Good morning, brothers and sisters.
I sent an email yesterday, and I am really thankful. When I am working and trying to figure out what to say, I say, “I need some help.” So there I go to email. I am sure many of you pray for me. This hymn just encouraged me.
I was thinking about what to share. Remember the brother in Christ last week: when you come to the last answers, he said, “Fear not, fear not, fear not. Still press on.” We may be here tomorrow; the long journey may be done. May the Lord help us.
Let us bow our heads and look to the Lord.
Lord, we are so thankful. Indeed, Lord, we want to say that You are a great God. You are not only a great God, Lord, but You love us so much that You were willing to lay down Your life to bring us into Your presence.
Lord, we do pray. It is Your promise that as two or three gather together, there is Your presence. Lord, we treasure Your presence. We pray that the anointing of the Holy Spirit would be with us—for the speaker and for the listeners.
Lord, may what You have put in my heart be shared in a clear way. May You also have a way into the brothers’ and sisters’ hearts, so that Your word may bear fruit for Your glory.
Lord, I am really an unuseful vessel. But although I cannot, I look to You. You are the God of the impossible. So we look to Your enablement today. Lord, we thank You. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The purpose of sending the email was that the verses I want to touch upon have different translations. I struggled a little because they are all in the New American Standard Bible, but you have to look at the sidebar to see what is meant. So when the verses are put up on the wall, you may not see the same wording.
Let us begin with John 1. I want to read two verses: John 1:29 and John 1:36.
These are, I believe, very familiar verses. John the Baptist was in the wilderness, and he saw Jesus coming.
The next day he seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.
Then we skip to verse 36 in the same chapter. It is the next day. John the Baptist looked at Jesus as He walked and said:
Behold, the Lamb of God!
I am not sure whether we pay attention to this word behold. A long time ago, it was mentioned that when you have “be” together with a verb, you should pay attention. It is not just “hold”; it is like “beloved” being very different from “love.”
Beholding means that you focus your attention. That is the thing you do: behold. That is all your concentration upon Jesus, upon the Lamb of God.
Now let us turn to Revelation 5. This is a verse that has different renderings. In the New American Standard Bible, you can look at the sidebar to see the alternative wording. I want only the first part of Revelation 5:6.
In the normal translation, I do not think we get a sense of where the Lamb is. But if we put the sidebar reading into the main text, it says:
And I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.
The Lamb is in the midst of the throne. I think that is a very crucial thought for us to have.
Then we turn to Revelation 13:8, the last portion of the verse. Verse 8 is negative in one sense, because it speaks of those on the earth who are not of the Lord and who worship the beast. In the normal translation, it says that their names have not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.
But this phrase, “from the foundation of the world,” has two renderings. I believe the rendering closest to what the Holy Spirit is trying to say refers to the Lamb:
The Lamb who hath been slain from the foundation of the world.
Then skip to Revelation 14:4. In Revelation, there are many things going on, but there are also many beautiful things. Here we see a special group of people. The hymn spoke of the way of the Lord, the way He went, and it also spoke of the followers of the Lamb.
These are they that follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.
John sees in heaven a group of people who follow the Lamb. They are not merely called followers of the Lamb; we must notice that they follow the Lamb wherever He goes—every step, not once in a while, but all the time. I think that is amazing.
Then we come to Revelation 17:14. It speaks about wars, and we see what John saw:
These shall war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they also shall overcome that are with Him, called and chosen and faithful.
In my mind, I have this picture: on one side, just a Lamb; on the other side, the Lamb overcomes them. We will come back to this verse later.
I trust you all have much better memories than I do. When I prepare to share, I have to go back and look at the records. I went back to the Christian Testimony Ministry meetings, and it reminded me that during the last couple of months our brother Jerry shared seven times from one chapter in Revelation. Brother Kennedy shared three times, I think from Revelation 2 and 3, concerning the seven letters. Then Brother Kong shared three times on visions.
But every time Jerry shared, he mentioned Revelation 1:3:
Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein: for the time is at hand.
When I looked at his face, I thought, “The time is here. It is urgent.” I am not quite sure whether we catch that in our hearts. It is urgent because the Lord’s coming is at hand.
That really struck me. I said, “Wow, if the Lord is here, what are we going to do?” Of course, one answer is that we should read the book. We should read Revelation. That is what it says: we should hear the words, ask the Lord to give us ears to hear, and pay attention to what is written in it because the time is near.
I do not know whether it was the Holy Spirit, but I thought perhaps I should really go home and read Revelation. I actually read it four or five times. I also began to make use of recordings in which people read the chapters and the whole book. It is not that difficult. If you put on an MP3 recording, you can hear Revelation from chapter 1 to chapter 22 in about an hour. I can listen to half of it each day.
This book is the last book of the Bible. It is also the consummation of God’s written word. As the brothers said, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ.
When I read it or hear it, the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Wow, all this stuff is going on.” John saw heaven and earth, angels, God, Christ, beasts, false prophets, dragons, torments, disasters, wars, destruction, tribulation, and judgment. Do I really want to read that? It is kind of scary, is it not?
But when I stand back and ask the question, “Is the Lord telling us something here?” one thing stands out to me and I cannot get it out of my mind: this term, the Lamb.
The Lord seems to place emphasis on this title, the Lamb.
I must confess that I do not like computers. You may be surprised, because I work with computers from nine to five, but I do not like them. People get computers, play games, or get on the internet, and they never talk to one another. This kind of thing takes away face-to-face communication.
But computers can be used for some helpful things. One thing they can do is search. You can enter the phrase “the Lamb” and ask, “Where does it occur? How many times does it occur in Revelation?”
I do not know whether this surprises you, but it surprised me: the Lamb occurs thirty times in Revelation. Thirty times.
Then I asked another question: besides Revelation, where does it occur in the New Testament? Only two more times—and those are the verses we read from the Gospel of John. From John the Baptist until the consummation of God’s written word, the Lamb is not mentioned in the New Testament until Revelation.
Of course, the lamb is mentioned in the Old Testament, though not very often.
In Revelation, we see the Lamb thirty times. We might expect the Lord to come as King. There is no question about that. We do expect Him to come as King, because He is King of kings and Lord of lords. So I typed in “king” and hit the search button. How many times? Three times.
Thirty and three. Is the Lord saying something to us?
Besides the Lamb, the next term is “Lord,” which occurs twenty-three times. I think the Lord is trying to tell us something.
Back in the Old Testament, the lamb occurs ten times. With one exception, it all has to do with offerings: burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, and so on. You find it first in Genesis, and then in Leviticus and the other books.
So I was sitting there asking, “What is the Lord trying to say?” We expect the Lord to come as King, but there are all these mentions of the Lamb in Revelation. It seemed that the Lord put it on my heart to look at this matter of the Lamb, especially the Lamb who has been slain from the foundation of the world.
What does that speak to us?
One of the brothers said, “Just keep it simple.” I think John said that. So I will keep it very simple. I also learned from Kenny—he is not here, so I can talk about him. There are three points.
Let us begin with the first point.
The heart of the Lamb is love. I was impressed when I came to the prayer meeting last Wednesday. Jerry mentioned that we not only have to be of the same mind as the Lord; we should be of the same heart as the Lord. I think that is a very important thought.
Earlier, the hymn said that when we look at the universe and His creation, we can say how great He is. But is that enough?
In Psalm 103:7, it says:
He made known His ways unto Moses,
His doings unto the children of Israel.
The Israelites knew His acts, but Moses knew His ways—His principles. I think it is great if we know the principles of God. But I would ask another question: is that enough?
Perhaps it is not enough. We have to know the heart of God. If we pray for the Lord to reveal what is in His heart, amazingly, we find something called love.
This love is so important. I wrote down that everything God does is motivated by love—speaking in human terms. Love governs all His principles, and His principles govern all His acts.
In 1 Corinthians 13:3, it says:
And if I give all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
That is how critical love is. We must not only know God’s love; we have to know His love, and His love has to be in us.
In 1 Corinthians 16:22, Paul says:
If any man loveth not the Lord, let him be anathema.
How serious this matter of love is.
The first occurrence of the Lamb in the New Testament is when John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.” All who are saved by the blood of Jesus and all who are born again can say amen to John the Baptist. We are forever grateful to the Lord, who came and died on the cross for our sins. He indeed is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of man.
Can we stop at that point and go home happy about it? Be careful.
If we really try to understand the love of God, unless it is revealed to us, we will not understand it. All our experience is of the things we receive and of how God loves us. But I think the secret is that we have to see the love between the Father and the Son—how the Father loved the Son and how the Son loved the Father.
It all begins there. Then, from that love, we are taken to be in Christ, and we become His beloved.
Revelation 13:8, when it says, “the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world,” may be the key.
You may ask, “Did Christ not die in the first century? Was He not crucified then? Why does the Bible say that we have to go back before the universe was created, to the foundation of the world?”
I put it this way: it was before time began. We can go back to eternity past.
That is really the question. If we can answer that question, it might open the key to the love of God: how the Father loved His Son and how the Son loved the Father. Then we will appreciate what it means when we read that God did not spare His own Son.
To consider this, we need to look at types—at what is written in the Old Testament and what is written in the New Testament. Hopefully, we can gain some understanding of what happened in eternity past.
Jerry shared the story of Abraham and Isaac. It is found in Genesis 22:7-9.
And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son.
And he said, Behold, the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?
And Abraham said, God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son: so they went both of them together.
And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood.
This is the first occurrence of the lamb, and it happens twice here.
I do not know how deeply we enter into this story. Abraham was an old man at that time. Isaac, I do not believe, was a young child. He may have been a youth—strong and full of strength.
Yet Abraham bound Isaac and laid him on the altar. There was no struggle. Isaac let his father bind him and lay him on the altar. What does that mean?
It means Isaac gave his life to his father.
When you think of love, I am not sure what you think of. I think of John 3:16: God so loved the world that He gave. Love is expressed in giving.
We know Abraham loved Isaac. How about Isaac? Isaac loved Abraham. He could have run away, but he loved his father. It was as though he said, “Father, Your will be done.” He was willing to obey, willing to lay down his life, willing to give his life to his father. That is love.
This is a foreshadowing, a type that opens a little window for us to see the love of the Son toward the Father.
Let us turn to Ephesians 1:11. Ephesians speaks of what we call the eternal purpose of God. Sometimes when we speak of the eternal purpose, it can seem very dry. What does it mean?
But when you put together the Old Testament story—the love Isaac had for his father—and what Ephesians 1 tells us, I think we begin to understand what is being said.
In whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will.
Here we have God’s will and the counsel of His will. We have to speak in human terms, but perhaps before the foundation of the world, before time began, there was the counsel of God.
The Father loved His Son. We know that. In Genesis 2:18, we have this expression:
It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.
Love is expressed in giving. Love cannot be contained within itself.
In that eternal counsel, it is as though the Father said, “Look, Son, I really love You. I do love You. I love You so much. I think You should have someone to share and rule with You together—someone with the same heart.”
And the Son said, “Thank You, Father.”
But God knows everything. One thing They foresaw was the fall of man. They had the intention to create the universe and to create man, that man might have dominion and rule. But They also saw what would happen in the Garden of Eden: man would be tempted and would fall.
At that moment, the Father said, “A Lamb must be slain in order to redeem man.”
In that sense, the Son said, “Yes, Father, I love You. May Your will be done. I am willing to be the Lamb.”
I think the window opens a little bit. We gain a glimpse of what happened before time began, in the eternal counsel of God. It was truly the interaction between the Father and the Son, the love between the Two. That is why the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.
We have God’s eternal purpose, God’s principles, and God’s ways. But I think we need to pray that the Lord would impress upon our hearts that behind everything there is love.
The Lamb was slain because there was love there. Perhaps we do not fully understand it, but that is what it is.
We are given to the Lord by the Father as His inheritance. Believers are given to Christ as His inheritance. That brings us into the love between the Father and the Son. Christ is the beloved Son of God, and now we become the beloved. Hallelujah. We should rejoice in that.
But we have to remember that God’s ways are higher than our ways. Sometimes we put a frame around God’s love and say, “This is what God’s love looks like.” Many times, that is not so.
In our eyes, what is love? We often ask the Lord for mercy. What do we mean by that? Essentially, we say, “Lord, just go easy on me.” But God is not that way.
One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Jeremiah 31:3:
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love:
Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
Can you imagine that—everlasting love, love that never ends?
Just before the election, I was thinking about what would happen after the election. A long time ago, I heard a sister say, “In wrath remember mercy.” That is a good word. Where does it come from? So I looked it up. The computer is good for that.
It is from Habakkuk 3:2:
O Lord, I have heard Thy report, and am afraid:
O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years;
In the midst of the years make it known;
In wrath remember mercy.
As I mentioned, God’s love is not our love. God’s ways are higher than our ways. Our concept of love is sometimes twisted; it is not the way it should be.
I asked my wife, “What happened to the Israelites? The Chaldeans were worse; they were evil, much more evil. What happened?”
She said, “Go find people and see what happened to them.”
What happened to them? They were taken into captivity.
You may say, “God, where is Your love? Is it really everlasting? What happened to Your mercy?” The Israelites were taken into captivity.
But when we look back and stand at God’s point of view, we see that God was working on something. God was working meticulously; He was after something. In the case of the Israelites, they were worshiping idols. The only way to bring them out of their independence was to send them into exile. They repented, and some of them returned.
What is the lesson here? God’s love is not our love.
When I read Revelation a couple of times, it seemed full of scary things. But if we view it in eternity’s perspective and settle in our hearts that God is love, that God does everything according to love, then go back and read Revelation again. It surprised me. I assume it will surprise all of us.
It is the same book. There is no change in the wording, but we are looking from a different perspective.
In Revelation 1, we see Christ as the High Priest because of His great love for His church. He is trimming, tuning, and adjusting so that the Lamb may keep on fulfilling His ministry.
Then there are the seven letters. There are many things said in those letters, but the first one, to the church in Ephesus, says, “You have left your first love.” That is the problem. That is the issue. That is always the issue.
Then in the last letter, the Lord is outside the door, knocking. It is as though the Lord says, “You have put Me outside the door, but I still love you.”
So He says:
As many as I love, I reprove and chasten.
We do not like chastening, but as Brother Kong spoke about last week, it is for our own good.
Then we come to Revelation 5:6. I want to emphasize this: the Lamb is in the midst of the throne.
When you read through Revelation 5, then chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, and all the way to 19—with all the disruption, torment, disasters, and destruction—always remember that the Lamb is in the midst of the throne.
And always remember that the heart of the Lamb is love.
Everything He does—even though there are disasters and destruction—He is after something in the end. This love motive is working through all things.
You will also notice that all these things are in His hand. It is not the enemy in control. He may allow the enemy to do certain things for a time, but it is under His control.
If you read through all of that and come to Revelation 19, you arrive at something glorious. There is war, the final battle, the war of Armageddon. But Revelation 19:7 says:
Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, and let us give the glory unto Him:
For the marriage of the Lamb is come,
And His wife hath made herself ready.
Love has been working. It began in eternity past, and now it comes to fulfillment at the end, where the bride—the church—becomes mature. The Lamb’s life is formed in her, and she becomes like Him.
When we read all these things, the encouragement is to bear in mind and bear in our hearts that love is working in all of it, and the Lord is working something out.
The Lord is also working toward the glorious end in which He will have His right. But that is not His primary purpose; that may be secondary. The Lord loved the Father and gave His life to the Father so that the Father’s will would be done. The Lord’s heart is that the Father’s will would be done first. Then, from that, the bride is made ready.
The bride—Revelation 19:7 says that the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife has made herself ready. This may or may not impress our hearts.
As I mentioned, Ephesians speaks of the eternal purpose of God. Ephesians 5 speaks of Christ and the church. Let us turn to Ephesians 5:25-27.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself up for it;
That He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
That He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
But that it should be holy and without blemish.
Can you imagine that?
Revelation 19:7 says the bride has made herself ready. What does that mean? It opens up when we look at Ephesians.
Verse 25 says that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. It was not only that He gave Himself up in the first century. He gave Himself up before time began, from the foundation of the world. That was when the Lamb was slain.
Then in verse 26, He works through all time, what we call the age of grace. He continues to work in the midst of His church, sanctifying her and cleansing her, until at the end the bride, the church, arrives in all her glory.
What does that mean? It mentions two things: no spot and no wrinkle.
No spot means pure—absolutely pure. No wrinkle is easy to understand, because a lot of times when I get up and look in the mirror, I say, “Oh boy, there are wrinkles there.” Wrinkles mean I am getting old. No wrinkle means fresh every day.
That is something glorious. I am very poor at expressing what this future is. You have to ask the Lord to impress it upon your heart.
Today, He is working. He is working faithfully and meticulously toward His goal.
I like this expression from Romans: the Father did not spare His own Son. I say, “Thank You.” If the Father did not spare His own Son, He will not spare anything necessary to arrive at the end. He will do all that is within His power so that, at the end, this will be accomplished: the church, the bride, will be like the Lamb.
We should be thankful that we have a Lord who disciplines us. We should praise Him for His everlasting love.
I spoke to Ralph last week about an expression in America: “tough love.” This is tough love. But tough love has something real at the end: the glorious church.
That is what I have concerning the heart of the Lamb: love.
Now let us continue a little with the life of the Lamb.
John the Baptist had two opportunities to say, “Behold, the Lamb.” The first was, “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.” Then the next time, John saw Jesus walking and said, “Behold, the Lamb.”
How did Jesus walk? This is not merely literal.
The Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world was incarnated about twenty centuries ago. His name was Jesus. He came and lived for thirty-three years among His people.
If you read the Gospels, whether in detail or broadly, you will come to a conclusion about how Jesus walked.
We know the Father loved the Son, and we know the Lord wanted to do the will of God. There are many examples, but I will take one. I like the Gospel of John, obviously.
The first miracle was at the wedding feast in Cana. The wine ran out. Jesus’ mother was there, and she said, in effect, “Jesus, I think You had better do something.”
In John 2:4, Jesus responded to His mother’s request:
Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.
“My hour has not yet come.” Jesus was waiting for the time when His Father said, “Now is the time.”
Especially in the Gospel of John, you find this expression again and again: “My hour has not yet come.” Then, when the time came, Jesus did it.
That is the way Jesus walked. That is the way Jesus lived. He always yielded to the Father, to the will of the Father.
At the end, there is a supreme example. Before our Lord was seized, He came to the Garden of Gethsemane. There was prayer between the Son and the Father. It is recorded in Matthew 26:36-44.
We are not going to read it, but roughly speaking, the Lord prayed three times. It can be summarized this way:
Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.
The Lord yielded totally to the will of His Father.
How did the Lamb walk? How did the Lamb live? Not His own will, but the Father’s will be done.
I say that the life of the Lamb is the way of the cross. That is the way He walked—the way of the cross.
What does that mean to us? We need the Holy Spirit so much. The Lord teaches us to pray that the Father’s will be done. Have you prayed that? Do we really mean it?
What about the way of the cross? Sometimes, as a brother mentioned last week, we try to avoid the cross.
We may see the cross itself as all loss and no gain. It is always taking away, and there is nothing in return. Of course, that is only our concept.
The Holy Spirit has to reveal to us that there is true gain. What we lose may be things we do not need. There are two gains.
As I thought about it, it seemed that the Lord led me to Hebrews 12:2. Again, this is a verse we know very well:
Looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Very simply, it says, “Fix your eyes on Jesus. Look away unto Jesus.” This term, “looking unto Jesus,” comes back to me time after time. When the situation is bad, look unto Jesus.
Then we really have to see what it says. He saw the joy set before Him. What is that joy?
To us, we really want to avoid the cross if we can. But Jesus saw something beyond the cross. I want to emphasize again what He saw beyond the cross: the Father’s will being done.
He rejoiced in that. And with that, He saw that through the cross something would come forth—the maturing of the bride, bringing His people into maturity. He would have His bride, and the eternal purpose of God would be accomplished. There would be the sharing of love and reigning together with His bride.
For that—the Father’s will being done—He endured the cross and despised the shame. Where did that end? He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
When you think about the whole thing, is it really only loss and no gain? There is actually much gain at the end. The Lord Himself sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Remember Revelation 5:6: the Lamb is in the midst of the throne. For those who walk the way of the cross, where will they be? They will also be with the Lord. They will also be in the midst of the throne.
The way of the cross leads to the throne of God. Is that not enough for us to go the same way?
Sometimes we feel that the way of the cross is so hard. Perhaps that is why we do not like the cross. It is hard.
The Lord seems to speak to us from Matthew 11:29-30:
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
What is the Lord’s yoke? We have heard that the Son loved the Father. He always kept the Father’s will in His heart. The Father’s will—that, in a sense, is the yoke. And He is willing to be yoked together with us.
What is the Lord saying? “Let Me teach you.” It is really simple. Someone said, “Keep it simple.” It is really simple. All you have to do is take My yoke upon you and let My character develop in your life.
Remember: “I am meek and lowly in heart.” So you should be. Take the first step and be obediently diligent, and you will find out that He is not joking: “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”
I think we have all had experiences like that. If we are willing to go the way the Lord wants us to go, if we really say, “May Your will be done,” we find that it is easy and light.
Sometimes we try it and say, “It is still difficult. It is not really easy and light.” What happens?
I am sure we all remember the story of Saul, when the Lord met him on the road to Damascus. The Lord said:
It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.
Is that not the answer? Is that an explanation of why sometimes we feel that the cross is so difficult? It is because we are kicking. We are kicking against the goads. We do not want to go the way the Lord wants us to go. We do not put His will as supreme in our hearts.
But the Lord is gracious, merciful, and loving. In the example of Saul, He did not let Saul continue in his own way. In the same way, because of the love He has for us, His love will never let us go beyond the boundary He has set for us.
That is great love. Again, I want to return to the great love the Lord has. He sets the boundary. He may let you go a little way, but you will find that you cannot go beyond the boundary.
We have to be able to trust Him: “Lord, I know You have great love for us. Lord, according to Your word, Your yoke is easy and Your burden is light. Help me to be willing—really willing—to come under that yoke, to walk the way of the cross.”
Then you will find there is joy in the heart. Praise the Lord for it.
These are things that have come to my heart during the last couple of weeks for us to consider: the Lamb, the significance of the Lamb, what is in His heart, and what is the way of His life.
Next week, if the Lord wills, we will cover one more point. We will look at the overcoming power—where that power comes from. Then we will share concerning following the Lamb wherever He goes.
I think it is marvelous. Revelation 5 caught me: the Lamb is in the midst of the throne. Whoever follows Him will also be in the midst of the throne.
May the Lord help us.
Lord, we do thank You for these words. Lord, I do want to trust You that You may use them however You please. Lord, just work in our hearts and capture us.
I know I am a very poor vessel to speak forth what is in Your heart, but Lord, Your Holy Spirit can explain all these things to us. Lord, draw us, encourage us, and press us on to press hard after You.
Lord, open our hearts that we may have a comprehension of the great love You have for us. Lord, reveal to us the way of the cross, what it will end up to be, and help us to see the big picture—the glorious future—so that we may press on to come after You.
Oh, Lord, we do thank You for Your mercy and grace. Lord, we thank You for this time. Lord, we thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.