Before coming to the text and to the
message before us this morning, I think there
are two things I would like to say
very briefly.
One is to say what a joy it
is to find a number of you able
to be out after the summer months, after
the winter months.
I hope that summer is still to come.
Some of you have been laid aside, but
the most precious thing is that some of
you good people are our most faithful prayer
warriors, and it's a joy to see you
out among us.
We owe so much to people who are
not with us here on the Lord's Day.
They can't be, either due to age or
one reason or another.
They're shut aside and they're unable to come,
but when the sun shines and someone with
a car comes along, well, they're able to
join us.
Some of that category are here this morning.
Please accept our thanks for all you are
to us and will continue to be.
The other thing I would like you to
pray for a little family this morning that
doesn't belong to Knox at all.
I've had a great friend over the last,
I would say, eight years.
He was a medical man, an internist, who
became a psychiatrist.
Sometimes you saw him sitting in one of
these front seats.
He really belonged to Little Trinity.
He knew the Lord very, very intimately.
He was a codigger, as they say in
England.
He used to stay alongside John Stott when
he was studying medicine in London.
They were both under the same roof.
He was a delightful man.
I came to know him because he taught
me, tried to teach me, how to deal
with various psychological problems.
And we met every now and again and
discussed some of the deeper, moral, psychological issues
of the day.
We didn't talk much about it.
And when I met people who had real
problems that I felt they needed a physician,
I generally sent them to him.
And very suddenly his life has been cut
short.
I'm not free to give you all the
details this morning.
There's no need to do that.
But I do want to commend to you
his widow and two children who are very
much in the wilderness.
May the Lord in his grace comfort them
today.
And oh, that the Lord would raise up
men like our brother who really loved people.
I believe that he is dead physically today
because he has tried to bear the burdens
of so many until it became a crush
upon his soul.
And I salute him as a brother in
Christ, as a great medical man, and as
a psychiatrist of the first order.
He will have a great welcome in the
presence of the great physician.
Well now the message that is laid upon
my heart this morning and the one to
which we come in in our studies of
the Sermon on the is based on the
passage that was read verses 5 to 18
in Matthew chapter 6.
We've entitled it God mastered.
I think a proper understanding of chapter 6
requires us to go back necessarily to the
end of chapter 5.
You will remember that even in verse 20
of chapter 5 our Lord said that he
expected of his disciples a quality of righteousness
that was greater than that of the Scribes
and the Pharisees.
Now their quality of righteousness was phenomenal in
the eyes of their fellow men.
Nevertheless our Lord Jesus made it quite clear
that in his kingdom his subjects, children of
God, subjects of the kingdom of the heavens,
must by his grace be able to produce
a quality of righteousness that supersedes that.
In what sense can our righteousness, whether in
the realm of morals or religion, in what
sense can our righteousness supersede that of the
Scribes and the Pharisees.
Now I believe that Jesus gives us the
key to that in the end of chapter
5 by telling us that our righteousness is
to be dominated by God, superimposed by the
image of God.
It came out you remember with reference to
loving our enemies.
He told his subjects, subjects of the kingdom
that you must love your enemies even as
you love yourself.
And he goes on to explain why because
he said your father he causes his rain
to fall upon the just and the unjust
alike.
And he causes the sun to shine upon
upon just and unjust alike.
And you he says you are to be
like your father.
Now you see the principle.
You are to act like that because of
the influence of God upon you.
And the secret of your greater, larger, deeper,
more intricate and intimate righteousness really lies there
in the influence of God upon you my
people.
You are called into an experience of God
and along with God in which his image
is to be deeply embossed upon your hearts
and your spirits and your minds.
And so you're to act differently.
And then chapter, chapter 5 comes to the
end with the stress you be perfect like
who?
Well here's the answer.
It brings us to the same point.
You are to be perfect like your heavenly
father who is in heaven.
In other words your lives, your lives are
to bear his image.
The righteousness that is to be brought about
in your life is a righteousness that God
brings into being.
Or if you want me to put it
in a slightly different way, it is a
righteousness that is to be cultivated in the
presence of God, by the power of God,
according to the word of God and for
the glory of God.
It begins, continues and ends in and with
God.
It's a challenging subject this.
Now last week we were thinking of this
in terms of giving to the poor.
It was a necessary aspect of Jewish religion
that they should give to the poor.
King James speaks of it as almsgiving.
Well if that's a good word, all right.
If it isn't, let's pass over it.
Giving to the poor was a necessity of
something that the Christian ought to be giving
now every now and again, or doing every
now and again.
It is an integral part.
A believer, a man of God, ought always
to be a man who is giving, because
he's walking through life with God.
And God is the senior partner in that
partnership.
And because God dominates the partnership, and his
creatures are needy, and his children are needy,
there must be a giving.
But now today we come to the subject
of prayer.
This principle is also to operate very especially
in the area of prayer.
Now look first of all at the hypocrisy
that is to be avoided.
Verse 5.
When you pray, do not be like the
hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in
the synagogues and on the corners of the
streets to be seen of men.
I tell you, I tell you the truth.
They have received their reward in full.
Oh yes, they get their reward.
People look at them and say, my aren't
there a great lot of people.
And that's the end of it, says Jesus.
They've received their reward, and they've received it
in full.
There's nothing more to come.
But you're not to be like them.
Bearing in mind, as we said last time,
that the word hypocrisy hails from a source
which implies first of all acting, and then
playing a part, as in a theater, and
thus superimposing someone else's mode of behavior upon
oneself.
Jesus says to his followers, now you must
be as far from that kind of living
as is possible.
You must be yourselves.
And being yourselves, you must learn out of
your new selves to produce righteousness that is
acceptable to God.
Not something that you put on as on
a theater stage, because you're putting on a
show.
And you must not pray just because you're
in the place where people are praying, or
because people expect you to pray.
You must learn to pray because of the
person you are, because of your relationship to
God and his relationship to you.
Jesus pleads here, you see, for genuine reality
in prayer.
The reality that springs out of a genuine
knowledge of God.
Now there are a myriad reasons why people
act the way they do in every area
of life.
One major cause found all too often in
human experience is that we speak or are
silent, we act or we remain inactive, because
of the influence of other people upon us.
We love to be highly praised by our
fellows.
There is an old carnal nature in every
one of us.
And we itch for the commendation of men
and women.
So, if we think that the people that
are looking on want us to say such
and such a thing, the tendency is that
we will do so.
Or if we think that it'll displease the
people that are looking on and hearing us,
it'll displease them if we say that, even
though it is the truth, even though it
may be the Word of God, we would
rather have the praises of men, if you
please.
And so you see, there are many people
who go through life, and this is the
main factor that determines what they do or
what they don't do, the praises of men.
What will people think of me?
Now that's hypocrisy.
That's being theatrical in moral things.
That's living on the stage.
That's not real living, that's making a mockery
of life.
And it is as much so in prayer
as in anything else.
We are all familiar with the age-long
adage and principle that it is not wise
to emulate evil doers and evil speakers, and
that's right, of course.
You know, Jesus is saying something which is
more challenging.
You should not allow your Christian life to
develop to simply emulating good people in their
goodness.
Your righteous life should be righteous because of
your relationship to God.
You hear His Word.
You are indwelt by His Spirit.
You love Him in measure.
He is your God.
You call Him my God.
He's your Father.
You call Him my Father, our Father, who
art in heaven.
Very well then.
What our God is saying is this, even
where it is appropriate to do good along
with other people, it's far easier when other
people agree with you, but you Christians should
never do the good simply because people expect
it, or simply because people will respect you
for it.
The source of it, as far as you
are concerned, should be far deeper.
It should be in God.
Now this is very, very challenging.
Jesus insists that righteousness in terms of almsgiving,
prayer, and fasting must not be a matter
of course or of convenience or of mere
conceding to custom, good customs though these may
represent.
It must be a matter of living out
the life we live in our hearts in
relation to God.
Now that's the first thing to notice here.
There is a hypocrisy that we must shun.
Do you pray in the prayer meeting?
Just because it's the done thing?
Or because somebody else prays?
Or do you have that little quiet place
in your home just because somebody suggested it
was a good thing?
Now thanks be to God that there have
been some who suggest such things.
I'm not condemning that.
But as Christian people you see, we should
be wanting to do the right things, to
pray and to have our own place of
prayer in our own home, because God is
real to us.
And the God who is real to us
is our Father.
And as our Father, he controls us.
He masters us.
He directs us.
And we are his children.
Now the second thing I want you to
notice in Jesus' teaching here is this.
We have here some practical instruction as to
how to achieve such righteousness.
Two or three things I mentioned.
I shall be brief about them, but they're
very important.
First of all, I believe Jesus is stressing
the need for privacy.
He described the hypocrite's method in verse 5.
When you pray, he says, do not be
like the hypocrites.
Well, what do they do?
This says Jesus.
They love to pray standing in the synagogues
and on the street corners to be seen
by men.
I tell you the truth, they receive their
reward in full.
Now don't you be like them, he says.
They love to pray standing in the synagogue
where everybody was seeing them, all eyes were
fixed on them, and even on the corners
of the streets from time to time.
Now, we, on the contrary, subjects of the
kingdom of our Lord, children of God, we
are to seek a solitary place.
We are to get away from the public
eye and catch the eye and ear of
God.
Now, my brother Christian, sister and brother, frankly
before God this morning, is this a principle
that is operating in your life?
Now, you're not answerable to me, but I
believe that God wants us to face this
question this morning.
Is there in your life an area, which
you call the area of prayer, of devotion,
private devotion, or whatever, where really you switch
off the thought as everybody else is concerned,
and the one thing that matters is that
you are on the right wavelength with God.
You're in touch, you're in tune with him.
Jesus says you need to get a part
into your own room.
There we must metaphorically, if not literally, close
ourselves in.
And in closing ourselves in with him, we
close out everybody else for the time being.
And within that sacred arena, where no human
eye is upon us, and no one is
expected to disturb us, we must learn to
discern the presence of God and commune with
him, and plan our lives together with him.
That's the first thing Jesus says.
You need privacy.
We cannot pray amidst the bustle of life,
unless we have first learned to pray apart
and alone with God.
Have you, my friend, have you, and allow
me to ask it again this morning, have
you a private place to which you thus
retreat, and where you can remain undisturbed as
you seek the face of God?
It is indispensable for the quality of life
that Jesus is requiring of us here.
This kind of righteousness will not come.
You will never be able to overcome your
temptations.
You will never be able to overcome the
opposition of the world, and the flesh, and
the devil, unless you have a place apart,
where you draw your resources from God to
face ungodly men.
Many of us flounder in public because we
fail in secret, and of all secret places,
in the secret place of prayer.
I have yet to meet a man or
a woman who has a regular place for
prayer, and Bible study, and communion with God,
and who is a failure in the arena
of daily life.
Morally, I mean.
Indeed, it's more subtle than that.
The moment you and I attempt to pray
more in public than we do in private,
that very moment we are on the slippery
path that leads to hypocrisy.
And this, of course, is a very challenging
thing for a minister of the Word, and
I acknowledge it humbly before you.
There is nothing which is more devastating than
this.
At some times, for one reason or another,
and no reason is adequate, one spends more
time in leading a congregation in prayer from
the pulpit here, from the front here, than
one has spent that morning, or that hour
before the service, before the face of God.
And it is a sin.
It's a slur on the Almighty.
You and I must always have more in
private than in public.
William Hendrickson says that among the Jews, though
prayers were always appropriate, there were set times
of prayer, and we know for well that
there were.
The pious were expected to attend to their
devotions, and there was morning, afternoon, and evening
prayers.
And that's why you see this reference here
to praying on the corners of the streets.
If it was prayer time, the scribes and
the Pharisees would stop.
If they couldn't get to the appointed place,
they would pray, they would say their prayers
publicly, and people would hear.
According to Josephus, he adds, sacrifices, including prayers,
were offered in the temple twice a day,
and someone else adds a third.
So you have these prayers and these sacrifices
going on three times a day.
And it became for all too many people
a matter of rote, a matter of just
going through the rigmarole.
And you see, brothers and sisters, coming to
church can be like that.
Even your altar in your home can become
that.
And your giving to the Lord's cause can
be just that.
Anything, anything within the orbit of our spiritual
life can become something mechanical.
And that, says our Lord Jesus, is not
as it ought to be.
Our righteousness ought to grow out of our
relationship with our all-righteous Father in heaven.
Out of our fellowship with Him, in which
He is God, and we are His creatures.
He is Father, we are His children.
He is in command, we are His obedient.
Harvey G.
Tusker says that the Greek word for room,
go into your room, in verse 5, was
actually used in our Lord's day for the
storeroom where treasures might be kept.
I don't know whether that is true or
not.
Tusker suggests it.
He doesn't make it very, very, doesn't make
a dogmatic statement.
But if it were true, how suggestive it
is.
Go to your room, says Jesus.
What room?
The room where the treasures are kept.
And brothers and sisters, that's what the prayer
room really is.
This is where God opens the caskets of
His treasures upon men.
This is where men receive of the benefits
of grace and of glory.
This is where they find mercy and grace
to help in time of need.
This is where strength is given to the
weak.
This is where wisdom is given to those
who are incapable of facing a day's task.
This is where courage comes from.
This is where it all comes from.
Go into your room, says Jesus, and lock
your door or close your door.
Fasten your door behind you.
And there in the treasure house of God,
you will find that He has somewhere to
give you.
Now having said all this, however, let's be
quite clear in our own minds that Jesus'
main point in stressing the need for secret
prayer is not so much for the sake
of the secrecy in and of itself, but
rather with a view to keeping our motives
pure.
We need privacy so as not to attempt
to play up to men that are listening
to us.
We need privacy to be alone with God
and not to allow our thoughts, our minds,
our hearts to be diverted at all, but
rather to deal realistically with our heavenly Father.
Ostensibly, some people might be able to do
that with a crowd of folk around them.
I never could.
I have to close my eyes if I
want to pray in a bus or in
a subway or wherever.
Some of you may be able to.
Just draw apart and be like an island
amidst a whole multitude of people.
God bless you.
And most of us are otherwise.
We have to disengage from the world in
order to engage our souls with God.
Praying in private saves us from fashioning our
prayers in order to tickle the itching ears
of men and play the hypocrite.
Too often it has been said the secret
to failure in our lives is our failure
in secret.
Let's take note of that.
It came from our A.
Finlayson of the Free Church College in Edinburgh.
So that's the first thing we need is
privacy.
Then we need intimacy with God.
I think that's the real significance of verse
six.
When you pray, go into your room, close
the door, and pray to your Father who
is unseen.
Then your Father who sees what is done
in secret will reward you.
Now will you notice you've got into the
room, you've got privacy, but privacy itself is
not enough.
You've got to make contact.
Merely going into a room and locking the
doors and saying well now here I'm going
to speak to God, that doesn't bring me
any nearer the Lord.
Unless in my heart of hearts and by
the Holy Spirit's working and by the Word
of God I can draw near as the
writer of the epistle to the Hebrews puts
it.
And so you see this applies only to
men and women of faith.
Now you've got to be a believer here.
If you're only a church member and you've
never been born again, my friend, you simply
cannot move this way.
It's beyond you as it was beyond me
and everybody else.
But if you have the Spirit of God
in your heart, if you've been born anew,
if you're a new creature, if your sins
are washed away, this is your prerogative.
This is your privilege.
This is your calling.
This is part of the wonder of it
all.
Without faith it is impossible to please God
because anyone who comes to Him must believe
that He exists and that He rewards those
who earnestly seek Him.
Or take Paul in Galatians, in Christ Jesus
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.
The only thing that counts is faith expressing
itself in love.
Even so you see faith is but the
fundamental ingredient.
The words of Jesus envisage an active virile
faith, in the words used, lays hold upon
God.
Our fathers used to say, have much to
say about that, laying hold upon God.
I remember some of the older saints in
the circles where I was brought up as
a Christian, they often used to speak of
this, come on now, one of the elders
would say, come and let us lay hold
upon God.
And I didn't know for a long time
what they meant, but I learned.
To lay hold upon God is to come
into such intimacy with Him that when you're
going out through the door you know you
go together.
You know anything of this?
Neither is that the sum of what this
verse refers to.
Faith, active faith, needs to be able to
lay hold on God as a child lays
hold of its parent.
That's the kind of intimacy envisaged here and
it is necessarily one in which God is
the one who teaches, corrects, commands and controls,
and His children are not His creature.
They hold His hand, they cling to Him,
and it is in that embrace they leave
the hallowed place.
Privacy without such intimacy is an empty shell.
I know some people who have a private
chapel.
I remember when I was a student going
to preach in a very certain place, I
better not mention names, and I was staying
the night in the castle with Lord and
Lady so-and-so.
And the service next morning was to be,
was to take place in the chapel of
the castle.
And I asked Lord so-and-so, how
often do you meet the Lord here in
the chapel?
Oh, once every Sunday, he said.
You see, there was a man who went
for seven days, and the chapel was there,
a place to meet with God.
But the heart to meet with God, the
grace to meet with God, the spirit to
meet with God was absent.
I'm glad to say that was not so
to the end of his days.
And on the occasion to which I'm referring,
it was totally absent.
He was dead in trespasses and sins.
But the Lord called him out of darkness,
changed him into a new man, and that
chapel became filled with praying men and women.
Privacy without such intimacy is an empty shell.
There is no greater tragedy than to have
a private chapel where you may regularly meet
with God.
And yet when you get into your private
chapel, you're no nearer God than you are
walking down Blue Street, no more aware of
him.
The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes
and the Pharisees on the level of prayer
has to be fashioned in the vital encounter
of a child of God with his heavenly
Father.
And the encounter must be so real and
so deep that when a child moves out
to his duty in this world, he carries
the sense of the presence of his Father
with him.
Thirdly, we need simplicity.
And when you pray, do not keep on
babbling like pagans, for they think they will
be heard because of their many words.
Do not be like them, for your Father
knows what you need before you ask him.
Simplicity, artlessness.
That is, the absence of any attempt to
play tricks or play games with God, or
even with men.
Such simplicity, of course, is nothing less than
just downright honesty.
Downright honesty.
The attempt to be clever in the presence
of the Almighty God is worse than folly.
It reflects a view of God and of
oneself which are both abhorrent in any context,
but especially in the supposed exercise of prayer.
Jesus goes far to define the kind of
simplicity he requires by contrasting his demands with
the familiar contemporary practice of the scribes and
Pharisees.
The pagans of the day employed what our
Lord refers to as babbling.
And one writer describes it in these terms.
Let me read to you a few lines.
Some pagans thought that if they named all
their gods, and they had many, and addressed
their petitions to each of them, and then
repeated themselves a few times, they would have
a better chance of receiving an answer.
Jesus tells his contemporary Jewish hearers that much
of their praying is akin to this babbling
found among pagans.
And I am certain that if he were
addressing us directly today, says this writer, he
would tell us exactly the same thing.
Prayer should not consist of heaped up phrases,
idle repetitions, and the ridiculous assumption that the
probability of an answer is in proportion to
the total number of the words in our
prayer.
And yet we sometimes think so.
We need a simplicity towards God.
We know that he knows everything before we
tell him everything, yet he has told us
that he will be inquired of even for
these things.
Very well then, let's tell him with all
simplicity and honesty the thing as it seems
to us, and leave it with him.
But we do not score points with God
by the addition of words.
The quality of righteousness which Jesus demands in
our prayer, in our prayer life, avoids all
such idle repetitions.
Now I'm going to close.
There is another section here, and I only
want to say a word about it.
The model prayer that illustrates the main principle,
or principles thus enunciated.
We've already spent a number of weeks on
the study of the Lord's Prayer, and the
only one thing I want to say at
this stage, I want you to notice that
the principle to which we've referred already, is
most evident in the Lord's Prayer.
That is, the righteousness which Jesus requires of
us, is a righteousness that is made, that
is produced, as God personally exercises control of
us.
Now listen to this model prayer.
The model prayer begins with God, does not
begin with human needs at all.
Now that is strange, because most of us
begin and end with needs.
And we're told of course to bring our
needs to God, so don't let's misunderstand that.
But it does not begin with human needs,
and with human problems.
It begins with God.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be
your name.
And that's the first thing it says, it
begins with a worship of God.
Just imagine it.
This is the way to begin praying, with
God.
Get your mind, get your soul, get yourself
focused on God.
And the first thing that we should seek
to do is to set the name of
God above every name.
Your name be sanctified, that's what it says
literally.
Set apart from every other name.
Kings and priests and emperors and presidents and
rulers, what are they?
The name of the Lord is above them
all.
And in our estimation, he is so, and
we tell him so.
And that's where prayer begins.
With lofty thoughts of God, telling him his
worth, in our estimation, as revealed in his
word and in his Son, and in our
own experience by the Holy Spirit.
Then the petitioner expresses his primary concern to
be, not for himself, in any sense at
all, but for the coming of God's kingdom,
and the doing of God's will on earth,
as it is done in heaven.
What praying is this?
It's so contrary to the way we pray,
is it not?
Your will be done on earth, as it
is done in heaven.
Your kingdom come, starting with his name and
moving in this direction.
You see, he's concerned with God.
The heart's taken up with God.
Against that background, the worship and devotion, of
worship and devotion, the petitioner's faith then rises
to seek from God, his Father, everything that
he really needs, spiritually and materially.
As one really dedicated to God, the petitioner
asks and trusts his Heavenly Father, first for
daily bread, temporal needs.
Give us, not this day, but really, day
by day, our daily bread.
He's not asking the Lord, give me such
a stock today, that I won't need to
come back to you again for the next
three years, but rather, please give me today's
portion today, and I'll come back tomorrow, when
I need something tomorrow.
I'll live with you from day to day.
Please feed me from your hand.
But not only, not only material needs, he
asks also for daily pardon.
I believe the thought of daily bread leads
on to the thought of daily pardon, spiritual
well-being, and daily deliverance from the evil
one.
You see, he moves from the material to
the spiritual, and very simply, in very few
words, he brings them all before God, because
he's aware of God.
He's under the rule of God.
He's under the eye of God.
He's got the ear of God.
See, this is what prayer is.
And there, in communion with God, he kind
of says to the Lord, now these are
my needs, I look to you for them
as my father, for out of grace and
mercy, please give me these things that I
need.
Moreover, here we come to a conclusion.
If the longer ending of the Lord's prayer
found in some manuscripts, and included in some
translations as authentic, the prayer ends likewise with
God, more than with man.
You remember the older ending?
It's in the King James, for thine is
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
You say, I never had a prayer like
that.
No, you didn't, my friend.
Say it based on this one.
You start with God, then you sandwich your
own needs between the glory of God, and
the worship of God on the one hand,
and the concession of glory to God on
the other end.
And in between, you bring your material needs,
and your spiritual spiritual needs, briefly, and just
leave them with him.
Now the righteousness that Jesus requires on the
subjects of his kingdom, in terms of prayer,
is of this order.
He wants us to be real with God,
not to play at prayer or anything else.
He wants us to be real.
He wants us to be effective.
He wants us to be genuine.
He doesn't want us to be hypocrites, and
act, and play the part.
He wants us to be real.
What then have we encountered here?
We have encountered a clear-cut outline of
the righteousness which the King requires of all
the subjects of his kingdom.
There are no exceptions.
If in chapter 5 he stressed his moral
demands, in chapter 6 he matches them with
such religious requirements as constitute this lofty righteousness,
giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting.
I've not dealt with fasting.
And all because Jesus wants us to be
real.
Brothers and sisters, have we strayed in these
areas?
Have we been less than real at times?
Is it true, is it true, that our
prayers are sometimes mere words without very little
heart or meaning?
Oh may the God of all grace come
down upon us afresh and win us back
to himself, and enable us, enable us, oh
enable us to walk the way the Master
would lead his people.
You see, walking in the footmarks of our
Lord, walking in this way, there is no
experience in life nor in death, but that
you may call upon your Father and know
his presence.
He's the perfect example in prayer, private and
public.
I have no time to enlarge upon that.
But what I want you to notice is
this, even after the ignominy of bearing sin
upon the cross, and bearing the curse of
sin, so that it appeared as if God
had turned his back upon him, his last
word is, Father into your hands I commit
my spirit.
Now I don't want you to miss that.
Whatever had happened in between, his Father was
there.
He could see his hands and his arms.
Into your hands I commit my spirit.
And his spirit was safe there.
How do I know?
Blessed be God on the morning of the
third day he rose again from the dead.
And the spirit brought the body, and the
body and the spirit moved about among the
disciples for 40 days until he ascended.
There's no question about that.
This is the way into a life of
righteousness, as Jesus calls it.
The kingdom life, kingdom living on the way
to our eternal abode.
God grant us his grace, some of us
to start afresh today.
Maybe some of us here to start off
on this road for the first time.
The Spirit of God is assuring you that
really you're not a child of God.
You're not a subject of the kingdom.
Give him your heart.
Give him your mind.
Give him your will.
Yield him yourself this morning, and walk out
with him.
But if he's calling you back from some
avenue of wandering, then come back.
Start again.
Oh, the matchless grace of God.
He is able to make all things new.
Let us pray.
Father, in the company of people such as
this, no two of us are in exactly
the same spiritual or perhaps material situation, but
you know us all.
We appeal to you, our Father, who knoweth
each of us by name.
By your Holy Spirit, continue to apply your
word to us that we may come to
know you truly, not as a paper God,
but as the ever-living Lord, our heavenly
Father.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.