It's good for every one of us to
give our testimony from time to time and
though you've suffered mine before, you just have
to suffer it.
Once a year, but it's longer than a
year now.
But I think that I should give you
my testimony.
I was born in Italy.
No, I was born in...
That was just to waken up those of
you who are elitist.
I was born in Belfast about 46 years
ago, which seems to me 24 years ago
as all of us feel who are over
30.
We feel we're 24 at the most.
I was born in Belfast into a working
class home really.
My dad worked in the shipyard in Belfast
and we had enough money, but not much
more than enough money.
And I went to a Methodist church, the
local Methodist church in Belfast, which was a
fairly evangelical church and a fairly big church.
Belfast is a city of maybe about half
a million.
And as I came up, I began to
go to Sunday school from I was about
five or six years of age and always
had a great belief in God and always
prayed to God.
You know, the three prayers that you always
do, the Our Father, the God Bless Dad,
Mum, and Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.
And I always did those prayers, especially during
the war years, during 39 to 45.
The shipyard was a target for the old
German bombers.
And so my dad would go down there
to see how things were.
And of course, I was very conscious that
only God could take care of them.
So I certainly believed in God during those
early years.
Then when I was 13, we had a
Sunday school teacher who I would have thought
then was just a wild old fundamentalist.
But the beauty of it was he believed
God's Word.
And so one Sunday afternoon, he told us
about the lake of fire, which was the
first time I'd ever heard of it.
That at the end of this life, there
was a hell or an outer darkness, a
great lonely place where there was no life.
And of course, he presented it as it's
presented in Revelation as a lake of fire
where you burn forever in your own selfishness
and in what you have become.
And that really just, well, scared whatever they
say it scares out of you, but it
certainly scared me.
And he did the verses, all have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God
and the wages of sin is death.
But I don't know that I really felt
I was a sinner.
I just felt it would be circumspect and
prudent to be on the same side as
the owner of the lake of fire.
And so I stayed behind after that Sunday
school class and prayed and received as best
I could Jesus as my Savior, though I
could never get the hang of what it
meant, Savior.
And I really didn't like that term too
much, to tell you the truth.
I didn't like the idea that Jesus was
my Savior.
I liked the idea of him being my
helper and my guide.
And so from 13 to 17, when I
went to university, that was kind of my
situation.
I would say I was a believer.
You remember the way Jesus says there are
believers, but they really don't do what I
tell them to do.
They believe all the right things.
I would say I was a believer.
If you had said to me, Do you
believe that Jesus is the Savior of the
world?
I would have said yes.
If you had said, Do you believe he's
your Savior?
I would have known that you wanted me
to say yes, and so I would have
said yes, but I didn't like the idea
of having to be saved by anybody and
didn't like the idea of him being my
Savior.
Until at 17, and probably I was later
than maybe you guys are in America, but
certainly at 17, I began to come up
against the agony of the old sex thing,
a power that I couldn't control and a
power that did make me feel dirty at
times.
And through that, I think God began to
show me other things in my life that
were not obedient to him and that were
in fact sin.
And so I began to see the meaning
of all have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God and the wages of
sin is death.
And I had already begun by that time
to think through the reasons for believing in
God and believing in the Bible, so I
did believe that those things were true.
And I began to see that I was
headed for eternal death because my life was
filled with things that were dishonest.
Oh, I would be dishonest.
I would tell a lie when it suited
me.
I would be unkind and cruel to my
brother when it suited me.
I would do whatever I wanted to do.
So I saw that I was doing things
that were disobedient to God day after day.
And then I began to think, now Jesus
must fit into this somehow.
And it was then that I came into
contact with a guy who asked me that
question.
He said, Do you believe that Jesus is
the Savior of the world?
And I said, Yeah, I do.
And then he said, Do you believe he's
your Savior?
And I said, That he died for me.
And he said, Yes.
And I said, Oh yes, yes I do.
But I didn't really.
And so I stopped my ordinary prayer times
and I started, even though I was a
miserable old Protestant, I started to do probably
what you loved ones in the Catholic Church
are taught to do from an early age,
really the stations of the cross.
I don't know the stations of the cross,
but I certainly in my own mind began
to see, I must somehow see the reality
of this death that took place on Calvary.
I must somehow find out what the meaning
of this is.
And so I began to spend my prayer
times thinking about Jesus dying on the cross.
And of course I had a skeptical kind
of mind, so it was hard for me
to think that this man actually died.
And then I began to think, You mean
that there is a place somewhere in this
world, and probably in Palestine, where his cross
actually made a hole in the ground.
And I would try to think my intellectual
way through to that.
This man actually died on a cross in
Palestine.
And so I began to just imagine Jesus'
death on the cross.
And that's what I did.
For weeks and for months, I just thought
of Jesus' death, and that it actually took
place, and it actually happened.
And then of course as I began to
go through the historical records, it was obvious
to me that all the talk about him
being a political criminal was stupid.
I mean, that wasn't why he was killed
at all.
And then I began to come into those
verses in Isaiah that says, He was despised
and rejected of men, and He carried our
sins.
And then I began to see the words
that He cried out on the cross, My
God, my God, why hast thou of all
people forsaken me of all people?
And then I began to see Him speaking
to the Roman soldiers, and saying, Father forgive
them, for they know not what they do.
And then it's just a miracle I suppose
of the Holy Spirit, you know.
But I sensed that He was speaking right
down the centuries, and looking at me, and
saying, Father forgive him, for he knows not
what he does.
And then somehow, I didn't know why He
had died, I didn't know what it had
to do with my sins being forgiven, but
I knew that He had died for me.
And that if I had been the only
person in the whole world, He would still
have died for me.
And so I just had a great sense
that He was my dear friend, and my
dear Savior.
And I would say, loved ones, that that
was the new birth experience for me.
My heart was changed inside, and I began
to want to please Him, and to love
Him.
And I began to read the Bible, and
I began to pray, and I began to
give my life to Him more and more.
And so when He appeared to be saying
that I should go into the ministry, I
wanted to go into the ministry.
But we didn't have a lot of money
to send people to seminaries, and that kind
of thing, in our home.
So I reckoned the only way I could
ever get to university was by getting a
scholarship, a teaching scholarship.
So that's what I did.
At 17, I got a teaching scholarship to
Queen's University in Belfast, and I studied English
literature.
And then went to teacher training school after
that.
Then went back to my old high school,
and taught English there for two, three years.
But it was during my second year at
university that it seemed to me that Jesus
was saying, nevertheless, impossible though it is, you
have to come and be a minister.
And so I sensed that He was calling
me into the ministry, and I said yes
to Him, and began to do examinations in
connection with the Methodist Church at that time.
So at the same time as I graduated
from university and from teacher training college, I
candidated for the Methodist ministry.
And then for the next five years, I
spent the time in what we call probation
in the Methodist Church in Ireland.
I spent the two years teaching and doing
chaplaincy work in university in Belfast, and then
the last three years I went to seminary
in Belfast and did the divinity degree.
During all that time, loved ones, I became
more and more conscious that though I knew
my sins were forgiven, there was a great
struggle inside me.
I was always aware of the reality of
Romans 7 and 15.
That is, the good that I would, I
cannot do, and the evil I hate is
what I do.
I was always aware of that.
From the early days in the ministry, and
some of the pastors know that in the
ministry you have to smile.
That's the big thing.
Smile all the time.
We had smiling classes at seminary.
No, we didn't.
But if somebody criticizes you, you smile.
That's it.
You smile.
If somebody is unkind to you, you smile.
You smile.
So I did that and kept on doing
that even after I was ordained.
I was ordained in Dublin in about 1960.
And then I met my dear one through
Jesus, really, just showing us that we were
for each other.
And that was a miraculous thing too.
And we married and served in Donegal for
a year.
Then at that time, I sensed that God
wanted us to go to London so that
I could do Old Testament studies at London
University.
So we went to London and spent a
year, two years there.
I always wondered, how does God really work
in people's hearts?
And how does He move a church into
life and into dynamic relationship with Himself?
And so when an opportunity came up to
take a church in London, I again took
a church and gave up the studies.
Because I always felt, oh, it must be
God that makes things happen rather than your
own intellectual brilliance or shrewdness.
And so we served a church in London
and came to the end of that year,
and then the question was whether to go
back to Ireland or not.
And at that time, I began to ask
God, Lord, where do you want us to
go?
And I would say, loved ones, that even
though I was in a half-hearted state
in my relationship with God at that time,
I would say God always answers you if
you really, really want Him to answer you
with all your heart, you know.
If you pray and you're willing to do
whatever He tells you, it seems whatever state
you're in, He somehow has pity on you.
And I asked Him what He wanted us
to do, and after hours in prayer and
nights and days, He said, go to America.
And I did not want to go to
America, because America had lots of money.
And I felt, no, if you're following Jesus,
you don't spend time in places with lots
of money, you spend time where people are
in poverty.
And so it is very hard to eventually
say yes.
And I did say yes, and went to
a neighboring pastor and asked him if he
knew anybody in America, and he said he
knew the Bishop of Minnesota who would be
there in London the next week.
So we had dinner with the Bishop of
Minnesota the next week, and then I came
out to America in 1963, just around the
time when John F.
Kennedy was assassinated.
I think I was here for a month,
and then the assassination took place.
And I served in a Methodist church in
Minneapolis for about a year and a half,
then was an associate in a downtown church
for a year.
And during that time, I became aware more
and more that I was not what a
Christian was supposed to be.
Especially after I arrived in America, I met
a man with a shining face.
That's the name of a book written by
another man who had the same experience.
I met a man who seemed to live
in victory.
That is, he seemed to live outside what
he was inside, and I was not.
I could smile, but if you criticized my
sermon, I would smile, but my knuckles would
be white, gripping the chair to hold myself
back from asking you how many lectures you
had done in homiletics or in theology.
And it was the old pretense, you know,
the old hypocritical life.
I was free from outward sins, more or
less.
I don't think you got a point of
the finger much at my outward life, but
my problem was inward sin, anger, that never
showed itself outside because we were always taught
at least you should have the control that
Plato and Socrates had over their outward life.
And we were taught that self-discipline should
enable you to be a gentleman to people
on the outside.
So I could control the stuff, but it
seethed within.
Resentment when somebody criticized you.
Rising resentment inside.
Untweened thoughts.
Outward a life of cleanliness, but inside a
life of uncleanness and of thoughts that shouldn't
be there.
Not thoughts that just popped into your mind
and pop out again, but thoughts that I
entertained and welcomed.
I just sensed that there has to be
something better than this.
Indeed, I came to the point where I
felt I'll go insane if this continues because
I could be praying to Jesus and sinning
in my own thought life at the same
time.
And I thought, this is schizophrenia.
This can't be.
I'm going to go insane if I continue
like this.
And I felt there has to be some
answer.
And at a little meeting in North Minneapolis,
I once shared this, and this man at
the back explained afterwards that he was a
missionary in Bolivia and had for years lived
in the same hypocrisy and that there was
an answer.
And then bit by bit, he told me
of his own experience and then gave me
some books to read, some books written by
old Methodist bishops years ago in America.
And these books explained clearly to me that
the problem in my life was that there
was something inside me that had never actually
been changed or touched by God.
And of course, at first I could not
believe it because I felt I had given
myself to Jesus and received Him into my
heart.
And these books said, ask the Holy Spirit
to show you what is in there.
And I was taught in seminary to believe
in the Holy Spirit, but I thought it
was a force.
Really.
I know I should have known better.
I know He is called the third person,
the trinity.
But I felt that the Holy Spirit was
an it.
That it was a force or an atmosphere
that comes upon a meeting at certain times.
And these books said, no, the Holy Spirit
is a person.
And they pointed out that Jesus said, I
will send to you the Holy Spirit.
It is to your advantage that I go
away.
Because if I don't go away, the Comforter
will not come to you.
But when I come, He will come and
He will lead you into all truth.
And then Jesus called Him the Counselor.
And these books said, you should ask the
Counselor to show you what is inside you
that has not been touched by God.
And that's what I did.
I started to ask the Holy Spirit in
my prayer times to show me what was
inside that I had never yielded to God.
And over weeks and months, loved ones, I
saw things that I could not believe.
And the Holy Spirit was faithful.
And He will be faithful to you if
you are willing to look.
And the Holy Spirit began to show me
that it wasn't just the outward sins that
were the problem, but there was in me
inward sin, which was me, and that I
couldn't believe.
I mean, I felt that a feeling of
sin was a feeling of sin.
Or a desire for sin was a desire
for sin.
Or a sinful act was a sinful act.
Or a sinful word was a sinful word.
But I couldn't believe that I was sin.
And then I began to see verses such
as Isaiah uses, you know, where he says,
I am a man of unclean lips.
Not just I speak unclean words, but I
am a man of unclean lips.
And the Holy Spirit began to show me
I would waken up in the mornings with
pride on my lips, and I would know
what it was.
Pride in my own insight into Christianity and
my ability to explain it to others.
And I would just see this as hopeless.
If I am that corrupt, I can never
clean myself.
If I am that proud, I can never
overcome it.
Because it's self itself that is proud.
I knew the lust.
That was clear and easy.
But I didn't know the depth of the
selfishness, the selfish ambition.
I don't know how you men are, but
the ladies are supposed to be proud of
the way they look.
We men are supposed to be proud of
what we can achieve.
And we always have this burden to achieve
something, you know.
And I had that selfish ambition to be
successful and to be well known.
And I saw that there was such dirt
and rottenness in me that there was no
way in which I could separate it from
myself.
It was true what the Holy Spirit was
saying that I myself was sin.
And loved ones, really, what can you do?
I became utterly convinced that it was me
that was the problem.
It was myself.
That in spite of the fact that I
appeared to live for God, I really lived
for myself.
And I wasn't really living for God at
all.
I was living subtly to elevate myself and
to gratify myself and to get others to
exalt me and not to exalt Jesus.
And bit by bit, the Holy Spirit convinced
me that there was no way in which
I could deliver myself from this.
And then, loved ones, it was that a
whole area of truth opened up to me
that I had never seen before.
I just never knew of it.
Of course, that's why I share it with
you.
Because it was so absolutely new to me.
We were taught in Northern Ireland that Jesus
died for you.
I always reckoned so that I wouldn't have
to die.
And I was relieved at that.
I had never heard, even though I'd read
it in the Bible often, I had never
heard in my heart that I died with
Jesus.
Never.
Now, you say, people must have told you
that they must have.
I must have read it somewhere in books.
But it never came to me.
Likewise, it will never come to you until
you're in desperate need for that experience.
But the Holy Spirit pointed me to a
mysterious chapter that I had never understood.
And you know the one.
You don't even need to look it up.
I can repeat it to you.
Lots of it.
Romans 6.
And I read there those of you who
were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
His death.
Well, I always read that as baptized into
the benefits of His death.
But then I began to see that the
Greek word baptizo means to be immersed.
And it meant you were immersed in His
death.
And then I read those incredible words in
verse 6.
We know that our old self was crucified
with Christ so that the body of sin
might be destroyed and we might no longer
be enslaved to sin.
Well, I knew I was enslaved to sin.
And then I saw that my old self
was crucified with Christ.
And, loved ones, I could not believe it.
Of course, it was double Dutch first to
me.
I mean, how could my old self that
I was experiencing now be crucified with Christ?
But then I saw it was the same
with my sins.
My sins were born by Jesus, but they
weren't taken away from me.
They weren't forgiven until I believed it and
was willing to let go of them.
So I saw it's the same with myself.
It was crucified with Christ, but I would
have to bear it in my own being
and my own personality until I was really
willing to let it go.
And I saw that it had been crucified
with Christ in eternity.
And that the self that was proud and
selfish and lustful was actually destroyed in Jesus.
And that it didn't exist anymore except in
the deception that I was under in allowing
the ghost of it to remain and to
retain an influence in my life.
And bit by bit, I began to see
that it was true.
That my old self had been crucified with
Christ.
And there was actually no problem in getting
rid of it.
God had already done that.
And the Holy Spirit would take the things
of Jesus and make them real to me
if I wanted it.
And then that was the crux.
If I wanted it.
And so I began to wrestle with that.
Were you really willing to live no longer
for yourself but for God?
And you know, I don't know.
Like you, I had often said that because
that's the right thing to say.
I had always said, Oh, I want to
live for God.
But as the Holy Spirit began to point
out the thousand little ways in which I
drew attention to myself in conversation, the thousand
little ways in which I was worried most
by what people did to me rather than
by what they did to God.
The thousand little ways in which I wanted
people to think well of me.
The thousand little ways in which I lost
my temper not because God was being abused
but because somebody was getting in my way.
As the Holy Spirit showed me that it
meant letting go of all those things, then
I began to see a little of the
cost.
And I've shared often with you the whole
business of anger, you know.
You know when we get angry.
We get angry because things aren't going our
way.
And we want to pull them back under
our control.
And so we think we'll make them fearful
because of our anger or our bad temper.
And I began to see that that was
my life.
Always concerned with whether I was in control
or things were going my way.
And the Holy Spirit came more and more
home to me.
Are you willing to die with Jesus to
yourself and to your own satisfaction?
And are you willing to live only for
His glory?
And loved ones, I don't know what it
will be like with you, you know.
But I was 30, so I had masses
of controlled surrenders that I had subtly arranged
in my life.
I had a hard packed soil of rejections
and resistances to God's will that I had
built up over the years.
And the Holy Spirit had to go down
through all that stuff.
And there would come days, you know, when
I felt, oh yeah, I am willing, I'm
willing, I'm willing.
And the next day I'd be back in
the old anger and the temper and the
envy and the selfishness and I knew I
wasn't willing.
And these books kept saying, when you get
to the ground of your heart, the Holy
Spirit will witness you're there.
And I would get to the place, you
know, where I'd feel, oh, I am there,
I am there.
Well, God is so good.
He doesn't let you be deceived, you know.
The next day I'd know I wasn't there.
I was back in the old life.
And gradually over a period of weeks and
months, the Holy Spirit dug down underneath the
layers, underneath all the mess of that inward
self until one morning in North Minneapolis in
the Parsonage there, a Saturday morning, I think
it was, the Holy Spirit put to me
the question, would you be willing to be
nothing for Jesus' glory?
And the self, of course, always pops up
and says, what good would that do?
Be nothing.
And then, you know, by that time I'd
begun to listen to the Holy Spirit and
begun to be able to hear Him over
the noise of self.
And He said, that isn't the issue.
Would you be willing to be nothing, to
be a failure, not to be known at
all, to be ignored, to be an absolute
failure for the rest of your life if
it were for Jesus' glory?
And then I at last whispered to Him,
and loved ones, I think that was just
full consecration, was presenting my body a living
sacrifice, which is our reasonable service.
It was at last saying, Lord, I will
live for You only because this is the
only purpose of our lives.
And there's no point in me building up
a little temporal kingdom that will end after
70 years.
I'm here for Your use and for whatever
You want.
And loved ones, it was the lifting of
the center of my life from self into
God.
And I just had acquired assurance that the
Holy Spirit had come in and had cleansed
my heart.
And the next morning, you know, boy, God
is always so good.
I got a letter from a colleague who
I was way ahead of him academically when
we were in Belfast, but he had concentrated
on getting the old doctorate in psychology while
I was flogging away trying to find out
how God worked in churches.
And every time I received a letter from
him, I felt, I should have done that.
I should have done that.
And the old envy always popped up.
And I received the letter and opened it,
and there was nothing.
That was good.
So, it is real.
The Holy Spirit can actually cleanse your heart.
He can actually cleanse your heart and fill
your heart.
So He can take away the selfishness and
the hatred and the resentment, and He can
bring about in your heart love, joy, peace,
so that it comes from inside.
The issue is not, do you sin?
I am sure I sinned a hundred times.
But before, I could not help sinning because
of this mess that was rising inside.
Now, if I sin, it is my own
fault.
Just my own fault.
Because there is a desire to obey God
rather than to disobey.
That is the change, loved ones.
It is not the issue of whether you
never sin.
The issue is that you are freed from
the power of sin.
You are at last free not to sin
if you so choose.
It is natural to obey where before it
was natural to sin.
And of course, my life just changed from
then.
Never had trouble until then, of course.
Never had problems.
Never had difficulties with the congregation because I
always preach so nicely that everybody, I persuaded
everybody to agree with me.
Then I started to preach about sin and
began to preach that that was the problem
in our lives that we did not obey
God and that we wanted to elevate self
and play all kinds of spiritual games instead
of obey God.
And then, of course, trouble came.
But I never had such glory until then.
Never had such outward trouble.
Eventually left the Methodist Church, taught in Benilde
High School, preached in the Presbyterian Church on
the campus and fought most of my way.
The past six months is kind of typical,
you know.
But never such peace.
Never such peace in my heart.
Never such freedom from inward conflict.
And oh, maybe a year and a half,
two years later, I spoke in tongues in
my own apartment.
But that's nothing.
Don't get caught up with the spiritual games.
They don't matter.
Don't get caught up with demons and all
that stuff.
The Holy Spirit came to cleanse our hearts
and to make us pure within.
And somehow, when you are cleansed and when
your heart is pure, then you're ready to
be used by God.
And loved ones, until then, really God can't.
He doesn't bother telling you what to do
in your life.
Do you know that?
God doesn't waste words, you know.
God doesn't blast at you, do this, do
this, do this, when He knows fine well
you can't hear Him.
Or if you do hear Him, you won't
obey Him anyway.
So really God is only able to tell
you what to do with your life when
you get through to whatever you want to
call it.
I frankly think the fullness of the Spirit
is maybe one of the best words because
in a sense the Spirit has come into
you when you're born of God.
But it isn't filling you.
He isn't filling you completely.
But whether you call it the fullness of
the Spirit or the baptism of the Spirit
or a clean heart or full surrender or
full consecration, it doesn't matter about the terminology.
The fact is, most of us have had
the same kind of experience as Saul on
Damascus Road.
We met Jesus as Savior and then there
was a gap before we met Him as
our Lord.
And only when we were ready to meet
Him as the Lord of our life and
to allow Him to take over our lives
completely was He able to fill us with
His Spirit.
And only then, of course, does power come
into your life.
Power for service.
So, loved ones, I would just tell you
that God has given us a great vision,
you know.
And we are privileged people.
It really doesn't matter whether you're just a
little one starting off here in the body.
We have a very clear vision.
And it's an exciting vision, you know.
And it's not a vision that anybody actually
needs to back off from.
It's just the vision of getting 10,000
of us living abroad, doing our jobs, involved
together in businesses or in schools together for
Jesus.
And any of us can take part in
that.
But here's the point.
You'll just be a hindrance if you're not
filled with the Holy Spirit.
You will.
You'll just be a hindrance until your heart
is clean.
But when your heart is clean and when
you've entered into that crucifixion with Christ, Jesus
will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
And you will have power to do things
that you cannot do at present.
So until you're baptized with the Holy Spirit,
you really will not only have a powerless
life on the outside, but you'll have an
impure, defeated life on the inside.
Now, loved ones, there's no mystery to it,
you know.
You just start seeking.
If you know that's your state, the first
thing I did was I settled in my
mind that the Bible promised this.
The Bible said, Blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God.
The Bible promised clean hearts.
Acts 15 and 9.
God gave the Holy Spirit to them as
He did to us and cleansed their hearts
by faith.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
The first thing is to settle.
Does God want this in your life?
The second thing is to go for it
with all your heart and not to pity
self or cry over self or protest that
you have a right to sin or rationalize
your sin.
The thing is to go for it with
all your heart and God will answer.
Of course, Jesus promised it.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they shall be filled.
And then those of us who want to
continue the old half-life, where we want
to be good Jews who have our sins
forgiven, but do not have victory over sin,
the Bible does not give much reassurance for
that life.
That is up to you if you choose
that life.
I do not know that it is actually
an alternative.
I think you either go all or nothing.
So you have to decide.
It does not matter how long it takes
you.
It does not matter if you are in
it this moment, but are you hungry for
it?
If you say to me, well, brother, if
you are going to keep at this, I
mean, I will have to leave.
Well, you can choose whether to leave or
not.
You do not have to leave.
It seems to me what God wants is
a body of brothers and sisters who love
each other and are understanding and tender towards
each other and give each other all the
time in the world to get through to
victory.
So I think what God wants is a
group of people who are hungering after this
with all their hearts.
It is not whether you are in it
or not, but are you hungering after it?
Old John Wesley used to bring the preachers
that were going to candidate before him and
he would ask them, are you hungering with
all your heart for a cleanness and purity
within?
He did not say, are you crucified with
Christ?
He said, are you hungering for this with
all your heart?
That is what I would say to you,
loved ones.
Are you hungering for this with all your
heart?
If you are, then welcome.
Welcome to the family and let us go
for purity and cleanness and for the fullness
of the Holy Spirit.
Dear Lord, thank you for the work that
you are able to do in each one
of our hearts.
Miraculous work.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, that as we are
forgiven by faith, so we are cleansed by
faith.
Thank you, Lord, that you do not bring
us into your family and ask us to
be like you by our own strength, but
you cleanse us.
You empower us to obey you.
Thank you, Lord, that as we became your
friends by faith, so we become children who
live like you by faith.
Thank you, Lord, for the miracle of dying
with Jesus and being recreated, becoming a new
creature filled with your Spirit.
Lord, I would pray for any brother or
sister here who yearns for the same victory,
and I trust you, dear Holy Spirit, to
lead them as you led me and have
led so many of us into victory within
and without for your glory.