The Deep Dealings of God Pt 27 - Let Us Go on Unto Perfection - Now Faith and God's Love — Phil Beach Jr.

Thank you, Lord. We thank you for your presence, Father. We bless you because of your kindness and your love and your Holy Spirit, Lord. We thank you, Lord, for your abundance of grace and mercy that you so freely and abundantly bestow upon us today, Lord.

Our hearts are so thankful, Lord. We pray, Lord, that you would teach us this morning, Lord. Teach us, Lord, how to look to you. Teach us, Lord, how to look to you, how to receive from you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, for all of the things that are going on in and around our lives.

For we know, Lord, that you're teaching us how not to trust in ourself, but in the living God who raises the dead, who works the impossible for those who trust him. Thank you, Lord, that your deliverance is not because of our strength or our wisdom or our numbers or our plans or our competence, but rather our deliverance, Lord, is because of you and your power and your might.

Thank you, Lord, that you diminish our strength. You diminish the things that we trust in. You diminish our resources. You delight in bringing us to hopelessness so that the God of all hope might be revealed to us.

Oh, Lord, your ways are not our ways. Your thoughts are not our thoughts. We rejoice, Lord, with you this morning. We rejoice with you this morning. Beloved, I'd like to invite you to turn to Hebrews chapter 11.

Seeing Jesus as the Pattern of Transformation

And we just want to read this word before we turn our attention to a few more of the divine virtues that Jesus possesses, and he wants to work in our lives. And I trust this morning the Holy Spirit will give us a grace to listen, to hear, as the word of exhortation came forth.

As we see Jesus, we're transformed. And we must pray, Oh, God, help us to see Jesus. That's our purpose of gathering together here, that we might see Jesus. Because in seeing him, we are transformed by the power of his Holy Spirit.

And so the greatest need of our heart now is seeing Jesus. But in particular, we need to look at something this morning that the Lord has brought to our attention, Hebrews chapter 11. I would suspect that it would be true for me to say that almost everyone in this auditorium, and possibly everyone, has one time or more in your life prayed.

And you've said, Oh, God, I want faith. I want more faith. I want great faith. Whenever the children are ready, just go ahead, nice and quietly, please. We've prayed and we've said, Lord, I want faith.

How many would agree that at least one time in your life you prayed that? I want faith. I want faith, Lord. I want to be able to believe you. But I think we have failed to understand the nature of faith.

Faith needs a certain kind of environment in order to work. And when God prepares us to be recipients of faith, we begin to despair because we don't recognize the environment necessary for true divine faith to be birthed in our hearts.

Now Faith in the Midst of Impossibility

First, let's for a few moments look at this faith, Hebrews chapter 11, now faith. Now that can be taken a few different ways. That word now could possibly be connecting the thought of the previous chapter to the present exhortation.

I like to take it differently. I like to take it just the way it says, now faith, that is present faith, that is living faith, now faith, faith that is now. Not yesterday's faith, not last year's faith, but now faith.

This coincides with what Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that is proceeding out of the mouth of God. We need a now faith, don't we? Yesterday's faith was wonderful. Yesterday's manna was wonderful.

But today we need a now faith. Now faith is the substance of things told for the evidence of things not seen. Let's go down to verse number six. But without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without faith, it is impossible to please God.

But likewise, faith is not possible unless there is something impossible. We do not need the faith that comes from Jesus Christ if the thing that we are hoping for or the thing that we are trusting in is possible.

With our resources and our wisdom and our credentials and our know-how and our plans, we don't need this faith. And so true faith, the faith that is birthed by the Holy Spirit that grows in our life and ought to be the quality that we live by is formed in our hearts as God entrusts us with impossibilities.

Now an impossibility means your faith diminishes and dies. Your confidence withers and it's in that state. Our hearts recognize their inadequacy, recognize poverty, where the faith of God, the faith of Jesus Christ is birthed in us.

And now the problem that we face, beloved, is that when we find ourselves in such situations, we despair as though something is wrong. When in fact, we are standing at the greatest moment of God's glory.

The greatest moment of God's glory is not when man is walking erect with self-confidence, seeing a possible way for this thing to happen. That's not God's greatest moment, that's man's greatest moment.

That's man's greatest glory. The words of God to Gideon reverberate this morning in the Holy Spirit. I cannot give into your hands the Philistines, Midianites, unless if I do, you would say, look at what our hand has wrought.

Look at what our might has secured. Look what we did by our numbers and by our military skill. So God diminishes the numbers down to simply 300 and makes, listen, he makes the odds impossible so that in the midst of impossibility, it becomes possible for a faith from God to arise within the heart so that that heart can believe God to do what is impossible.

It takes impossible circumstances in order for the possibility of divine faith to be birthed within the house of God, within your heart. It takes impossible situations. And this is why our father in his sovereign wisdom allows us to be tried to the extreme so that we would learn not to trust in ourselves.

The greatest display that heaven could ever behold and the greatest damage that could ever be done to the kingdom of darkness is to see God's people having been brought by the hand of God to the end of themselves, to the end of confidence in anything other than God.

The greatest joy in heaven, the greatest fear in hell is to see a people who in the midst of utter impossibility around about them begin to sing, I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and the rider thrown into the sea.

The greatest fear within the heart of the kingdom of darkness is to see the faith of the son of God arise within the church, a faith that laughs at impossibilities, a faith that laughs and says, I believe God.

Is it possible this morning that your heart has been prepared for such a faith as this to arise this morning? Is it possible? Would you like such a faith? Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find.

Let's bow our heart for a second. Father, thank you for faith that comes when all hope is gone. Father, thank you for letting our human emotions wither and dry up. Listen, some of you folks think you're backslidden simply because you don't have the fleshly excitement you used to have.

It's not true. You don't measure how well your heart is doing with God based on human emotion. Human emotion comes and goes like the dew in the morning. Human emotion is as fickle as water. God is weaning you from having faith in your emotions.

This thing of faith is much deeper than emotion. This is faith. This is a reality from God in the midst of a heart that has fears within and fears without. This is a faith that lives within the soul, within the spirit of a man or a woman when he's being led into the lion's den, there possibly to be eaten alive.

This is the faith that carried the early martyrs into the Roman arena where they were cut in half and had corn put inside their cut open bodies so that the lions could come and eat them. God help them if they had faith in their feelings at that time.

I don't think they would have marched triumphantly into that scenario. I think they wrestled with fears. I think their humanity was in convulsions. But this thing goes deeper than our humanity. This goes deeper than our feelings.

This goes into the depths of our spirit and it's from and by God. It's the very faith of the Son of God, Jesus himself. Father, thank you for this faith. I pray, Lord, that you will nurture this into our hearts right now.

Birth it, Lord. You are able, Lord. Help us to come into a new way of believing. Out of the old way of believing based on what we think is possible. Oh, we're so quick to believe, Lord. We're so quick to make a good confession of faith.

When we still see there's a trace of hope. When we still see that there's a plan A and we have plan B and we still are strong. But, oh, when everything withers and everything dies and all hope is gone and Lazarus is dead and he's stinking, then, oh, God, we're found out.

The hour of our glory is over. The hour of our boasting is over. The hour of our confidence is over and there we lie defeated. But, Lord, in our defeat we would see Jesus and come to know a faith that is born of his Holy Spirit that doesn't faint.

Oh, yes, Lord, I pray this morning by the power of your Holy Spirit. Romans chapter 4, God's word to Abraham, make him a father of many nations. Before him whom he believed, even God, who quickens the dead and calls those things which be not as though they were.

Listen now, who against hope, faith. That's what the word believe there is, faith. Against hope, faith. That's what the Holy Spirit is saying, against hope, faith. Let me tell you what the human condition, apart from grace, does against hope.

The human condition, your human heart, my human heart, in the face of hopelessness, fails. Against hope, unbelief. No faith. We can have hope as long as we see hope. But when all hope is gone, we faint, we fail.

But Abraham, being the father of faith, God demonstrates in him the pattern. And the scripture says, against hope, faith. Against hope, faith. Let God speak that into your heart this morning. Against hope, against the hopelessness of the situation that you are wrestling with.

Against that hope, in light of that faith, that faith arise from Jesus. This is not an earthly plant. This is a heavenly plant. This is not something that comes out of earth. This is something born by God's Spirit.

And this faith, this faith, declares hope. When what I see with my eyes and what I hear with my ears tells me hopelessness. That he might become the father of many nations according to that which was spoken.

So shall thy seed be. And be not weak in faith, in the faith that comes from Christ. Have faith of God, the scripture says in Mark 11. Have the faith of God. He considered not his own body, now dead. You see, faith that comes from God frees us from considering the circumstance.

Faith that comes from God frees us from considering the deadness of Sarah's womb. Frees us from considering the age of our own body. It frees us from being limited. It frees us. It lifts us. It enables us to come into the bounty, the plenty, the omnipotence of God.

Who is able to perform his word. He didn't consider his own body when he was about 100 years old. Neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered not. That word stagger means to be divided. You'll never find this condition present in your heart apart from God's grace.

You'll never find it. There is a provision from God that the church that you and I individually must come into. It frees us from the staggering that is present in our flesh. The vacillation, vacillating.

How many experience the vacillation in your humanity, in your feelings, in your mind? Brothers and sisters, there's something that God can give us that can hold us steady in the midst of vacillation. Becoming spiritual does not mean that we cease from vacillating.

Cease from being human. Cease from fears within or without. But becoming spiritual simply means that in the midst of this human vacillation, there is an anchor that's holding us in God and in his word.

That's what we want today. This is what calms the soul. This is what holds the soul in the wits of life's bangs and bruises. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.

And being fully persuaded, fully filled. That's what the word persuaded means. It means to be filled. He was filled with the confidence that God was able to perform what he has promised. That's the faith available to us today.

Faith, Love, and the Character of Christ

1 Corinthians chapter 13, that's the only faith, brothers and sisters, that will stand the test and come forth approved by God. And I think it's quite remarkable that this little exhortation precedes what we're about to talk about because we need faith when we come to this subject of Jesus and our being transformed into his likeness.

We need a faith from God that will enable us to believe, that will enable us to be persuaded that God is able to do the impossible. Father, help us as we look at the next few divine qualities of the Son of God.

Help us, Father, we ask for the enabling of the Holy Spirit to come and plant this word deep in our spirits. May it wake us up at night. May it make us uncomfortable during the day. May it trouble us, Lord.

May it get into the very fabric of our being. Lord, we know that your word says that in thy light do we see. This is thy light, O God. This is the standard. This is the standard. Jesus Christ is the standard.

In his light we see. I pray, O God, that you would produce a diligence in us and an earnestness, O God, that we would be empowered to follow hard after these things and that you would leave no stone unturned, and that you would take the sword of your Spirit dipped in the healing balm of Gilead and cut deeply into the very center of our being, making room for the increase of the blessed Son of God in our lives.

Lord, we declare war on all that is in us that is not in conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ. We declare war against it. By the grace of God, we take our stand as being new creatures in Christ Jesus. And our old life, all of the sin and corruption, as having been crucified with Christ, having been buried with Christ, we align ourselves, Lord, with what your word says.

And we ask for a faith that will enable us against the hopelessness of our human condition, against the hopelessness of our corruption, a faith that will say, I believe God will transform me and enable the beauties of Jesus to be seen through this earthen, clay vessel.

God, birth this faith in our heart, I pray. As we turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 13, there's just one word I want to read out of 2 Timothy, verse 5, chapter 1, it says, 2 Peter, I mean, chapter 1, it says,.

And beside this giving all diligence, diligence, a need in this current hour for God to birth diligence into our spirit, diligence, divine diligence, that we might be hard after the things of Christ, a diligence that will capture our heart, capture our heart's affections, a diligence that will free our heart from setting its affections on things on earth, earthly treasures, earthly kingdoms, a diligence that will enable us to pursue after the treasures that are in Christ.

And as we look into 1 Corinthians chapter 13, brothers and sisters, we are in desperate need of diligence. We mustn't let these things slip from us. As we've mentioned before, every, listen, every single problem that we are experiencing has to do, can be traced to a deficiency in our life, a deficiency in these qualities that Jesus Christ possesses.

And so it would be reasonable to conclude that a divine diligence after these things would be the thing that cures us from the corruption of our own heart and the hurts and broken relationships in our life.

Thus far we have learned in 1 Corinthians 13 that the Holy Spirit would want to produce in us a patience, a long suffering. In particular, that has to do with the ability to put up with the sins and faults of others.

Secondly, we saw that love is kind, a kindness that is not based on condition. You're kind to me, I'm kind to you. That's condition. This is a kindness that was seen in Jesus Christ who became a man and demonstrated love and mercy to those who were not deserving of it.

Not only did he demonstrate love and mercy to those who were not deserving, but he went as far as dying for us. That's kindness. Having the ability by God to be an encourager and to help and to comfort, not simply those who are nice to us, but those who are not nice to us.

And remember, all of these qualities must start in the home. A gentle warning from the Holy Spirit to all of us. Your spiritual life does not shine brightest at home. There is a danger light shining. Do not make it your chief goal simply to pray that these qualities will be in your life toward your brothers and sisters in Christ, but pray that they might begin in your home with those that are closest to you and that know you closest, with your children, with mom and dad.

I pray the grace of God will come upon us and enable us to come to a deeper realm of brokenness in our life so that we don't resist the dealing of God in our home. Listen, resolve in your heart right now by the grace of God and the Word of God.

Pride, Humility, and the Transformation of the Heart

Say, Lord, my pride will destroy me. My pride will destroy me. My unwillingness to acknowledge my fault, my sin is the leaven. If not purged, we'll ruin the whole lump. We must pray, oh God, work in me deep humility.

How many go to bed angry? How many go to bed knowing you should have said I'm sorry and you don't? You know what keeps us from saying I'm sorry? Pride. Rotten, terrible, sinful pride. The thing that brought Lucifer down.

We ought to fear pride. The beginning of wisdom is what? To fear God and run from evil. God needs to put a run in our life toward evil who has loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore God, even thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

That's the words that were spoken to our blessed Lord. There is a run in his heart toward evil. He hates it. And he loves righteousness. Young people, the greatest snare in your life is pride. Pride. Pray, oh God, help me see how ugly my pride is.

Pride will cause God to resist us. Pride will cause God's face to turn from us. Pride is the ultimate expression of the sinful nature. I don't need anyone who will not acknowledge my need for God. I will not acknowledge my need to be forgiven.

I will not acknowledge my need as having been wrong. Pride is always right in its own eyes. And that's when we come to this picture of love in 1 Corinthians 13. The first thing that's gonna begin to ache inside of us, it is the heart of pride.

We will have to let go of the heart of pride. Every single husband here needs to look at his wife and say, sweetheart, I am a proud man. Help me, pray for me. When you see this the way it really is, you won't play with it.

It won't be a casual thing. You won't put it on your schedule and say, well, if I have time tomorrow at 9 o 'clock, I'll talk about my pride for 10 minutes.

No, when you see this,.

When Jesus shows it to you, you will groan within, oh God, deliver me from my pride.

Any moment, the moment you see it.

Will be the time that you deal with it. Don't put off dealing with this until an opportune time. Now is the day. Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation. May Jesus help us to see. May Jesus give us a revelation of his eternal perfections.

When you see Christ, when you see Jesus, truly see him, you'll have the same heart response as Peter did. Oh Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man. Have you seen that about yourself? I know we want to get on, talk about these things, but I just feel that God, I just feel the Holy Spirit wants us to be aware this morning that these things are veiled to us.

These things are hidden to us. They turn into putrid theology. God doesn't want to give us a theology lesson this morning. I don't want to be a theology teacher. And I feel this is just the heart of God.

The heart of God crying out to every one of us. If you come and talk about these things, if you approach these things, you will have to be prepared to cry out for deliverance from pride. Pride, pride, pride.

Pride is the exact opposite of everything we read in 1 Corinthians 13, the exact opposite. You want to walk with Jesus? You want his qualities to rub off on you? You've got to get low. You've got to say, Lord, bring me down into the lowness of what you are.

Bring me down into the humility of what you are. Show me, Lord, how you serve your children, how you serve them. Show me, Lord, how only your Father's glory is your concern, not your glory. Half the time Jesus doesn't get the credit for the work he's doing in our lives.

But does he stop doing the work? He doesn't. He keeps on. Why? Because he's selfless. He's not sinful. You want to walk with Jesus, brothers and sisters? I'm not talking about religion. I'm not talking about learning sermons.

I'm not talking about coming here and listening and getting some good ideas and then going around talking about them. You want to walk with Jesus. You want to commune with him. Watch out. Be prepared.

Be prepared. You'll never ever meet a man like him. You'll never meet a man like him. He'll not look on an unclean thing. He is always grieved. Every time we speak a harsh word. Always. Not sometimes.

Always. And if we're close enough to him, we'll stop getting in our tracks and begin to weep and say, Oh, Jesus, I'm sorry. I grieved you, didn't I? He'll show you the way. And it'll be himself. So this is much more than just a theology lesson.

God knows. God knows that it ought never to become just simply that. This is fellowship with the Son of God. This is sharing his heart and sharing his life. This is devastation. This is being devastated before a holy God and learning the way of Christ.

You see? There's a resistance in us. A resistance. There's only one cure for that resistance. Oh, Jesus, have mercy on me. Why do we defend ourself? Why do we insist on being wrong and harsh and right and cruel?

The answer? Jesus. Grace. Give me grace, Lord. Everybody together say this. I'm sorry. Is that hard to say? Now get even more specific. Get even more specific. Say, I'm sorry that I am so arrogant so often.

Is that hard? You see? You see our condition? You see how terrible pride is? Why is it hard? Because we have to see more of Jesus. I'm sorry. Hear it right now. I'm sorry for being so arrogant. I'm sorry for saying that to you.

I'm sorry for being so short and unkind. I'm sorry. Spell it out. Say it specifically. That's good for the soul. That's good for the soul. Don't ever get, brothers and sisters, don't ever get into the practice of putting under the carpet things.

Don't. Don't. I'm sorry. Forgive me. I don't want a breach of the spirit. I don't want our hearts to depart from one another. And you know what we need to learn to do every day? Father, against thee and thee alone, have I sinned.

In so much as you have done unto the least of my brethren, you have not done it unto me. You see, even though we read one another and we must confess our false one to another and pray that we might be healed, ultimately we're hurting and wounding the heart of our God.

Are you sensitive to that? Have you been awakened to this reality? Have you come to realize that God is real and he feels? And every time, every time you grieve him, he feels it. Are you sensitive to that?

I strongly recommend you ask God to make it a practice in your life, not only to confess your thoughts to one another, but also to learn to go to Father and say, Father, I know this grieves your heart.

I'm sorry. Thank you for the forgiveness that's in your son. Change my heart, oh God. A few months ago, the Lord put it on my heart to write a paper, most of you have gotten it, called Wisdom for Families.

And at the end of that, I gave a little exhortation for families to get together and to talk about these things. I gave an exhortation for husbands to look at their wives and say, Hon, point out the blind spots in my life that I can't see or that I'm unwilling to see.

I wonder how many have done it. God wants us to be serious about these things. We live in a culture where they don't take these things serious. Kindness. We learned that pride doesn't envy. We learned that pride does not vaunt itself.

Love Rejects Self-Glory and Serves Others

It's not a bragger. Pride doesn't brag. Or love doesn't brag. Love doesn't speak of itself. Love doesn't bring attention to itself. Love doesn't need to be praised by men. Know how deeply that is in our heart.

How mad we get when we're not recognized. How mad we get. You know, a lot of anger in our hearts is simply because we don't think we're getting the honor we deserve in our home. Some men have an unrealistic idea of what their wife is supposed to be and makes too many demands.

We get mad. We get mad when we're not the king. Listen, Jesus don't want you to be the king of your home. He wants you to be the servant. He wants you to take your crown off and wrap yourself in the cloths that he wrapped himself in when he went down and washed the feet.

But you're not going to manufacture that. That's not a plant that grows out of earth. That comes from Jesus who emptied himself as king of heaven and washed our dirty feet. Not only washed them, but bore the wrath of his father.

Not because of anything he did, but because I cursed him. Because I blasphemed him. Ever tell you about the vision I had years and years ago as I was praying? It was a foggy thing. It wasn't with these eyes.

It was the eyes of my heart. I saw Calvary. And I saw a man arise with a sword in his hand and he walked up to the Savior and plunged it in his side. And as this man turned, I beheld and know it was me.

It was me. And God said to me, Son, always remember that's the best thing you can do for me apart from my grace working in you. Plunge a sword into my side. Oh, I would never do that, Brother Phil. What Peter said, huh?

You see, God so wants to display these qualities. Listen closely. He wants to display these qualities before us. He wants them to be honey. Honey. He wants them to be honey to our taste. He wants to draw.

He wants to entice us. But there's a difficulty. Do you know what that difficulty is? It's what we can't get off of. It's pride. Hard to be uttered. Love's not puffed up. It's a word that means that through your breath you inflate something.

You blow something up. Figuratively, it represents inflating ourselves with our own words. Proverbs. Let another man's lips praise you and not that of your own. Don't ever forget that you're nothing without him.

Don't ever forget it. The fatal flaw in Nebuchadnezzar was what? God. God gave him a big kingdom, and he said one day, Look what I have done, and look at the glory of Nebuchadnezzar. Don't ever forget the small beginnings where you've come from, brothers and sisters.

The dirt, the mud that God pulled you out of. Don't ever forget if God ever, ever gives you a little bit of success in what you're doing, don't ever forget that it has nothing to do with the one that you see in the mirror every morning.

Nothing to do with it. Don't ever forget. You know, the word nerd or geek. What does that represent? Someone that's square, right? We've got people pointing at one another. You know what a nerd is? You're a nerd, man.

You're not cool. You're a misfit. Well, don't forget we're all nerds and geeks. If you ever think you're the cool one and someone else is a nerd, you're setting yourself up for a fall. You're setting yourself up for a fall.

You're not cool. You're a geek. Everybody should say, I'm a geek. I'm a nerd. Oh, that's good for the soul. Don't ever forget. Don't ever puff yourself up because as quick as you puff yourself up, God will drop a needle from heaven and his aim is perfect.

And it will pop that thing and the explosion will scare you and everyone around you half to death. You ever hear something? That's just what will happen. And all those empty words will just be dispersed.

And then God will say in his love, He that glorieth my son, my daughter, let him glory in this, that he knows me, and that I am God, and there is none other. There is none other. Love doesn't behave itself unwisely, doesn't bring dishonor to itself, doesn't act shamefully.

Love seeketh not her own. Love is not selfish. Love is not... Listen, listen carefully. We're going to close on this because we've run out of time, but that's all right. That's all right. We've got as much time as we need until Jesus comes.

Listen. Love does not say this. What can I get out of this thing? Love is not driven by selfish ambition. Rather, love says, How can I help? And the thing about the nature of love is this. True love is satisfied not when it seeks to get for itself, but when it gives of itself.

That's the paradox of divine love. You say, well, I mean, everything in life has to do with me getting something for myself, brother. You will get all you need for yourself when you give your selfishness to God and let God produce selflessness in your life.

The greatest joy that a soul can know is the bliss and happiness and peace and satisfaction that it experiences when it exchanges selfishness for selflessness. Do you want a free life? Do you want a rich life?

Do you want a satisfied life? Do you want a life where you could say, Oh God, I'm so blessed. I don't know what to do. Say, Oh God, free me from selfishness and give me a love that doesn't seek its own.

Love that pours itself out into the lives of other people. A love that Jesus has in his heart. Father, we thank you for your presence. We thank you, Lord, for your word. We sense, Lord, great eagerness within your heart to put on display before us the beauties of your lovely Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

But we also sense a difficulty because we cannot see when our eyes are blinded by pride. We cannot see when our eyes are blinded by selfish ambition. And so we pray by thy grace and thy mercy and thy Holy Spirit that you would free us from our pride so that the eyes of our heart can see clearly the beauties of Jesus Christ and by faith look to you to be transformed and changed.

That the image of the heavenly might be seen through these earthen vessels of clay. I pray every single person in here, Lord, myself included, would be given a grace today that will free us and overrule the law of sin that causes us to resist your truth and your word.

Help us to say we're sorry. Help us to acknowledge our sin. Help us to talk openly and freely with the ones closest to us about the faults in our life, about the sins, about the things in our life that are not like Jesus as seen in 1 Corinthians 13.

Give us the courage to be vulnerable and transparent. Help us to stop defending ourselves and to acknowledge our guilt that apart from you we are most corrupt. Free us from pride, Lord. Give us this quality that once it's wrought in our life open up to us the treasures of heaven and let us see Jesus more and more and more.

Count us, Lord, for your honor and glory, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.