If we can turn in our Bibles to 1 John 3. First John 3, starting in verse 2—actually, let’s start with verse 1.
See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are.
For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be.
We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.
And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
And then in Luke, at the very beginning, chapter 1, verse 34. This is after the angel Gabriel has appeared to Mary, greeted her, and let her know that the Lord had chosen her to bear the Christ.
And Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”
And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.
And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month.
For nothing will be impossible with God.”
And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; be it done to me according to Your word.”
And the angel departed.
And then in John, the Gospel of John, chapter 14, starting with verse 16. This is in the upper room during the Passover time, after the meal. The Lord is speaking with His disciples, and He says:
“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him. But you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
And then one last verse: 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, how glorious You are. How wonderful it is to know that we have been brought to You through Jesus Christ. Here we are, our Father, before You, wanting and desiring You to speak to us.
Lord, only You can reveal the things that are on Your heart, the things You really want us to know. Only You are able to do that. And so, Lord, we lay this hour before You and ask that You would speak to us.
Speak to us through Your Holy Spirit, through Your Word, and show us, Lord, the things that You have done for us, the things that You want for us, the things that You have made possible for us in Jesus Christ. We give You this time in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, this is the third and last time I’m going to be speaking on hope. The first time, we looked at what the hope of a Christian is. What is our hope as Christians? Then, last time, we considered our hope as something that is sure and secured for us.
Today, we want to look at living that hope. You know, we have this hope before us, but how does it pan out? How does it pan out for us? How does this hope become sight?
Hope is something that we remember; it is something we see in the far-off. But it does not mean that we never reach it. It is not a carrot on a stick. It is a reality that has been promised to us by a God who cannot lie because of Who He is.
So, the first Scripture, in looking at these four Scriptures that I read, tells us what that hope is. Our hope is that we are transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. That is our hope.
It is not just that we are saved from our sins. It is that the whole work is done, and we become, like John said, not just children of God, but sons—sons of God.
In the second Scripture, we have a dilemma concerning this hope. This hope is put plainly before us, and that brings us to a dilemma. Then the third Scripture that we have is God’s answer to this dilemma.
So, we have looked at the hope twice now, and today we stand before that hope. This is the hope that we have been given. How do I react to the hope that has been set before me?
At first glance, the obvious answer is, “I rejoice. Hallelujah! What a hope, what a wonderful thing!” It is like last time when I talked about going to Pauley Pavilion and seeing those UCLA Bruins practice and saying, “Whoa, this is us.” What a wonderful thing it was to realize in my heart that this is what we are supposed to be. This is wonderful.
Then you have the whole season before you, and all of a sudden you might have a different point of view. More often than not, when we think of things—especially Christian things, spiritual things—we rejoice and claim them. But then we face the question, “Well, how do these things get done?”
We look at ourselves and say, “I don’t see it.” And that is what we find with Mary.
Mary is told, “You are going to have the Christ.” What a wonderful message—that you are going to bear the Christ Child. But then she says to the angel, after he says God has chosen you for this very thing, “How can this be?”
We can say the same thing. God has chosen us to reflect the Son—not just to reflect, but to be conformed into His image. That is much more than reflecting His Son. God has chosen you.
Her response was, “How can this be?” I think for a lot of us—and I know for me—when you look at what God has placed before you, you say, “How can this be?”
I have been a Christian for fifty years. I remember at first how joyous everything was, but then you start realizing that something is amiss. And it is not with God. There is something amiss with me—not in the things that I do, but in who I am. There is something that is amiss. How can this be so?
Mary was a virgin. How can I have a child without having known a man? That is an impossibility. Yet the angel gave an answer to her inquiry.
The angel did not say, “Well, you’ll figure it out. Good luck to you. Oh, wait—here is a book you can read. This will help you.” He did not do anything like that.
But he answered her inquiry. He said, “The Spirit of God will overshadow you.” He led her to the Holy Spirit. This is heaven’s answer to man’s limitations.
We have limits as fallen men, but God has an answer to our limitations. Better yet, it is not just our limitations, but our extremities. Our limitations say, “Hey, we are limited. We only go so far.” Our extremities mean, “I am going to expand my box, and I am going to go as far as I can.”
When we do that, as we get beyond ourselves, we get to the place of saying, “Even that does not go far enough. Even that cannot get it done. Even that cannot bring to pass what God has promised me.”
Of course, it was never meant to bring to pass what God has promised you. There is nothing impossible with God.
There is a better rendition of this. If you remember, in the Old Testament, when Abraham and Sarah were visited by the angels, they told Abraham that Sarah was going to have a child. Sarah laughed, and the Lord said to Sarah:
“Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
I think that is better. We look at it and say, “It is impossible.” That is our frame of mind; it is on us. It is impossible. But when our eyes are put on God: “Is anything too wonderful? Is anything too wonderful for Him to do?”
So, that is His answer to us: “Is anything too wonderful?” Upon this word given by the angel, Mary responded, and her response was, “Let it be done to me according to Thy word.”
With these words, she gave herself to God and said, “Lord, You have said I am chosen for this very purpose. I give myself to You, that these things might be done.”
That is the whole key to our hope. Our hope is not for us to try to fulfill. Our hope is to say, “Oh, Lord, what a wonderful hope You have given me. But I look at myself, and I say, ‘How can these things be done?’”
He turns again and says, “I have a way, and I am going to give you My Spirit.” These are the very words, the very prayer, that opens the door to God—that opens the door to God to fulfill His purpose and His will in His servants and His children.
In His answer, God took the focus totally off Mary. Mary did not have to worry about how this was going to be done. God took the focus upon Himself: “By My Spirit.” There is where the focus is—totally off myself, totally off Mary.
Now, it is a wonderful thing, a wonderful picture. The Holy Spirit is God’s answer to our dilemma.
In a sense, it is like reading Romans 7. I used to hate this, because you get to the point of Paul saying, “The good that I want to do, I do not do. The bad that I do not want to do, I do. Who can save me from the body of this death?”
I am agreeing with that all the way, but this part just really stuck in my craw; it just burned my saddle: “But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.”
What kind of answer is that? Shouldn’t he be telling us to do something? “If you do these things, that is how you get rid of the body of this death. Just give me the five things. Give me the list. I’ll do it.”
But he does not. He leaves us with just this: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ,” because that is the answer. It is through Jesus Christ. It is only through Jesus Christ.
It is nothing that you do. It is how you respond to Him, how you respond to the life He has put in you.
It is a wonderful picture of the love of Christ for His own here: the giving of the Holy Spirit, where He says, “I will not leave you as orphans.”
An orphan is not just a person whose parents have died or given them up. An orphan, because of that situation, has no one to provide for him. There is nobody to provide for the needs that this orphan has. Who is going to look after him? Who is going to give him the things that he needs? There is no one there.
So, God says—the Lord Jesus says—“I am not going to leave you that way. I am not going to leave you unprovided for. My provision for you is the Holy Spirit. I am giving you the Holy Spirit.”
He says, “I will ask of My Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He might be with you forever.” Forever.
Not until you are past your teenage years. Not until you have gotten settled in a church. Not until you have had a wife and kids. Not until you retire. Forever.
This is the provision for us. We are provided for forever.
I am reading slowly a biography on George Müller. The orphans could only be in his orphanage for so long, but he trained them with skills and gave them a basic education so they could make it on their own when they reached the age where they could not be in the orphanage anymore.
It is not so with God. We always have the provision that He has, because we are not orphans; we are His children and His sons.
“I will ask the Father, and He might give you another Helper that might be with you forever.” The Holy Spirit is sent to indwell us. The very Spirit of Christ has been sent to indwell us—indwell us.
He comes in to indwell our spirits, saying this:
“Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is written of Me;
I delight to do Thy will, O My God;
Your law is written in My heart.”
That is how the Spirit comes into us. I know we say, “Well, this is talking about Christ.” Yes, it is, but it is also speaking of His Spirit that comes to indwell us, because the same Spirit that was in Christ is now in us. This was the Spirit that was in Christ.
In his book originally titled Divine Conquest, which today is reprinted as God’s Pursuit of Man—which I do not think is the greatest title; I think Divine Conquest should have been kept—A. W. Tozer speaks of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the regenerated Christian, or the born-again Christian.
He makes this point: the Holy Spirit does not come to indwell our spirits as a disinterested guest, or even just as a guest.
How do you treat a guest? You treat them nicely, right? But He does not come as a guest, and especially not as a disinterested guest.
He does not come to be a passenger in our life. He does not come to be an observer of your life, making a few suggestions here and there to help you out. No.
He enters into our spirits with intent. He has intent. There is something He has come to do. He is not a passenger. He has not come just to say, “Hey, let’s just chill out, buddy. We’ll just kick back here on the couch.” He has not come just to sit around in our lives.
He has come with an intent, and His intent is to rule.
He intends to come into our lives and conquer, and to vanquish any and all things that stand in the way of me being conformed to the image of Christ.
He comes like the angel of the Lord in Joshua 5. When Joshua says, “Are You for us or against us?” He says, “No, I am commander of the Lord’s army.” It is not, “I am for you,” or, “I am against you.” “I am here to do God’s will.”
That is My intent: that God’s will will be done in you and through you. I have not come with less than that on My mind, less than that in My heart. My intent and My mission are to bring you all the way through to conformity to the image of Christ.
I will not move from that intent. That will always be My intent.
He comes to lead me against the various cities in my life that need to be assailed, taken captive, and brought under His authority. He comes to wage war against sin—the lingering sin.
We were getting into the beginning of Judges. They had not driven out every Canaanite; they had not taken the whole thing. It is the same with us. We have lingering things that need to be driven out.
The Holy Spirit has come to drive them out and bring them into captivity. He has come to wage war against the flesh—our fleshly desires, our fleshly ambitions.
He has come against every high and lofty thought of self, the world, and the devil that would exalt itself higher than the hope that God has given us. He says, “No, no, no, no. That is nothing compared to this.”
It is like when Jesus was shown all the kingdoms of the world and was told, “If You only bow down and worship me, these will all be Yours.” Those things were being exalted above what He was meant to do.
The Holy Spirit has come against these things. Not only against every high and lofty thought, but against every low and lustful imagination of the flesh that would defile me and keep me forever in a place of inaction, self-loathing, and defeat.
The Holy Spirit has come against these things. He is coming into our lives to remove them and put us, as we just saw, on a higher plane, on higher ground—no longer in Adam, but now in the humanity of Christ. This is the will of God for us in Christ Jesus.
He has come as the Commander who also leads us into the kingdom of God. When I say He leads us into the kingdom of God, you say, “Well, I have been born again into the kingdom of God.” Well, that is true.
But we will also find His rule increasing in us. That is what I mean by leading us into the kingdom of God: leading us into that rule where God is ruling more and more and more of our lives.
The kingdom of God—let me put it as the definition I want to use today. In Romans 14:17, it says that the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit—not apart from the Holy Spirit’s working in us. Not righteousness apart from that which He is working into us; not peace apart from His working in us; not joy apart from His working and completing things in us.
When we talk about righteousness, we are not talking about acts that make us righteous. “Oh, if I do these things, I will become righteous.” No, because if we do these things, what do we present God? We have nothing but filthy rags, because our righteousness is nothing like that.
There is nothing that we can do that makes us righteous. We are made righteous in Christ. We have Christ’s righteousness, not a righteousness of our own.
But the righteousness He is leading us into is leading us into the will of God. That is a good definition of righteousness. What is righteousness? It is doing the will of God. That is righteousness. That is what is right. What you do is right: “I am doing His will.” That is right, and that is good.
When we think of this, it is not just a grandiose righteousness. It is a righteousness in our daily lives. It is a righteousness that comes into the very minute things in our lives—how we act toward one another, how we talk, what we do.
The good works—where do they come from? From the Spirit of God living in us, working in us. So, that is righteousness.
Peace. Well, you know, we think of peace as, “I need some quiet around here.” Okay, peace. My wife and kids will tell you that peace to me is when I go to my chair of solitude. It is in another room. No one comes in there. Peace.
But that is not the peace of the Holy Spirit we are talking about. It is not the absence of strife. It is not the absence of conflict. It is not the absence of noise.
If it was, Jesus Christ never had peace, because His life was full of conflict and strife. Those who were against Him brought conflict to Him; they brought strife.
But what we are talking about here is a harmony—a harmony between God and us. That is what the Lord Jesus Christ had. There was a harmony between Him and His Father. That is what kept Him. That was His peace.
When I say harmony, I do not mean like a singing harmony, although that is nice. Those who sing in harmony—it is really a wonderful thing. But harmony with God comes through agreement with Him.
I think a year or so ago, I gave a few messages on walking with God. One of the verses I used was Amos 3:3, where it says:
“Can two walk together, unless they are in agreement?”
The peace, the harmony, that we have with God comes with being in agreement with Him. As we are walking through life with Him and having that personal relationship with Him, we start to see Him pointing out things and saying, “That is sin.”
We have to come into agreement with Him and say, “Yes, that is sin.” When we start arguing with Him and say, “No, You are going too far here, Lord. That is really nothing,” we have to come into agreement. That is where we get peace with God. That is where we are in harmony with God.
He talks to us. He shows us. He points things out in life. “You need to be going out more to other people. You need to be inviting people into your home. I want you to invite these people into your home.”
And we say, “Oh, I do not know them.” We got invited into somebody’s house this last week. We hardly know them; we have seen them here in the fellowship. But it was a wonderful thing to be in harmony with the Lord. The Lord said, “Go.”
I am a person who really does not like to go to other people’s houses. You cannot be yourself. You cannot take your shoes off—although when I was there, I did take my shoes off, and they were not offended.
But to be in harmony with the Lord—that is how we have peace with God. That is the peace Jesus had with His Father: always at peace in the midst of conflict, always at peace because He was in agreement with His Father. He never moved out of that agreement.
And then joy. Joy is taking delight in something. “I really delight in doing this.”
What does it say? “I delight to do Thy will, O God.” I delight. I take pleasure in doing Your will.
To do the will of God was food for the Lord Jesus. You remember in John 4? “Has somebody given Him something to eat?” And He said, “I have food that you know not of.” “Well, somebody brought You some food.” “No, My food is to do the will of God.”
We are going to have a meal today. How many of you are looking forward to it? You do not have to raise your hand, but how many of you are looking forward to it—probably even more than this time right here? You are looking forward to having food and fellowship with other people, delighting in it.
That is what joy is. It is the delight in following the Lord, the delight in doing His will. That is the joy the Holy Spirit gives us.
It is not joy that baseball season has begun. It is not joy that I am retired. It is joy because I am doing the will of God. I find myself in the center of the will of God. Oh, what joy that is. What delight that is.
Now, the Holy Spirit does not transform us in order that we might do the will of God. He does not fix us up and say, “Okay, now you are ready to do the will of God.”
But He transforms us as we do the will of God. I want to have two examples here to bring this out.
In 2 Kings 5, you have the story of Naaman the leper. Remember Naaman the leper? He was a Syrian general who came to raid the northern kingdom. He captured a little Israelite girl, and she told his wife, “There is a prophet in Israel who can heal you.”
So he went over there. He came with all this entourage and everything, and Elisha, who was the prophet, did not even go out to meet him. He just said to his servant, “Tell him to go dip in the Jordan seven times, and he will be made clean.”
Naaman said, “I am not going to do that. We have cleaner rivers in Syria. I am not going to do that.” And he did not say it as calmly as I am doing. He was really upset.
He had a couple of servants who said, “If he had asked you to do something hard, you would have done it. He asked you to do this simple thing.”
So he went down to the river, and in dipping seven times, what happened? He was cleansed of his leprosy. He was transformed as he did the will of God.
That is a big thing, a big lesson we need to learn. This is what stops us from doing good works: “I cannot do it. I have to fix myself up first.” And the Lord says, “No, go do it.”
Another one—and this is probably one some of us older people know. You all remember Corrie ten Boom. Remember The Hiding Place?
Her sister died at Ravensbrück, the death camp. Corrie ten Boom, in 1947, two years after the war had ended, went to Germany to share the love of God and the forgiveness of God with the German people.
She was there speaking, and in the back of the room was a guard from Ravensbrück. She recognized him immediately. She gave a word on the forgiveness of God.
As she ended, the people were getting up to go away, and this man made his way forward to her. He said, “I did a lot of bad things.” He first confessed that he had been a guard in Ravensbrück and had done a lot of horrible things.
But after the war ended, he had been led to the Lord, and the Lord had forgiven him of all these things. Then he said, “Now I need to know that you forgive me.”
She said that all the time she was seeing him, she was thinking, “I recognize him. I know what he did. And what do I do?”
She said, “Very mechanically, as if there was no feeling at all in it, I reached out. As he reached his hand out, I forced myself to reach my hand to shake his. And the moment I touched his hand—the moment I touched his hand—the love of God came flooding into me.”
She said, “I forgive you, brother, with all my heart.”
You see, we are not transformed in order to do these things; we are transformed as we do them. This is the Lord’s way. Otherwise, we are never ready—not ever ready, but never ready.
As the Holy Spirit is leading us into the kingdom of God, we are proving to be His workmanship.
Now, do you have that? I want to show a picture up here. This is the Pietà. This is Michelangelo’s first masterpiece. I think he made it when he was twenty-one years old. It took him two years.
When I say that we are proving to be His workmanship, look at this wonderful piece of art. Look at the intricacies in this statue.
For example, look at the detail in the garment, the folds in it. Isn’t that incredible? The ankle bone, the relaxation of the body, the intricacies of the fingers, and these little pads here—all of them like that.
The almost sorrow in the face of His mother as she holds Him, the folds in her garment. Isn’t that just intricate and wonderful?
God’s work in us is just as intricate and just as wonderful. It took him two years. The Lord has said, “I am taking My time because it is My masterpiece I am making, and I will take as long as I need to.”
There is no time limit on Him, because He is doing a great work. It is like Nehemiah: “We are doing a great work. I cannot come down.”
The sculptor Michelangelo had a number of tools he would use to make this. He had different chisels and hammers to knock out rock. He had coarse papers, rough papers—like we would call sandpaper—of different coarseness.
You have that real coarse sandpaper when you want to get at really rough stuff. It is rough. Then you get a finer sandpaper and start to smooth it further. Then you get one that is almost like a cloth, an emery cloth, and make it even smoother. Then you also have real soft cloths to polish.
Think about Michelangelo. When he got a piece of stone—dead stone—it is said that he saw what he wanted to make in the stone, and that is why he purchased that piece of stone.
He would look until he found the piece of stone where he said, “I can see what I am making in there.” Not that it was within the stone, but he could see what he wanted to do. He could see it: “I can see what I want to do, and I know I will be able to do it.”
Now, the Holy Spirit has His tools. Look at the Holy Spirit’s tools. He uses the Word of God in our lives.
Whether it is the study of the Word of God, whether we are memorizing it, whether it is just the reading of the Word of God, whether it is the Word of God speaking to us through a ministry, or through a brother or sister talking with us and using the Word of God, He uses His Word.
He uses our relationships with others. We have an unforgiving spirit? Oh, He will use somebody you need to forgive. Or He will use someone who will forgive you to change your heart and spirit.
He uses assembly life. We were talking about that when we did the Sunday night meetings—why we gather. He uses life circumstances and trials. He uses illness. He uses disappointment. He uses the love that the brethren have for us.
He uses our prayers. That is, I think, one of the biggest things I have been finding out, because I have been seeking to fix my prayer life.
As you pray, you might be praying for something, and if you pray for it over time, you find that all of a sudden you get some light on it, and your whole heart changes about what you are praying about.
It comes to the place where the Lord gave us a prayer. He said, “Our Father who art in heaven, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” It comes to the place of saying, “I want to pray Your will. I want to see Your will for this. I want Your will to be done.”
I know I have this thing in my life right now. I want Your will to be done over that. Our prayer life—He uses it, molds it, and changes it.
Yet we are not always compliant. Oftentimes, we resist His working with us. But when we resist, He wrestles with us.
There is a great hymn. I know I choose all these obscure hymns, do I not? This hymn is number 490 in the book. I am not going to read it all because it has fourteen verses here, but the original was more like thirty.
It was written by Charles Wesley, about four years into his being a Christian. Originally, it was titled “Wrestling Jacob,” but here it is called “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown.” It is a picture of his wrestling.
Verse 1 says:
Come, O Thou traveler unknown,
Whom still I hold but cannot see;
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee.
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.
“I need not tell Thee who I am.” That is a great verse. I do not have to tell God who I am.
I need not tell Thee who I am;
My sin and misery declare.
Thyself hast called me by my name;
Look on Thy hands, and read it there.
But who, I ask Thee, who art Thou?
Tell me Thy name, and tell me now.
And then verse 7:
My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath Thy weighty hand;
Faint to revive, and fall to rise,
I fall, and yet by faith I stand.
I stand, and will not let Thee go,
Till I Thy name and nature know.
And verse 12:
The Sun of righteousness on me
Hath risen with healing in His wings;
Withered my nature’s strength, from Thee
My soul its life and succor brings.
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and Thy name is love.
And then verse 14:
Lame as I am, I take the prey;
Hell, earth, and sin with ease o’ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And as a bounding hart I run,
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and Thy name is love.
The first time I heard that, Lance used it when he brought messages on Jacob back in California in 1979.
Through His perseverance in wrestling with us, His strength, His wounding us, we find His name as love. He is the love that never lets us go, the love that conquers our soul.
His wounding changes the way we walk, the way we live our lives, the way we view all things. No longer are we self-reliant, but we are forever leaning on a staff.
That staff for us is Christ Himself, Who is made known to us through the Holy Spirit and through our experience.
Finally, the Holy Spirit is God’s seal upon us and seal within us. That seal shows that He has put His claim on us: “I have redeemed you. You are Mine.” So says Isaiah 43.
He has written His name on us for others to read as we live before them, walking by the light and life of His indwelling Spirit. They are the ones who ask us, “What is this hope that you have?” because they see our lives are being transformed.
You know something? This is the most wonderful thing of all. The Holy Spirit, like our hope, has been given to us by God.
We do not have to earn Him. We do not have to earn His indwelling. We do not have to do something to gain His indwelling. God has given Him to us as our Helper, to indwell us forever.
He has been given to us by God to dwell in us with intent—the intent that we will be like Christ and even share His glory. He has been sent that we might realize the hope that God has put in us.
Since we have such a hope, let’s give ourselves to this Helper, Who is able to construct those highways to Zion in our hearts, Who is able to bring us all the way to God—before God—not in fear of punishment, but in the hope of being those spirits of just men made perfect.
Charles Wesley, in another hymn, writes:
Finish, then, Thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see Thy great salvation,
Perfectly restored in Thee.
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
This is the kind intention of God’s will for us in Christ Jesus. To Him be glory forevermore.
What great things He has for us. What great things He has done for us, and what a great thing He has done in seeing to it that these things can be made complete through the Holy Spirit indwelling us.
What a great God we have, Who not only gives us hope, but gives us One to lead us through to the end of that hope—to endure till the end. We have that hope held onto tightly, and He has us tightly in His grasp.
Our Father, You are so good and great and gracious to us. Who could have thought that God would want to do anything for those like us?
There is no reason in the world that we could imagine it. Our thoughts do not even rise to that height. But You—Your thoughts are greater than our thoughts. Oh, Lord, how we thank You that is so.
How we thank You that You do not only give us the hope, but You give us One to lead us all the way through to the end of that hope.
Lord, we accept Him. We say, “Lord, come boldly into our hearts afresh. Fill us anew with Thy Spirit. Holy Spirit, come.”
And do what You intend to do. We give You our lives. We, like Mary, say to You, “Here I am. Let Your will be done.”
And we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.