Chapter 2 of Exodus.
And there went a man of the house
of Levi, and took to wife a daughter
of Levi.
And the woman conceived and bare a son,
and when she saw him that he was
a goodly child, she hid him three months.
And when she could not hide, when she
could not hide longer, longer hide him, she
took for him an ark of bulrushes and
dabbed it with slime, and with pitch, and
put the child therein.
And she laid it in the flags by
the river's bank.
And his sister stood afar off, to know
what would be done to him.
And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to
wash herself at the river, and her maidens
walking along by the river's side.
And when she saw the ark among the
flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
And when she had opened it, she saw
the child, and behold, the babe wept.
And she had compassion on him, and said,
This is one of the Hebrew children.
Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall
I go and call to thee a nurse
of the Hebrew woman, that she may nurse
the child for thee?
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go.
And the maid went and called the child's
mother.
And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this
child away and nurse it for me, and
I will give thee thy wages.
And the woman took the child and nursed
it.
And the child grew, and she brought him
unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.
And she called his name Moses, and she
said, Because I drew him out of the
water.
Let's bow for a word of prayer.
Now, fathers, we continue on now, the second
message of this series on the life of
Moses.
I pray that the Holy Spirit would open
up to us the word of God, and
that we would draw principles out of the
messages that we have, principles by which we
can live by from your word.
I pray that the Spirit of God would
speak to our hearts, and if there's one
here today that doesn't know Jesus Christ as
their Savior, that that one would consider that
Christ died for them, and that they must
repent of their sins and receive him as
their Savior.
Holy Spirit, you do the work, as we
yield ourselves to you now, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
These messages, I hope, will be simple.
But as I mentioned in my prayer, I
want you to learn principles.
Every message that you receive, try to get
at least one principle out of it that
you can use.
There's going to be many subjects that we
cover.
Like today, we're going to look at the
birth, and probably won't get into the training
of Moses until next week.
But the beginning message is we're laying the
foundation for the whole series.
We're laying, really, the footers.
And we're going to build up.
And as we go along, we're going to
cover some key principles.
Now today, we'll just look at probably the
birth of Moses, and then next week we'll
get into the training.
But the birth of Moses reveals some key
principles to us.
And as we go along, I realize that
you are in different situations.
But many times, you and your situation on
this side, and you over on this side,
you'll have your situation.
You can take the same principle and apply
it.
So it'll be up to you to take
what's given and apply it to your life.
Now, during the week, I pray with many
of you, I listen to you, and I
counsel with you, and I get your problems
and everything.
And a lot of times, God says, there's
a principle for them, right there in that
passage.
And so God will speak through the word,
through me, to you.
It'll be up to you, though, to catch
it and to use it.
And I'd like to know if he gives
you something.
Maybe sometimes you get something that I didn't
even see out of the passage, and you
share it with me, if God teaches you
something.
Because if it's, you know, if it's really
that good, then the rest of us could
use it, too.
All right?
Now, on the top of your bulletin, there's
a little typing error.
It's supposed to be, how is a baby
like a bullet?
It's not, how does a baby like a
bullet?
It's, how is a baby like a bullet?
And I've thought about this, because I'm not
trying to be funny, even though it could
be funny.
But I was watching Our Baby, and thinking
about this, and then I was studying on
Moses, as we look at Moses as a
baby.
And here's how a baby is like a
bullet.
I won't have to take time to let
you throw out your ideas and everything.
You can tell me later.
But a baby's like a bullet.
Like this.
When you point a gun, and you shoot
the bullet, and you point a baby, and
you let it go, both, both tend to
go in the direction that they're aimed.
Now, I'm not talking about the baby in
life, because the baby's going to go all
kinds of directions, but in the way of
life, a baby tends to go in the
direction that it is trained to go.
Isn't that true?
You watch some little children, they grow up
very sad.
And if you see a child that's very
sad, like the other day, when I dropped
Johnny off at kindergarten, there's one little boy
that I've noticed in town, I've noticed in
sports.
And I almost felt like stopping right then.
If I wasn't in a hurry, I would
have.
And going back over to the fence, where
that little boy was just leaning all by
himself during play period.
Because the little boy has a problem, and
I've noticed through the last few months, and
in sports, he has a real problem with
self-acceptance.
But he's been pointed that direction.
He's been pointed that direction.
And a bullet, if you aim it in
the direction it'll go, and then it'll tend
to go downward.
After the first propulsion, then it tends to
go down.
And we in life, after we get blasted
off and we get directed, if there isn't
some sustaining help from the Word of God,
we'll tend to go down, too.
It's a downward trend.
Down in our image, and in our reactions
to life, our attitudes and things.
So, a baby is like a bullet in
that sense.
Both tend to go in the direction that
they're aimed.
Now, I say that because Moses had very
good aiming.
In other words, his mother and father aimed
him very good.
Especially when they knew they only had him
so long.
All right?
Now, I want to get into this passage
today by giving you some background on chapter
1.
Chapter 1, verses 1 through 7, is the
naming of the 12 tribes.
And basically what it says is they were
very fruitful, the 12 tribes of Israel.
And then verses 8 through 14 of chapter
1 gives us the story of how a
new king arose that didn't know Joseph.
Remember, Joseph was very influential, way up there
next to Pharaoh.
Well, time went along, and this new king
arises that doesn't know Joseph, and he was
afraid of Israel.
Because Israel was growing in numbers, he was
afraid of them.
And he assumed that they would rebel and
join their enemies and try to overthrow him.
He made just an assumption.
And so he began to plan to destroy
Israel.
His first plan to destroy them, in verse
11, was by hard work.
So he said, we're going to increase the
labors.
Have you ever wondered where this whole cliche
came from?
Hard work never killed anybody?
I wonder if that's true, because it didn't
work there.
It says that in verse 12, but the
more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied
and grew.
And they were greed because of the children
of Israel.
And there's another principle that is proven true
through history.
That is, the seed of the church has
been the blood of the saints.
Back in the early persecution of the church,
Satan found out that he could not destroy
Christianity by killing Christians.
And because the seed of the church was
the blood of the saints, the more they
killed them, they martyred them in the arenas,
the more they multiplied.
So Satan stopped that tactic, and he started
another tactic, and that was the tactic of
infiltration and dilution.
And he tried to get Christianity mixed together
with paganism, and there he found success.
And today his program is switched to counterfeit.
He's found that if he can counterfeit spirituality
and get Christians off into the counterfeit spirituality,
he can destroy.
So, Pharaoh found out that hard work didn't
kill him, and so he tried something else.
And then the next thing he tries, he
says, he goes to the midwives, two main
midwives, and he says, Listen, we want an
abortion.
And here we have a major abortion attempt.
Abortion is always of Satan.
It's never of God.
Murder is never of God of this proportion.
So he says, Listen, when the male child
is born, you take him and kill him.
Well, the midwives, they were afraid of God.
They wouldn't do it.
And so they disobeyed, and God in turn
blessed them, and so Pharaoh had to come
up with another attack.
And the next attack that he had, we
find that he just says in chapter 1,
verse 22, he just gives a clear command
that all of the male child when they're
born be thrown in the river.
Let's let the crocodiles eat them.
No ifs, buts.
Let's do it.
And it was an order.
So I imagine as the soldiers went marching
down the street, they heard a baby cry,
they go busting in, and then say, Where's
that baby that's crying?
Boy or girl?
Boy, they take it and go throw it
in the river.
All right, that's the background of the setting.
Now, that brings us up to chapter 2,
the birth of Moses.
A man of the house of Levi, and
took to wife a daughter of Levi.
And a woman conceived and bare a son.
And when she saw him that he was
a goodly child, she hid him three months.
Actually, chapter 11 of Hebrews, chapter 11 and
verse 23 says the same thing.
Let me read it to you.
By faith, Moses, when he was born, was
hid three months of his parents because they
saw he was a proper child, and they
were not afraid of the king's commandment.
Actually, what they saw was that Moses was
an unusual child.
His beauty, the word proper and the word
goodly, had to do with beauty.
He was an unusually beautiful baby.
And they saw that God, they could just
see God in Moses.
That God had a reason, and Josephus, a
historian, even has said that it's possible that
his father, Amram, had received a revelation that
Moses was a special child.
And so if that's true, then they knew
for sure that God was going to do
something.
But anyway, it says that by faith, they
hid him.
They hid him because they saw that God
wanted to do something, and then also that
they were not afraid of the commandment of
the king.
And that would take some real faith, because
to disobey would probably be, you know, your
life.
They'd take you and throw you in with
the...
Also, now, back to...
I lost my marker.
Back to chapter 2, all right?
Moses' parents, as they went through this traumatic
experience, may have been guided by three principles,
three parental principles in raising and surviving in
this situation.
Raising Moses, and I'll throw these three out
in case you want them.
But the first one was parental instinct.
Wouldn't it be natural to want to see
your child survive?
Right?
A natural response, parental instinct.
Do the best and give the best that
you can for your child.
That's a basic instinct.
The second thing is divine meditation.
They dared to step out against the king's
command, I believe, because of divine meditation.
They had meditated upon the word, and I
believe that they understood what the situation was.
They understood Scripture.
Now, Scripture said in Genesis 15, 13, that
there'd be a captivity period of about 400
years, and they understood that this captivity period
was almost over.
And also, they understood the principle of a
deliverer coming.
Remember in Genesis 3?
The Messiah, the first promise of the Messiah.
And so every Hebrew woman, when she had
a baby, she hoped it would be the
Messiah.
And finally that was fulfilled with Mary, when
she had Jesus.
So it could have been that maybe Moses'
mother thought that this was the Messiah.
Well, in a sense he was the Messiah,
because he was a type of Christ, right?
He was the deliverer.
So that principle of divine meditation, that meditated
upon the word of God, and the word
of God gave them the strength there.
And then another thing, hope in God's deliverance.
These three things, these three parental guidelines, hope
in God's deliverance, they were looking for a
deliverer.
So it was all set up.
It was all set up.
Now we have the situation, alright?
Now, let me share something else with you
on this that takes it into a little
bit deeper.
They had three other things, along with the
three parental instincts of the Hebrew parents.
They had these three things.
They had a conviction, they had confidence, and
they had a commitment.
The conviction, the conviction did something.
It destroyed the fear.
Somebody was sharing with me about a pastor
down in another city, down in North Platt,
how when the authorities told him that he
could not have, I think it was a
Christian school or whatever, he told the court
that, and everything was done right and legally,
but he told the court that he was
doing this because of a conviction.
And the interesting thing about it that was
mentioned was an unsaved lawyer, an unsaved lawyer
told, the gal that told me, he says,
I have a lot of respect for that
man.
An unsaved lawyer said this, I have a
lot of respect for that man because he
is standing on a conviction.
And when he stands on his conviction, when
his conviction is that nature, and he did
everything right that he could according to law,
except that he could not violate a law
of the state because it violated his conscience
and conviction, then I have a lot of
respect for that man.
Interesting that an unsaved lawyer would say that
the Christian is right in his case, and
he went through all kinds of stuff, lost
his house, they took everything away that he
had.
But this is the case here.
It destroys fear.
Now, if you are afraid of somebody, then
you will bow to them.
But if you are more afraid to disobey
God, then you will not bow.
Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?
They wouldn't bend, and they wouldn't bow, and
they wouldn't burn.
They had a conviction, and they stood.
And that's the way that we should be.
I believe they had this too.
They had a conviction that God was going
to do something.
They saw the unusual beauty.
And then a confidence.
Confidence does something for your faith.
It develops your faith.
Conviction destroys fear, but confidence develops faith.
One of the things that we learned when
we grew up is that man will let
us down.
People will let us down.
And we just get used to that.
Even Christians sometimes fell us.
But God never does.
And so God is teaching us to develop
our faith in Him.
Ultimately our faith is to be Him.
And so when they hid in three months,
they had confidence in God that God was
doing something.
And then the commitment.
That dares to follow.
And a commitment.
This is interesting.
I was doing a little study on commitment.
If I have some time this morning, I'm
going to share a few notes on it.
Extra things outside of the sermon that go
along with commitment.
And that's that.
This.
They committed Moses.
What do you commit?
Moses.
That's what they commit.
Now I'm building up to something.
This is one of these sermons where it's
just jumbled a little bit.
But I'm building up to something.
And we're building up to you and your
situation right now.
What do you have that would be a
similar situation?
You see, Moses' mother and father, they were
in a position where they got to the
point where there's nothing they could do.
They were getting to the point of despair.
And when you get to the point of
despair, you're getting to the point of where
you get to the miraculous, where God has
to do a miracle.
And guess who specializes in the miraculous?
Well, God.
He said, that's right up my alley.
I've been waiting for you to get to
that point.
No big deal if I do it and
everybody says, oh, ho hum, you know.
But when God does something and it's in
the miraculous, He gets more glory.
And when He gets us to the point
to where He can trust us with bigger
and greater trials, to where He can get
more glory, then that's better.
The trouble is, He can't always trust us
because we're going to blow it.
We're going to go off crying and everything
and grumbling and dishonor Him.
But they committed Moses.
Now, what they had to commit was what
they wanted but could not keep.
They wanted to keep Moses, but they couldn't
keep Him.
He was going to be found out.
He was beginning, you know, three-month-old
begins to cry.
And when you get up to like we've
got an eleven-month-old, when they cry,
they'll just raise you right out of bed
at three in the morning.
You know?
So here's the guard walking along in the
middle of the night and they're listening and
he hears this cry.
They knew that one of these days their
number was going to be up.
So they had to commit what they could
not keep.
Okay?
Now, who were they going to commit it
to?
Well, we know it's to God.
The question is who are you going to
commit your problem to?
Now, I like what James Elliott said.
He said, He is no fool who gives
what he cannot keep to gain what he
cannot lose.
That one may have to run by a
couple dozen times.
But it says, He is no fool who
gives what he cannot keep to gain what
he cannot lose.
Primarily, let's say this about your soul.
If you do not commit your soul to
Jesus Christ, if you do not commit your
life to Jesus Christ, you will lose it.
That's what that's saying.
He is no fool who gives what he
cannot keep, your soul, to gain what he
cannot lose, salvation.
You're not a fool.
If you'll give to God your soul, then
you won't lose it.
But if you try to keep it and
don't receive Christ, you'll lose your soul.
That's what Jesus said.
It's the Mark 8.35 principle.
The Mark 8.35 principle is a key
principle where Jesus taught, and this is a
crucified truth principle, but he says, Whoever will
save his life shall lose it, but whoever
shall lose his life for my sake and
the gospels, the same shall keep it.
If you're afraid to give your life to
Christ, you're going to lose what you're afraid
to lose.
You see what we're talking about?
Now this goes for your problem too.
Whatever it is that is a big issue
with you, give it to God.
Very simple.
Now, let's keep going.
I'm going to throw out a principle here
before we keep going.
I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget
it, but whatever is given to God is
never lost.
Isn't that good?
Alright, whatever is given to God is not
lost.
Whatever we try to keep, we lose.
Now think of your situation that you're in.
You'll lose if you just try to keep
it to yourself and do it.
But give it to God.
That's the principle.
Now, there are some victory principles in this
passage, and we've already read the passage.
I want to share the victory principles with
you.
Jochebed, that's Moses' mother, she had a name,
when she was faced, she was really the
one that, Moses' father was probably off in
the salt mines tromping out clay, you know,
making bricks.
And so she was the one that had
to deal with this every day, because he
was gone most of the day.
She was the one that had to try
to put up with the pressure.
Can you imagine the pressure of trying to
keep a baby hid in a society that
wanted to kill him and throw him to
the crocodiles?
Okay.
God dealt with her and her husband in
these areas, these two main areas.
And these two areas are victory areas.
These two areas are victory areas.
The first one is she had to die
to self.
She got to the point to where she
just had to die to herself.
And I say that's self-effort, the self
-survival for Moses, the self-struggle.
Just die to self trying to do it.
Alright?
Now the second one is this.
Now this is very profound.
In other words, it's so simple, watch it
that you don't miss it.
She had to rest on God alone.
I believe many times we do not see
things happen in our lives, in our situations,
because we're just not willing to rest on
God alone and come up and lean completely
on Him to where we're really leaning.
If I try to lean that far, I'll
fall over.
But just really say, God, whatever you do
with it now, I'm going to accept.
And you just have complete peace in God.
We don't have the peace when we're not
willing to commit.
Alright?
Now I want you to notice something about
her faith in verse 4.
Her sister stood afar off to know what
would be done.
In other words, she put him down in
the river and then she got off and
she hid just to see what was happening.
They committed Moses.
Her problem was put into a basket and
her basket was put into the river, but
really her basket was put into God's hands.
Up to that point, it had been her
concern, her struggle, trying to clamp the kid
up, you know, and keep him quiet when
he'd cry, you know, so he wouldn't sound
so loud.
But now, he was cast completely onto God.
Alright?
Here's something about faith in verse 4.
We need to realize this one.
Faith is not reckless abandonment.
Faith is not reckless.
You notice they're not reckless.
She sets him there right in the edge
and she's going to watch.
She's not going to let a crocodile, what
we call down in Louisiana, crocogators.
We're not going to let a crocodile get
her.
We don't have crocodiles down there though, we
just have alligators.
But she's not going to let a crocodile
get the baby, but she's just going to
see what God will do.
Alright?
So it's not reckless abandonment.
It's not presumption.
Faith is reasonable actions.
We take a reasonable action.
So she put her problem in the basket,
she put her basket in the river, in
God's hands, really in God's will.
Okay God, we can't do anything anymore.
Now what happens?
Here's the good part.
What had Pharaoh said?
Death.
River.
Put him in the river.
The river symbolized death.
Now what do they do?
They put Moses into the river.
And what does God do?
He delivers, right?
From the thing that Pharaoh had issued as
death, God's going to take that same thing
and make life out of it.
The result was victory.
Because Pharaoh's daughter came along, she found the
baby, and she liked the baby, and of
course we, I believe the whole thing, you
know, it's almost, it's almost to me very
obvious that Pharaoh's daughter knew what was going
on and then the little girl comes up
and she puts it together, that that's the
sister probably.
And so she knows that that's the mother
that's going to nurse it.
But she has a soft heart.
But God is the one that softened her
heart.
Now here's the thing about it.
What's the result?
Victory.
When she was willing to completely give it
all to God and see what God would
do, there was victory.
Two things.
Short range and long range.
The short range was she got Moses back.
The long range was the very thing that
she committed to God completely was the thing
that God used to deliver her and her
family and all of Israel out of the
land of bondage.
Now if you'll take your situation, whatever it
is, and if I'll take mine and just
let God do what He wants to with
it, we'll see victory.
But when I try to keep my hands
on it, it's a mess.
And that's the way our Christian life is.
It's a mess if we keep our hands
off of it.
Victorious Christian living is me keeping my hands
off of my life and letting God keep
His hands on and do what He wants
to do.
Doing my best for God will be the
devastating principle of my Christian life.
God doesn't want me to do my best.
He wants me to just be dead and
let Him do what He wants to do.
You know, we even sing the song, give
your best to the Master.
In a sense that's true, but really God
just says, let me do what I want
to do.
And you just be quiet about it.
You know, I don't want to complain.
You know, and bellyache.
But when she did what God wanted to
do, then she had victory.
You know when Christ went to the cross?
When Christ went to the cross, that's the
same principle.
But when Moses went to the water, it
was death.
Really, as far as she was concerned, Moses
was dead.
But she was willing to see what God
would do.
Because all the guard had to do was
walk along, see the baby, and kick the
basket over it.
You know, whatever, throw the spear down.
And when Christ went to the cross, as
far as Satan was concerned, it was death.
For Christ, He was done with.
He was dancing with glee.
But on God's point of view, what looks
like death ends up to be life and
victory.
And when Christ died on the cross, that
was the very thing that you and I
needed for life.
And these principles that we're going to learn
in this passage are so liberating.
So, when Christ went to the cross, it
seemed like defeat, but it resulted in victory.
And when we will go to the cross
and just be dead, let God do what
He wants to do, we've got our problem.
God is going to crush me.
But we will just die to ourselves and
let God do what He wants to do.
Then we find that we get the very
thing that we wanted anyway, a victory in
that situation.
And when I listen to people talk, many
times I just listen.
Many times I'm finding that people don't ask
for biblical advice.
They just want to have some encouragement to
do what they want to do.
And I have to wait until they're willing
to listen to what God wants to say.
And God had to do that.
Many times I get advice and counsel and
everything, but I really don't want what God
wants.
I want what I want.
And when I'm completely willing to totally commit
it to Him, then I'll get victory in
that area.
Alright?
Let me share these principles with you real
quick and then we'll close up.
These are the extra notes that I wrote
on total commitment.
It's a man on a cross.
Remember Galatians 2.20?
Paul said, I am crucified with Christ.
That's death.
He says, I am dead.
He says, nevertheless, I live.
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,
and the life that I now live in
the flesh I live by the faith of
the Son of God who died for me.
There's a story that goes along with this.
That was a little boy, or maybe an
older boy, don't know his age, but he
asked a man about a cross.
What was death?
What was this about?
Dying on the cross, for a Christian to
die on the cross.
And the old man told him these three
things.
He said, well son, a man on the
cross is facing only one direction.
Remember I shared this with you?
If we're going to be on the cross,
we're going to face only one direction.
When you're nailed to a cross, you can't
turn around.
We can't turn around.
We've stopped looking back.
And the faith life is looking forward.
Satan will say, look back.
Look, turn around.
I've got something here I want to scare
you with.
But we keep looking at Christ.
We keep looking ahead.
And the direction is God, and God's word.
We look in that direction.
Then another thing he said, son, he's not
going back.
He's not going back.
The Christian life, and here's where we miss
out, when we lead a lot of people
to Christ, when we talk to them about
being a Christian, the Christian life is a
crucified life.
He's not going back.
The Christian life is a life where you're
dead to self.
And this is what the Bible says.
Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he's
a Christian.
The old things have passed away, and a
new thing has come.
A new life.
But what we have is somebody, I'm a
Christian, yeah.
But the old things have never stopped.
And they never do stop.
They stop when Christ comes in though.
And so what we've been fed is an
intellectual line from Satan.
Oh, you're saved.
Yeah, you received Jesus.
Yeah, you've been born again.
He intellectually feeds us with that stuff, but
yet our life never does show Christ being
there.
He's not going back.
When you join Christ, when you receive Christ,
when I do, I'm finished.
I'm finished.
And Christ has taken over.
And that's where the joy comes in and
the victory and the power and the purpose
and all of the good comes when Christ
comes in.
But we see so much bad in Christian
lives because they're still there, and really Christ
isn't there.
And if you try to live and if
I try to live and reign where Christ
is supposed to, then there's all kinds of
trouble.
Christ doesn't want my best.
He just wants me to be dead.
And that's what He did with Jochebed and
Amoran.
He just brought them to the point to
where they just had to die and let
God do what He wanted to do.
They died to their self-effort and their
self-solutions and all of this.
And so He's not going back.
And any time we backslide, all backsliders have
a lot of problems.
They never have any peace and they never
have any joy.
And I know that because I've tried it.
And then the third thing that a man
told his son, he said, the boy, he
says, Father, third, he has no further plans
of his own.
Now that's been a real problem for me
in my Christian life because I make plans.
You know?
And I set goals.
And that's okay if I'm willing to have
God change my plans and change my goals.
But a lot of times we've got our
mind made up and we don't want God
to be God in our life, really.
We say it.
But when you're on the cross, somebody else
makes your plans for you.
You know what's in the middle of sin?
I.
If we'll stay out of the middle of
our life and keep Christ there and keep
I up, we'll stay crucified.
Now that's what this Desert Survival series is
about.
Moses, we're seeing him born and we're going
to see what God does with him.
And as we see what God does with
him, we're going to see Jesus Christ and
we're going to see ourselves too.
And we're going to go on a trip.
And we're going to go on a trip
through the desert.
We're going to go on a trip in
the desert through the Word of God, but
also we're going to see ourselves as God
takes us through our personal deserts.
And we'll find out.
If you haven't found out already, I'm finding
out that the desert experience, those really hard
times that almost crushes you, those times are
the times when God is able to make
you most like Christ.
And that becomes the most valuable experience.
Like Paul, when he first got saved, God
buried Paul out in the desert.
And you don't hear much about it, but
he was teaching them about himself.
Let's bow in prayer.
Lord, I thank you for this time we've
had now.
And it's a time of study.
It's a time of listening to you.
And as we're just beginning now, Father, beginning
by building in some basic principles as we
study this series, I realize that you want
to take this study and you want to
make us like Christ.
And how better than to let us study
the life of a man who you broke,
who you molded, and who you made.
And let us see how Christ was developed
in him.
And at the same time, we'll take these
lessons and we will apply them to our
lives.
And Lord, we'll apply them to the situations
that you let us go into.
And we'll learn that there's victory in life
when we let go and just let God
be God.
And Lord, I'm learning there's real victory when
I just let you do what you want
to do.
And I let you lead and I don't
try to lead you.
And I thank you for the time that
we've had.
And again, Father, I pray if there's one
that needs to make a decision about Christ,
that they'll do it today.
That they'll just receive Christ.
They'll quit struggling and just surrender.
And also, maybe there's someone here, Father, that's
been carrying their burden.
They've been carrying their load.
And it's just been weighing them down, bending
them over, crushing them.
And you're just saying, my child, let me
carry the load.
Let me have the basket.
Commit it to me.
And watch what I can do with it.
Thank you, Father, for this time we've had
now in Jesus' name.
Amen.