How very grateful we are for Your perseverance in communing with us, Lord; that You have chosen to fellowship with us, and that You have done everything necessary that we might be fit for Your presence.
Lord, we acknowledge this morning that we are the full benefactors. We have brought nothing to this relationship, but we have received everything from You. How blessed we are, and we thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, good morning.
A word of thanks. I look out and see brothers and sisters whom I have known for twenty, thirty years, who have diligently, patiently, and lovingly encouraged me and other saints down in Dothan, Alabama, as well as saints throughout the world. We thank you.
I see some whom I have known for a shorter time, but who have been just as precious in their encouragement and loving-kindness. We thank you for that. And some I have barely gotten to know, or do not know at all.
But I can say with an honest heart that, sitting here this morning before the table and worshiping our Lord together, my heart is filled with love toward you because His love has been shed abroad in our hearts. How blessed we are. How wonderful it is for brethren to dwell together.
Thank you so much for being so faithful for so long.
I want to speak this morning about things like rumination and pondering. Do y’all ponder up in Virginia? Is that a Virginia habit? Do you ruminate?
I was ruminating not long ago—back in, what’s this? This is December, so it would have been late September—when the season had changed and it was now only ninety-five degrees in South Alabama. In that cool, wonderful fall weather, I was ruminating.
Now, some of you may not understand ruminating. You may be challenged; you may be city dwellers. But a cow ruminates. He ruminates because he has multiple stomachs.
When he eats that ground—you know, y’all think these cows eat that grass and that must be so wonderful to them, good green grass. Try eating grass for a while. It is not all that nourishing and great.
So, a cow has to work that grass through several different stages of digestion to get to the stuff that will make it give good milk. Now, that is why, by the way, the best butter and the best milk are alpine, because they have the best grass. It is hard to produce good milk and good butter. Pine-straw-covered grass does not work as well, so we have different milk and butter in Alabama.
But a cow ruminates. He works through it until he gets to the good stuff, and that is not a hurried process.
You know, one of the problems we have as the people of God is that we are in a rush. We want to know the Word of God in fullness the first time we read it. We want it to be fully laid out and fully comprehended, and we want to be experts in it with one reading. But that is not the way it works.
We are built with only one stomach, but spiritually, we are built to ruminate. We are built to work through and see, in that first reading, the preciousness and richness of it; then let it sit for a while.
Then the Lord brings it back to us, and we see something that convicts, maybe, or challenges, instead of all that preciousness we saw the first time in it. Generally, we lay that down. We let it ruminate, for sure.
But in the end, we distill it, if you want to say it that way. We ruminate it. We process it through the Spirit of God until, in the end, if we are patient, we find the essence of our Lord Jesus. We find the real life that is in it.
Ruminating is that process, and you cannot rush it. You have to take your time.
But pondering is the outworking of ruminating. Pondering is totally different from ruminating. Pondering is once you have gotten to that essence. Then you go out to the local county pond, sit under your ruminating tree, and ponder.
You ponder that essence of Jesus that you have found in His Word. You think about it. You consider it as it works out in your own life, in the life of those with whom you fellowship, and in the life of those who are without the kingdom.
You consider it, and it gets richer and fuller. Eventually, that life of Christ works its way out through you. So we need to be a pondering people, but we must first ruminate.
And when we do, we understand that the Lord communes with us. Then the richness of His voice rings in our ears.
When we take the time and are willing to be patient—to let the Lord deal with all the things in us that need to be dealt with for that Word to bring us to Jesus—and when we see Jesus and sit in wonder and ponder His glory, then we are communing with our Redeemer in the fullness of the Lord.
So, with all that said, we will start in Hebrews 1:1.
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son,
whom He hath appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the worlds.
A simple passage—not difficult to understand what it is saying to us. God communicates with us through Jesus.
Now, we are not in the garden. It is not face to face. But it is just as real, just as sure, just as powerful. He communicates with us. He is committed to having a relationship with His people.
He communicates through His Son, by His Spirit, in His Word, through His servants, in His people. So that when all those come together, we realize we have a living Word of God among us.
The richness of being built together in living fellowship is not your smiling faces—they are wonderful. It is not your brilliant insight. It is that Christ Himself speaks to me in you.
I see something of my Redeemer in you that blesses me, challenges me, encourages me, and convicts me. God communicates to us in so many ways, if we are willing to hear, if we are willing to learn of Him.
He has been doing it for a long time, by the way. We are reading this passage where it is in Jesus; in times of old, it was through the prophets. It is not a new thing that God has decided to have a relationship with His people.
He started, of course, with Adam and Eve in the garden. That was the full intent of God originally: that He and man would have a speaking relationship, a living, walking, talking relationship day by day.
Of course, we know He did not mess it up, so I guess that leaves us to be the culprits. And we continue our culpability even to this day. We are a stubborn and hardheaded people.
We want to hear Him the way we want to hear Him. I mean, we want Him to say what we want Him to say many times. And we just have nothing else occasionally until He brings us down.
But through it all, He is still committed to that first idea of living fellowship with His people.
Sometimes, we are not so bright. Man, whether regenerated or unregenerated, can be very dumb. He may have to speak out of a burning bush just to get us to realize He is there speaking to us. Or perhaps He will have to speak out of a donkey.
But if that is what is required for Him to communicate to us, He will do it. He is committed to us. He has never said, “I am through with you, and I will go somewhere else and start all over with a different creation.”
He has stood by us. He has stood by you, and He has stood by me through all our stupidity, all our excitement and joy, all our failures. He has ever stood by us. How blessed be the name of the Lord.
You know, in Hebrews 11, we have a litany of people with whom He communicated.
By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not yet seen,
moved with fear, prepared an ark.
Now let me pull you in on something. Noah did not have a fellowship house to go to, sit down and read the Holy Scriptures, worship at the table of the Lord, and hear from the Lord there.
You think it is hard for you to hear God? Try being Noah. He did not have all the advantages we have, and yet he heard. God communicated to him, revealed to him His purpose, His thought, and His plan, and used Noah to preserve that avenue of communication.
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out, went out.
Now we have Abraham. Again, he does not have First United Fellowship of Whatever. He does not have Jerry or Kenny or some of you other brothers and sisters to speak the Word of God to him.
But God spoke to him and said, “Time to get up. Time to move along. I have a purpose. I have a plan. No, you do not understand it, and you do not know where you are going, but just go. I will lead you. I will guide you.”
We get that same instruction at times in our lives, when God says, “It is time to move on.” But we have the big advantage: we have the Holy Spirit within us, we have the Word of God, and we have one another.
You know, I suspect there were a lot of people scratching their heads at poor Abraham. “What are you doing? Are you sure you know what you are doing, where you are going?” And he is saying, “I do not know, but I know I heard, and I know I will obey.”
For he looked for a city
which hath foundations,
whose builder and maker is God.
You want to be able to hear God a little better when you are struggling? Focus your heart on the things that are His instead of the things you are currently experiencing. Look for that city. Look for the Lamb in it.
Turn your eyes and focus them on the Lord God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. He will speak to you. He will help you find that way through your concern and confusion.
The Lord communicated great things to that host of witnesses—that cloud of testimony on high. All those folks who were there heard the Lord and followed the Lord faithfully.
Some of them had a bit of Holy Writ. Most of them only had oral tradition. They mostly only had what they heard from their fathers, who heard from their fathers, who heard from their fathers. None of them had the King James, much less The Message.
And yet they heard, and they followed. And here we are, the people of God, stumbling and tripping and falling in the wilderness and moaning, “Oh, if God would only explain it to me.”
As if we had none of the advantages we have; as if we did not have the Word of God and the Spirit of God to teach us in it; as if we did not have two thousand years of looking back at all that Jesus did and has continued to do since then.
As if we did not have the examples of great men who found faithfulness in the Lord, from whom we can learn; and sadly, the examples of great men who fell heavily in their own way, from whom we can also learn.
We just stumble around in the dark: “Oh, I wish I understood it all. I wish I knew where I was going.” Ruminate.
We have that great privilege of looking backward. That is not what that cloud of witnesses had. They did not have all that we have going for us, and yet they made the honor roll. They got to be in the hall of fame. They knew what that glory was.
We can have communion with God if we will be patient and willing to put in the time, to separate the time out and ruminate. Let it work in us. Reconsider it.
Invest in it with a brother or sister, and let them add something to the pot. We can hear from God because He speaks to His people. And it is all in the speaking. We do not need special ears, just faithful ears. He is able to speak.
So, as I was pondering, some of the ruminations came up, and it landed in Ezra. What can I say? That is where it went.
But as I was thinking, the verse that had started me off was Zechariah 1:14.
So the angel that communed with me said unto me,
Cry thou, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts;
I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.
I have read the verse before. It has passed around a little bit, been considered a little bit, but this time it just would not go away: that my Lord was jealous for His people, for His place.
As I considered that, that is when He brought me back to Ezra to look at how He had said it and revealed it in olden times.
Ezra 1. We will read verses 1 through 5.
Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia,
that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled,
the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia,
that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom,
and put it also in writing, saying,Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia,
The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth;
and He hath charged me to build Him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Who is there among you of all His people?
His God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah,
and build the house of the Lord God of Israel,
He is the God, which is in Jerusalem.And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth,
let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts,
beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.
And then rose up the chief priests, and we get this great gathering of folks who leave that captivity in Babylon.
Now, that had to be a great day, huh? We are getting out of captivity. We are going. Oh, wait a minute—we are going on a long journey through some rugged land among some hostile people. Oh yeah, we are ready. Let’s go.
You know, captivity is not so bad. You have what we call a normal life. You have a job to go to every day, a school to go to every day. You have friends, golfing buddies, hunting buddies—maybe ruminating friends.
It is not that bad a life, sure. Sometimes the finances are difficult, and heaven help us that we could have enough energy to keep up with those grandchildren. But captivity is not all that bad. We know what it is. We have worked out our little place in it.
That is how it was for these people. They had actually built a place of some respect, some normalcy. And now this king, who is not of the house of God, is saying, “Oh, I want all you guys to go up to Jerusalem.”
“Yeah, it is a four-month journey. Sure, there are going to be some difficulties. You know, a few of you may drown in the rivers as they flood, and some of those folks who do not like you so much may treat you roughly as you pass through, but do not worry about it. It is gone. It will be better than it is here. You know, go on.”
Not surprisingly, everybody did not sign up for the trip. Many preferred captivity. Those who did persevered until they got to the city.
We are all called for that journey. This captivity thing is not something that ended when they left Babylon behind.
We in this age have made ourselves captive to the world in many ways, and we choose that captivity. We find pleasure in that world that is more pleasant to us than the price we have to pay to commune with one another and the Lord.
It is much easier to say, “That little bit of a cold I’ve got—hmm, I’m sorry, Kenny, you’re right by yourself today.”
It is much easier on a Wednesday night to watch whatever your favorite weeknight show is than to choose the house of God.
Captivity is nothing that has gone away. It has just changed. We wear a different name on it. But man, in his root nature, prefers a world where we do not have to face a living God every day.
We do not like, in our natural man, to realize we do not measure up. And it is sometimes just too much effort to stand in the mercy and grace of God, accept the fact that He has made us fit, and then function in His kingdom.
We are a lazy lot many times. We are an unfaithful lot.
I realize most of you can dismiss what I am saying there and say, “Oh, that’s not me,” and some of you are probably right. But many of us are. Many of us do not take the time. We do not have the patience to go through what we have to go through to truly learn what it is to die to the flesh and live in the Spirit.
Because it is an everyday thing. You know, if we could do it once—man, if we could just get hold of this sanctification thing one time, and boom, not only would it be true in the heavens, but suddenly it would be true in the earth—that I am fully, completely, and forever sanctified.
That I cannot be a jerk sometimes. That I cannot be stubborn. That I cannot be a know-it-all French boy. If we could just get that worked out in us once for all, and it is done, and for the rest of our life never have to deal with the flesh again, it would be wonderful.
I have heard testimony of saints who have basically accomplished that—some of them whom I believed. I remember hearing Norman Grubb sitting in a little room with a bunch of us twenty-somethings, you know, know-it-all young hotshot believers.
He was sitting there, and we were asking him all kinds of questions, which he must have inwardly been laughing at—how stupid we were, how unfocused we were. But one question came up about sanctification, about dealing with the flesh.
Norman just looked at us and said, “I’m dead. You’re dead. It’s done. It was done in the cross, not in the front seat of your car driving to church.”
And I got to be around him a little bit and see that, for him, that was absolutely true.
On the other side of it, he had spent a whole lot of years and a whole lot of hard places before he got to that point where he understood that was absolutely true.
But that is where we are headed, brothers and sisters, if we are being faithful; if we are ruminating on the Word of God, if we are fellowshipping with our brothers and sisters, if we are communing with our blessed Redeemer.
We are headed to that point where we will not have to struggle with the old nature and the world and its temptations. We will just be able to always choose the right thing, say the right word, go the right place.
One day, we will see Him face to face. And when we see Him, we shall be like Him.
So that day will come for us. Whether before or until that day, eventually those of us who are the Lord’s will have that glorious freedom.
Till then, we need to accept the fact that we are called on that journey, that we have to walk through some hard places to find the fullness of the Lord at times.
But God spoke to those saints who were so willing, so able, and so persevering to make that journey. He gave them three things that stuck out to me as I was pondering on this, to speak to them clearly in a way that would encourage them and help them come to fullness.
One is found in Ezra 3:1-4. Basically, it says that when they had been there in the seventh month and the priests came forward, they laid the altar stone. They reestablished the altar of sacrifice before the Lord.
When the Lord gave them the right and the place to lay that altar and begin to offer the sacrifices, He was speaking to them in Christ. I mean, that is a simple one, isn’t it, for us? We had the table today.
What does the table say but that the Lord Jesus loved us while we were yet sinners; that while we were unfit, totally unclean, and not in any way suitable to His presence and fellowship, He washed us in His own blood to make us acceptable in the Beloved?
Well, that is what He said to them here. Can you imagine that you have been, for the last ten years, in Timbuktu—not on a great mission, but because your company decided they needed an accountant in Timbuktu and you got elected?
You are stuck down there, and there is no fellowship and no life. You spend ten years without another brother or sister to put their arm around you and say, “We love you. We treasure you.”
No great speaker to speak the Word of God and encourage you and motivate you. Nothing going on to say that God has kept you and loves you.
You begin to grow a little weary, and year by year it seems more and more distant, until eventually your heart is just aching to hear the Lord say to you, “You are My beloved.”
Well, that is what those guys were facing. When that altar was laid and they began to offer those sacrifices, for the first time in years they could feel clean again.
That is what the sacrifices did for them. It gave them freedom to be in the presence of Almighty God. Now, they did not have the presence like we have it because we have the Holy Spirit, but they knew that they were the people of God, that God had not forsaken them.
They knew their sins were taken care of and would not judge them or keep them from being the people of God.
That altar was as precious to them as this table is to us, and it meant the very same thing. It looked forward to a sacrifice that we look back upon, but it is the same sacrifice: the Lord Jesus giving Himself for us, the Father sacrificing His Son for us.
The pain and shame of our sin upon His back—all of that wrapped up in the table of the Lord was wrapped up in the altar of sacrifice.
Without it, they could not be and function as the people of God. They built a whole new system, did they not? Called it synagogue. They put a whole new way of relating to God because they could not do what they had been instructed to do.
Finally, at last, they were back on their ground with God. They were back on the standing that they had in their God because they had the altar. He spoke to them in that altar just as He speaks to us at the table through His Son.
Well, after the altar was laid—about, what, is it a year later maybe? Not quite. Second month, seven months, five months later maybe—the temple begins to be built.
Now, I say “begins” because it was kind of a start-and-go project. It was not all that smooth. Although in the end, they finished it in fifty-two days, and I do not know—I assume some of you who are architects or builders or something can understand how enormous that must have been of a task. But they did it in fifty-two days. As I read that, I have got to tell you, I am still ruminating on that one. That is hard to comprehend for me.
But when they began to build the temple, they laid the foundation. You find that in Ezra 3:8-10. They laid the foundation, and folks were excited and joyous. Other folks were sad and tearful because some of them were around to see the original temple, and this temple did not seem to measure up.
Was it the same size? Was it going to be as full of glory? They knew that when they came back from Babylon, they did not bring the ark or the Urim and Thummim, so it would never be fully the temple that it had been before.
But it was the temple that God wanted built. He said, “Build it.” Why would God be willing to settle for a temple among His people that was not equal to the temple of Solomon?
Because His love for and desire for His people, His jealousy over Zion, had not abated. It had persevered.
He wanted that place in Jerusalem that said to His people, “I, the Lord God Almighty, have chosen to dwell among you. It is My choice that I will commune with you, that I will live amongst you, that I will have a place in your presence.”
That is His choice. He made that decision. That temple may not have looked as good as Solomon’s, but, oh, did it speak to those people coming out of captivity to know in their hearts that their God had said, “I choose you.”
You know, this gathering is not as big as it used to be. The gathering I am a part of is almost nonexistent anymore, size-wise. We are down to just a few.
But God has not looked at us and said, “Hmm, you are just not good enough for Me.” He has chosen to persevere to commune with us.
His purpose for us has not changed. His gifts to us have not been withdrawn. His love of us has not abated. He is still jealous over us with a strong jealousy. He desires for us to be His people and for Him to have communion with us.
The other Scriptures I was going to read have been read today already. But 1 Peter 2—if you read back through that when you go home today—you see what He was saying to us in Christ that He said to them in the temple.
Ye are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood,
an holy nation.
In 2 Corinthians 6, He tells us that we are His temple. We are His house.
God has chosen, in this day, to commune with His people. We have the great privilege and benefit of that.
We can come this morning washed in the blood of the Lamb, indwelt by the Spirit of the living God, and lift up our voice and cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord,” with full and sure confidence because of all that He has done.
Yet how many times do we come in as beggars, in a beggarly fashion, as if somehow it were possible that the love of Christ was not enough; that the blood He shed could not cleanse me, or did not cleanse me—not in this instance; that His mercy was good for you, but somehow I am missing out on it?
Somehow, we come many times to commune with Him in a fashion that is not a proper appreciation of His table, His life, His presence, His love, His glory, His mercy, His people, His work, His purpose, His intent, His promise, and His future return.
How can we have all of that in our hands and sit silent, think about other things, and consider how difficult it is to be here? You know, it is a little bit too warm for me. It is a little bit too cool for you. Heaven help us, I heard somebody singing off key.
How can we come, with all that is given to us, as fools and beggars instead of as the priests of the living God—here to bring honor and glory to His name, here to minister the Word of God to one another?
It is wonderful that you always have great speakers, today excepted. But do you realize? If all you have is great speakers, you are not the people of God together.
I have got to have you. I have to have the life of Christ in you. We have to share that life together to find that fullness.
Do not come as beggars. Come with a full appreciation of what is in your hands, what has been given to you, and just let it ring. Give it out whatever way is your way.
We are everyone different. I tend to be a little bit—yeah, lunatic? I do not know.
Some of you are very serious, and you will give out the life of Christ in a different way than another will. We are all different.
But when we are in communion with Him and in fellowship with one another, we give that life as it is in us. We do not repackage it. You know, I do not try to be Jim Bogg or Mac—Josh. I have to be me. You have got to be you.
God fashioned you. We need you the way you are, as long as you are living out the life of Christ. We do not need your flesh.
Now, that is the one great equalizer for us all: all our flesh stinks. It does not matter. I do not care how sophisticated you are or how bad a redneck you are. Flesh is flesh, and it all stinks.
But the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus has so many flavors. It is no wonder He calls it the fruit of the Spirit, because it tastes different from each one of you.
It is gentle here. It is challenging here. It is gracious there. It is beauty there. It is just different, and it brings such a good taste and leaves such a good, satisfied spirit behind after it tastes.
He spoke to them with this building of the temple—what it meant: that He was committed to being their God and having fellowship and communion with them.
Of course, the last thing they did was build a wall. It is a little dicey here. We talk about the wall, and we are wonderful with that. I mean, we love the wall of the testimony, this thing that says, “This is God’s, and that is not.” It separates, it divides, and we get to be on the good side of the wall. This is God; that is where we are.
But you know what came with that wall? Judgment. To be on the good side of that wall, you had to face the judgment.
They called the roll. They did the genealogies. They said, “Now wait a minute. You say that you are of the priestly tribe, but we cannot find a record of it. It looks to us like you are an interloper. We are sorry, but the gate is open. Please pass through.”
There is judgment with the wall. Not just anything can say that it is the Lord.
Amazingly, we do not get to make the choice. I am not dumb, okay? I am not stupid. I know that those who know me very well might choose for me to be on the other side of the wall just because I can be irritating at times.
You do not get to make that choice. I get to be in anyway because God has chosen me, and He has worked in me so I can be. But there is judgment.
You cannot just bring in anything to the kingdom, to the house, to the city. It has to pass through the blood, and it has to have the life of the Spirit.
It is not a funeral home that that wall demarks. It is the city of God. It is the kingdom of God. That is what it is about.
Oh, that it was just a simple wall, and we could say, “Well, you believe these doctrines; you believe those doctrines. You get dunked instead of sprinkled, and you can come in.”
There are many a dunked person who are not inside that heavenly wall. There are many a good theologian who are not inside those gates. And there are many a poor, ignorant, pitiful soul who has found mercy and grace in the eyes of the Lord and enjoys the full benefit of the kingdom of God.
When that wall was built, it spoke not only to the house of God; it spoke to the folks round about. Kings were getting upset. “Well, you know, if they get that wall built, they are going to try to take over. They will be like they were before Babylon came. We do not need to let them build that wall.”
They sent out orders: “Do not build it.” And just as Paul appealed to Rome, those in the return appealed to the king that sent them. He sent a letter back saying, “Leave them alone. Let them build.”
They built that wall. They stood on top of it, laying the bricks, wearing their sword, carrying their shields, and they built it.
You want to move deeper and be a part of the kingdom? Then be ready to put on the full armor of God, because there is great opposition.
Your flesh, first of all, will oppose at every level. It will be too hot today. It will be too hard tomorrow. It will mean having to deal with that person I just cannot stand the next day. It is just too much for me.
If your flesh does not win, if you manage to die to your flesh, then the world will come after you. Your boss: “You have got to cool this thing down a little bit here. You need to pay more attention to your work and less attention to your God. We need you to work forty hours a week and then another twenty, and forget about the fact that you have got young children. Just work when we say work.”
Or it will be that great Christian music that you just cannot get enough of. You get so enthralled with it, you lose sight of what it is to die to yourself and follow after Christ.
Or it can be your love of food, having to have fellowship with that worldly lot so that we can feast at the table with them. The world will tempt you in any weakness you have.
But if you manage to resist the world and not fall in love with it, then the enemy will take you on.
Now, I have, over the years, come up through much of the charismatic movement, as many of you older saints did. We saw a real and honest realization that there is an enemy, that there are demons, and that they do possess people.
We saw a great blessing poured out as the Lord retaught us how to cast out demons, how to see people set free and made whole. We enjoyed it so much that we just decided everybody had one, and we would go cast it out of everybody.
You know, if the enemy cannot just take control of you, then he will get you so excited doing something—your own hobbyhorse—that you forget about what the Lord has called you to.
There is opposition that is more powerful than we are in our own abilities, that is capable of destroying us if we take it on in our natural man, in the flesh.
But thanks be to God, for those of us who dwell inside the wall, we have a banner. We have a champion, and He is victorious. He has won the battle, and we can live in the goodness of that.
He spoke to them in that wall just the same way He has spoken to us in Christ Jesus, and said to us, “You are Mine, and not even the enemy will pluck you from My hand.”
He has made it plain to us, if we have listened, that He has covered our sin. Satan can raise his ugly head and point his bony finger at me all day long, but he cannot remove the blood of Christ that has washed me and cleansed me from my sin.
What a privilege. What a blessing to commune with the Lord God Almighty.
Father, we are so very grateful that everything You have spoken to us in Christ, You were already speaking throughout the ages to all mankind: that You are revealing Your Son, revealing Your purpose, revealing Your commitment, Your desire for us throughout the ages.
Lord, we are grateful to get to live in the fullest benefit of that: having the ability to see Your Word, to have Your Holy Spirit dwelling in us, to have the fellowship of the saints, and the testimony of those who have gone before, all the way back from Adam and Eve.
Lord, we thank You for all that You have given us, and our humble cry is: Help us, Lord Jesus, to take that which You have blessed us with and live in it, that we might bring glory, that we might bring joy, that we might bring all that You desire before You, and that You can rejoice in the works of Your hands.
We thank You in Your blessed name. Amen.