We thank the Lord that we can gather together this weekend.
The Jews had festal seasons where they gathered together to remember the Lord’s faithfulness. As many of us are gathered here today, we remember how faithful the Lord has been to us.
Our theme is “The Way of the Church: Following in the Footsteps of the Flock.”
When we talk about following in the footsteps, there is implied that there is a history. Our brother began this morning by going back to the 1940s, but all of us know the story goes back further and further and further.
It all began, clearly, in the days when the Lord Jesus came to earth. There were many godly Jews who were waiting for the coming of the Messiah.
They had been following in the footsteps of the flock of various hirelings. Some followed Pharisees; some followed a particular teacher.
But there was a remnant among them who were not satisfied until the Messiah Himself would come. The Gospels record for history the wondrous moment that the Shepherd came and kissed the woman.
Even as in the Song of Songs, Solomon came and kissed that black woman. The rest of her life, she spent pursuing after the king.
Isn’t it wonderful that the Lord gathered together some disciples and some women from all walks of life, and He kissed them, and they followed?
In the story of history, there is always a combination of being gathered together as a flock, even as the disciples were gathered together. But it is also always a story of the Lord Jesus and His personal love for you.
“Peter, do you love Me?” This can only be said by the One who came and kissed Peter.
The Lord wants to come to us as we share together this weekend, as He has come down through the centuries. Many times, sovereignly, He finds people who are hungry to follow the footsteps of their Lord.
As we share our story, we begin with some history. I would like to share some of my history this afternoon, because my history is found in a larger history of a great sovereign work that God is doing to capture people with His kiss.
I would like for us to read some Scriptures together: Ezra 1:1 and Ezra 1:5.
Here we see a great sovereign God beginning to do a mighty work.
Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished,
the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia.
I just want you to notice the phrase: “The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia.”
We know from this story that the remnant from the Babylonian captivity came back to Jerusalem. In Ezra 1:5, we see who this remnant was.
Then rose up the heads of fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites,
even all whose spirit God had stirred to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem.
Who was this remnant that went back to Jerusalem? They were the remnant that saw that there was only one pathway of footsteps that pleased the Lord. He wanted His flock to be gathered in Jerusalem, in the house of God.
Only fifty thousand out of a few million—their hearts were stirred. It was because the Lord had sovereignly kissed them. And when that happens, what else can you do?
Then we read a Scripture in John 6, and we see the same matter brought before us with the disciples. The way of following the Lord is to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him.
As a result of this many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.
Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, Would ye also go away?
Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.—John 6:66-68
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we come to a loving God. We know that You would draw us to the Lord Jesus by the kisses of His lips.
We know there have been moments in history—crossover moments—when a wave of this love was poured out upon us, and we find ourselves irresistibly drawn in a time of such outpouring of love.
Lord, would You pour out Your love upon Your dear children, that they may be kissed and spoiled by Thy love from anything less than what You desire?
We thank You for Your faithfulness to us. We pray that You will help us during this weekend to have a personal encounter with our Lord Jesus.
We pray these things in His precious name. Amen.
Our God is a sovereign and mighty God. He moved the spirit and stirred the spirit of the greatest potentate on earth at that time, King Cyrus.
It is nothing for God to move the greatest king, emperor, or president in this whole world—to move and stir his spirit. God moved the spirit of Cyrus.
But behind the sovereign act, we find a backstory. There was a prophet named Daniel who had been faithful for many years.
If you study the Book of Daniel, you will see the last verse of the first chapter. It says that Daniel lived until the first year of King Cyrus of Persia.
Daniel had prayed for years that there would be a return to Jerusalem according to the Book of Jeremiah. Now Daniel was an aged prime minister in the Persian kingdom.
We believe that one day he came into the presence of Cyrus and said, “Cyrus, have you seen the word of the Lord?” He opened up the scroll of Isaiah, where it had been said hundreds of years before:
I have called thee by thy name:
I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known Me.—Isaiah 45:4
Daniel showed this to the king, and Cyrus’s spirit was stirred. He said, “It must be me. God has chosen me to build His house back in Jerusalem.”
In the highest regions of power, the Spirit could stir a king. But what good is it to have a king who is stirred if there is not a people who will respond as well?
In Babylon, the Jews invented a new form of worship called the synagogue. These synagogues multiplied.
There were synagogues for every kind of people: synagogues built especially for language groups; synagogues for different kinds of workers, carpenters or masons; and synagogues for those who were slaves and those who were free.
There were many, many synagogues. But God’s heart was not satisfied because His house lay in ruins in Jerusalem.
If I could use this as a type, even today among Christians there are many, many, many synagogues. They are grouped according to race, language, and leaders.
But who is willing to go in the footsteps of the flock—to Jerusalem—to rebuild the ruins of the house of God, where He and His people could be one together with no walls or barriers?
Oh, He needed a remnant who would be faithful. So He kissed fifty thousand people, and their spirits were stirred to go back.
We do not know if there were others who were given the opportunity. Perhaps, just like in the days of Jesus, many disciples turned away when things got tough. But there was that remnant that gave all.
The Lord moved in that wonderful way. At various times in history, He moves again in a sovereign way. There is always a backstory. Some people, like Daniel, pray.
But when God moves, as it says in Daniel, none can stay His hand.
Our brother Stephen this morning touched on a great moving of God back in China. Some of us from Manhattan do not even know these names: Watchman Nee and Witness Lee.
But in the 1920s, the Lord sovereignly raised up some brothers and sisters who wanted to walk in a pure way before the Lord Jesus. Our brother Watchman Nee was the man who saw such great light and helped others see.
But it is never a work of one man. Indeed, it is the Lord behind it all.
The Lord began to gather other brothers to work with our brother Nee, including Witness Lee and Brother Stephen Kaung.
For those in Manhattan, when you go to Chipotle, that is the old Dutch church. The actual Sunday school building where the revival took place is now a CVS. Those wooden buildings have long since been destroyed.
But strangely, as we meet today, I can report that we meet thirty yards from this original place. God is faithful. He continues His desire to capture children for Himself.
The Lord moved even in the twentieth century here in the United States. I can only share the smallest perspective of this sovereign work that God did, but I want to share it to show us some of the way of the church.
The Lord captured me in 1975. I must tell a little story so you can understand what was happening.
I was saved 120 days after President John Kennedy was shot. I was in college, and the whole college was in an uproar. The young people were bitter about this.
In one sense, we can say this was the end of the innocent American dream. Students in the universities began to rebel. Drugs were becoming available. Morality began to crash, and the society of the American dream was dead.
It was a very confusing time to be a young student. But we thank God: it was at the same period of time that He brought revival showers to the United States.
The Holy Spirit was poured out sovereignly by God during the 1960s and 1970s. By the grace of God, I was also saved during this time.
Many young people got saved in that season. They were called hippies. But many of those who are now leaders in churches across the United States were hippies who got saved in the 1960s and 1970s.
The heavens were open. I was a young pastor and evangelist, and during this period, when we preached the gospel, many young people would get saved.
One time I was down by the ocean on Long Island. We went there to baptize a few kids. When we arrived at the beach, two hundred young people from everywhere came around to see what we were doing.
We preached the gospel, and I could not count how many people got saved and were baptized that day. It was God’s outpouring, sending the love of Jesus to a confused generation.
He also brought revival to many church people. It was called the charismatic movement. Indeed, the Holy Spirit was poured out during those days.
There were some charismatic expressions and seeking after gifts, but there was something much greater that God was doing. He was reviving many church people who were faithful, but who did not know the love of Jesus in their lives.
Those of you who are younger here have no understanding of this, but before 1970 people rarely ever sang choruses. It did not matter whether you were Methodist, Baptist, or whatever; choruses were very seldom sung, especially Scripture choruses.
But it was during this time that songs came from heaven, and they were mostly songs of love.
I remember when we first began singing, “We love You, Lord, and we love our Lord.” Christians never said that kind of thing before. But Jesus’ love was in the middle of the group, and people would sing such songs with tears coming down from their eyes.
They were touched by the Holy Spirit. Perhaps they had even been born again, though they had belonged to a church for many years.
The love of Jesus was so great that, for a while, denomination did not make much difference. There were meetings in people’s homes. Before the 1970s, this was not commonly done.
Suddenly, all these people opened their homes. If you were a rich guy and had a big enough house, you opened it up. Many people would come—Catholics, Methodists, and others. They had all been kissed, and they were hungry.
People began to travel among these various houses. There were healers, prophets, and Bible teachers. In those days, you just opened your house.
My parents were newly saved. My father was a doctor, so he had a large house. They opened their home, and fifty or seventy-five people came every Monday night. Different people would speak. It was a tremendous time.
God turned the hearts of many Christians during this time. Eventually, this revival began to decline.
But what did we discover? Many Christians had been kissed by the Lord during this revival, and now they were hungry.
They had been involved in the footsteps of some flock called by somebody’s name, but they had heard of the possibility of following the Lord Jesus completely. So they were seekers.
They did not know whether they should continue in their institution, as it were. They did not know what to do. Filled with the Holy Spirit and praising God, they were meeting together in homes.
I was one of those people. By then I was a pastor in North Carolina. I went to college, I went to seminary, and I was ordained as a Baptist pastor.
But when this movement came up, I could not stay in the confines of the Baptist denomination. I began to travel from house to house.
I ended up in North Carolina, and there in time we started a house church. Now, it was not a house church—it was simply a church that had to meet in a house because we did not have a building.
I wanted this church to be the best, you know? So I designed the church: everything is love. Do not correct anybody. God will correct. Everything is love.
Charismatics could come; non-charismatics could come. No problem. All were together.
We would come together, and I would take out my guitar. We would worship for half an hour—wonderful worship. Everybody worshiped. Then I would teach the Bible. No offering. No church membership.
This was very popular back in those days. Many hungry people came. But I was hungry myself, and I did not know the way of the church.
I had never seen the footsteps of the flock. But our God is a sovereign God.
When He moved in this wonderful way in the 1960s and 1970s on the East and West Coasts of the United States, He had also been preparing vessels to show people the way of the church.
Our brother wonderfully shared this morning the history of what happened here in New York. But there was actually God’s sovereign working in several different locations on the East Coast.
God had found a new and wonderful strain of seed for the Christian life. This seed was half Chinese and half English—it was a hybrid.
Some brethren came over from England. Some brethren came over from China, along with American missionaries who had been in China. This was good seed.
The Lord began to plant these little anonymous assemblies here and there. We cannot say that they were fully in the way of the church, but they certainly wanted to follow the Lord Jesus only.
There were little groups here and there—in the New York area, South Jersey, and Washington, D.C.
Brother T. Austin-Sparks came over from England every year with a tremendous ministry of light. He shared on the centrality and universality of Christ.
This man himself did not have much fame. As a matter of fact, mostly he had criticism. But people began publishing his books.
Brother Stephen Kaung began publishing the works of Watchman Nee and translating his messages into English. People began to read.
I was reading about the way of the church before I ever understood the way of the church, because I read every book that came out by Watchman Nee.
God was preparing the ground. He raised up His servants, like Priscilla and Aquila in the Book of Acts, to lead hungry people who were seeking the more perfect way of the Lord.
The Lord took many seeking people, and some of them began to gather together in groups.
I want to talk about the group in Richmond. My brother Stephen was living in Washington, D.C. at the time. There were some older sisters in Richmond, very charismatic.
They went to a conference with Brother Kaung and Brother Sparks. They went back to Richmond and began to pray, “Lord, please raise up such an assembly who would follow the footsteps of the flock.”
They prayed and prayed. They asked Brother Kaung to come down every month to Richmond and share the Word of God.
My brother did not share the way of the church specifically. He actually shared the way of the cross. But as he did so, it seemed like God did a special work there in Richmond.
They were young people, and most of them were not even married. Some were Baptists, some were Pentecostals, and some were workers in Campus Crusade. But they were drawn together as they began to hear this word.
At that same time, our brother also went once a month for a whole weekend to Raleigh, North Carolina. He went to the house of a saved Catholic family.
They were charismatic Southern people, but they were willing to listen to the Word of God, and they heard things they had never heard before.
The brothers and sisters in Richmond began to assemble, meet, and break bread—maybe twenty-five, thirty, or forty people.
At this point, they decided to do something that made a tremendous difference in history. Though they were a small group, they had a heart to have a summer conference for anybody who wanted to come.
This was just thirty or forty people. They began to have a conference and invite people they knew from Raleigh, Washington, New York—anybody.
It was amazing, the people who came. Nobody had any idea how many hungry people were out there. We had some of the strangest people I had ever seen in my life, but they were hungry as well.
The Lord did something special at that conference. I am not trying to lift up any group or any conference. I have been to many conferences.
Maybe I am just speaking personally, because it was at the Richmond Conference that I was touched and changed. But God did a special work in the 1970s at that Richmond conference.
I want to try to convey to you what I saw when I went there on my first trip. I was a pastor with my wife and three children, and I went there.
I was touched very deeply. I had never seen God’s people so full of His love. They loved the Lord so much, and they could not have enough meetings, teachings, or prayer.
There was a tremendous sense of intensity there that I had never known before. At that time, I was a charismaniac myself, but I am not talking about a Holy Ghost jamboree. I am talking about an intensity of desire.
These people came from here and there, but this was a gathering of those people who had been kissed by the Lord. Many of them were not meeting anywhere. Some were meeting in small homes; some were still in churches somewhere.
But it seemed like all of them wanted the Lord. When there was a meeting, the light was so intense that you had to go away quietly to digest the light into knowledge.
The light so hit your spirit that you had to get away for it to filter into your mind. You understand what I mean?
Again, I am not here to glorify any man. But God did a sovereign work when He joined our brothers Lance Lambert and Stephen Kaung together in ministry.
There are certain spiritual marriages like that which are arranged sovereignly by God. When the two of them were preaching the Word together in the 1970s, one after another, it was like being punched with the left and with the right.
When I first came there, I could not believe the intensity of the people. But the first summer I went, I was slain by what I saw.
Most of you know our brother Lance Lambert. He was so full of life. I was so happy every time he spoke. He was so living, and he had such humor. He spoke with an English accent—what could be better?
But when he shared the Word, there was such light.
I had studied in seminary. I took a course in ecclesiology, which is the study of the church. We read the Book of Ephesians and studied it in Greek.
But in one of his messages, he spoke on 1 Corinthians 12:12. He said that the church is not merely the body of Christ; it is Christ Himself.
Perhaps you have heard me say those words. But when my brother shared these things, it was a shaft of light that went through and burned right to my spirit.
I saw it. As he spoke, I saw the most beautiful Christ I had ever heard—and this beautiful church.
If you had asked me what the church was like, I never would have said it was beautiful. I would have said, “Ah, it is imperfect. Many flaws, starting with me.”
But I saw that the church is the most beautiful thing on this earth. And I was slain.
There is a rebuke that comes from seeing light that is different from any other kind of rebuke you can receive.
If somebody tells me, “Dana, you’re wrong,” I immediately resist. I give counterarguments.
But when you see light, you see the truth, and all darkness collapses.
My whole understanding of the church collapsed when I saw that the church was Christ. You cannot treat the church like people. Neither could I any longer look at people in the church according to the flesh.
That was Christ. I saw it.
Our brother Stephen was the other speaker. He did not come, as Lance did, with humor and life.
He was the living testimony of what Paul says:
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom,
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.—1 Corinthians 2:3-4
He was determined to know nothing among us save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
My brother talked about God’s love for His Son. I had never seen that before. I did not know how intense it was.
Our brother laid bare the heart of God, and we saw how much God loves His Son. It was unbelievable.
There is a level of feeling that is deeper than emotion. I know we all have emotion, but I am talking about a level of feeling that can only be described as spirit-feeling.
As our brother talked, I saw God’s love. Then we saw the Son’s love for us. I knew that the Bible says Christ loved us and died for us, but I had never experienced the depth of that feeling.
As I sat in that room, I realized that I was somebody who was going the wrong way. The light had shown me that.
Yet, as our brothers spoke, I knew that my Lord was running after me.
We Christians stay away from God. We are afraid of His might and what He might say. But there was my Father running after me.
I saw the love of God. It is fierce, possessive, jealous, and on fire. He just wanted to consume me with His love.
I saw myself. I saw His love. He pursued, and His love would not be denied. So He came and kissed me. I was done.
It started a struggle, and it may have lasted for two years. Could I leave everything and just follow Him?
It is so hard to describe this because it is something that has to sovereignly happen. I do not know how and when the Lord will kiss you.
You might understand the love of Solomon for his lovely woman, but I saw it in the story of Nehemiah.
Nehemiah was an important man. He asked about how things were going back in Jerusalem. The house of God had been built, and more than a generation had gone by.
He heard of the situation back in Jerusalem—how desperate it was, how the people were in poverty and great persecution, how the walls were destroyed, and how the gates were burned.
Hanani gave Nehemiah an objective description of the devastation of Jerusalem, and then he went away and did his business.
But when Nehemiah heard of the devastation of God’s people, he sensed the heart of God for His city. In feeling this heart of God for that city, he felt that he could do nothing else but go back and try to repair.
We talk about God’s heart for His people, His church, and the destruction of the church in so many ways. I know for most of us it may seem just like talk. We can talk like Hanani about these things.
But Nehemiah could not talk.
Why did he weep and fast and pray for more than three months? What happened to him?
You know, we are all self-centered, and we are concerned with our own things. It is a miracle of God when, into your heart, comes what God feels about something.
Look around us today. Do we know how God feels about this?
In some way, Nehemiah entered into that feeling. By God’s grace, we want to talk about that a little bit tomorrow.
That conference I went to was a glorious conference, and it was a terrible conference, because now I was caught.
When you see the absolute love of Jesus, you also see the absolute surrender it takes to follow Him.
In my life, I had to wrestle over two issues before I could surrender.
The first was that I knew that if I followed the way of the church, I would have to resign and turn away from all my career, my ministry, and my livelihood.
This church that I was pastor of loved me a lot. But if I resigned, they would hate me, because I was the shepherd, and they were following in the footsteps of the shepherd.
Yet, by the light that I had seen, I realized that everything I had done up to that point was off track. It was following a path, as I saw it, but it was not the way of the church. It was my way of the church.
I would have to put all of that away. Seeing that the church was Christ threw me off in every aspect of leadership.
Before, as a pastor, I would treat you, rebuke you, correct you—whatever needed to be done. But when I saw that I was hitting Christ, not a person, I could have spent the rest of my life repenting of how I had mistreated Christ.
Do you see Christ in your brother and sister, or do you see their flesh? I am convinced that unless you see Christ in them, you cannot even deal with their flesh.
I did not know how to do that back then. I did not know what that meant.
You remember when the apostle Paul, under the heavenly vision, heard the Lord say:
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?
—Acts 9:4
Paul thought, “I am not persecuting You. I am persecuting these people of the Way.” But in the heavenly vision, Paul saw that when you touch any brother or sister in the body of Christ, you are touching Christ. You are persecuting Him.
I did not know how to lead that. I did not even know if I should lead that. That was the first issue: I would have to resign everything.
The second issue was even tougher. I knew that in the absolute love of Christ, I needed to submit myself to brothers and sisters.
It would have been much easier if I could have submitted myself to Brother Stephen Kaung or to Brother Lance Lambert. But I lived in Raleigh.
There was a group of people in Raleigh. They were charismaniacs. They were older than me, and they did not trust me. I would have to submit my life to them, though they were still trying to figure things out themselves.
This was not a beautiful group. But I saw that they were beautiful to the Lord Jesus.
Why? Because, with all their faults, they wanted to follow the footsteps of the Lord Jesus in simplicity.
It was the only group I knew where I lived that wanted to do that. Oh, there were so many better groups in Raleigh: good preachers, worship ministry, gifts of the Spirit, and all kinds of things.
But this group—nobody there could preach—and I was supposed to submit my life to them.
To be honest with you, I was stuck. I could not make a decision. I did not know what to do.
Then the Lord made it worse. In the providence of God, I went with a team of brothers and sisters to Halford House, where our brother Lance Lambert met in London, England.
We went out, witnessed, and preached the gospel for that week. But I saw something there in that assembly.
They had been meeting for twenty years. There was a coordination beyond them, under the Head, the Lord Jesus.
There was order. Their worship had a life and a direction. Their prayer meetings were powerfully energized by the will of God. The saints had love one for another.
I had a wonderful time there. On the last day, they asked me to stand up and sing a song. I had my guitar.
I remember looking out at this congregation. I should never have said what I said, but I said, “I have found my home.”
Because this is what I wanted to be.
So I went back to North Carolina, and I became sick for three months. I had physical ailments, but it was really soul-sick.
I only got up out of bed two nights a week—to teach the Bible study and to preach on Sunday. Every meeting we had, the church grew bigger and bigger: over 150, then 175.
Every time I preached, it was just unbearable. But I was stuck.
Then one Sunday morning, as I was praying, the Lord came to me with this Scripture in John 6.
The Lord said to me, in the most gentle way:
Would ye also go away?
—John 6:67
I thought about how many people had been kissed by the Lord. I even had some pastor friends who had been kissed by the Lord, and yet after a while they decided they could not follow in this way.
I never knew the Lord had such deep feelings about this. It was as if He came to me as a friend and asked, “Are you going to go away too?”
What else could I say? Where else can I go, Lord? I am completely trapped. You alone have the words that I need.
On the wall of my pastor’s study was an ordination certificate. I pulled it down from the wall. I told my wife and children, “We are going to that house meeting over there, not to the church.”
We went that morning to this house group. I told them that I was renouncing my being a reverend, and I tore up my ordination paper.
I always like to do these kinds of effective things. Then I said, “From now on, I am just Brother Dana.”
I left my job, my career, and my ministry. I found the way of the church and began to follow the footsteps of the flock.
Over these almost forty years since that day, I have come to see two things. This is why I pray so much for you, my dear brothers and sisters.
Unless we come and see our Lord’s love for us, and unless we absolutely give Him all, we will not continue on.
Over many years, I have seen many people who have been touched in their hearts. But unless we are all in, circumstances will give us a way out.
In the footsteps of the flock, you often have to embrace the cross. You have to forgive and be forgiven. You are tempted to be offended by others.
You go through seasons of doubt and seasons of coldness. If you are not all in, there will come a point where you stop.
Following a man, a woman, or a tradition is always much easier. You can start off in the way of the Lord and end up following a tradition.
The way of the church is the way of the cross, and this way of the cross leads to a love for Jesus.
The second thing I have learned is that even those who have been captured need to be kept by a sovereign God.
I tell you this with sadness in my heart. Many who have been captured and have been walking in the way of the church have not been kept.
They have not consecrated or given to the Lord that which He could take into His hands. They have not committed to Him that which He could keep.
Some have great emotional experiences, and yet they do not last. Others have no emotional experience, and you look at them and are quite doubtful that they will ever make it.
Then you look back thirty years later, and they are still all there. This is something much deeper than emotions—something that has been bound in our spirits.
For these almost forty years now, I have wanted to walk in these footsteps. I am so happy every time I can gather with brothers and sisters who also have this heart: they want one hundred percent Jesus.
I pray that somehow, in the sovereignty of God, He will grab our hearts with the depth of His feeling.
It is a fearful thing to realize how much He loves us. And when we realize it, it is so wonderful: He will not let us go.
You can argue with Him. You can have dialogues with Him. He will not let you go.
Oh, I hope that you will see His love.
For me, in my life, often when the moment comes and something happens, and I think about it a little bit, a song comes to my heart.
Back in 1976, almost forty years ago, I wrote a song out of this experience. I do not sing much anymore, but the last line of the song is from John 6:67: “Where else can I go?”
Oh Lord, I see it now,
I see the church is one;
The walls are barriers,
Nothing in between,
And the world can see
You have come.Oh Lord, You know my heart,
You know I want Your perfect way:
The church in unity,
Reflecting all Your beauty,
So the world can see
You have come.It could be such a simple thing
For saints to dwell together.
Every effort schemed by man
Has failed to make us one.And now we’ll have to die,
To be crucified;
But I hear the trumpet ring
And the angels sing
As the bride steps forward,
Pure,
Pleasing,
Longing for her Husband.And, Lord, I know You’re the only One,
So I guess I’ll simply fellowship
With those who bear the testimony
That Jesus Christ is Head of His church,
He is love.Where else can I go?
You alone
Have the words that I need.
After all these years, Lord, I am still caught. I have no choice. So I thank You that I can be all in.
Oh God, touch the hearts of Your people. Many have been kissed and do not know what to do. Show us Your ways. Help us love You, even as You pursue each one here.
Bring us to Yourself, that You may gain the glory in all these things. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Okay, brothers and sisters, let’s have a time of prayer to reflect on what we have just heard. As the Holy Spirit leads, let us feel free to offer our thanksgiving and prayers to the Lord.