Well, good morning, saints.
Good morning.
It is always a delight to be here and to be together, fellowshipping together. And it was really a delight in the last hour to worship the Lord together. It was a real treat yesterday to be together with so many who are looking to the Lord concerning what He might have for this coming summer conference.
As I considered this time before the Lord, I became very excited to be here, though I was not necessarily excited to speak, right? But we would be obedient to the Lord. As I considered the time, He really gave me a few simple thoughts to share and ponder together.
Let us begin by turning to a few Scriptures, starting in Philippians 3. This is actually a verse I shared yesterday: Philippians 3:12-14.
Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect: but I press on,
that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do,
forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Back home in Houston, we are in a study of Genesis, and I will make reference to part of Jacob’s story in Genesis 32-35. I know a number of you have been looking at the story of Jacob, and I believe our brother Isaiah read many of those verses to you back in November. We will focus particularly on portions of Genesis 32-35.
This is where we see Jacob wrestling with the Lord at Peniel. I always struggle with saying that word—sorry. Anyway, we see him wrestling with the Lord there at Peniel, where he receives his new name, Israel. Then, after that, we see him settle for a period in Shechem before he returns to Bethel.
One other verse I want to read before we begin is Malachi 3:7.
From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from mine ordinances, and have not kept them.
Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.
But ye say, Wherein shall we return?
Let us commit this time to the Lord.
Lord, we do look to You. We know it is Your heart to reveal Yourself to us. So, Lord, we ask that You would speak to us. Lord, anoint the words that You desire us to hear, and anoint our ears to receive that which is on Your heart. Lord, we surrender and commit ourselves into Your faithful hands. In Jesus’ name, amen.
As I said, my burden this morning is really this charge that Paul gave to the Philippians in Philippians 3: to press onward and upward into the fullness of Christ.
No matter how much we have experienced of the Lord, no matter how much we have seen of the Lord—and we have seen great things—we realize that it is really very small. It is minuscule compared with how big, how large, how marvelous our Lord Jesus is.
That is why we know there is always more. There is more that He wants us to enter into, more that He wants us to see, and more that He even wants to recover and remind us of.
We are not looking to gain more knowledge of Christ in order to try to live the Christian life. We know that is impossible. We really want to know more about Who He is so that we may draw near to Him. It is a love relationship, a personal and intimate relationship, that He desires.
That knowledge comes from learning more about Who He is, how He wants to shepherd and guide us, and how He wants to walk with us. He wants to conform us to the very likeness of Christ. Are we those who are cooperating, responding, and hastening His soon return? We know that is what is on His heart.
There is more. This concept has actually been a theme for our family retreats at the end of the year for the last few years, as we gather together as a larger group of family.
Again, we are reminded that wherever we are in life, there is more to see and know of Him, and more that He wants to reveal of Himself. God’s heart is to have a bride for His Son, and we have not arrived at that wedding day yet. So, we know there is more.
But even when we arrive at that wedding day, praise the Lord, we will be forever with Him, learning more about how fantastic, marvelous, great, and worthy He is. We are blessed to be part of that chosen bride, that one body, that one church—all these pictures of the intimacy that He wants with us: that personal relationship and that corporate relationship.
It is an eternal relationship, looking toward that wedding day. Today we see dimly; we see as in a mirror. But that day we will see fully, and we will know fully, even as we are fully known today. Praise the Lord.
So we keep looking to Him: What is more? What is on His heart? How do we press on so that, at the end of our lives, like Paul, we can say that we have finished the race, run the course the Lord has put before us, and reached that which is on His heart—the fullness of all that is on His heart?
The danger is always, no matter where we are in our Christian walk, that we settle or stop short—short of the fullness of what is on the Lord’s heart and short of seeing the fullness of all He desires.
Praise the Lord, we know that He who has begun a good work will complete that work. But we have a part in that. We need to respond to His calling, to His love, and to His glorious eternal purpose into which He has brought us.
Now, those are not the specific points I will discuss this morning, but we do need to be those who are responding.
The Lord has put three simple thoughts on my heart concerning how to press upward toward this fullness of Christ:
As we press onward, we must always be alert not to settle and not to become comfortable in this world. We see this throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
Even when the Lord sent Zerubbabel back to build the temple, it was not long before those who had returned started to settle. The story goes over and over again: we become comfortable in our settings, comfortable in this world, and forget that we are but pilgrims and sojourners on this journey. This is not our home.
This is especially true because we live in a very prosperous country. We need to be cognizant of that fact and remember that this is not where we find our rest or our life.
The life of Jacob can teach us much about many things, but it can definitely teach us much about this issue of how to keep pressing on.
Jacob’s beginning was very good. He dwelt in tents with Abraham—his grandfather—who was looking for that city with foundations and pressing on according to the vision he had received. Jacob seemed to have a listening ear. He longed to have that birthright.
Esau sold it for just a cup of soup, but Jacob seemed to know that it was important. Then we know that he deceived his father in order to steal the blessing. This was the plan of his mother, Rebekah. She had a vision of what the Lord wanted, but she also thought, “Well, maybe I need to help the Lord out a little bit.” That is a tendency we can often get into, right?
But what was the result? There was enmity between Jacob and Esau. Jacob was then sent back to the homeland to find a wife. He came back with four wives, though he had been sent to find one wife.
As Jacob returned to his homeland and his people, he met Laban. He met his match, right? He met somebody much more cunning than he was. The Lord used twenty years to deal with Jacob, teach him, and guide him.
Then Jacob came to the point where he was going to return to the promised land. He had his four wives and eleven children at that time. Yet, as they set out, he was still in fear of man. He was fearful of seeing Esau again, knowing there had been enmity between them.
Jacob prayed to the Lord, but he still had a plan. He was still being cunning and trying to figure it all out. Then he was alone that night, and that is where the Lord came and met him where he was.
The Lord wrestled with Jacob and allowed Jacob to wrestle with Him all night. He often allows us to wrestle with Him. He wants us to get to the end of ourselves, to the point where we give up.
There we see the Lord touch the socket of Jacob’s hip. But Jacob did not let go. Instead of continuing to wrestle in order to get his own way, he began to cling to the Lord. What a marvelous encounter with the Lord, and what a marvelous revelation to be captured by.
Jacob named the place Peniel and declared, “I have seen God face to face, and I have not died.” What a wonderful declaration. We have the opportunity, even daily, to see the Lord face to face and to see what is on His heart.
Yet, even after that time, the Lord gave Jacob a new name and said, “Your name is Israel.” But afterward, in the record of the Bible, we see the Lord sometimes use the name Jacob and sometimes use the name Israel.
Why is that the case? There was still much in Jacob that had to be dealt with and worked out. There were several saints in the Bible whose names changed over time. We see Abraham, but we never see the name Abram used again after he receives his new name. We see this with Paul as well. But with Simon Peter and Jacob, we see that their different names are used according to various circumstances.
Following this great revelation, Jacob told Esau, “I will meet you down in Seir,” but then he went over to Succoth. Jacob was still planning and thinking. He built himself a house, built several things, and then moved from Succoth to Shechem.
There he seemed to have forgotten the vow he made in Genesis 28, where he met the Lord at Bethel and said, “Lord, if You bring me back to this place.” Now he stopped thirty miles short of where the Lord really wanted him to be, and he remained there for a number of years.
While Jacob was in Shechem, he seemed to lose his alertness and carefulness. The interaction between the people of Shechem and Jacob’s tribe increased. Ultimately, Dinah was violated, and Jacob’s sons came up with their clever plan of using circumcision in order to take advantage of and murder the people.
Often, as we move along with the Lord, we have encounters with Him, but then, step by step, we stop inquiring of Him. We do not see Jacob inquiring of the Lord and being told to go to Shechem. Later, we will see that the Lord does come back and speak to Jacob, giving him direction.
Why do we have this tendency to settle? What is it that is natural in man that wants to settle?
Sometimes we are just looking for rest. We are tired. We are worn out. Life can be difficult. Or perhaps we are using our own strength to try to live the Christian life, so we become tired and start looking for rest.
Or we may simply become satisfied: “I have been so blessed. I have all I need.” We do not realize that we are still so far short of the fullness that is on the Lord’s heart.
At other times, we lose a sense of urgency. If we know the Lord’s heart is to return and that He wants a bride, there should be a constant sense of urgency: “Lord, come and gain all that You desire.” But sometimes we become comfortable and lose that sense of urgency.
I want to take a few minutes to speak about this search for rest. Settling often happens, as I said, when we are looking for rest. But as we pursue the Lord, He has promised us in Exodus 33:14:
My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
Rest is a very important concept in the Bible. It appears more than five hundred times, and probably many more when we consider related references. Naturally, we do not think of pressing on with the Lord and rest as being connected. But the fact is that we are only at rest when we are running the race the Lord has set before us and when we are in His presence, walking step by step with Him.
Rest is not a physical state. Part of our problem is that we cling to definitions. We think of rest as going back, sitting in a lounge chair, kicking our feet up, and doing nothing, right? Or we think, “I am just going to spend some time to myself.”
But that is not rest. In the Bible, rest is not a vegetative state or a self-indulging state. Rest can be very, very active. In fact, rest is when the Lord is being satisfied and when His will is being done.
After creation, God rested. But He did not just kick back and sit in a La-Z-Boy. What was He doing? He was enjoying His creation. He was walking and fellowshipping with man in the cool of the day. His rest was in being together, and our rest is truly in the presence of the Lord.
Matthew 11:28-30 says:
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.
I love the contrast between Jacob and his son Joseph. In Joseph, we see something of this rest of faith. Even in the most trying circumstances, Joseph’s life was very challenging and difficult from the world’s perspective.
He was wrongly enslaved, wrongly accused, and imprisoned. Even when he was elevated to second in command of all Egypt, that was not a restful time from the world’s perspective.
But we have this wonderful record in the Bible: the Lord was with Joseph, and the Lord prospered Joseph.
Joseph really walked with the Lord. He was often confused and did not necessarily know what was going on, but he seemed to have this walk and trust: “The Lord will care for me. The Lord will keep me. The Lord has a plan that is beyond even what I can see.”
When Joseph had his second son, Ephraim, he named him because “God hath made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” He saw that God was receiving glory and that many were blessed as Joseph remained in that place.
We need to come to the Lord, be yoked with Him, and learn of Him. We want to be like Paul, declaring that we are not disobedient to the heavenly vision.
When the Lord gives us that vision, when He gives us Himself so magnificently, we need to be very cautious not to settle or pull up short of what is on the Lord’s heart and desire.
This brings us to the second point: pursuing Christ. We have to hold fast to the heavenly vision. Paul said before King Agrippa, “I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision.”
Hebrews 12:1-2 says:
Let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame,
and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jacob had received a great vision and encounter with the Lord at Bethel. Then he had made that declaration at Peniel: “I have seen God face to face.” Yet that was no guarantee of abiding, daily faithfulness.
We need to see how wretched we are in the light of Christ, but also how wonderful a place He has put us in Christ, and what a provision He has made for us. When we see that, we need to enter in and live in the good of it.
That is where we find Jacob in Shechem: not quite living in the new name he had received. We need to see that in Christ we are His own possession. He has made us a royal priesthood, and He is making us into a bride ready for His return. What a wonderful place to be. We can depend upon Him.
As we continue to pursue Christ, we always need to come back to this. There is one heavenly vision, in the sense that it is Christ. But Christ is so magnificent in all that He wants to bring us into.
It is really a dependent life. One of the biggest challenges is that we are taught from our earliest age to be independent, but we need to be those who are totally dependent.
The Lord gives us another beautiful picture of the intimate relationship He desires: the relationship of sheep and shepherd. The Lord desires to be our Shepherd-King. This was certainly a relationship Jacob knew, because being a shepherd was his profession.
Sheep, interestingly enough, unlike other animals, are completely helpless. They do not have the instincts necessary to care for themselves. They need the shepherd for safety, food, and every aspect of their life.
Another interesting aspect is that sheep do not become smarter over time, right? As sheep, we are not trying to learn how to live the Christian life. Rather, we are learning Who our Shepherd is and where our safety is.
We learn that we need to walk moment by moment with Him and learn how wonderful our Shepherd is. Sheep do not say, “Okay, it is wintertime; now it is time to move over to this field.” Or, “This is what we do every year, so now it is time to do it.” That is not where the sheep finds himself.
The sheep is constantly looking and walking where the shepherd is, except when he wanders away. And faithfully, the shepherd comes back to bring him in.
We need to know our Shepherd and constantly allow Him to protect us, keep us from settling, and keep us from going astray in any way.
Often we take something the Lord has done for us and then try to use it to interpret what His will for us is going forward. But the real question is this: Have we asked Him? He is the One who knows what His will is. He is the One who knows every step of the way.
The sheep’s life is simply to stay close to the Shepherd. The Lord Jesus Himself says in John 10:27-28:
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me:
and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish,
and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.
What a tremendous promise we have from our Lord Jesus. Jacob met the Lord face to face and received this great revelation, yet he was still struggling with a certain fear of man. He was still struggling to wholly trust and depend upon the Lord.
But praise the Lord, He is constantly working. He is constantly speaking to us. He is constantly calling us back to Himself.
He is the living Word. The Word is active, and the Word is powerful. Jesus is the Word. We need to be those who are constantly coming to and looking to His Word, listening for His Word, and being very cautious to measure everything against His Word.
The question is whether we spend that time meditating and hearing from Him. In today’s world, there are a lot of words. Technology has really sped things up. We are constantly bombarded.
We have pop-ups, news feeds, constant instant messaging, and all these things assaulting us and trying to steal away our attention. We have AI and this constant tracking of everything we look at so that more things can be fed to us to distract and draw our attention.
We need to be conscious of that. We cannot escape some of these things in the world, but how do they captivate us? Are we captivated by the Lord, with Him protecting us?
One thing that has always amazed me is this: when I was a young boy, I was a paperboy. Now, there are probably a few younger people in this room who do not even know what a paperboy is, right?
I used to have a bike with bags on both sides. Three hundred sixty-five days a year, I had to ride around and throw newspapers. That was the only way we got the news. You had one hour of news on television, and then you had the newspaper, where people could get sports stories, international stories, and everything else that was going on.
It is a great profession, by the way, but that is for another day.
The phenomenon I noticed was this: I thought, “Okay, I am bringing people information. I am educating people.” But as people read the newspaper, if there was a story about something they knew well—perhaps their profession or a subject in which they were very knowledgeable—they would say, “Well, this is not right. This is not true. Half the story is false.”
They could discern between what was true and what was false in that story. Then they would read nine other stories in the same newspaper. What I noticed was that when they read those other stories, subjects about which they knew little or nothing, they would form their opinions and accept them as truth because they knew nothing else.
It is as though they were saying, “If the story I knew something about was only half true because the reporter had limited information, how could the other nine stories not also be untrue?” Yet those things impact us.
Today, we have sensational headlines. We say, “Wow, really?” Then, if we read the story, we realize, “Wait a minute—that headline had nothing to do with that story.” But if we do not read the story, we may repeat that headline to several other people and spread what is untrue.
It is very, very critical in this day that we come back and always remember that the Word of God is truth. Jesus is the Word, and we need to measure and test everything against that Word. We will receive a lot of information, but we only spread the truth that is the Lord.
As we press on for more, we must remember that we are not trying to eat more from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are trying to eat more from the tree of life. We are trying to spend more time in His presence, and He will guide and protect us.
This reminds me of a hymn:
More about Jesus would I know,
More of His grace to others show;
More of His saving fullness see,
More of His love Who died for me.More about Jesus let me learn,
More of His holy will discern;
Spirit of God, my Teacher be,
Showing the things of Christ to me.More about Jesus in His Word,
Holding communion with my Lord;
Hearing His voice in every line,
Making each faithful saying mine.More about Jesus on His throne,
Riches in glory all His own;
More of His kingdom’s sure increase,
More of His coming, Prince of Peace.
By God’s grace, we need to cut off the things that stumble us and look to Him to guide, protect, and shepherd us, even in the midst of the challenges of this life.
That is really first love: fixing our eyes on Him and inquiring about everything. When we are in first love, we do not do anything without conversing with Him and having that ongoing conversation.
Often we get into these challenges of saying, “Well, it is my time,” or, “It is my schedule.” But the fact is, if we have died with Christ and the life we now live is Christ in us, it is not my time, and it is not my schedule.
So we ask, “Lord, what do You want to do with Your time? What do You want to do with Your schedule? Even if we have to make a schedule, Lord, how do You want to adjust it as I go through this day?”
As I get older and older, I am reminded that we need to be constantly in prayer. That is our interface and communion with the Lord. As we are in prayer, we know that His presence is with us.
I will give you a very simple example. My wife spends a lot of time, when I get ready to do a job around the house, reminding me, “Did you pray?” Or, as we go along, “Have you prayed?” It is this constant practice of simply praying.
A number of years back, my uncle and I—two godly men—were going to change the pipes in the attic because we were getting pinhole leaks in the old pipes. We knew what we were doing. We went about our business.
About halfway through, I slipped off one of the rafters. My foot went through the ceiling, and I was left dangling, looking down at a pile of sheetrock and insulation on the master bed. There was my wife standing and looking up, right?
The reminder was that we had not prayed.
Now, I want to caution you: I am not saying that if you pray, these things do not happen. But if you pray, you know that the Lord is with you. You know that you are in the will of the Lord, and there is rest as you walk through what will be challenges in life.
When we do not pray, we see consequences such as Jacob experienced at Shechem. Our choices impact not only us but everyone around us, and they can be quite devastating.
On the other hand, we can be in affliction and difficulty, and if we have prayed and remained in communion with the Lord, there can be much blessing. It is the perspective of the Lord’s viewpoint versus ours.
Unfortunately, too often we are like Jacob, and it is not until we get into big trouble that we call upon the Lord and turn back to Him. But first thing in the morning, we have the opportunity to draw near to Him and remain in that place of constant communion. Again, it is not our time; it is His time.
Ultimately, we see Jacob—and our brother Jim even referred to this at the table—in Genesis 48:15. When Jacob was old, he was blessing Joseph’s sons, and he said:
God hath been my shepherd all my life long unto this day,
the Angel who hath redeemed me from all evil.
Praise the Lord. He is doing that work, and He will do that work. But the question is: Are we those who are responding? Are we those who are remaining near His presence?
This brings me to the last point I want to fellowship about: remaining teachable.
How do we remain teachable? There is this call the Lord gives us to repent and return. God knows the tendency of His sheep to wander. We wander away from the flock; we wander away from Him. But He has made a way for us to return. He says, “Repent and return.”
One of the first verses we have our children memorize is 1 John 1:9. What a glorious promise from the Lord. The question is: Are we living in the good of that promise?
By God’s grace, we have marvelous visions and revelations of Who He is and what He wants. We meet the Lord face to face. We are forever changed. But do we continue in that place and in that grace, or do we begin to walk according to our own thoughts, allowing the old man to govern and falling short of what the Lord desires?
Shechem was really a crisis in Jacob’s life, but God did not leave him alone. Whom He loves, He disciplines. He continues to work. And when we respond, we see that there is a glorious end and a glorious purpose.
May we continue to have this heart of repentance and returning. In Genesis 35:1-3, we see the Lord begin to speak again to Jacob after Shechem:
Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there:
and make there an altar unto God, Who appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.And Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him,
Put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments:
and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el;
and I will make there an altar unto God, Who answered me in the day of my distress,
and was with me in the way which I went.
Jacob returned to the house of God, to where the Lord told him to be. In the Lord’s loving-kindness and faithfulness, He is always drawing us back to where He is.
Since the fall of man, He has been working toward this recovery. At the end of Malachi, in the verses we read at the beginning, we see the Lord’s call to repent and return. Then, when the Lord came the first time to begin the New Testament, the call was, “Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Then we come to Revelation, and what is the Lord still saying to His church? He is saying, “Repent and return. Come back to your first love. Repent of where you have strayed.”
Sometimes it may simply be an attitude or a thought. But we have this glorious opportunity to repent of that, return, and walk with Him.
Revelation 2:4-5 records the Lord’s word to the church at Ephesus:
But I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.
Then in Revelation 3:19, the Lord tells the church at Laodicea:
As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
During our family retreat at the end of the year, we were looking together at the book of Malachi and considering this wonderful gift of repentance. My wife had stories for the young children each day that focused on this aspect of repentance.
It was amazing to sit and reflect upon this gift the Lord has given us. We often think of repentance as, “Oh, I have to repent because I have done something bad.” But the fact is, it is a great and marvelous gift.
The longer we walk with the Lord—and I know many of you know this—the more we see that we need to repent multiple times a day. It is not because we are sinning more and more, but because we see our wretched selves in the light of Christ.
We want to repent because we also see His marvelous provision for us in Christ. May we be those who are quick to repent and quick to be restored.
The Lord has so much that He needs to work in us, but it is so much easier when we are quick to return. Jacob learned some of these lessons in a very hard way, and too often we do as well. But we have the opportunity to repent and return, to be constantly restored in our relationship with the Lord.
When He does that work, as He did in Joseph’s life, there is rest, glory to God, and purpose in what He is doing. He is tenderly shaping us and molding us, working in us exactly what He desires.
As we come toward the end of our time, I would like to share something concerning this whole matter of remaining teachable and moldable. Our brother Evan Hopkins wrote something that I would like to read. It is a little long.
He wrote: If a piece of iron could speak, what would it say about itself? “I am dark. I am cold. I am hard. I am stiff.”
But if you put that piece of iron in the fire, a change takes place. The iron is still iron, but the iron and the fire seem to have come into a different state. The iron ceases to be dark, cold, and brittle. It begins to be moldable. It begins to glow.
The iron would not glory in itself. It is the work of the fire that keeps it glowing and keeps it bright.
Our brother goes on to say that this is true of believers. In ourselves, we are cold and carnal, and left to ourselves, we inevitably fall into the law of the captivity of sin which is in our members.
But it is our privilege to enter into fellowship with Christ and abide in Him. In Him is life, purity, and power. In Christ, Whose Spirit can penetrate every part of our being, the believer is no longer carnal but spiritual.
We are no longer overcome by sin and brought into captivity. Instead, we are set free from the law of sin and death and preserved in a condition of deliverance.
As believers, we cannot glory in ourselves. We cannot glory in a state of purity we think we have obtained, or even in a great vision we have seen. Our existence is in Christ Jesus alone.
We are like that piece of iron. The moment we are withdrawn from the furnace, the coldness and hardness begin to return. But as long as we remain near the fire, we do not return to our natural state. The influence of the fire counteracts the tendency to return to who we are naturally.
Jesus has won this victory. Pressing on is not a challenge of striving in ourselves. Pressing on is remaining in Him and allowing His life, which He has put in us, to come forth, do all that He desires, and bring us into the victory that is that life.
May we be those who ask the Lord: “Lord, give us vision of the beauty of Christ. Give us vision of You, Lord, upon Your throne. Give us vision of our lives as royal priests, and give us vision of Your longing for a bride.”
Give us vision of the glory of the Lord. May that vision keep us and cause us to press on until the reality of the vision is fulfilled, until the fullness of what is on the Lord’s heart is gained and He is satisfied. Because when He is satisfied, we truly are satisfied.
As we walk on this earth, may we be very watchful not to settle or come up short of this vision, not to come up short of all that He has provided for us.
When we stray, depart, or even for a moment have a thought that departs from Him, may we be quick to repent and return. May we take hold of the wonderful promises the Lord has given us, because in His presence there is not only rest; there is always more to come into, more to see, more.
It is a glorious destination, and we want to press on until He is fully satisfied.
Let us pray.
Lord, we want to be those who allow You to gain all of Your heart’s desire—to be like Jacob and say, “Lord, You have been our Shepherd. You have guided us and redeemed us from all evil.”
But Lord, may we be quick to allow You to do that work in a way that is unto Your glory and a blessing even to others in this world.
Lord, instead of bringing challenges and difficulties, we want to be those who are conscious of our natural ways of settling. But Lord, You have overcome. You have given life. You have shown us something of Yourself, and as we cling to that and cling to You, You will bring us into more and more.
Lord, we thank You for Your wonderful promises—for this promise and call to repent and return, and to remain in this place of constant communion with You.
Lord, take even these feeble words this morning. Lord, what is man? May we forget what is merely of man, but may what is of Christ, and what You want us to hear, be planted in our hearts.
May we continue to walk in the reality of this marvelous, glorious, personal, intimate, and corporate relationship that we have with You. In Jesus’ name, amen.