And it is the 11th verse that shall
engage us.
Say unto them, As I live, saith the
Lord God, I have no pleasure in the
death of the wicked, but that the wicked
turn from his way and live.
Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways,
for why will ye die, O house of
Israel?
Every scripture that is from the heart of
God, aimed at the heart of men, carries
with it a three-fold testimony.
First, it tells us about the nature of
God.
Certainly this verse does.
Secondly, it tells us about the nature of
man.
And thirdly, it has something to say about
the nature of sin.
Now, this verse is certainly doing that, as
did the one last Lord's Day that engaged
us from 2 Chronicles 7, 14.
If my people, which are called by my
name, will humble themselves and pray and seek
my face, and turn from their wicked way,
then will I hear from heaven, then will
I forgive their sin, and then will I
heal their land.
Now, God speaks to each generation in terms
of its specific needs, but he also speaks
in terms of eternal principles.
Whenever your understanding of the word of God
obscures the principle, as you see the particulars
that are associated in the use of it,
you have done damage to the scripture.
This is a principle, or these are principles,
rather, that are eternal and unchanging.
The first thing that you see as you
read this text is that there's always the
possibility that people that have made a good
start should fumble, should fall, should fail, and
should sin.
I think this is patently clear.
I believe it's the reason why in Hebrews
we have such a verse as, he's able
to save unto the uttermost all them that
come unto God by him, seeing he ever
liveth to make intercession for them.
And again, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
God is a great economist, and he never
provides what isn't needed, and he never warns
when there isn't danger.
And consequently, he has stated in the context,
that if a person who is righteous fails
and falls into sin, that the previous righteousness
doesn't in any wise eliminate the necessity of
dealing with the present sin.
And the first thing then we have to
see is that God realized that you and
I would not always take the provisions that
he'd made, the grace that he offered, the
escape that he provided, that we would be
tempted and would always live in the possibility
of yielding to temptation and the capability of
sin.
One of the neglected doctrines of the Church,
and the Church has suffered no end because
of its neglect, is that of the perseverance
of the saints.
I think it would do well, do you
well to read this and study it, use
any source you have and secure what you
haven't.
In order to acquaint yourself, for instance, what
John Calvin taught.
Frequently we hear Calvin as though he propounded
antinomianism.
You know what I mean by that, I'm
sure.
Anti, against, nomos, the law, a teaching that
after a person was forgiven, Christ had saved
him from the necessity of keeping the law
and obeying God and pleasing God, and that
because he was forgiven he had a license
for sin and he could do what he
wanted to do.
Now this is antinomianism.
Historically it's been condemned as heresy through the
centuries and it's been unfortunately attributed to John
Calvin.
Now I'm no particular defender of Calvin.
He was immortal, lived, died, and his mistakes
have lived after him and his blessings have
continued.
But the fact still remains that this is
not what he taught.
For one of the doctrines which characterized his
teaching was that of the perseverance of the
saints.
And he stated it in this way, that
God preserves the saints by causing them to
persevere.
And we need to understand that when the
Lord Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice
and no man shall pluck them out of
my hand.
He also said, my sheep hear my voice
and they follow me and no man shall
pluck them out of my hand.
And the characteristic of the sheep of the
Lord is that they follow the Lord.
They follow him.
And so when God brings you out of
death into life, he gives you a new
heart and a new nature and a new
spirit.
And he makes you a new creation.
And the characteristic of this new heart is
that you want to please God.
And it's this new nature that you hate
sin.
And that this new spirit is that by
his presence you're enabled to do what your
new heart and your new nature dictates.
Namely to please God.
There's provision made by the Spirit of God.
We see this in Ezekiel 36 chapter.
We've dwelt on that in the past.
He said, I take away the heart of
stone and I'll give you a heart of
flesh and I'll put my spirit within you
and cause you to walk in my statutes.
God has made provision for his children to
please him.
He didn't only give you a desire to
please you and withhold ability.
If he had done that it would have
been the cruelest of mockery.
To have given you a new heart which
says you want to please God.
A new nature which caused you to hate
sin.
And then not to have provided that which
was necessary for you to fulfill.
Your desire of your new heart and your
new nature would, I said, have been the
cruelest of mockery.
It couldn't be attributed to God.
If he gives you a new heart and
a new nature then you have every reason
to believe he's going to give you a
new spirit.
Wherein by the presence of this new to
you spirit, even the eternal God himself, you
will be enabled to please God.
But the fact remains that whereas the Bible
makes it abundantly clear that there is victory
for a child of God, there is provision.
There is power for us to live a
life that pleases him.
That we don't always do it.
That overtaken in the fault on the one
hand, let aside by desires on the other,
or shackled by our ignorance, or by some
other pressure from within or without, a child
of God can fall into sin.
Now there's no question but what this is
a possibility.
And furthermore there's no state of grace where
it won't be a possibility.
And as long as you live, as I
live, we're going to be subject to this
temptation and to the capability of sin.
There is no work of God in this
which this book speaks, and I know of
none other elsewhere.
There is no work of God which will
immunize you to temptation.
And keep you from that place where you
can sin if you choose to.
But by the same token the scripture says
there's no temptation overtaken you, but such is
common to man and he will with the
temptation make a way of escape.
So there's no sin that now besets you
that must continue to govern you.
He has provided victory.
But what this text brings us to see
is that there's always the possibility of a
child of God falling into sin.
Now we are to realize that there's an
application to the impenitent, to the world outside,
and we'll make that later.
But right now I hear the voice of
God as he pleads with these that are
in covenant relationship with him.
He pleads with Israel.
He pleads with the nation.
He pleads with these that are the heirs
of the promise.
And they've been led aside in the same
way that everyone is led aside.
We've spoken to you about the three idols
that be leaguered to Israel and clip them
up and cause them to come under God's
justice and punishment and wrath.
The worship of Ashtaroth, the lust of the
flesh.
For Ashtaroth was the deification of the female
and the license to sex indulgence outside of
the will of God.
The worship of Baal, which was to placate
the evil spirit so that there could be
prosperity and sufficient money to get what one
wanted.
It was equivalent to cheating and lying.
He that would do be dishonest in business
is actually worshiping Baal in its effect, whereas
he may not ever go to an idol
and offer incense.
Yet still it was to keep the law
of economics and the rights and responsibilities of
citizenship that was involved in Baal worship.
Then the worship of Moloch was for the
sake of securing position and place and power.
And again, it was to secure that which
wasn't properly earned and fully deserved.
And so as you consider the worship of
Ashtaroth, of Baal and of Moloch, these being
the three primary avenues of idolatry that brought
Israel under such judgment, you will recognize that
this is going to be the area of
conflict in your life.
And you, if you would take the Christians
that have backslidden, and I'll use a term
that's appropriate to some, but nevertheless one that
God was pleased to use, and I think
it would be expressive of having gone back
from some state of fellowship and consciousness of
his presence to a place where one is
out of fellowship.
If you check into the Christians of the
20th century that backslide, or that go back
from some place they've had with God, almost
invariably you will find it is specifically to
one of these three areas that we've touched
on.
The lust of the flesh, and how many
times Christians have been just ruined here in
this area.
And we must recognize that it's being a
constant assault.
Our whole general, our whole nation seems to
be given up to idolatry in a far
worse sense than Corinth or Athens that Paul
condemned.
For every newsstand and billboard and everything that
you see or hear seems to be but
the hymns that are dedicated to the worship
of the modern 20th century Ashtaroth.
And this is an area that assaults the
Christians.
And God is just as concerned when his
children read that which is forbidden, and they
think that which is forbidden, and talk that
which is forbidden by him because of his
high desire for his people, as he was
when Israel went down to the temple of
Ashtaroth, which is a grove dedicated to the
worship of Ashtaroth.
And then we discover that the other areas
that are things, the worship of Baal.
Now we don't have temples set aside for
Baal worship in America, but nevertheless we realize
that though, if you read the newspapers, the
magazines, that things become the symbol of success.
These are status symbols.
And to possess them is to prove that
one's achieved and one has place.
And then it becomes an obsession to get
certain status symbols.
And so we find that the whole of
fashion is in on this order.
That there are people today in this city
that are madly consumed by an obsession to
be in the latest passion and mood.
And in so doing they are bringing themselves
into the place where their approval and their
happiness comes not from something within, and a
relationship to God, but from without.
And my dear, whenever your happiness depends upon
the applause of another, or the approval of
another, you've placed it in very treacherous hands.
Because they could do your, it's too flimsy
a support for your happiness to let it
rest in the hands of others.
And so this is the worship of Baal,
and you are going to be tempted in
this direction.
You're going to be tempted along the way
to allow yourself to become enamored with the
thought that perhaps if you bend here or
twist there, turn in the other, that something's
going to happen that's going to make you
a happier person.
Obviously everything we do, we do with some
misguided idea, or properly guided idea of happiness.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness isn't
only assured us in the Declaration of Independence,
but it's put into us as part of
the very structure of our personalities and our
beings.
And what you do, you do essentially to
be happy.
You do because you think that if you
take this you'll be happy, or if you
do that you'll be happy.
Take the third and just dwell on it
a moment.
You're going to be tempted to get some
position.
You're going to feel that if you have
some honor given to you, some position afforded
you, that you're going to be a happier
person.
Oh what a delusion this is.
What a terrifying delusion this is.
I saw a sign years ago, and I
haven't forgotten it because of the truth implicit
in it.
It said work hard eight hours a day
so that you can get to be boss
and work 12 hours a day.
And seemingly this is about the only real
effect that comes from the promotion.
Greater responsibility and greater difficulty.
During our recent prayer conference in White Plains,
one of the pastors got up and he
said, you know the pastors of big churches
don't have any problems.
And here he was sitting in some suburban
rural community with a small group of people
who every one of whose home was in
10 minutes of the parsonage, and he was
able to live there with them and happily,
and he just felt somehow that if he
had been pastor in what he called one
of the large churches, I really don't think
there are any in our society, but if
there were, that he would be happier.
Oh if we could understand that position is
just one of the snares that's been given
by the God of this world to drive
us from that place that God wants us
to be.
And so his people, if you say to
your people, to my people, God has no
pleasure in the death of the wicked but
that the wicked turn and live.
Now you say what does this have to
do with me, wicked?
I'm not among the wicked.
My dear, when regardless of what state of
grace you may be, in how many years
you've been forgiven, when in your mind and
motive you have the intention to defraud God
of the right that he has in your
life, this intention causes you in that state
to be wicked.
Do you see?
Regardless of whether your past sins are under
the blood, wickedness is not a state here
of this, not a state of relationship.
It's a state of attitude.
The wicked is that attitude.
The wicked attitude is the one that wants
to get something out of the will of
God, to experience something out of the will
of God, to be something out of the
will of God.
And in this it becomes wicked.
And we've had a tendency, you know, as
Christians, to think of the wicked as being
outside the church doors, and they are.
But I'm trying to press upon your heart
today that the God is speaking to a
people in covenant relationship with him.
And he is saying it's the wicked.
Now when you and I find ourselves being
drawn by gravitational pull within or from pressure
without, towards that which God held to be
worthy of the direst judgment, do not think
that because of the passing of the centuries
God's attitude has changed.
If for instance you want an experience outside
of the will of God, do not think
for a moment that because you've, your name
is on the church roll and you're a
professing Christian, that it's less wicked for you
than it would have been for someone that
would have been under the sentence of death
because of it.
Never.
It's equally heinous in its nature.
And it's this nature that we've got to
see and recognize and understand.
Now if this is the case, and we
see this and recognize this as a valid
principle of the truth and the word of
the work of God, then we're going to
know that it is God's intention and God's
purpose for his people to deal with that
which he condemns the same way that he
expects his people to be faithful in dealing
with the sins of the unsaved out in
the world.
This is what you must see if you're
to see the message that God has given
me today.
When you allow or I allow in our
lives something that grieves him whose name is
holy, it's no less wicked because we are
called by his name.
It's no less wicked.
It's no less wicked for the child of
God, for instance, to have bitterness and strife,
to have anger and wrath and malice, than
it is for the demons to have bitterness
and strife and anger and wrath and malice.
Anger and wrath and malice has not been
mitigated or ameliorated or somehow made less noxious
because it occurs in my heart than it
does in the heart of a demon.
When it occurs in my heart, it is
identically the same thing as when it occurs
in the heart of a demon of the
pit.
You see, when a lie occurs in the
heart of a professing Christian, it is one
less disastrous or evil in its effect than
when it occurred in the heart of Satan,
who was the father of lies.
And this is what God wants us to
see.
We must call things by their name and
deal with them as they are.
Now when this happens, the fear of God,
a proper wholesome fear of God, develops and
a right regard for the way in which
our lives are to be related to him
develops.
If you are prepared to say that when
sin occurs in my heart, it's just equally
heinous as when it occurs in the heart
of anyone anywhere, there will not be a
tendency to excuse it.
There will not be a tendency to pass
by it.
And there will be the proper means of
dealing with it.
And God then can bless.
Now notice what he said.
If my, if as I live, saith the
Lord God, I have no pleasure in the
death of the wicked.
You say, but I'm a Christian and you're
talking primarily to Christians.
What do you mean about death?
Do you remember what Paul said to the
church at Corinth?
They had abused that holy institution of our
Lord's appointing, the communion table.
And they came drinking, eating gluttony.
And when he wrote of it, he said
this, for which cause many are sick and
some sleep.
And when this has been interpreted by commentators
for centuries to mean that God realizing the
incorrigibility of even his children, that they were
not prepared to deal with it, was simply
prepared to allow sickness to come because they'd
given place to the devil and it had
come.
And some of them had died because of
it.
As I live, saith the Lord, I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom.
Do you actually realize, dear child of God,
that if you allow unconfessed sin in your
life, that you have, for you have made
it impossible for God to protect you?
Have you, do you realize this?
That there's a sense about the Christian.
The angel of the Lord encampeth about them
that fear him.
Them that fear him.
And this means that because we fear him,
we hate sin and hate all kinds of
sin.
And when it occurs, we deal with the
thought as though it were the finished deed.
And this brokenness and this confession, this attitude
in our heart toward sin, erects around us
a wall.
But that when we allow sin in our
life, we have tied God's hands and make
it impossible for him to protect us.
Because he's got a conflict going on.
He's got a conflict between the God of
this world, Satan.
And when, when you allow in your life
the thing that God cast Satan out of
heaven for, and sends demons to hell for,
and sinners to hell for.
When you allow in your heart, heart dishonesty,
cruelty, lust, selfishness, whatever it is.
Then there's an argument going on in the
courts of heaven.
And Satan is coming and saying, now look,
you can't protect him.
You can't protect her.
Because this person has done the same thing
I did.
And you cast me out of heaven for
it.
And you've bound us in chains for it.
And you're sending these to hell for it.
And you can't protect him as long as
that attitude continues.
This exposes the body.
This exposes the mind.
This exposes the home and the family.
This exposes everything to the ravaging tax of
this enemy.
As I live, sayeth the Lord, I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
God is not pleased when we allow ourselves
to cherish an attitude which exposes us to
what the enemy can do to us.
God has no pleasure in this chastisement.
He has no pleasure in this grief.
He has no pleasure in what results from
it.
God does not want to see his children
bruised.
He doesn't want to see us hurt.
There's a law, however, an unalterable, unchangeable law,
that when a person who names the name
of Christ, a person who's been born of
God, allows sin to go unjudged, and unforsaken,
and unconfessed, and uncleansed, he has absolutely opened
the doors of his life to everything that
the enemy can do.
And I believe it's imperative that we should
realize that this conflict is going on.
It's not just a matter of the disease
germs in the air.
It's not just a matter of cars going
down 43rd street that could jump the curb
and go into a saloon and offend someone
against the bar, as happened in this tragedy
just last Saturday, or Friday.
This isn't the only thing that could happen.
We are in conflict with organized conspiracy against
the children of God, governed by an intelligent
being, Satan, with a host of evil spirits
that are at his bidding.
And they're constantly in conflict with the children
of God, going about as a roaring lion,
seeking whom they may devour.
And when you allow in your heart and
life sin, you have absolutely tied the hands
of God from protecting you.
The angel of the Lord encumbered the law
to ever fear him.
Let me repeat it.
And the fear of the Lord is to
hate evil.
Now if you want the protection of God,
if you want the encircling wall of Jehovah
-Nissi, if you want God to be on
your side, then it's absolutely imperative that you
have a conscious void of offense toward God
and toward men.
Otherwise the gate is left open, the door
is off the hinges, it's like Jerusalem with
the gates burned.
Anybody can come in any place they wish.
Now this is why God says he has
no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
It isn't something that he himself is going
to impose, though he must if it's undealt
with.
But it is the natural consequence of a
morally responsible being violating moral principles that which
ties the hands of God from affording the
protection that he's prepared and willing to give
to his own.
And so if it was true that day
that some, many were sick and some slept,
early demise, early death, because of the sin
at the Lord's table, then you can understand
what this means.
I have no pleasure in the early death
of the wicked.
Now let it be understood by us that
there's another application to the unsaved.
But I want you to see another aspect
of death.
If life is a person, then to live
is to have fellowship with this living person.
And we read the scripture says, he that
hath the son of life, and then it
tells us, because life is in the son.
And if we have walk in the light,
as he is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another.
I can't conceive of anything more utterly distasteful
and unpleasant, unhappy and difficult than the Christian
life without personal conscious fellowship with God.
And I have known in times in the
past, when this fellowship was broken, and oh
what a cross, what a thing it is.
And if one is sensitive to fellowship with
him, they're aware when it's broken.
And consequently we ought to have the greatest
concern.
This ought to be its own real incentive,
for you to keep a conscience void of
offense toward God and toward men, so that
you can ensure continued fellowship with God.
Doesn't make any difficult, any difference how difficult
the situation may be.
Doesn't make any difficult, difference how many problems
you may have.
As long as he's with you in the
furnace, the fire isn't hot.
But oh my friend, if you're standing on
ground in the sunshine with a cool breeze
off the mountain and he isn't there, it
is a furnace.
If you've never known fellowship with him, and
this is living death, to have known fellowship
with God and to have grieved the Spirit
and had that fellowship broken.
And so it ought to be that there's
this great sensitivity on your part to this
continued conscience, constant fellowship with him.
And this ought to be its own reason,
that the moment that you grieve him, you
ask your heart, Lord what is it?
I sense that you're grieved.
I sense that this doesn't please you.
What is it?
And deal with it on the spot, because
he'll tell you on the spot.
And if you've been in fellowship with him,
you'll know when it's broken.
And if you know when it's broken, you're
nearer than you'll ever be again to fixing
it right there.
This is living death.
Let me see something else with you in
it.
I have no pleasure in the death of
the wicked, but that the wicked turn from
his way and live.
Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways,
for why will you die?
You'll notice that there's a quality of freedom
here.
Almighty God, who says as I live, speaking
of his eternity, and with his eternity is
all of his other attributes, his omniscience, his
omnipresence, his infinite power, his omnipotence, his infinite
wisdom, his omniscience.
Everything that God is, is expressed in this
word, as I live.
And the eternal God is speaking to men,
and he is saying, turn ye, turn ye,
for why will you die?
Do I speak to someone that knew better
days with the Lord than today?
If this isn't the happiest day in your
Christian life you've ever had, if you haven't
had sweeter fellowship already as you've awoken in
the morning than you've ever had before, if
there hasn't been a sense of joy that
this is another day that you can walk
in closer to him than yesterday, well, put
it this way, dear friend, if you ever
were here in your relationship with God, and
your love for God, and your hunger for
God, and your burden for soul, you were
here, and now you're here.
Do you know what's happened?
You've backslidden.
You've gone back from here to here.
However imperceptible it might be to your friends,
God knows, and you know that you're not
where you once were.
Now you ought to have been here yesterday,
and here today, and here tomorrow in your
relationship.
It ought to be an enlarging, expanding, enriching
relationship with him.
If it isn't, something's happened.
You've gone back.
And if you've gone back from here to
here, it's not going to be hard for
you to go back from here to here,
and from here to here, and from here
to here.
And it's going to be a continual retrogression
until you deal with it.
Now what are you waiting for to deal
with?
What are you waiting to have happen?
Some people are praying for revival.
Do you know what they mean by revival?
An emotional atmosphere that compels them to do
the thing that they've been unwilling to do,
when they didn't have an emotional atmosphere, but
they knew they should have done all the
time.
But this isn't revival in my sense, because
this would be a compulsive thing.
This would be coercive.
Whenever you do something because you have to
do it, and the emotional atmosphere or some
other psychological pressure makes you do it, then
in that sense it's not a moral action.
A moral action has to be a free
action.
If you are forced to do it, there's
no benefit or virtue in your doing it.
This is why I believe so firmly in
a government of freedom of the individual, because
only where there is a freedom of life,
can there be the development of virtue.
And when a person is compelled to carry
chains, then his abstinence from certain things is
not proof of virtue, but simply proof of
a good locksmith and blacksmith.
And so it is that if God makes
you, there's no benefit in what you've done.
And so here Almighty God, the one who
has the power to point a finger and
send constellations into the sky, burning in their
place and following their orbits, Almighty God stands
and holds out his hand to omnipotent man
in his own realm and sphere, and says,
as I live, says the Lord, I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
but that the wicked turn and live.
Turn ye, turn ye, for why will you
die?
God gives the quality of freedom to your
action.
He allows you to face the issues and
the consequences.
And dear child of God, if you've been
born of him, passed from death to life,
and have not had some injury to brain
tissue or some damage to your nervous system
so that you've lost contact with reality, if
you understand words that are being spoken today,
then you have moral responsibility to act upon
those words, to act upon that truth.
And I believe that there will be for
you no greater incentive or moral pressure than
your now feeling, that you ought to.
The sense of oughtness is the voice of
God calling to action.
I ought to get this right.
I ought to settle this.
I ought to get this clear.
I ought to get this clean.
I ought to break.
I ought to bend.
And that sense of oughtness is the voice
of God to your heart, telling you the
course that you should take.
And I do not believe there will ever
be from God more moral, emotional pressure than
your feeling when you are aware of what
you ought to do.
Now when you do what you ought to
do, then your move has allowed God to
move toward you, and he could meet you.
But if you're waiting for a moral quality
of atmosphere in a meeting sometime, when you're
going to be forced to do the thing
you've known for a time you ought to
have done, then be sure of this, that
what you do because you're forced has no
moral virtue, no moral quality to it at
all.
It's what you do because you know you
ought to do it.
You've heard him say, turn ye, turn ye,
and you have the complete power not to
turn, but you choose to turn.
You choose to bend.
You choose to break.
You choose to bow.
This is moral.
This has spiritual quality to it.
This releases God to meet you.
Now hear it again.
As I live, saith the Lord, I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
I speak to the unsaved, you that have
never been born of God.
This is God's word.
He doesn't want you to perish.
God's not willing that any should perish.
I speak to the Christian who forfeits so
much.
As I live, saith the Lord, I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
but that the wicked turn from his way
and live.
Turn ye, turn ye.
Oh, why will ye die?
Oh, Christian friend, why will you go in
living death without the joy of the Lord,
without the blessing of his presence, without release,
without him in his fullness?
Why will you go?
Today's the day.
Now's the time.
And God's appealing to you to do what
you ought to do just because you ought
to do it.
And he leaves you free.
And I must leave you free.
Our Father, to the ones who turn, thou
dost offer forgiveness.
To the ones who turn, thou dost offer
pardon.
To the sinners that come with their mountain,
their enormous world of guilt, thou dost offer
cleansing and eternal life.
To the child of God who's allowed that
to come into his life which grieves thee,
thou dost offer forgiveness and pardon.
If we're but willing to come as thou
hast bid us, taking sides with thee against
ourselves, acknowledging, confessing our sin, then we can
know life which is the consciousness of thy
presence and the joy of thy fellowship, can
know life.
Father, we pray today for those that had
a name to live, known better days, and
in some sense are backslidden today, gone back
from where they were.
And they've not called it by the name
wickedness and seen how thou didst see it.
Oh, that somehow the Holy Ghost has shown
it this morning.
Guide us now as we close.
Dear friends, to enforce moral action and not
to give opportunity for moral action is derelict.
I'm going to ask this of you today.
Any of you that feel that God has
said, now I want you to do and
act on what you've heard, be wise.
Remain seated where you are until others have
gone.
The choir's left.
Just remain seated.
And then, after the others have gone, I'll
see you.
We'll go together into the room to my
right, and we can have a time of
prayer together.
We're going to stand, have the benediction in
just a moment, and then if you would
like to remain, you stay.
Remain seated and quietly in prayer, and we
will have a time of prayer after the
choir is retired.
Shall we stand?
Our Father, we thank and praise thee for
thy love thou hast given thyself.
And thou dost ask for brokenness, and honesty,
and turning, and in reward thou dost give
thyself, the fullness of thyself.
We pray today that there may be hearts
that are stirred by thy Spirit with such
an intense, deep desire for better days, days
they've known in the past, that they can't
leave.
They'll just have to remain seated, and then
can meet thee as we seek thee together.
Now may thy grace, and mercy, and peace
be and abide upon us now, and until
Jesus comes again.
Amen.