Well, Lord, we come with our hearts bowed before You in thanksgiving, and again just proclaiming that there is none like You, Lord. You stand alone in Your holiness. You are the great Lover of our souls. And so we look to You and ask You to speak.
And we thank You in Your most wonderful name, Lord Jesus. Amen.
I have this thing plastered in my Bible. I’ve had it in here for about thirty years, I think. I read it one time before here. But if I was to ask the question of us, what is that distinguishing characteristic in your life that separates you from the world?
And, of course, everyone has to answer that question for themselves. But what is that one distinguishing characteristic that separates you from the world?
I’ll read this poem. Like I said, I believe I’ve read it one time here before. It’s a poem by Amy Carmichael, but it’s meant a lot to me over the years. It’s been in my Bible for about thirty years. It’s called “No Scar.”
Hast thou no scar,
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land,
I hear them hail thy bright ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers, spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compass Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And pierced are the feet that follow Me;
But thine are whole. Can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar?
If we would turn to Romans 12, I’m going to read those two verses that we’re all very familiar with.
And Paul, crying out, as it were:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Well, today we’re just going to really look at that first verse. Maybe someday, on another occasion, maybe we could look at that second verse, but we’re just going to look at this first verse today.
“I beseech you, brethren.” When Paul uses that word beseech, here is this man who was in love with Christ. He had experienced the goodness of Christ toward him, the mercy and the kindness shown him, the demonstration of God’s love for him. He grew and grew in a greater and greater appreciation of that great love of Christ for him. It compelled him.
And so, in this word beseech, there is this pleading from the heart to these believers in Rome.
And he says, “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God.” What he’s saying there to them, actually, is, “I want you to take account of the great mercies that you have been shown.” Wrapped up in that word mercy was the kindness He’s shown you, the gentleness, the patience, the longsuffering, the revelation of Christ to them.
He’s saying, based on that, that should be the impetus in your life that drives you forward. Therefore, by the mercies of God, present yourselves a living sacrifice.
It was to be the motivation of their lives.
The Lord Jesus said:
No one taketh My life away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.
And here it says, “I beseech you, by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice.” That’s what we see in the Lord Jesus when He says just that: “No one takes My life from Me. I lay it down.” It was a living sacrifice.
As a matter of fact, when we look at the Lord Jesus, His whole life was sacrificial. From the moment that He was incarnate, from the moment that He left His throne in heaven and became a man and walked on this earth, He was living this life of sacrifice. Sacrificed, crucified before the foundation of the world, this was His life.
And His life was for one thing: to satisfy the very heart of His Father and to fulfill that which He was sent for. That was His life.
And it says that as you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. This issue of holiness is that He’s saying to them, “You have been set aside by God for Himself.” That’s what makes you holy.
God is the only One who designates holiness. And He says, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” But at the same time, there needs to be something stirring in our hearts where we then turn to God and say, “Lord, I separate myself unto You.”
So God has separated us unto Himself, and yet there is something that He wants to do in our lives where we say from our heart, “Lord, I separate myself unto You. I offer myself to You. You are worthy of all my love and devotion.”
And this is an issue of the will, not of emotion. Now, emotion can be involved in it, but the decision is a decision of the will. There is a recognition of God, that He is wonderful and holy, and it turns us to say, “Lord, I want to give myself to You fully. You’re worthy of all of my love and devotion.”
Are you ready? Are you ready to present yourself, your body, as a living sacrifice upon this sacrificial altar?
It’s not something to be taken lightly. There is a cost involved in discipleship. There’s a cost involved. And so, before we throw ourselves, as it were, on the altar, we need to count the cost.
And Jesus makes that quite plain as He deals with those who are around Him. He makes that quite plain. As the Master is, so shall the servant be.
Jesus placed Himself on the altar of His cross. He was that living sacrifice, fully acceptable to God, holy unto God.
And when Christ calls, He bids us to come and die. Now, we don’t really want to hear that kind of word, but that is the truth. When Christ calls us, He calls us to die.
But that dying leads to life. Without the dying, you will not experience the life. That’s just the way it is. Unless there was a death involved, you cannot see the power of the resurrection.
And we only see that in the Lord Jesus’ life as our example. He went to the cross. He laid down His life, and then there was this resurrection that took place. All the power of God vested in Christ, and He rose from the grave.
He proved everything that He said was true. If He had not risen from the grave, then we could have discarded it all. But He rose from the dead and put a seal on everything He had done as being true.
If we return to Luke’s Gospel, chapter 5.
Luke’s Gospel, chapter 5, verse 27:
And after these things He went forth, and beheld a publican, named Levi, sitting at the place of toll, and said unto him, Follow Me.
And he forsook all, and rose up and followed Him.
There was something. Here was Levi sitting in the tax collector’s booth at work, and Jesus is passing by and sees him and says, “Follow Me.” There was something in Jesus’ voice that spoke of power, that spoke of authority.
So much so that Matthew got up from his tax table there. He says, “And left all.”
It wasn’t something that you might say was done easily. Everything was tied up in Matthew as related to that tax booth. That’s where his employment was. That’s where his stature was. That’s where he received praise and felt worth for what he was doing, in spite of even the persecution he was experiencing from other Jews.
But there was something in Christ’s voice when He says, “Follow Me,” that just gripped Matthew and took him out of that booth. And he says, “And he left all.” We never hear of Matthew going back to that booth again.
There was something that transpired within Matthew that said, though that was all-important to me, it’s not as important as Him. There was something—he was captured by Christ in such a way that he left all with no regrets.
There’s a cost involved in discipleship.
If we turn to Luke, also chapter 5, verse 11. We know the story here. Simon Peter, James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, were fishermen. They were fishing. They fished all night. They didn’t catch anything.
Jesus comes along, steps into one of the boats, and begins to preach to the crowd that had been following Him. And when He was all done addressing the crowd, He says to Simon Peter, “Put out a ways and lower your nets.”
And Peter says to Him, “You know the story. Oh, Lord, we fished all night and didn’t catch a thing. But at Your bidding, I will do that.”
Well, they went out and they lowered the nets, and they caught this abundance of fish.
When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying:
Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord.
And I think there was something in what Peter was saying just then, where he was saying, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am such a sinful man.” Oh, but at the same time, there was something in Peter’s heart that said, “Don’t leave me. Don’t. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I never met anyone like You before. Please, don’t leave me.”
For he was amazed, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken;
and so were also James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.
And when they had brought their boats to land, they forsook all, and followed Him.
Again, this wasn’t something that was done flippantly. There was something that gripped their heart. They saw something in Jesus that they wanted now more than the fish, more than the boats, more than their homes, more than their families. No, they were ready to forsake all and follow Christ.
Are you ready to do that? This is part of the cost of discipleship. Is there something in your heart that is ready to walk away from everything else to follow Christ?
I’ll tell you just this little story. Actually, it’s quite a big story, but I’m going to make it just a little story.
In 1972, when I had come to the Lord, I began to meet with about fifteen or twenty other young people. We were in our twenties. Some of us had children, and we had been captured by the Lord.
We were meeting on Tuesday evenings in the basement of a Catholic church. We would come with guitars, and we’d be singing some songs and reading from the Gospels and sharing what Christ was doing in our lives, and it was wonderful. This wonderful fellowship. We used to go on summer vacations together. It was great.
At that time in my life, it was the first time I actually started to have a steady job. I had just recently bought a little tiny house out on Long Island. Things were just good, you know, just good.
And about two years into this situation, in this relationship, all of a sudden my wife and I began to have a stirring in our hearts that God wanted to move us.
And I couldn’t understand that, because now everything was good. Everything was stable. This was great, what was happening. But we had this sense that God was wanting to move us.
And so we began to pray and then to ask these brothers, “Pray with us about this.” And as young as we all were in the Lord, we began to put out these fleeces before the Lord, you know? And every time we’d put out a fleece, boy, He would answer it just like it was supposed to come, as it were.
And we did this a number of times, to the point that we felt not to obey would have been sin. And we had this thing about moving to Florida, which I never liked. At that time of my life, I thought New York was heaven, but He showed me that that wasn’t true.
But there was this stirring in the heart, and all of these fleeces that He met. And so we decided to take off two weeks from work and just to travel down to Florida and see what the Lord might do.
And we started traveling, and we stopped at different places in Orlando and down at Fort Lauderdale and some other places. Every time we came to a new place, we’d say, “Wow, this is really neat.” You know, it was like paradise—the palm trees, all of that stuff. “Wow, this is really good.”
But yet that place didn’t really seem to be where He wanted us. And so we traveled to the next town, same thing, until we were going over this bridge in Port Charlotte, Florida.
Going over this bridge that was going over this body of water, and about halfway over that bridge, we looked at each other, and we knew this is where God wanted us.
Interestingly enough, after living there for a while, we discovered that the name of the body of water that that bridge was going over was called Holy Spirit Harbor.
Well, we go back to New York now, and we have to tell everyone, yeah, that God is moving us.
So that meant I had to let my mom and dad know that we were moving to a place where we didn’t have a home. I didn’t have a job. Nothing. But we knew God wanted to move us.
So I had to tell my parents. My wife Carol, at the time, had to tell her parents, her siblings, my siblings. My children were going to be uprooted from their schools. My friends, these brothers and sisters, all of my history, my cousins who we grew up together with—all my history was there.
But we knew we had to go. Because obedience—see, God can show us things that He would like us to do, but obedience has to be involved.
And so that’s what we did. And then we moved to Florida, just like that, not having anything of any stability. Nothing.
But God was so faithful. And over those years, He proved Himself faithful. We began to see Him like we had never seen Him before as our Provider. And He just built relationships. Actually, after a while, a number of my family moved to Florida, right? God is faithful. He’s faithful.
Discipleship will cost you, and you need to be aware of it. If you’re going to follow after Jesus, know this: it will cost you.
If you turn to Mark’s Gospel, chapter 10, verses 17 through 27.
Again, Jesus was walking along the road:
And as He was going forth into the way, there ran one to Him, and kneeled to Him, and asked Him, Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou Me good? None is good save one, even God.
Thou knowest the commandments, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor thy father and mother.And he said unto Him, Teacher, all these things have I observed from my youth.
And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow Me.
But his countenance fell at the saying, and he went away sorrowful: for he was one that had great possessions.
Oh, there was a cost to be paid. And Jesus made this quite clear to him. “Do you want to follow Me? Then all of these other things actually stand between you and Me. All of that religious activity, all of those things that you have, come between you and Me.”
“But if you want to follow Me, then you have to forsake all of those things and follow Me.” What’s important to you?
Sometimes we just have to ask ourselves that question: What keeps me from intimacy with Christ?
Now, you might have a relationship with the Lord Jesus where it’s like you can have some of God and some of the world. But the Lord wants all of you. He wants all of me.
And He’ll be faithful to point out what keeps you from having that intimate, abiding life with Him. Will we obey?
This young man, you see, when he approached Jesus and said, “What must I do?” it’s as if he was saying, “Okay, Jesus, give me the task. Show me what I need to do. What else can I add to my résumé?”
He already gave Jesus the résumé. “Yes, I’ve done all those things from my youth, but I know I need something else.” But for him, it was just adding something else to the résumé.
And Jesus is saying, “No. I want you to wipe that all clean. I want nothing between you and Me.”
Actually, He asks the same thing of you and I. In Philippians 3, verses 3 through 8, here is Paul:
For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh:
though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more:
circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;
as touching zeal, persecuting the church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.Howbeit what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ.
Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may gain Christ,
and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith:
that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death.
He’s saying, “I have suffered the loss of all things for Him.” He had come into such a great appreciation of the Lord Jesus. He says, “I’ve suffered. Yes, I’ve suffered the loss of all these things for Him because He’s worth more than all of these things.” That’s what he’s saying.
That’s something that God the Father wants to see happening and working in your life and my life. Out of our great appreciation of our Lord Jesus, that we’re able to say, “I have suffered the loss of all things, and He’s worth more than all of these things.”
So he gives this litany of things that he has done: a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin. This was his identification. Paul the apostle—Saul, you know, as he came to know the Lord Jesus. These were his credentials. This was his life. This is who he was. This was what he was acclaimed for. He was given authority.
This is who he was. This was his very life. But in that encounter with the Lord Jesus, he was able to say, “All of those things are nothing.”
He says, “It’s all rubbish.” Some translations say it’s dung. All of these things, in comparison to knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.
At his conversion, on that road to Damascus, when he was struck blind and went on into Damascus, Jesus spoke to Ananias, a believer there, and said, “I want you to go to this address, and you’ll meet a man there. He’s waiting for you so he can have his sight back.”
And Ananias says, “Oh, I’m afraid to go there. This guy has a reputation of trying to arrest us and put us in jail.” But Jesus says this: “Go, because I will show him what things he must suffer for My name’s sake.”
Paul made a decision in his will to follow the Lord Jesus, and it cost him everything.
What cost have you incurred in following Jesus? I mean, we have to ask ourselves that question. What cost has it cost me, as it were?
What things have I held onto that keep me separated from the kind of relationship He wants to have with me, this intimate relationship?
In 2 Corinthians 6, verses 3 through 10:
Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
Giving no occasion of stumbling in anything, that our ministration be not blamed;
but in everything commending ourselves, as ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses,
in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in fastings;
in pureness, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned,
in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left,
by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true;
as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed;
as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
It’s interesting, as he’s addressing these Corinthians, he’s saying, “We commend ourselves to you.” He’s saying, “We want you to look at us. Look at us as we’re living among you. It’s just not words. We want you to examine us and see that we’ve been faithful to the Gospel. Take note. We commend ourselves to you. Take notice.”
This was the cost of discipleship.
And so sometimes when we’re in school, or sometimes when we’re on the job, or sometimes when we’re in health issues, there’s a cost that’s involved in discipleship. How do we respond to all of those situations that we find ourselves in? How do we respond?
As we mentioned before, sometimes we want what heaven offers, and yet we still want what this world offers.
And so, in all of those circumstances, there is a cost that’s involved. He enumerated the cost that he was experiencing in following Christ, and he wouldn’t have given up one of those things, one of those difficulties, because he valued Christ more than the circumstances of his life that he happened to be in the midst of.
And so, in the circumstance of your life and in my life, what are we counting valuable? What are we holding on to? Or is Christ more valuable than what we know Him to be?
Second Corinthians 11, verse 22. Again, this is this litany of things that are in his life. And again, he just says, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham?”
And he goes on with these things that he had gone through. From the Jews he had received five times the forty stripes minus one. Three times he was beaten with rods. Once he was stoned, et cetera. We all know that Scripture. The cost of discipleship.
But he came to realize the worth of Christ.
So before you throw yourself on the altar, have you counted the cost?
The Holy Spirit, you know, though He is kind and gentle, longsuffering, gracious, yet He demands to be Lord of your life.
He demands to be Lord of your life. He’ll take your personality and form it into the likeness of the personality of Jesus, so that you’re not able to say, “Well, that’s just my personality. Yeah, that’s the way I am.”
Well, you know what? Jesus may have to say, “That thing has to go on the altar. It has to be put on the altar. It has to be adjusted.” It’s not an excuse: “Well, this is my personality.” No. The Holy Spirit will adjust.
He will require obedience to the Word of God. Sometimes what we can do with the Word of God is take the Word of God and then try to fashion the Word of God into our lifestyle.
So we can read the Word of God, but then we adjust it, as it were, to accommodate me, rather than me being taken in by the Word of God and it adjusting us.
He’ll take the direction of your life out of your hands. You may have plans, but if you’re surrendered to Christ, He just may take those plans and just, as it were, tear them up and say, “No, this is the way I want you to go.”
You may have thought that this was the way you were going, but He’ll take the direction of your life away from you. Why? Because He’s to be the Lord of your life, the Lord of my life.
Are we able to face that? Are we able to come to grips with that kind of invitation from the Lord Jesus?
For there to be fullness, there needs to be emptiness first. If we want to be filled with Christ, then we must be emptied of ourselves.
So let me ask: Do you have a passion for Jesus? For Him, do you have a passion for Him?
Sometimes people don’t like to hear that kind of word. It almost sounds too emotional. Well, it is emotional. Yeah. But it’s also because we have come to recognize this wonderful Master that we serve. Do you have a passion for Him?
Is all this relationship with the Lord, this passion for the Lord, all-absorbing? Is it the most important thing in your life?
Is the desire for Christ consuming? Does it consume you? Is it the most important thing in your life? Is it so large that it presses everything else out of your life?
When God begins to work in our life in this way, it can get very lonely. It can get lonely. You’re left alone with Him.
Everything else now is being—God is beginning to separate us from these other things that were so important to us, that made up our life. He begins to separate us from those things.
That Psalm 42—we sang it:
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
So panteth my soul after Thee, O God.
Is that going on in your life right now? Do you feel that hunger for Christ that sometimes becomes so acute that it’s actually painful? Because you want Him, and you want more of Him. But it is costly.
You know, we use the Scripture—we’ve all used it at one time or another—where we refer to ourselves as clay pots that contain this treasure. And that’s true. We are clay pots that have this treasure within ourselves.
But I had found myself taking pride in being a clay pot. How—yeah, it can be almost insidious, our pride.
But I would say, like so many of us, “Yes, I’m a clay pot and I have this treasure within me. Yep, I’m a clay pot for Jesus.”
But I have found that the Lord strikes that clay pot. Do you ever see a vase—or a vase, I don’t know how you would say it—but you see they have these old fissure lines through it? They look like all these lines, like cracks.
And so, taking pride in my clayness, the Lord would come and strike that clay pot, and all of a sudden all these fractures were there. I said, “Oh, yeah, I’m a clay pot, but you know, I have these fractures in here. But I’m still standing. Yep, I’m a clay pot, and God is dealing with me.”
And all of a sudden, the Lord recognizes—I mean, He knew all along—this pride. It’s insidious.
And then He comes along and strikes that clay pot, and all of a sudden a chip of the clay falls off. And then a chip falls off. But I’m still hanging onto my clayness.
And then He comes along and strikes it, and that whole pot just falls down and becomes like dust.
See, my clay pot was the clay pot I fashioned for myself. And so now He builds a clay pot that He fashions to contain the treasure of His life. Costly is discipleship. Costly.
As the Lord works with us in this way, there are times where He takes us through this dark—what this has been referred to over the centuries now—the dark night of the soul.
You know, you read some books of these great saints, men and women of God, who have gone through these dark nights of the soul. You know, no consolation, no sense of God’s presence. But God is dealing with them. God is dealing with them.
I don’t know if you’ve had a dark night of the soul, but many, many God brings through these dark nights of the soul.
And also, something that we, I think, need to understand when we’re considering taking ourselves and making ourselves a living sacrifice and casting ourselves upon this altar, a sacrificial altar: now, it’s not a one-time event.
It’s like consecration. I have noticed that with consecration, as best as I knew myself, I consecrated myself to the Lord. “Lord, I give myself to You, Lord. I want to serve You. Here I am.”
And then, down the road a ways, the Lord begins to show me some things in my life that He’s still wanting to address. And at that point in time, I say, “Lord, I consecrate myself to You, Lord. As much as I know myself, I consecrate myself to You, Lord.”
Something of that is what happens in this whole issue when we’re called upon to cast ourselves as a living sacrifice upon this sacrificial altar.
So what happens, and what has happened? When we first came to the Lord, so many of us, the Lord took us out of, sometimes, like in my case, terrible situations morally and otherwise. In His mercy, He rescued me, as He did each one of us. He rescued us from ourselves.
And we come up now in new life. And so we’re standing, as it were, on the shoreline, and we’re rejoicing over the fact that God has done such a wonderful thing. He took me out of the gutter, as it were, out of the dump, as it were, and worked this new life in me.
And I’m standing there rejoicing in this fact. And then, three years later, I’m still there on the seashore, rejoicing in the fact that God did this wonderful work.
But it’s like someone standing on the seashore, and there’s the water just sort of rippling over our toes. It’s rippling over our toes, and we’re thinking, “This is the greatest thing since apple pie.”
Well, in front of us there is this sea of Christ, the vastness of Christ in front of us, and He’s beckoning us to come into the waters, in the deep waters, where He can reveal Himself in a deeper and deeper way.
But so many just stand on the seashore, and we live these compromised lives, these tepid lives, where Christ has so much more for you and for me, but especially for Himself.
And He’s calling us into the deeper water. It’s costly.
Because when Christ calls us in this kind of way, He doesn’t often give directions right up front to say, “This is what I’m going to do. This is where you’re going to go.” No. You’re leaving everything and not knowing where you’re going, oftentimes.
No security. No job. Your life has been turned upside down. The direction you thought you were going in, now it’s not so.
Oh, discipleship is costly. And the Lord Jesus, He tells you that right up front, if we’re listening.
But so many, unfortunately, end up living these compromised lives.
But the Lord is ready right now. If He’s showing you something of that in your own life, if there are things right now in your own life that keep you somewhat separated from Him, and He wants to get rid of it—because some of these things are good things, but they still get between you and Him.
They’re not all bad things. There are things that are good, but they keep you from the fullness of Christ in your life and in my life.
And so the Lord calls us and lets us know right from the go: “If you want to follow Me, you have to forsake all and follow Me.”
So the only thing that I would say to each of us is that if God is stirring your heart right now, if He’s pointing some things out in your life right now, even some good thing, well, I ask that you take the time and do some business with Him.
Let Him point it out, and be ready to say, “Yes, Lord, I am going to follow You. I’m leaving this behind, and I’m going to follow You. I’ve counted the cost, and I have found You worthy.”
I have found that You are the Christ—there is nothing that can compare with You, Lord. And I’m going to follow You by Your grace.
I just encourage each one of us today to make that decision: to count the cost, to count the cost, and then present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
It’s reasonable to do that. It’s reasonable to forsake all to follow Christ. It is not meritorious. It’s not that you gain something more of God. No. It’s your reasonable service.
And He will prove Himself over and over again that He’s a wonderful Master to serve. You will find your contentment in Him.
Dear Lord, work this kind of work in each of our lives, Lord. And we do want to say again, You are wonderful, Lord. There is none like Thee, Lord. No place I would rather be but in You.
Again, we bow our hearts in thanksgiving. Amen.