
I know that after being two years here,
I know this as we come to June
and and this church being two and a
half years.
I know how to fill this place.
You know, Dan Fox used to sit over
here, but Dan has fled the country.
It's probably with our kids.
Dan Fox is a very, very gifted man.
I'm actually glad he's not here.
I can speak completely about him, but it's
Kimberly here.
That might be the real question.
Dan is a very gifted man.
If we wanted to turn this worship team
into an entertainment, we could do it in
a minute.
And by the time that they're done, he's
got the gifting to entertain us.
Keith knows how to stand in the pulpits,
just in front of people.
He's very funny.
He's very gifted, actually, in front of people.
You probably don't know that.
Because one of the things I said to
him, one of the things that we made
a choice here at Apostles, you've got to
put the humor aside.
You've got to get that natural gifting of
wanting to entertain aside.
We've got to come here, the gospel of
Jesus.
And that means you've got to do things
inside of you which you make choice.
We're not going to motivate.
We're not going to entertain.
We're going to come to the Savior.
We're going to come to this gospel.
And that's what I said right off from
Keith.
You've got to come.
And as you're as you're as you're preaching,
as you're as you're speaking, tell us the
truth.
That's what people have got to hear.
At the end of the day, it's the
truth of the gospel that we need to
hear, not something that's going to double our
size.
But the temptation, I cannot tell you the
temptation out there when you're planting a church.
What people want to do is they want
to grow.
They want people.
Don't get me started on the subject.
Do you know what I deal with all
the time are calling committees for churches?
And at the end of the day, the
calling committee says, yes, we want people that
believe in the scripture.
If it's a if it's a strong evangelical
church, we want people who are strong in
the scripture, strong in their belief in the
Lord Jesus Christ, that they're born again, all
these sort of credentials.
But at the end of the day, what's
the pulse of the calling committee?
We have got to get somebody that's going
to bring life into this church, inspire, motivate
and grow.
That's always the key underneath it.
And always what we find is that people
and I'm sorry, I've seen this in mature
congregations.
What we're looking for at the end of
the day is somebody who is going to
come and really beef us up and motivate
us a call on that inner thing inside
of us, which is so good that we'll
rise up and that we'll live different lives
because of it, inspire and motivate.
And that's called leadership.
It's not called leadership.
Do you know, I can put a donkey
up here that can say, if he's going
to please you, if the message is going
to please you, he'll course gather people.
It's not difficult to have a passion to
please people.
If that's your passion, go please people.
I'm telling you, that's why much of our
church in America is growing today.
Why is it growing?
Because people are saying you've got to come
to our church.
It feels good to be at our church.
And so the churches are actually growing and
there's building programs and the pastors are now
actually there to give us the five points
that are going to make us feel good.
Get that, get that motivation going, inspire us
to live more godly lives.
We pepper, we salt the sermons with scripture
so that it sounds like it's about Jesus.
When in fact, what it's doing is calling
on us to, to, to find in us
this good that will make us live differently.
At the end of the day, there's self
potential underneath it.
This, this rising up of the belief that
there is something good inside of us.
Now, when I present to you, I'm going
to tell you straight out, this is please
never study the book of Romans, never come
to it, never address it.
Why?
Paul's entire first three chapters are devoted to
the actual bringing down of this heresy to
the conclusion in Romans chapter three.
If you're, if you've got your Bibles in
Romans chapter three, I want you to see
what a great motivational speaker Paul was.
Romans chapter three, here is the summation of
his arguments.
He actually pulls this from the Old Testament.
Talking of the Jews, are we better than
they?
Verse nine, Romans three, verse nine, not at
all.
For we have already charged that both Jews
and Greeks are all under sin.
And it is written, there is none righteous,
not even one.
There is none who understands.
There is none who seeks for God and
dropping down verse 18.
There is no fear of God before their
eyes.
Now we know that whatever the law says,
it says to those who are under the
law, that every mouth may be closed and
all the world may become accountable to God,
accountable to God.
One day standing before that great white throne.
That's what Paul is saying.
All of us are going to be accountable
to God.
And here's the indictment.
We're all sinners.
We've all fallen.
We're all in a place where there's no
nothing good inside of us.
That's the statement of the Bible.
How do you motivate somebody like that?
See, what's happening here is this.
If we come to a place where there's
something good inside of us, my dear friends,
we don't need Jesus.
We don't need him.
If there's something good inside of us that
we can call something inside us that can
that can make the day and something inside
of us, a good work that we can
do, then what we'll say is that good
work will get us into heaven.
There aren't good works that will get us
into heaven.
That's the whole point of needing a savior.
That's how we do it.
We call upon the Lord who who has
got to meet us in the minutes.
If not, no, not even one.
We're not going to stand when the court
sits and the books are opened.
This is the whole point of it, where
we're ravaged not only by a by a
by a gospel that's contrary.
These are six principles that are working in
the world.
Our financial system is built on these six
principles, not the gospel.
I'm so sorry to tell you this.
This is how my grandfather, great grandfather made
money.
Suckers are born every minute.
He knew the principle.
He knew it.
He understood it and therefore pitch a tent
and anybody will come.
And the idea is by the time you're
done, you'll have a blessing.
You'll be you'll be encouraged by whoever you
are.
For those of you who don't know my
name, my name is Barnum.
That's the whole point underneath the principle that's
a secular principle, but it is the devil's
own principle that we might salt and pepper
this gospel so that actually at the end
of the day, you'll hear scripture, you'll see
and hear about Jesus on some level.
But at the end of the point, it's
all going to be about you being personally
affirmed, seeing your possibility and tapping the good
potential inside of you that will make that
possibility a reality and you'll have benefit at
the end that that is contrary to the
gospel of Jesus.
It is contrary because the gospel begins the
opposite.
No, sir, there is nothing good inside of
me.
I have to underscore this because, again, I
appeal, I make my appeal.
There are Christians who have been long time
in the Lord who don't know these things
and can't discern them.
And I don't know why I've seen it
all over.
I remember one day a preacher came into
into a church I was serving.
I was on the staff of this church
and a preacher.
They flew him in from some other country
and he got done.
Everybody I interviewed people afterwards.
They were thrilled with the sermon.
They were.
And the man was very gifted.
He was a very gifted speaker.
And I went immediately to people, all kinds
of people.
What did you think of this sermon?
And they were they were overwhelmed by the
wonder of the day and they felt blessed
by him.
And I said to some of them, especially
the mature, are you aware that the gospel
was not preached in your church this day?
We got motivationalism, we did not get the
gospel that saves.
Did you know that they did not?
I had to walk it through with them.
And I'm talking about people who have been
seasoned, mature, who know their scriptures, who couldn't
discern it because at the end of the
day, we're addicted to motivation.
We're addicted to this this unrighteous gospel that's
crept into our church.
Twenty two years ago today, I stood in
the pulpit of a church on staff and
was fired.
Twenty two years today and I saw my
history, I saw my future.
It wasn't good.
I saw my future.
What I was dealing with in those days
and we're still dealing with it today is
that there are people in the pulpit that
are actually publicly denying Jesus Christ.
And the person under whom I was serving
at that time had given the message denying
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I was in a pickle because I didn't
know what to do.
I was up to preach.
I could not stand with him.
I called the person overseeing me.
I said, what do I do?
He said, you preach the gospel.
And I said, well, thanks be to God.
You better have plans for me afterwards.
I thought that my life would be spent
dealing with these people who are in the
pulpit denying Jesus publicly, denying Jesus at the
cross, denying him.
This is why for me, many people today,
many people, many pulpits today are being filled
with preachers speaking about the Da Vinci Code.
I know that.
Let me just tell you something.
Da Vinci Code speaks for itself.
The secular world has picked up this.
The Da Vinci Code is denying the authority
of scripture.
What else do you want from the world?
Of course it is.
The Da Vinci Code is denying the deity,
the Jesus as son of God.
They're tearing him apart.
But what do you expect from the world?
Of course it is.
And it's denying the work of the church
as being now under approach for hiding truth
and bringing down the reputation of the church
over these two thousand years.
Deny the Bible.
Deny Jesus.
Deny the church.
I'm sorry.
The devil's been doing this for a long,
long time.
It doesn't take a long time to figure
out that this Da Vinci Code is not
of the Lord.
And I'm not so concerned about the Da
Vinci Code.
And you won't hear anything more about it,
at least for me in the pulpit, because
these things are self-evident.
What's not self-evident is how the devil
brings in a gospel that's foreign and deceives
the Christians from understanding it's the wrong gospel.
That's what concerns me.
There is something far more dangerous in the
pulpits today than the Da Vinci Code one
and two.
This this overt denying of Jesus.
It's this.
It's this thing.
I can only call it motivationalism.
I don't know.
I don't know what else to call it.
Uh, this is why I've had to make
a statement.
I've had to say it.
I've had to say it to the staff.
I've had to say it as Erlin and
Keith come to preach or anybody preaches here.
I'm sorry.
Our job is not to motivate.
Our job is to preach the truth.
That's our job.
And sometimes what does the truth find?
It convicts us.
It brings us to a savior.
It calls out for Jesus.
That's what it does.
It's not here to give us what we're
actually longing for.
We went through new covenant members class with
20 or so people who are standing up.
Well, they may not stand up now, but
they were, they were, they were completely planning
on it.
It's a not long time ago.
And, uh, and, and what they were commenting
back is that apostles is not a comfortable
place to be.
This is why I'm telling you about mission.
I know how other churches are growing.
You have no idea what a temptation this
is for the preacher.
There's a temptation to want you so excited
about apostles that you'll run out.
You'll tell your friends and the rest of
these seats will be filled.
And you'll come in and you'll say, Oh,
you've got to be at this church.
It's a wonderful church.
It's a great church.
I always feel good when I leave this
church.
I I've always got that wonderful joke that
I've got to tell my mates in the
morning when I get to work, I've always
got that wonderful little story that ran the
goose bump down my hands.
And, and I, I feel like I'm, I'm
just charged up for the day and then
they come to apostles and we never see
them again.
I'm sorry.
The pulpits never been about you.
It's always been the declaration of him.
Always.
It's always been this, this passion, because one
day we're going to stand before him.
And our job has only been to ask
one question.
Is your name in the book of life?
The lamb's book of life.
This book, is it there?
I had a man come to me.
The very dear friend of mine, when he
came to know Jesus, it was because somebody
didn't say, come to a church that will
bless you.
He said, come to a church where you'll
meet Jesus.
He heard the gospel of Jesus.
And that night after receiving Christ into his
life, he had a vision, a dream, a
picture.
He saw the Lord giving him a charge,
a calling.
He saw two books that were opened, the
book of condemnation and the book of life.
And he saw the Lord giving him the
ability in the preaching of this gospel, where
the lamb Jesus would take names out of
the book of condemnation and write them in
the book of life.
And he said, from that day on, I
knew my calling.
The gospel begins where our names are in
the book of condemnation.
Our job is to say, Lord Jesus Christ,
by your grace and mercy in fear and
in trembling, take our name out.
Because on that day, if I am judged
according to my deeds, I will not stand.
It's with fear and trembling.
It's with this extraordinary cry, Lord, have mercy
upon me, a sinner.
It's the Lord's grace and mercy because of
what he did at Calvary that Jesus allows
us to hear that calling and watch him
by grace, take our name out of this
book and put us into the book of
life.
You want me to entertain you?
I can't.
And I've tried, you know, not many times
I've been in my office with people who
are in sin.
And I've tried with all of my heart
to let them see what that sin will
do for them.
I can motivate by saying, look, pick yourself
up, man, live a good day.
There are things inside of you.
You can tackle this addiction.
I know you can.
And I'll walk with you.
You'll do it.
Yes, you can.
But I know it's not true.
I know he'll like me at the end
because I'll motivate him and that night he'll
go to bed and he'll feel good about
our meeting.
But our meetings are a waste of time
because tomorrow he'll go back to his addiction.
There's only one that can save him.
And so I make my appeal.
But my appeal, I can see it in
their eyes when the deer looks back at
me with all the headlights beaming him.
They're not going to do this.
I can try to convince, but there's nothing
I can do.
There's only one motivator.
It's the Lord.
That's what happens.
The Lord motivates somebody.
That's what happens when somebody rises up.
It's not because I said something or a
preacher has said something or the Bible has
said something.
It's because they've heard the voice of the
Lord saying to them, come and they rise
up and they know that the Lord is
calling them to seek him.
And suddenly they come and they say, it's
not what you said.
It's what he said when you said it.
Why are they motivated?
They're motivated because they realize it's Christ alone.
It's Christ alone who can strengthen us through
all things.
Not motivationalism.
It's the opposite of motivationalism.
It's Christ alone.
How often I wish I had the power
in my hand to deliver people out of
sin and put them in the book of
life, but I have no power.
But what I have the power is I
have the power to sin and tempt you
to believe that I can make you do
something that will make you live a better
day.
And I can't.
It's wrong.
It's against the gospel.
If it's true, then Jesus had no reason
to come.
If there's something good inside us, there's no
reason for Jesus to come.
And that's why there's only one gospel from
the beginning.
It's him and it's him alone.
He sets us free.
He delivers us.
He fills us with the power of his
spirit to live this life that I can't
live.
He's the one that enables us.
He's the power that cross to forgive us
our sins.
He's the one.
And people want to hear five teachings on
what it is to be a better parent
more than that.
Five teachings on what you can do in
your life to be a better person.
Five teachings on what you can do to
find personal happiness in your life.
And these churches are growing, salted with scripture,
salted with the name of Jesus, and they're
growing.
I know that.
And you have no idea the temptation of
going that direction.
I would that this church were completely filled,
but I know why it's not.
I know that there's got to be a
statement that gets us away from this gospel,
which is more dangerous in our country than
any other.
It's got to start with a people impassioned
for Jesus Christ and for him alone.
And that's why when these covenant members, whatever
remnants remain, stand up and say, I am
making a commitment to this church because I
believe this.
I believe that Jesus Christ has placed me
here.
A part of the local body of faith.
That's what he does.
He puts us into the body of Christ.
I learned this so early in the days
back at the days when the great preacher
Terry Fulham used to say a Christian who
is not in the local church is a
dying Christian.
He takes us and he places us into
the book of life.
And in the book of life, he places
us amongst Christians, wherein we can live and
move and have our life according to God's
word, where we can be strengthened, where we
can be accountable, where we can live together
in the joy of the Lord.
That's what he does.
That's why Jesus said don't boast, don't rejoice
in the ministry God has given you.
Rejoice that your names are recorded in the
book of life.
That we're found there, that he's done this
work inside us.
After all these years, I have found something
inside of me that has just given up.
I make a choice.
I make a choice not to go this
way.
I choose not to proclaim a gospel that's
going to make you feel better.
But in the end, when you meet Jesus,
you'll never know anything like it.
When you meet Jesus and trust him, when
you meet Jesus and the Holy Spirit begins
to work in your life, you'll never know
anything more great.
But what he's going to do is he's
going to deal with the areas of your
life that are in sin and he's going
to call you to stop it.
That's what he does.
And if you want to live in sin
and still have Jesus, you're going to have
to go to a different church.
That's just the way it is, because you
can't come before the Lord in reverence to
the scriptures, and you can't come and ask
the Holy Spirit to be with you and
upon you, and you can't come into the
body of Christ and then believe that you'll
be allowed to walk in the path of
sin from that point on.
It's just not true.
The hound of heaven wants us to live
godly and righteous in this day and say
no to ungodliness in this day.
And that's why I say I've learned.
I've learned my lesson.
He is the motivator.
I had one man I was talking to.
He was completely lost in addiction.
He came into my office.
We had a conversation.
At the end of the conversation, I knew
why he was in my office.
You know why?
You'll never guess.
His wife said, you either go and talk
with him or I'm out of here.
That's motivation.
He was there to save his marriage.
Do you think he got out of his
addictions?
He did not.
And what I said to him is, my
friend, I'm going to tell you this straight
out.
You are not ready.
You have not hit bottom.
You have not cried out for mercy.
You have not asked the Lord to help
you.
You are coming here because of your wife
until you own this as yours.
Not because I say it or your wife
says it until you've met the Lord.
And he says it when he says it.
Then you'll find your day of liberation.
Two years later, two years, he came to
me with tears in his eyes and said,
I am free in the name of Jesus.
And I said, oh, who's the motivator?
The Lord is the motivator.
That's what the Holy Spirit does.
He motivate us to live a godly life
where the cross is in front of us,
where Jesus lives his life to strengthen us
in what we've got, not us, him, him.
And guess who he gave praise to?
It was a sad moment.
He gave praise to the Lord.
He didn't come up to me and say
that I want to know it was it
was what you said and the way you
articulated, oh, you're so gifted and lovely and
affirming and and boy, it is such a
wonderful thing to know.
Thank God there's nothing I can do about
this.
I can't deliver him from that.
Who can?
The Lord Jesus Christ.
That's who does it.
And that's who we proclaim.
I think eventually this church will grow, but
it's going to grow by the people who
need Jesus.
It's going to grow by you reaching out
to the people who are hurting and saying,
you know something, if you want to go
to Entertainment City, there's a great church down
the street.
But if you want to go here, we're
going to find the well of water deep.
It's going to allow us to tap and
touch the great well that is Jesus.
Please hear me.
There are many churches in this town that
are preaching Jesus.
But there are also many churches that are
preaching motivationalism and our Christians are not able
to distinguish.
My friends, have you.
If Dan comes up to sing and lead
us in this song, I've got this to
say, is it well with your soul?
That's the nature of the song.
Is it well with your soul?
That takes examination.
Father in heaven, I pray today, especially that
you would forgive us in the church who
have been so tempted to want the church
to grow that we've compromised the gospel.
We pray, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon
us and especially upon our people in this
country.
Lord Jesus, I pray for everyone here that
you would give us the discernment by the
Holy Spirit to separate motivationalism from the truth
of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That you give us wisdom by your spirit
that we might not tap the resource of
our own potential, which we have none of.
But to confess our sin and to cry
for mercy and to call upon Jesus to
rescue and empower us for life, the blood
of the cross.
Help us, Lord, to be able to say
and to know by what you have done.
It is well.
Our names are recorded by your own hand
in that book of life.
It is well.
Jesus, Lord, have mercy upon us.
We pray these things to the honor and
to the glory of your holy name.
Amen.