Well, good morning, everybody. Always great to be together, isn’t it, in the house of the Lord?
This morning, I felt compelled to share something that really goes back almost a year and a half. So I have had some time to consider it and think about what the Lord showed me. The more I considered it, the more I thought it might be worth sharing with you folks this morning.
What I want to share about is a trip that my wife and I took to Louisiana this spring. But the focus will not be so much on the trip itself; it is what the Lord showed me through that trip. The way the trip unfolded was really a beautiful picture of how our salvation unfolded.
I saw a mirror image—an exact representation—of what all of us have been through to bring us to where we are here this morning. So that is going to be my focus this morning. I will share about the trip we took, but we need to remember this one thing: we have, oh, so great a salvation.
That is what the Lord has done for us. He refreshed us with this thought of our salvation as we took this trip. It just became living and alive to me, and He so refreshed our hearts. But I thought, if it refreshed me, why cannot that refresh all of us?
There are times in our lives when we can grow stagnant and stale and become dissipated because of everyday life and the pressures we go through. There is a real danger in that: we can lose our first love. We can slowly drift away.
So, in the Lord’s great mercy, He re-energizes us, refreshes us, and renews that excitement in our hearts for Him.
This morning, I am going to share more of an extended testimony—a little more than what we can do on a typical testimony day. The thing about testimonies is that they are like the rising tide: they lift all boats.
My desire this morning is that we would be lifted together as we deepen our appreciation of the Lord. Gosh, it is already ten after. Time is quickly getting away, so we need to get started.
What the Lord has impressed upon me is simply this: so great a salvation we have, and what the Lord did for us to bring about this salvation, that we might dwell in intimate fellowship with Him. That is His desire.
Our Lord Jesus is truly the God of the impossible. Do not ever forget that. Sometimes we can lose sight of that.
To get us on track, or to lay out a roadmap this morning, we will be looking at three aspects of this so great a salvation that were brought to life for me again as a result of taking this trip to Louisiana. So, if you happen to be a note taker, here they are.
First, as fallen, sinful people, we discover that we cannot, by our own effort, win our way to heaven. We need help—someone who can deliver us from our hopeless condition.
That is number one: you cannot do it yourself. We probably experienced that as young folks before we came to the Lord. Try as we might, our own flesh could not do it. We needed help.
Number two, we find that we need an advocate, a mediator, even a Savior—in order to redeem us.
Think back in your lives many years ago. Was there not somebody who fulfilled that role? Perhaps it was a mother, a father, a friend, a relative, or some association that we may have had, and they were praying for us.
Eventually, they were that human advocate we had, but they led us to the Lord. Jerry, I know in your case your mother led you to the Lord. It was not an easy thing, but she did. You have told us the story.
For me, I was led to the Lord by a Catholic priest back in the 1970s, during the Jesus movement that came through the schools and colleges then. We all carried that little version of a Bible called Good News for Modern Man. It may have been a Catholic Bible, but a lot of us had that. You probably remember that. But that was way back when.
Having been made sons of light, we praise Him for our salvation. Whatever it took to get us in, He did it. So here we are this morning. We have been born again to that glorious hope.
The third item: do you think we were saved merely to avoid eternal death? No, that is only the beginning. Being saved is only the doorway into the kingdom.
We were saved that we may enter into full, unhindered fellowship with the Father and His dear Son forevermore, as it was intended to be from the very beginning, before the fall of man.
Hence, my theme verse this morning is found in John 14:2-3. You do not really need to put that up; I will read it.
In My Father’s house are many abodes;
if it were not so, I would have told you;
for I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I come again, and will receive you unto Myself;
that where I am, there ye may be also.—John 14:2-3
This whole thought that I want to convey this morning came about as a result of a trip that Lynn and I took to Louisiana early this spring. Why or how did the Lord use a road trip—or even a vacation—to reinvigorate and refresh us? That is a question we need to consider.
More importantly, what does it have to do with the rest of us? Is there any value in that? Who cares why I went? But I do think there is value; otherwise, I would not feel like the Lord would have me up here this morning.
The answer lies in the fact that the Lord can take things we already know—like the three things I just mentioned—and reinvigorate and refresh us. Our love for the Lord should grow as we appreciate Him even more. When He does that refreshing, it should lift all of our hearts.
I would like to tell the story of how He accomplished this. I will have to lay a broad base, almost like a pyramid, and build this thing as we go along. It is not necessarily something new or something you have not heard, but it never hurts to hear these things again and let them become new and living again. He is so faithful.
It is not my intention to present a travel log, as that can be done over lunch any day. I wrestled with even doing this at all because I did not want it to come across as a travel log or merely a recollection of a trip we took. In and of itself, that would mean no value to us.
It is what the Lord showed me that I want us to focus on this morning—not the trip, but the picture of our salvation. Do not forget that. That is what we need to see: what a wonderful thing He has done for us.
Why would my wife and I want to travel all the way to Louisiana to begin with? What compelled us to take such a long trip? We did drive it. It is a long way, believe me. What could possibly be the attraction?
The answer goes back about a year and a half before we traveled. It began for me as a result of reading a well-known, if not famous, diary of a young woman named Sarah Morgan, who grew up in Baton Rouge before the Civil War.
Some of you in here, I know, already have that diary. I hope you get a chance to read it, because it is not simply a diary; it is a testimony of a life to the Lord.
As we read that diary, we were so inspired that I had to go see some of the places she wrote about. It was unbelievable, really. Let me tell you a little about Sarah Morgan.
She was a woman of many sorrows throughout her life, but nevertheless a woman of hope, who persevered because of her abiding trust in the Lord. Although she was far from perfect, like all of us are, you see instances of her faith woven throughout her narrative.
In such tumultuous and uncertain times, she never lost her faith and trust in the Lord, or her dependence upon Him. This was one of the things that so captivated me as I read her account.
Sarah was born in 1842 in New Orleans. As a young girl, she and her family moved to Baton Rouge, where her father was a judge. That is where she grew up.
By the time she was nineteen, the Civil War had begun. With Baton Rouge under siege in 1862, the town was subjected to sporadic and unpredictable gunfire from Union naval ships anchored in the harbor, right off the town docks.
It was a small town in those days, not the large capital city it is today—just a small habitation along the river. Frequently, the town was shelled, and it terrorized the townspeople. Shrapnel scattered into homes, and some people Sarah knew were killed.
Sarah even speaks of shells whizzing right over her head, coming down the street and slamming into houses. They were terrorized. At some point, the situation became untenable, and the citizens had to flee for their lives, including Sarah and her family.
They packed up their little wagon with what they could take. Sarah let her pet parakeet, Jimmy, fly away. They left the city and went into the countryside. For several months, they were refugees, staying wherever someone would take them in, or else in the woods or along the road.
In the midst of this danger, Sarah frequently quoted this line from one of her favorite hymns:
I hope to die shouting,
“The Lord will provide.”
And the way things were going, that very nearly happened. That was no joke.
Food was scarce, too. There was all manner of deprivation. Her sister had five babies and little children they were trying to carry along. They had no food and nowhere to care for them. It was a very, very bad situation.
Sarah even laments:
I have become an irreligious person because I have not been to church in three months. All I do is run from the Yankees, and they soon catch up with me, and then I run again. How long must this go on? And when will this dreadful war ever end?
Eventually, they found themselves at a place called Lynnwood, a large sugar plantation some distance from Baton Rouge and, therefore, a somewhat safer location. It was apparently owned by some of her relatives.
For the next eight months, Sarah and her family lived at Lynnwood. Soon after arriving, she had a severe buggy accident—their version of a car crash. She was thrown from the buggy, fractured her back, and became a temporary invalid for quite a few months. She had to be carried everywhere. Things went from bad to worse.
But, as I mentioned, she was strong in her faith and clung to the Lord. While she was there, Sarah describes the siege of Port Hudson, on the Mississippi River just five miles from Lynnwood. The house shook from the concussion of exploding shells.
Once again, terrified as they were, they had to flee Lynnwood. Soon after, the Union army descended on Lynnwood Plantation, taking the home over as their headquarters and the sugar-processing house as a hospital.
Sarah and her family eventually made their way down to New Orleans, where she stayed with her brother for the rest of the war.
There is one little side note I thought was interesting. Remember, I told you that she let her pet parakeet go? Somewhere in her travels, one day, that parakeet landed on her shoulder from out of nowhere.
She did not make much comment about it, other than the fact that she was absolutely glad to see her pet. But I saw it as a picture of the Holy Spirit being with her. To me, that was the message there, and I believe it was true.
Time moved on, as it continually does. Late in the war, Sarah lost two brothers, one about a week apart. They perished in the Civil War. One is buried up here in Orange Courthouse.
After getting over the shock, she wrote in her diary:
Surely God has sent all these afflictions within these three years to teach us that our hopes must be placed above, and that it is blasphemy to have earthly idols.
She absolutely loved her brothers and sisters. That was her life. So she was devastated by their loss.
Furthermore, she wrote:
Did not our Lord say He would come unto those who love Him and make His abode there? And though I am so sinful, had I not ventured to approach His table? Did He not say He would in no wise cast out those who came to Him? Let me believe it was the peace of God. It has left me with a peace that passes all understanding.
What immortal words.
The war, with all its sadness and hardship, finally ended, and life gradually resumed, although never again as it was before the war. By the time she was twenty-three, she had already lost her father and three brothers.
The family never did return to Baton Rouge, as their home was mostly destroyed.
As she approached the end of her life as an elderly woman, she reread her diary—the diary she had threatened to burn so many times along the way. I am glad she did not.
She reread the diary and made insertions above the lines of her original entries. Let me give you an example. In one original entry, she wrote:
God, help me bear my life patiently, to offer it as a sacrifice to Thee. But when I am purified from earthly taint, and God pronounces me clean in His mercy, let me find it above. This belief, O cherish my soul, and no earthly disappointment can cast you down. I may seem to forget all the rest, but mark, if I still cling to this faith in the darkness and trouble through which my life threatened to take me.
About forty years later, Sarah wrote in the margin above those words:
Thank God, I have kept the faith. I have kept the faith through such joy and through such sorrow as that poor little girl never dreamed of.
Throughout all she suffered in life, Sarah never doubted the faithfulness of her Lord.
In 1909, at the age of sixty-six, just before she passed away, she made one last entry in her diary:
I shall die here, far from all I once clung to more than life. So be it. I need no home. I need no friends. I need no old associations. The peace of God supplies all deficiencies.
Oh, can that be our testimony?
The diary she began as a child of nineteen and kept throughout her life—what she called “my old and true friend”—survived her. She is buried in St. Lawrence Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina, but resides in glory, no doubt.
After reading Sarah’s diary, I decided I wanted to make a trip down there and see some of the places she talked about. I was really compelled to do that. It was such a wonderful story.
More importantly, I decided I wanted to find Lynnwood. I wanted to see the place where a large part of this diary was written, where some of these stories took place. That became my objective and my destination.
Frankly, I did not care that it was a thousand miles away. I did not just want to see it from afar. I wanted to go there, go into the house, and meet the owners of the place.
Lynn heard me talking about it and laughed at me a little bit. I said, “Remember, Sarah laughed at God, and Abraham too.”
She said, “Well, exactly how do you expect to go to someone’s home a thousand miles away, who does not even know us? Good luck, mister.”
In my defense, after my wife read the diary, she said she wanted to go to Lynnwood too. So I felt somewhat vindicated after that.
Now, look, I have gotten somewhat deep into this story. Please bear with me so that we can bring it together and show you what the Lord showed me. I promise it is coming. I wanted to give you the background of why we wanted to do this.
We were determined to go to Lynnwood, perhaps the following April. But I wondered whether it even still existed. Most plantation homes of that era along the Mississippi did not survive the ravages of time.
The Mississippi frequently floods, and many homes were swept away over the last 170 years. What was not swept away by floods was struck by lightning, burned down, became abandoned, or was torn down. For whatever reason, most did not survive.
So where do you begin? How was I going to find out about Lynnwood? Maybe you guessed it: you Google “Lynnwood Plantation, Louisiana.”
I did that, and a black-and-white, very old picture popped up. The caption said, “Lynnwood Plantation.” I looked at it and thought, “Gosh, that is a dilapidated old building. The weeds have grown shoulder-high around it. It looks abandoned, not lived in, and totally run down.”
Then I read the caption a little lower down. It said, “Lynnwood Plantation, just before it was torn down in 1939.” I said, “Oh my gosh, I cannot believe it. It does not even exist anymore.”
After I gathered myself together, I remembered seeing a picture of it in the diary. I compared the picture in the diary with the one online, and they looked very similar. Finally, it hit me: one home had four columns, and the other had six. Maybe there were two different Lynnwoods.
So I searched again, this time typing in “Lynnwood Plantation near Baton Rouge.” A picture came up that matched the exact picture in the diary. I said, “That is it.” It looked like it had been kept up very well for being 170 years old.
I was gratified to see that it still existed. My next step was to figure out how to get there and where it was exactly.
I contacted an author and historian at Louisiana State University. She quickly got back to me and said that although she had never been there, she had heard of it and was familiar with it, though not enough to tell me whether I could get to it.
She suggested that I contact the historical society in East Feliciana Parish, where she thought the home was located. We did, and we spoke with a very nice lady who was certainly familiar with it. She said she would check with someone who really knew and get back to us about the status of the place.
I was pretty excited by then because the trail seemed to be getting hotter. True to her word, she soon contacted us by email, saying that Lynnwood was privately owned and not open to the public, even as a historic property or a bed-and-breakfast.
That was not what I wanted to hear—not at all. Unfortunately, she did not know the current owners, and she told us that the property was gated. They did not even open for garden week. I was trying everything I could.
The only hopeful thing that came out of the correspondence was that the mile-long lane up to the house was accessible, but only to the electronic security gate. Depending on the time of year, you could see the house across a quarter-mile field if the sugar cane or corn was not too tall.
I was resigned to the fact that maybe that was all we would be able to do if we made the trip. At least it was better than nothing. But I was greatly disappointed.
The point I am trying to make is this: I had exhausted all my efforts. I was getting nowhere in trying to get into Lynnwood. I was in the same spot where I started, trying to make this happen, and I was not one bit closer.
Getting into Lynnwood seemed impossible. There was nothing else I could do. Lynn was right after all, it seemed, but she did not laugh at me this time because I was pretty upset.
Remember the three things I mentioned at the beginning? This is the first lesson the Lord showed me as a result of my failure to gain access to Lynnwood. Nothing I could do would get me any closer to gaining access to that property.
Now, does that not sound like our first dilemma in coming to the Lord? Can you see the parallel here? You cannot do it yourself. No matter how clever or skilled you are, you are not going to do it yourself.
You are not going to find your way to the Lord merely because you are a good person. You see what I am saying. Thanks to Adam, our best human efforts cannot bring us into the presence of God.
What if only somebody could help us?
This was the first thing the Lord reminded me of through this trip: we do need help. We cannot gain access to the Father, even by our best efforts. When man fell, he gave up fellowship with God. He was cast from paradise.
We know the sad story, but God does not give up when all seems lost. Remember, I said He is the God of the impossible. He truly is.
In order to regain that lost fellowship with God, man needed help—an advocate, so to speak. That was my first lesson.
Let us examine the word advocate for a moment. To me, it implies three things.
You know I am talking about Jesus. Only He can be our true Advocate. Our Lord Jesus is our Advocate. I like that word. It really witnesses to me.
Our Lord Jesus, first, recognized our inability to come to the Father and enter the kingdom. He knew we could not do it.
Second, He took compassion upon us and was willing to do something about it. Only He could do that.
Third, He was willing to go to the cross for us, because only He could accomplish that which we could not.
Had we not had an Advocate, none of us would be sitting here this morning. So number one is: you cannot do it yourself. Number two is: we had to have an Advocate, and that is the Lord Jesus.
I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me.
—John 14:6
And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.
—Acts 4:12
Clearly, Jesus—and He alone—is our Advocate before the Father, ever pleading on our behalf.
My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
—1 John 2:1
Not only do we sin, but we were born in sin, with no escape except by Jesus and His death on the cross—our heavenly Advocate. The good news is that all is not lost. There is a way to the Father in heaven. Remember that word: advocate. It is so important.
Now, back to my Lynnwood dilemma. I knew I needed an advocate if I was to gain my way in.
About a year before our Louisiana trip, I was speaking to a friend of mine in Fredericksburg who grew up in Baton Rouge. I had not even realized that at first. I told him about the diary I had read, and he said, “Well, I have read it too. I wish I could have gone to Lynnwood when I still lived down there.”
How do you like that? I never would have thought I would run into somebody who knew the dilemma I was facing.
The next thing I knew, he was on his phone calling somebody—an old friend from his LSU days, a fellow named Robbie Rung, who was a realtor in Baton Rouge.
Bill told him that my wife and I wanted to make a trip down there to tour the area and, if possible, have a look at Lynnwood. In time, I had the unexpected pleasure of meeting Robbie Rung and his brother. They made a trip to Virginia that past winter, and we really hit it off. We had so much in common that we became close friends.
He and his brothers are believers. They were planning to go to the Holy Land early the following year, and he told me that his brother Bill, having never been baptized as a young man, wanted to be baptized in the Jordan River. I thought that was right cool. I was really blessed to hear that.
But this is the important part: Robbie said to contact him prior to our trip to Baton Rouge so that he could arrange to be our tour guide and try to get us into Lynnwood. Now I had an advocate in Robbie Rung.
Finally, the time came for us to begin our journey to Louisiana. Contact had been made with Robbie. He was willing to be our guide, the places we planned to stay had been reserved, and everything was set to go.
The only part of the trip that had not been finalized was our visit to Lynnwood. Robbie had been strangely quiet about this. We had been communicating by email and phone calls, and I knew he was working at it, but nothing had been resolved.
I wondered what was going on because it was getting close to our trip. I knew he was having difficulty making contact with the owners, primarily because of the electronic gate. You cannot just go to the phone book anymore and call somebody. With all the privacy matters now, it is hard to get hold of someone if you cannot get to them.
I did not know the ongoing situation, but I was beginning to worry. Had Robbie been successful in contacting the owners? I simply did not know.
But I trusted his determination and ability to make the impossible happen. That is an important point for us this morning.
With the Lord Jesus as our Advocate, we may not know all the things going on in our lives, but we trust Him to be our Advocate because we know He is doing all He can for us. He is our Advocate, and He will prevail.
We just need to trust and obey and live by faith. Trust our Advocate, right? I was having a little trouble trusting my advocate. I did not know exactly how successful he was going to be.
But I looked at it this way: if he was a real-estate professional and a native of the area, then if he could not make contact with the Lynnwood owners, probably nobody could. He was clearly the right man for the job. He was the advocate I needed.
So onward we went. Two days later, after nearly 1,100 miles, we were one hour out of Baton Rouge. We were on Interstate 10 when I got a phone call.
It was Robbie. He said, “I have got some news. I have got some news for you.”
Then came the reply I had been waiting a year and a half to hear. I did not know exactly what he was going to say. I was kind of nervous about it.
He said, “Bobby, I just got an email from Mr. Ed Hackenberg of Lynnwood Plantation. I had been waiting all week to get a reply from my handwritten letter that I sent him earlier in the week as a last-ditch effort.”
Everything else Robbie had tried had failed. He had been there several times to try to get in, but the gate was always locked. There was no way to make contact. So he was pretty much at the end of his ideas. He had the mailing address, so he wrote and sent a handwritten letter. He did not know whether he would receive a response.
He was a stranger, just as we were. But he said, “I have got good news, good news.”
Mr. Hackenberg said, “Y’all come on to Lynnwood tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and I will leave the electronic gate open. I might or might not be there, but spend all the time you want walking around the yard and taking in the sights. You are totally welcome here.”
Hallelujah.
Needless to say, I was exhilarated. That was the culmination of many months of anticipation. Yes, my advocate Robbie had won our way into Lynnwood.
I hope by now you see the big picture of the role of an advocate. It is a picture of Jesus. This was my trip, but it was really the story of our salvation and what Jesus has done for us.
As I have stated over and over, our Lord Jesus does for us what we cannot accomplish for ourselves.
The next morning, we arrived at Lynnwood at the appointed time. We drove up the mile-long lane, and sure enough, the electronic gate was swung open. We drove right up into the yard, got out, walked around, and took in the sights. It really was a lovely place.
It is now a twenty-six-acre farm, not a multi-thousand-acre sugar plantation. The pictures really do not justify the beauty of the place.
We knocked on the door but did not get a response. We waited a few minutes, walked around the yard, talked about the place, and took in all the sights we could.
Then, next thing you know, a man came walking around the corner of the house—Mr. Hackenberg. He was home.
We made our introductions and got to know one another. He said his wife was at church that morning, so she was not home. But he could not have been more friendly. He was totally gracious and welcoming, just the most amiable person you could meet.
He quickly warmed up to us—strangers that we were. Were we not strangers ourselves at one time? You bet we were.
He was a retired airline pilot and had lived there for thirty-some years. I suspect he thought we were just curious tourists from Virginia with little or no idea about the story of Lynnwood.
But once he found out that we had read the diary—and that he had read it too—he found out that we knew the story. He really warmed up to us and told us all kinds of interesting things about his home and the people who had lived there. It was fascinating history.
We went up on the veranda and stood there while Mr. Hackenberg told his story. As I listened, I thought of all I had been through to reach that destination, and how it all came about.
The impossible had not been impossible. My prayers were answered. I had been asking the Lord for nearly two years to open the doors of Lynnwood for us.
I reflected on how great our God is, how generous He is, and how He wants close fellowship with us. The Lord Jesus Himself became our Advocate to bring us to the Father through His redeeming love displayed on the cross. These thoughts overwhelmed me.
And it was now about the sixth hour, and a darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, the sun’s light failing: and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst. And Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.
—Luke 23:44-46
The curse of sin was broken, and the way was opened for us to enter into the very presence of God.
It is so much more than merely being saved, brothers and sisters. God has opened the doors and invited us into His everlasting kingdom to enjoy that close fellowship and relationship with Him that He and His Son have longed for from the very beginning.
Father, I desire that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
—John 17:24
This is the longing, passionate plea of our Lord, pouring out His heart to the Father: “Enter fully, fully into My presence.”
Now let me pause for a moment to ask this question. This is critical. If you have heard nothing I have said so far this morning, and you would prefer not to hear much else I have to say, at least hear this part. This is the crux of the matter. This is what I have been leading up to all morning.
Now, we as Christians, are we satisfied to dwell in the yard of the kingdom? Have you ever thought about it?
Are we satisfied to be barely saved—enough to be on the property, through the electronic gate, just to be saved? Are we satisfied just with that?
Are we happily sitting in the shade of the trees, laying back, drinking our tea, looking at the views, looking over the fields, and watching all the activity on the farm?
Think about farm life. There is no busier place than farm life. Some of my relatives on my mother’s side were farmers. I remember, as a young boy, going to the farm and seeing the cows and all the crops—always busy.
That can be the way church life is. We can be on the farm. We are saved, soundly saved. We are through the security gate. Our salvation is secure.
We can be extremely busy doing things on the farm—extremely busy doing things in the church, as it were—and we can miss the Lord.
We can be doing good things, necessary things. We can be like Martha, but the Lord wants Mary.
That is the warning of just being on the farm. Do not be satisfied merely with being there, because God our Father has so much more that He wants us to enter into.
Then came the defining moment. We were in the yard of Lynnwood, even on the beautiful veranda in the charming company of the owner. I looked at Robbie, and he looked back at me.
I was standing by the window, and I wanted to look in that window. I was thinking, “Will he ever invite us into the house?”
Oh, how that question burned holes in my pockets. Then the suspense was finally broken. He said, “Now come on in, folks. I want to show you around the house.”
I went, “All right!”
Then he laughed, saying, “I do not think Mrs. Hackenberg will care if she is not here, and so long as I do not take you upstairs to the bedrooms, she probably will not care at all. So y’all come on in.”
We soon found ourselves inside the home. Most of the rooms were quite large, with original floors. So much of the place was like it had been from the very beginning, except for the kitchens and bathrooms, of course.
I became flooded with thoughts of all that had transpired within those walls. Mr. Hackenberg showed us vintage pictures of the original family who owned the place, the Carters. The home was built in 1848.
He brought us first into the dining room. The place had thirteen-foot ceilings, which made it seem enormous. The first thing I noticed was the dining-room table. It ran nearly the length of the room, a beautiful mahogany table.
I am kind of into antiques anyway, and I was really intrigued by it. But I got to thinking that one day we are going to be at the marriage feast of the Lamb, and there is going to be somebody sitting at the head of that table who is very, very special to all of us.
There will be a magnificent marriage feast of the Lamb, and we will be there.
Then we moved to the parlor, the equivalent of what we would call a living room today. It had period antiques, pictures, and paintings on the walls. It was a beautiful, lovely place, the way they had kept it up.
Then we worked our way around to the biggest room in the house, called the ballroom. It stretched the whole length of the house, like a double room. It was huge.
I thought about what I had read in the diary and the stories Sarah told of events that took place there—the balls, the dances, and all that. I was just taken in by it.
I thought, “Do you think they might be dancing in heaven?” I do not know. Could be. There will be some kind of celebration, will there not?
Finally, we went back into the hallway and looked around the house some more. Mr. Hackenberg showed us even more history and just opened it up to us in an amazing way. I was thinking, “Gosh, if walls could talk, what could they say?” I wished they would speak. The history was unbelievable.
Then something really funny happened. Mrs. Hackenberg was not home, and Mr. Hackenberg became excited about the history. We were standing at the staircase looking up, and he started laughing.
He said, “I cannot help it, fellas. Y’all are coming upstairs. Mrs. Hackenberg will never know.”
So we went upstairs, and he began to show us the rest of the house. We went to the veranda out back and looked out over the fields.
I thought about the diary. Sarah was a guitar player, and one of her favorite things to do in the evenings was to play her guitar while people gathered around to sing hymns—just like what we do here.
Being on that veranda and thinking about the crowd gathered there as she played her guitar and they sang really blessed me. It meant a lot to me.
Mr. Hackenberg showed us around upstairs and told us more things. He was like a walking encyclopedia of Lynnwood. To the surprise of all of us, he pointed out the room in which Sarah resided while she was an invalid there, writing her diary.
I did not ask him how he knew that, but he sure had a lot of facts, and he shared everything with us. He held nothing back.
At noon, we needed to wind it up. Then I was overwhelmed again with this verse found in John 14:2-3:
In My Father’s house are many abodes;
if it were not so, I would have told you;
for I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I come again, and will receive you unto Myself;
that where I am, there ye may be also.—John 14:2-3
We arrived there as strangers, but when we left, we were no longer strangers. We were family.
When we first arrived on this earth, we were strangers to our Lord. But this morning, we are no longer strangers to Him. We are family. We belong to Him.
He has become our Advocate. He has redeemed us. He has brought us to Himself.
Not only has He brought us to Himself; He has taken us into His inner courts with our heavenly Father, where we can dwell with Him forever.
That is what is on our Father’s heart this morning: that we would not simply be satisfied to be on the farm. He wants us to come into the farmhouse, to dwell with Him, to have intimate fellowship with Him, to take His rest, to sit on the porch, and to talk with Him.
You see what I am saying? That is the beauty of it. How often we become partially satisfied when the Lord has done it all for us.
So that is the story of Sarah Morgan and the story of Lynnwood. But, most importantly, it is the story of our Advocate and heavenly Father.
He desires the uttermost for you and me: to dwell with Him and His precious Son, even in His inner courts. What a blessing. What a blessing.
In My Father’s house are many abodes;
if it were not so, I would have told you.—John 14:2
Brothers and sisters, it is very much so. Very much so.
I encourage you: enter, rejoice, and come in. Let us pray.
Father in heaven, we thank You for this time together this morning. Lord, my prayer is that You have refreshed us as we see what a glorious salvation You have wrought for us.
When we see that we were not able, Lord, and that You were able; when we see that You were more than willing to invite us totally into Your inner courts, our hearts rejoice when we see what You have done for us.
Lord, it is with gratitude that we say thank You this morning for what I hope You have shown us. Refresh our hearts, that we would not grow tired and weary in the days in which we live.
Lord, we bless You in the name of Jesus. Amen.