Righteousness Or Wrath

Righteousness or Wrath

We’re continuing today with our study of the cross. It has occurred to me that it’s somewhat appropriate that I should be presenting this message to people who are here at The Crossroads! I hope you’ll really demonstrate the truth of Crossroads. By the time you leave you will have had an experience at the cross that will affect the rest of your life.

I think it’s appropriate this morning to begin with a little review. My background as a trainer of teachers always influences the way I go about things, and one of the principles we taught was “review is an essential part of good teaching”. So I’m going to suggest we try—we includes me—to enumerate the ten aspects of the divinely ordained exchange which we have studied together, without looking at the notes. I mean, there’s no sin to look at the notes but just check your memory. It’s a test of my memory too, I’m liable to miss one out. I think we should do it with the left hand and the right because that will fix it more firmly in your memory. So we’ll begin with:

He was punished that we might be forgiven.

He was wounded that we might be healed.

He was made sin with our sinfulness

that we might be made righteous with his righteousness.

He died our death that we might share his life.

He was made a curse that we might receive the blessing.

He endured our poverty that we might share his abundance.

He bore our shame that we might share his glory.

He endured our rejection that we might have his acceptance.

He was cut off [or separated] that we might be united.

Our old man was executed in him that the new man might live in us.

We succeeded.

I’d be happy if one of our students would be bold enough to stand up and say it on your own. Anybody want to do that? We won’t be embarrassed if you don’t get through it, but it’s a good way of checking on yourself. Anybody want to do that?

I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen this illustration of the five fingers, about how to take in the word of God? The little finger is hearing. The next one is this finger, reading. The next one is studying, that’s the big, middle finger. The forefinger is memorizing. And the thumb that makes the grasp complete is meditating.

Why I say that is because hearing is essentially passive. Reading is more active, but studying is much more active. The result of studying is you have something to pass on to other people. And one of the best ways of making sure you have something to pass on is memorizing. It may be old-fashioned, but believe me, the pathway to blessing is systematically to memorize scripture. And then, when you’ve done that, you can meditate. You can’t meditate on something that isn’t already there. Meditation is what gives you the final grasp on truth. You would do well to study sometimes the blessings that are promised to those that meditate on God’s word. They’re almost measureless.

Psalm 1:

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”

You can’t do that if you haven’t done the first steps.

“He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, he shall bring forth his fruit in season, his leaf shall not wither; and [listen] whatever he doeth shall prosper.”

There is no room for failure in that promise whatever. Whatever you do will succeed but it succeeds out of right meditation. You cannot live right and think wrong. And you cannot think right and live wrong. The key to success was handed to Joshua by the Lord. He said, “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.” That’s the three-fold principle: think God’s word, speak God’s word, act God’s word. And then the Lord said, “Then thou shalt make thy way prosperous and then thou shalt have good success.” And God has no favorites. If you do what he told Joshua to do, he’ll do for you what he promised to do for Joshua.

There is no way that I can overemphasize the importance of the place of God’s word in your life. It is ultimately the key to everything that you’re going to experience.

I didn’t intend to say that, but just make that mental picture. Hearing, reading, studying—that’s when you begin to be able to teach others. Actually, you really don’t know how much you know until you try to teach others. That’s when you find out. Memorizing, meditating. You see, you try to pick your Bible up without using your thumb, you can do it but it’s not easy. But if you have your thumb, it’s no problem. If you want to master the word of God, you have to learn to meditate. You can’t meditate unless you’ve gone through the previous stages.

We now are still looking for a candidate to stand up and try. Jesus never criticized Peter for walking on the water, you know that? He criticized him for not staying on top. All right. Now we’ve got a candidate. Good and loud. That’s right, I think we need to give him a clap.

Now we don’t have time, otherwise I’d love to give other people an opportunity. I want to suggest to you as a way of really mastering this material that at your convenience and at your leisure, if you have such abundance, you make that list in order, 1 through 10 and then beside it you write down the scripture references that confirm each statement. Like, for he was punished and he was wounded, it will be Isaiah 53:4–5 and so on. Try and do it from your memory. I’m not saying memorize the scriptures but memorize the references.

It is extremely helpful. Some of you are in a counseling school, it’s extremely helpful to be able to counsel people knowing what scriptures to direct them to. You don’t say somewhere in the Bible it says. You say in Romans 6:23 it says the wages of sin... et cetera. I don’t insist on you doing this, for some of you it will be an effort, for some it will be comparatively simple. But I guarantee you that it will stay with you the rest of your life on earth. You’ll be that much richer from now on if you’ll do it. Jesus said with what measure you measure, it’ll be measured to you again. That’s very, very true in regard to the word. As much as you put in, that determines how much you’ll get out. The more you put in, proportionately the more you’ll get out. If you never sow you cannot expect to reap.

What we’re talking about here, that is sowing to your eternal nature. The incorruptible seed of God’s word. And what you sow you will reap. You see, there are laws that govern the universe. Paul said whatever a man sows, that he will reap. It’s guaranteed. If you do the sowing, the reaping is guaranteed.

We’re going to go on now to page 3. You have to bear in mind that page 2 is just a little kind of P.S. to page 1. It got me confused for a while, I couldn’t find page 2. Page 2 is this little thing on the back of page 1. So we go on to page 3 and the first theme we are going to deal with this morning is two aspects of the cross. This is very important because up until now I’ve been dealing, in a sense, with all the good you can get. Everything’s been a plus. But there is another side to the cross and if I don’t present that side to you and make it clear, I’ll be deceiving or misleading you at least. I don’t want to do that.

I was sharing with some of the leaders here an experience that I had some years back when I was a widower, in between my two marriages. I had some dear friends, a couple that I took out for a meal in a rather fancy restaurant. I discovered in this restaurant that they gave two different kinds of menus. To the gentlemen they gave a menu that had the prices on. To the ladies they gave a menu without the prices. This dear sister just looked down at the appetizers and said, “I’ll have that.” It cost $22. And that was when $22 was a lot more than it is today. They were my guests and I was pleased but I knew she never would have ordered that had she known the price.

And you see, I think there’s a tendency to do that in the contemporary church. Preachers hand you the menu but it’s not got any price attached. “Oh, I think I’ll have that and that and that. I want prosperity and I want blessing and I want healing.” That’s wonderful, but there’s a price attached. You could find yourself ordering things that you’re not prepared to pay for.

So I’m going to deal now a little bit with the price and we’ll come back to that again later. Let’s turn to Romans 1:16–18.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God to salvation for every one who believes; for the Jew first, and also for the Greek.”

If we really comprehend that the gospel is the power of God we’ll never be ashamed of it. No one is ever ashamed of power. But if we don’t realize its power, we can be very timid and apologetic about the gospel. Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel because I have come to realize it’s the power of God.” Contemplate that fact, it’s the power of God, Almighty God, who’s power is unlimited and measureless. His power is in the gospel.

“For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith: as it is written. The just [or the righteous] shall live by faith.”

He’s quoting Habakkuk 2:4 which is quoted three times in the New Testament. Never imagine that the minor prophets are unimportant. Thank God for half a verse in Habakkuk which in many ways is the basis of the whole doctrine of justification by faith. So Paul says in the gospel [and that is through the cross] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

Now we have seen how the righteousness of God was revealed. Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with his righteousness. And notice that’s the righteousness of God, it’s not human righteousness. It’s not the best we can do. Isaiah says all our righteousness are like filthy rags. Notice not all our sins but all our righteousness. The best we can do in God’s sight is just like filthy rags.

But the gospel reveals a different kind of righteousness. A righteousness of God, a righteousness which is appropriated by faith and not by works. That’s part of the revelation that we’ve looked at. But it’s not the whole revelation. We need to go on to verse 18. Now in the particular Bible I’m using, there’s a heading between verse 17 and verse 18. That could kind of give the impression that there’s a break. But remember that heading was not put there by the apostle Paul. It’s all right.

Incidentally, I suppose you know that the chapters were not put there by the writers. There were no chapters. In fact, there was basically no punctuation. It was just sentence after sentence after sentence.

Anyhow, what I want to say is that verse 18 cannot be separated from verse 17.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”

Not only does the cross reveal to faith the righteousness of God—and only to faith. Because people who do not believe cannot see the righteousness of God. But it also reveals to everybody the wrath of God. God’s wrath against what? Against sin.

You see, there’s a kind of tendency in the contemporary church to suggest that there is inconsistency between the revelation of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament spoke about a God of wrath and judgment and the New Testament reveals a God of love and mercy, kindness and forgiveness. That’s really not correct. Both testaments reveal both aspects of God. They reveal his mercy but they also reveal his judgment. And it is misrepresenting God and misleading people to present only one aspect of the truth. The cross reveals the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.

In fact, it’s the most total revelation of God’s wrath against sin because in the Old Testament the people who came under God’s wrath had done something to earn it. But on the cross, Jesus did nothing to earn it. He was the perfect, sinless, totally obedient son of God. If anybody could have commended sin to God, it would have been Jesus. But he couldn’t. When he became sin with our sinfulness, the full wrath and judgment of God came upon him because of sin. You need to bear that in mind. If Jesus could not commend sin to God, believe me, neither you nor I can do it. There is no way to commend sin to God. His wrath is against sin. His mercy is toward the sinner who will forsake his sin. But his wrath is always against sin. And that never changes.

Actually, if you can mentally picture the sinless son of God and what he endured on the cross: his beaten body, his bleeding brow, his hands and his feet pierced, the mockery, the cruelty; that’s the most vivid picture that you’ll ever get anywhere of God’s attitude to sin. It’s far more vivid than anything that’s found in the Old Testament. We need to contemplate that. We need to receive the double revelation: The righteousness of God revealed only to faith, the wrath of God openly revealed.

Do you want to know what God’s attitude towards sin is? Mentally picture Jesus on the cross. That could be a remedy against temptation. The next time you feel perhaps tempted to indulge in something unpleasing to God, just mentally picture Jesus and say, “If that’s the way God feels, I think I’ll change my mind.”

You see, in Romans 11 Paul presents the two aspects of God’s dealings. Romans 11 is written by the great apostle of the Gentiles primarily to people of non Jewish background, to Gentiles. That is probably 98 percent of us here at this time. So it’s a special message for us. Paul is talking to them about the good olive tree which has its roots in Abraham and the patriarchs. And then he’s explaining that Gentiles, such as I am, were wild olive branches that would not normally have born good fruit, but we were grafted into the good olive stock and therefore qualified to begin bearing good fruit. But he said, “Never forget, you were the wild olive branches.” Israel, the Jewish people, were the true olive tree. Now he said, “Some of them were broken off through unbelief and you’ve been grafted in through faith. But bear in mind you only stand by faith.” Let’s read from Romans 11:19. Paul was typically Jewish in the sense that so much of what he presented is presented in the form of dialogue, somebody objecting to what he was saying and then him coming with his answer. And he said in verse 19:

“You will say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in.”

That is, the Jews were set aside that I, as a Gentile, might come in.

“Well said, because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear.”

Don’t let it go to your head. Don’t become proud, arrogant and self-righteous.

“For if God did not spare the natural branches [the Jews], he may not spare you either. [Verse 22:] Therefore, consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness: otherwise you also will be cut off.”

Those are very searching words. I want to direct your attention particularly to Paul’s admonition “consider the goodness [or the kindness] of God, and the severity of God.” Never let his kindness blind you to his severity. And never let his severity cause you to lose sight of his kindness.

I can tell from the faces of some of you that you’ve never heard that kind of truth. And yet, many of you have been going to church a long while. Well, if what I’m saying isn’t in the Bible, don’t believe me. But if it is, it may be that something has been missing in the presentation that has been given to you of the gospel.

God is not sentimental, I’ll tell you that. The Holy Spirit is no sentimentalist. I have discovered he’s the greatest realist on earth. And wherever I become sloppy and sentimental, the Holy Spirit and I part company because he’s never that way.

In the 60s and so on we had the generation that grew up saying, “Tell it like it is.” I always said that’s the most wonderful challenge to any preacher of the gospel. Tell it like it is, because that’s what the gospel does. It tells it like it is. It’s real, it’s true, it reaches us where we live. It talks about the things we do. It doesn’t talk about people who are half angels, it talks about people with problems like you and me. It gives the answer to our problems, the solution.

I want to endorse that recommendation of Paul. When you think about the cross, consider the kindness of God, the unbelievable mercy of God. But don’t forget his severity. Don’t forget that he is a God who judges sin. Nothing has changed in that respect between the Old Testament and the New. All that’s changed is the full revelation of God’s mercy and grace.

I’ve got a sentence there which I think is important. I felt kind of prompted to write it. “The cross satisfied God’s justice and liberated his grace.” You see, God is inherently just, he’s a righteous God. It’s part of his eternal nature and he never changes. So he’s never going to compromise his justice. But through the cross his justice has been satisfied. Sin has been dealt with totally. And therefore he is now free, without compromising his justice, to release his grace.

Now justice is exact. In the Old Testament it’s eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burning for burning, bruise for bruise and so on. Justice is totally exact, it’s mathematically exact. But when it comes to grace God will accept no limitations, he is totally sovereign.

That’s another area of truth which I believe has been sadly neglected in recent years, the sovereignty of God. My definition of sovereignty is “God does what he wants when he wants, the way he wants and he asks no one’s permission.” Not even the permission of preachers! He just does it.

Believe me, if you had consulted the first apostle as to a likely candidate for apostleship, the name of Saul of Tarsus would have never come on the list. No one would have recommended him. A lot of the people had thought God had made a mistake when he chose him. But he chose him. Saul was on the way to Damascus to imprison the saints and halfway there Jesus arrested him, “I want you. From now on, you’re going to do what I tell you.” That’s the grace of God. Paul never earned it. Paul said, “God showed all patience, first of all in him, that he might be a pattern to all who would afterwards be sinners.”

I rejoice in the grace of God. It took me years really to appreciate the grace of God because somehow I tried to tie God down to doing it the way I thought he ought to do it. God didn’t seem to follow my rules. I’ve been with some wonderful groups of Christians but I have to say most of them made their own limitations to God’s grace. Sometimes they got quite provoked when God didn’t stick to their rules.

I remember when I first came into the Charismatic movement from a Pentecostal background. I couldn’t believe that God was actually baptizing Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Lutherans in the Holy Spirit. If he had ever consulted me I would have never endorsed it. But he never did. I just had to live with the fact he was doing things I wouldn’t have expected him to do.

So the grace of God is measureless, it’s unpredictable. I enjoy that. I never have a dull day. Really! I never have a dull day because I never know what God is going to do before the day ends. What I try to do is try to be open to his grace and not to set my own silly little religious limits as to what he might do.

Another aspect of truth which goes together with this is the only important thing in the spiritual life are the things that God initiates. Anything that God doesn’t initiate has no permanent or eternal value whatever. And in many sections of the church God is never given the opportunity to initiate anything. He would be resented if he interfered. They have their program, they have their rules, they meet at such and such a time, they probably pray for five minutes beforehand for God to bless. But they never really consult God as to whether that’s what he wants to bless or does he have another idea and another way of doing it.

One of the things I enjoy about the group that I’m currently ministering to—and for the sake of the tapes I don’t always use the name, but we all know where we are—is that basically I believe as much as any group today they’ve left room for the grace of God. They’ve left room. And God has done all sorts of things that a lot of people didn’t approve of. But if I had to choose, I’d rather have God’s approval.

I want to give you three examples of God’s choice. This is very, very important and it’s the outworking of God’s grace. If you turn to John 15:16, Jesus is talking to his apostles, you need to bear that in mind. You see, to take just one major example, from John 14 through John 17, Jesus is dealing only with a small handful of men who have totally committed themselves to serve him and obey him. And he gives tremendous promises in those chapters. But you need to bear in mind to whom the promises were given. They’re not given to people who just go to church on Sunday or even twice on Sunday. Those promises are for people who’ve made the commitment that the apostles had made. It’s misleading to quote the promises without pointing out to what kind of people they were offered. I’m not saying that God won’t fulfill the promises to people less committed. What I’m saying is we have no right to expect that he will.

So what did he say to his apostles? This is very important. If you don’t understand this, you’ll miss the whole point of seeing what he said.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you.”

Chose you for what? To be apostles. We’re not talking about salvation, although it’s true about salvation. We’re talking about apostles here. “I chose you.”

And then he gives the blueprint for the apostolic ministry which is outside the direct line of my teaching, but I’m not going to make any extra charge for it. What is the blueprint, what’s the key word with the apostle? I chose you that you should go, that’s right. The apostolic word is go. Apostles are chosen to go. The word apostle means someone who is sent forth. If you haven’t been sent forth you cannot be an apostle. If you don’t go when you’re sent forth you can’t be an apostle.

“That you should go and bear fruit.”

Now the bearing fruit is conditional upon the going. No going, no bearing fruit. You can’t leave out the go and say, “I still want to bear fruit.”

“And that your fruit should remain.”

Where does enduring fruit come from? It comes from God’s choice. That’s where the fruit endures. If we depart from God’s choice and carry out our own elections and make our own plans and make our own appointments, we have no right to expect enduring fruit. And my observation over many years is we don’t get it. We get a lot of religious activity, a lot of promotions, a lot of sweat producing action, but in the last resort, when you analyze the results, the fruit isn’t there.

Then he says:

“Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it you.”

Now that’s a favorite promise for a lot of people. “Whatever I ask the Father in the name of Jesus, he will give it.” Thank God it’s wonderful what he does, but bear in mind that you have no real right to claim that promise until you meet the conditions. That’s God’s grace.

I was preaching on apostleship and I stumbled on a revelation. I mean, this happened to me in the middle of my preaching, I suddenly see something and I get excited about it. I was trying to explain to a group of churchgoing people—and you know the key word for churchgoing is sitting! I was trying to motivate them to go and I was trying to explain to them the costs of going. It’s not cheap, it means foregoing your comfort, your convenience, your material security and so on. I said, “The thing is, if you get excited about what you’re going to do, the cost won’t worry you.”

I’m not a fisherman, but I took an example from fishermen. I said, “People who are really keen on fishing will spend any money for what they want. They’ll show you this piece of tackle and say, ‘This cost me $150.’ They’re not complaining, they’re quite happy. Or they say, ‘This boat cost me $25,000.’ They’re not saying, ‘Ooooh, I had to pay $25,000 for this boat.’ Why? Because they like fishing, they’re interested in fish.”

Ruth and I tend to take our exercise going for walks and we walk along riverbanks. I’ve watched fishermen. It’s raining, it’s cold, they’ve got this vast umbrella, they’re sitting on a little stool, they’re wet, they’re shivering, no fish are biting—and they’re perfectly happy! Amazing! I can’t understand it. I get so concerned about them I say, “Ruth, the fish aren’t biting, but they don’t mind.”

What I was saying to those people was if you cared about fish, you wouldn’t talk about the price. It wouldn’t make any difference to you whether it was raining or shining.

And then I got this revelation. I said, “I think it’s no accident that the first four apostles Jesus chose were all fishermen.” There’s something about being a fisherman, and I’ve never been one. But I can see it. It’s got vision. It’s got intention. It’s got purpose. And never mind the cost as long as we can fish.

Some of you dear ladies here are probably married to fishermen, you know what I’m talking about.

What I’m pointing out is the choice of the apostles was that of Jesus’. Nobody told him who to choose. As a matter of fact, I could be misunderstood, but basically, the people who volunteered to follow Jesus didn’t go through with it. The people who went through with it are the people he chose. He went up to Levi sitting at the seat of custom and he preached the shortest sermon ever preached, “Follow me.” And that changed that man’s life forever.

What I’m trying to say to you is the grace of God is unpredictable. Don’t make your rules for God’s grace. He will do things you don’t expect. He will choose people you would never choose—and you might be one of them. I mean, it is exciting, it’s risky. But it’s exciting. Like our brother said when he stood up to quote what he had memorized. He’s going to take a risk. The only people who ever get anything done are people who take risks.

I’ll tell you something else. I’m liberated from my outline for a moment. I have seen Christians pursue material security. And do you know what? They didn’t get it. And I’ve seen others step out for God and go out on a limb and do things that are crazy and today they are secure. I could speak of my own career. I gave up everything. I’m not boasting. I gave up one of the most promising careers in the academic world in Britain. I could have been a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge; a professor and all sorts of things. I gave it up to marry a lady and become adopted father to eight girls—all in one go! And bear in mind, I was an only child, I never had brothers or sisters. And furthermore, they were of different races. Six were Jewish, one was Arab, one was English. Later on we adopted an African that made them nine. If you had considered anybody suited for that calling, you wouldn’t have even put me on the list. I had none of the qualifications. It was totally contrary to everything in my background and everything I’d been trained for. You would have pictured me as a lecturer in some Bible college.

Well, what I’m trying to say is I stepped out. I left home, I left family, I left career, I gave up my money, I gave up my country. But today, I’m over 71 years old, I travel the world. If I had been a professor I’d have had to retire at 65, I’d have a little income and sat in some cottage in Cambridge. How good God has been to me! I want to recommend him!

See, I didn’t choose him, he chose me. And I tell you, in the last resort he knows what he’s doing. He sees things in people that we don’t.

Let’s look at just a couple of other examples and we’re going to have to close. Acts 15:7. This is the council that was held in Jerusalem to determine what to do about Gentiles who were believing in Jesus. These Jewish believers at last came to the conclusion we’ve got to let them in. You know, it’s very interesting that in the last decades the situation has been exactly reversed. The Assemblies of God in America have a branch of what they call Messianic fellowship for Jewish believers. This has grown and there’s a substantial number of them today. Within the last two or three years they had a meeting of the general council to decide whether they could admit these Messianic fellowships to full membership in the Assemblies of God! And one of the leaders stood up and said, “Listen, they let us in, we can’t keep them out!”

So Acts 15:7, Peter explains how the first Gentiles heard the truth.

“And when there had been much dispute [and believe me, if you know the Jewish people, that’s an understatement!], Peter rose up and said to them, Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.”

God made the choice. Peter didn’t volunteer. In fact, he was very reluctant to do it. He had to have a special vision on the rooftop in Jaffa before he would even consider it.

And then in one other passage in Acts 22:14–15. This is what Ananias said to Saul of Tarsus when he was told to go and preach for him. And you remember, he was very reluctant to go. He said, “Listen Lord, I’ve heard about this man. He’s persecuting all your saints and putting them in prison. Don’t you think you’ve made a mistake?” The Lord said, “You go.” So off he went. And when he came he said this in Acts 22:14:

“The God of our fathers has chosen you, that you should know his will, and see the Just One, and hear the voice of his mouth. For you will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.”

Whose choice was it? The Lord’s choice. And the result: endorse God’s choice.

I venture to suggest to you no contemporary Christian in the time of Saul of Tarsus would ever have chosen that man. But God did. That’s his grace. I just want to recommend his grace to you. We don’t have time to go further for this session. I want to suggest to you that you open your heart to the grace of God. Don’t be like Israel. You remember we looked at it yesterday? They limited the Holy One of Israel. They set limits to what they felt he should do. And he was angry.

If God is truly prompting you, telling you that he has a work for you, don’t tell him, “Lord, I’m not qualified. I don’t speak the language, I don’t get on with people like that.” All that is secondary. The thing that matters is God’s choice. Did he choose you?

Why don’t we just close for a moment or two by praying? “God, show me your choice for my life.” Maybe God will speak to some of you here even now in this very closing moments. “I’ve chosen you, I have a place for you. I have a work for you to do. I set my love upon you.”

“Father, we just pause now to acknowledge your measureless grace. We want to set aside any limitations that we have imposed on you and on your grace. Thank you, Lord, that your justice was satisfied for ever by the death of Jesus. It’s not a question of justice now Lord, it’s the release of your grace. I want to pray for my brothers and sisters here and for all who will in due course be hearing or seeing these messages. I want to pray, Lord, that they’ll open their hearts to your grace and that you will speak to many about your sovereign choice, your purpose. You’ll take away all fears and all distrust and just motivate them sovereignly, supernaturally in the direction of your will. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

Now just remain a moment or two longer in the presence of the Lord.