Leadership Baptism and the Importance of Devotions — Art Katz

Leadership and Authority in the Church

Well, I've been asked to repeat a few remarks made before our break time, one on the issue of leadership, the other on the subject of baptism. And just to bring it together in a very concise way. I feel very keenly about the necessity for leadership and that it's intrinsic to the church.

And that the absence of leadership is a formula for, what's the word that I use? Anarchy. And it's clear from scripture that God gave to the church, apostles and prophets, men of authority and evangelists, pastors, teachers, but also elders and deacons.

And so the issue of government and rule is clear in the church. The only issue is the recognition of those whom God has appointed. So Paul would leave a fellowship that he himself had established through his own evangelistic efforts and come back a year or two later and set in the elders of that fellowship.

It's not that he just said eenie, meenie, minie, moe and just picked one capriciously. What he did was recognize what God had already established and make that public. And to the recognition of the body in which that brother was already expressing authority.

So it's not some arbitrary thing that the apostle at will establishes, but recognizes and ordains and sets before the body in the recognition of the calling of God. One of the compliments that we received that the Lord is just reminding me to share with you about our own fellowship.

I was one of the three elders, was a brother who visited us from another community and said at his leaving two weeks later, if I did not know who the elders were, I would have been hard pressed to identify them.

Which is to say that except for the fact and the requirement of expressing authority, that the elders acted as brothers. They were not conspicuous. They didn't wear a label or have a sign on their door.

But when authority was required, they asserted it. So I think that that's the kind of formula where brothers with brothers until such time as the expression of authority is required and then it's given.

But authority certainly and that the whole kingdom of God is hierarchical and different offices and distributions and gifts. And so that's reflected in the earth. But that will be the reality eternally when his kingdom comes.

So we shouldn't shrink from that. And maybe what's being tested is our own pride, our unwillingness to recognize or to submit to authority. And that will take the form of finding disagreement with the personality of the man or something about his own history.

None of them will be perfect, as I'm not. But elder signifies one of a greater maturity in the things of God, but not necessarily that he's faultless. So if you want to find grounds to exempt yourself from the authority expressed through that one, it wouldn't take you much to find it, so as to disqualify his authority.

But what it really is, is the expression of one's rebellion and self-will that really refuses to submit. So we need to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord and err rather on the side of submission and recognition of authority than defiance against it.

And that would be God honoring. And you have only to look around and see who are the men that seem to be expressing things, calling the session to order, praying, making comments, announcements. These are usually the signs of those who have already been groomed and called by God to express authority.

If you're going to move from a very precious but casual Saturday morning meeting of men into something more formidable and significant for the kingdom of God as a body, you'll have to come to these recognitions sooner or later.

And that will be a qualitative shifting and a change from just the enjoyable, non-requiring fellowship that your Saturday mornings have been to an expression of the body of Christ in this locality that can begin to serve and to fulfill the purposes of God because structure that has been imputed is recognized and acknowledged.

Baptism, Death, and Resurrection Life

On the issue of baptism that came up out of our conversation about the exchanged life, if we can perform what we think as Christian, we are outside the faith. God has called us to a faith, the nature of which is of such a kind that it's beyond any capacity in ourselves to fulfill, so that he must be all in all.

And to be it through his sons who have yielded up their own natural ability, however well-meaning, that he might express his life through them. This is God's normative intention for all believers. And I would say it's the most grievous lack and failure in the body of Christ today, in the Church today, is the appropriation of the life of God.

Maybe we have not the faith to appropriate it, or we're fearful to let go of our confidence in our own ability, which has been established over a lifetime, and the fear that if we relinquish that dependability, what will we have in its place?

It will be a kind of a no-man's land where we'll have our face sticking out, but we have nothing clever to say and no ability to express except that the life of God will express himself. So resurrection is the name of the game.

It's the heart of the matter. We're called to be sons of the resurrection, especially in the last days. Who will be sufficient for these things? But the resurrection must ever and always be preceded by death.

Death is a painful phenomenon. Humiliation is death. Waiting on God is death. Not trusting your own confidence and your ability is a death. Believing God and opening your mouth and yielding your body, your frame, your voice to his use is a kind of death.

But the result thereof is life. And so we saw last night in what seemed to be a fitful, spurt, jerk presentation that the life of God was functioning because it turned a message into an event. Something went forth that affected lives because it was the life of God himself promoting his own kingdom and his own power.

But what it took was a man willing to abdicate the confidence in his own ability, his own eloquence, his own knowledge, and trust God. That's the genius of prophetic proclamation. That you don't come with a well-ordered statement that becomes your confidence.

You simply come and trust the Lord to assemble and bring together in the point of time his own communication. And if you're around long enough and follow such men long enough, you'll see how variable their expressions are.

They're never two times that they are the same, even on the same subject. So I'll be speaking tonight likely on the subject of Israel. Though I'll say many things that I've expressed before, the way it will come forth will be uniquely fitted by the wisdom of God to this occasion.

Not by any cunning on my part or ability, but the Lord himself expressing himself in his own originality. Not because we want novelty, but because he's a creative God and he will form and shape his utterance.

And that ought to spoil us. That when we come to the house of God to hear the word of God, that we should really have that expectation. That it's not going to be the word of man or an opinion, but that of God, which Paul says performs a work in them that believe that.

The Word of God and Apostolic Proclamation

He complimented the Thessalonians, these pagan people who are radically converted by the preaching of Paul, the apostolic proclamation of Paul, because they turned from their idols to serve the living God and to wait for Jesus who comes from heaven to save them from the day of his wrath.

You can imagine the kind of gospel that they received from Paul that was that inclusive and had the power to turn them from their idols to serve the living God. With the God we would see that in the conversions of today.

But our idols continue. Sport, sex, business, whatever. We need an apostolic proclamation that has the power to break idolatry. And that's why Paul said, I praise God, that when you heard the word of God from me, you received it for what it was, not the word of man, but the word of God that performs a work in them that believe that.

He didn't say that, but not just believing in general, but believing that the word that they heard was God's word. Now it came forth through a Hebrew, and it had his accent and was expressed through his personality, but it was God's own word.

And these pagans recognized it and believed that, therefore it had the power to deliver them. So we need to come in the hearing of the word without expectation, and those who proclaim the word need to believe also that the word of their own mouth is God's word.

Maybe it's a greater demand on the speaker than it is the hearer, because who is more conscious of his own frailty and his own humanity than the one who is speaking? Like last night, my bowels were rumbling, powerful headache, hot and sweaty, I felt like I had a fever, in fact, perhaps I did.

So I was very conscious of my humanity and my infirmity, but in that same consciousness to believe that the word is God's own word. See how we're continually tested by faith? Faith never becomes a static matter of just subscribing to correct doctrines.

That's what it has become today, a kind of a creedal Christianity, where we believe correct things. Faith is a dynamic, active affirmation of the reality of God moment by moment, despite all appearances to the contrary, despite all feelings to the contrary.

So the just shall live by their faith in the living God, whose spirit lists where he will, and you cannot know, as we mentioned before, where it's coming from or where it's going, and you don't need to know.

To know is still to have yourself on the throne, to have control over a situation, to gratify the lust of your mind and give you a security that is not a kingdom security, but a worldly security. Not to know is to trust.

And when God called Abraham, who is the father of faith, and who will inherit the world, the nations, in his patriarchal place in God's governmental scheme, in his own resurrection, the word was, come out from father kindred, from nation kindred and father's house, and follow me in the land that I will show you.

It's not some fixed thing that here it is, sign on the dotted line, you know what it's going to be. You'll not know. It'll always be a trembling, always an adhering to God, a sensing and an obedience.

That's the act of life of faith. It's a remarkable requirement. I said to my dear brother across the way, as we were having a cup of coffee, I always ask men what they do for a living. I want to know what men will give their lives to.

And he mentioned something about, he's young in the Lord, two or three years, something like that, and that he's timid. Which is to say, don't expect me to share the word of God. And I said, Israel's great sin was limiting the Holy One of Israel.

We dare not limit God by deferring to or referring to our personalities, or our natural temperament, or our disposition. As if that's the only thing, that we can only act in God to that limitation. He has given that personality, but He may call for occasions when He will transcend it, if we will allow Him that right.

We must not limit the Holy One of Israel and tell Him what we can or cannot do. We can do all things in Christ who strengthens us, if we'll allow Him. So what seems to be modesty, is really arrogance.

It's imposing upon God a limitation, and saying this far, no further. No, you can't do that, I'll not allow it. This is my personality, this is the way I am, and I'm comfortable that way. I don't want to be bold.

I don't want to be a preacher. I don't want to be an object that men may reproach. So we're falling short of the glory and the kingdom, by these mentalities, that have not their origin in the faith or in scripture, but in the world.

Baptism as Separation from the World

So that's why we need a radical separation from the world, its mentality. Not in the things that are apparently evil, that's easy to renounce, but in the things that appear to be good, that seem to be deferring, modest.

And the way for that separation is not by analysis, but by baptism. Baptism is the radical separation from the world, the flesh, and the devil. Israel was baptized unto Moses, both in the sea and in the cloud.

They had to come out of Egypt, but Egypt had been taken out from them, and they had to pass through the waters and come up on the other side. And then before the entry to the land, one more time for the generation born in the wilderness, through the Jordan.

Which, by the way, means descent into death. It's not just going down and getting your little tootsies wet, it's coming into a burial. So baptism is a burial, and I shared before the break, if those of us who are having difficulty in appropriating the life of Christ, we need first to make clear and understand that the baptism is the key of entry into his life.

Because it's the place of entry into his death. There's no resurrection without death. And our death is entering into his death, established at the cross by the sacrament that he has established called baptism.

And what we have done in modern times is to traduce the great sacraments of God and to make them mere institutional, commonplace obediences. So that people get wet, and they feel like they're fulfilling a requirement, but they have no notion of what they're in fact doing.

And if the truth were told, they have no desire for the truth of what they are doing. They only want to get wet. They only want to fulfill a minimal religious obligation. They never have any intention of dying.

God is not going to bury something that's still kicking and alive and wanting to succeed on the basis of that life. He'll only bury a life that is committed to death because it recognizes that in me, there is no good thing at all.

And as I said before the break, it's an easy thing to crucify and bury our defects, our shortcomings, our hangups, our sins, our sinful disposition, our lust and all the kinds of things that mar our life.

But we want to retain that which is good. And we want to succeed on the basis of what is good. And we want to be found succeeding. We want to be recognized by men succeeding on the basis of our virtue, our accomplishment, our strength, our intelligence.

These are the things that must be crucified. And that's why we've not come into the resurrection mode. We want to retain and succeed on the basis of our own natural life, thinly gilded over with a religious overlay.

We have not shared God's view of man. We do not really agree with him that it is utterly depraved, that there's no hope in it, there's no good thing in it, even at its best. It stinks, because it has as its basic constitution self-seeking.

It will always displace God. It will always seek for preeminence. It always wants to be recognized. The only place for it is death and burial. And the good news is that something was performed 2 ,000 years ago that has effectually met this profound inveterate egocentrism.

It's called the cross of Christ Jesus. When that atom went to that cross, that's what was destroyed there. And that's the good news. It has been done in once and for all. And we can enter that death through baptism.

And then Paul says in Romans 6, which is the heart, in my opinion, of the Gospel, verse 11, now reckon yourself indeed dead unto yourself and alive unto God in Christ Jesus. He's not saying suck in your lips and hope against hope and whistle in the dark, that in fact this is true, but that your reckoning is based on two facts, the death of Jesus 2 ,000 years ago at the cross and his resurrection, and your death by the moment in time which you entered it by your baptism.

You have a fact, you have a factum, you have an historic event that on August 13, 1965, 75, 92, you entered his death by the act of baptism. You know when it took place. Reckon yourself dead on that basis and on that act that you chose and you will to go to a willing death, as he went to his death willingly.

So when I baptize someone, I keep them down. And when I was baptized, I asked, don't make this a quickie, I want to be submerged and my head especially, my Jewish head, with all of its independent thoughts and self-will and idealistic revelries and all that that seat of rebellion and self-will has to go down into death and into burial.

And then bring me up. And so I keep the baptized person down, let him get the sense. That's why immersion is so remarkably significant. And I would not say that if you were just sprinkled that you have an invalid baptism.

But I will say if you were only sprinkled, you need a greater faith to believe that that sprinkling stands for that burial. And if you have not the faith to believe that, then see to it that you are immersed and be buried.

Because you have to make a reckoning and you need to make it daily that you are indeed dead unto yourself and alive unto God on the basis of an act that you can point to. Got the idea? That you might be raised unto newness of life.

That you no longer, how to say, yield your members unto unrighteousness. But no longer to live unto self but unto God. That's what makes it new. There's a new principle of life. The old principle was self-serving.

And you can even do that religiously. Hide in the pew, dollar in the collection plate, sing to him, say amen, attend the meeting. But you are still in the throne. You are still calling the shots. You are still making your own determinations.

The newness of life serves God. It has no interest in anything else. Its nature is to serve God. He was raised to a newness of life, no longer to live unto himself nor for himself but unto God. Can you imagine a whole church of people who have come alive into that reality?

My God, it would shake Canada. Nations would fall. But what do we have now? We have an addendum to society. A Sunday thing that confirms the status quo and challenges nothing. It's just people who subscribe to a quaint Sunday culture that has not even impressed their children or engaged their children.

Their children are going out and doing their thing under the more powerful influences of the world than anything that they have gleaned or seen in their parents. Because their parents are not in the resurrection.

They are only in a religious equivalent thereof. Got the idea? Okay. So, what I'm going to share with you guys are the insights of this morning's devotional. And I want to encourage every one of us to a morning devotional life.

Devotional Life and the Appropriation of Scripture

So I read the psalm for the day. Today was the 30th, it happens to be for me, in the third month of this cycle of psalm readings, Psalm 90. But I also read the chapter of Proverbs. So today is the 30th, it's the 30th chapter of Proverbs.

And you'll never exhaust it. Every time you go through it again, you'll see something else that will be an application, appropriate now, for some circumstance in your life that will quicken something in that chapter that you had not seen before.

So my devotional life is early. Before the world wakes up, before the family wakes up, it's yet dark, quiet. You can bow before the Lord, commence in prayer, plead and invoke the blood afresh upon your own head and your own house.

It's amazing, I have a naive and simple faith that invokes the blood. And I'm always astonished when I hear of families that are being ravaged, and their children are being chewed up and spit out, or they're having all kinds of tumult and problems.

I say to the father, have you pleaded the blood? He says, what, what do you mean? I say, you're the priest of the family. You need to perform your priestly function for your family by invoking the blood of the Lamb daily on their heads, on your house, on your doorpost, on your pillow, and submit the whole family under the blood of the Lamb for protection, keeping.

And so I do that in the morning, at the commencement of the day, I do it at the end of the day, for the night hours. It's amazing, if I forget once in a while, how that night I will be worked over by the enemy with hot seasons and flashes of such erotic things that it's an embarrassment and a shock to know what you're able to conceive in your night hours because you've not thought to submit yourself under the blood of Christ and that he would rule even over in your sleep and through the night hours and not allow a harassment that we need not suffer if we had only submitted ourselves under the blood.

So that's how I begin in prayer and talking things over with the Lord the things of the day and giving myself to him afresh asking for his thoughts. The last bastion of self is our thought life because our thought is us and we don't want to be thought to be ignoramuses or devoid of opinion because that's our identity is our thought and how we express it but God says in Isaiah, I think it's 55 let the unrighteous man let the, not unrighteous the evil or the wicked man the wicked man forsake his acts and the unrighteous man his thoughts and I will receive him, save the Lord.

And I used to think that the unrighteous thoughts must certainly be pornographic and yes we must forsake that but the Lord impressed me that it's not because it's pornographic that it's unrighteous it's unrighteous because it's our thought the presumption of having our thought when we could have the thoughts that are above our thoughts and come down to us from above his thoughts are above our thoughts and his ways above our ways and we never think to clear our minds from the debris and clutter of our own imagining and our own contemplations to receive the thought of God like for example, what is God's thought for this morning through me for you is that something that I'm supposed to determine by some kind of logic that I should have an idea of what is represented here and what their needs could be and what is the most appropriate thing to say.

There's no way that that can be considered. All I can do is Lord give me your thought for these men today. So I want to encourage you to know that our minds are to be secondary to our spirits and not to run the show that is the servant organ and not the primary one our spirit his spirit.

And our spirit is the center of our being and to allow it to engage our minds when it serves the purposes of God but not to be a playground where every stray thought can have its place of residency. Anything that does not come down from above must issue from below if it's not his thought, but our thought it's contaminated, it's impure it has its ultimate origin below but it'll be working in your mind with your voice, it'll sound like you you'll enjoy it, you may even be proud of it and that's how the devil will engage you and find sway.

So let God be God. The remarkable thing is if you lose your life you'll find it. You'll not be mindless but you'll have the thoughts of Christ. He'll have your mind, you'll have an enchristened mind. And that's not just for religious or spiritual things but all things business also that the business might be a kingdom venture submitted to the king whose thoughts are being given to direct you in it in a way that is contrary to the ethos and principles of success that are employed in the world.

Proverbs 30 and Knowing God Beyond Doctrine

Well, just let's take a look at Proverbs 31 today's chapter that begins thus says the man, I am weary, O God I am weary, O God, how can I prevail. How appropriate. There's nothing that's going to be more exhausting than religion when we seek to serve God out of our humanity.

It's wearying. And here's the cry of it, I am weary, O God I am man and I am weary. Surely I am too stupid to be human. I do not have human understanding. I have not learned wisdom. Nor have I the knowledge of the Holy One.

And then comes this remarkable portion that we often quote to Jewish inquirers. Who has ascended to heaven and come down. Who has gathered the wind in the hollow of his hand. Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment.

Who has established all the ends of the earth. What is his name. And what is his son's name. If thou canst tell. Or surely you know. Well, I like the phrase it takes God to be a man. Jesus' humanity was the evidence of that.

I'm too stupid to be human. I do not have even a human understanding. I have not learned wisdom. Nor have I the knowledge of the Holy One. In a word, we don't know as we ought to know. And what I heard myself praying this morning that occupied my spirit is to come in to a knowledge of God that is a real knowing to qualitatively shift gears from things creedal, doctrinal, theoretical to the thing that's actual the real knowing that establishes our humanity as godly men.

And then that's why those questions arise. Who has ascended to heaven? Do you really know who he is. Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment. Who has established all the ends of the earth. Do you really know who that is if he's established all the ends of the earth.

How about my ends. Does that include me and the details of my life. Is that inclusive in the God. Who has established the ends of the earth. This is typical biblical speech found also in the Psalms grand statements of the inclusive God.

That is the understanding of those who have a history in God and have struggled to convert mere theoretical or doctrinal knowledge into the reality of who God is. This is not a cheapie but it ought to be our persistent search.

And then the text goes on and every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Well what a wonderful last days provision to have God as a shield. But it's only available to those who take refuge in him.

Who have wrestled through. Who has the winds in his hand and the waters as a garment. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. So this is beyond the issue of doctrine theoretical knowledge even correct understanding.

This is existential appropriation of God. That seems to be the reality of whoever wrote Proverbs and who speaks like that in the Psalms. It's the same language in the Psalms God is my shield, God is my high tower God is my refuge, God is my strength.

That's why Psalms is so remarkable. The faith of the psalmist is the thing to which we are called. And it's got to come to a place of actuality. God is my refuge and my strength. You'll not be able to say that except that you have tested God for this reality in your own life.

And the frequency of his answer gives you the confidence and the strength. And you can say my shield, my tower, my strength. Because you know you're weak and you've seen his strength make perfect in your weakness.

You've been willing for the humiliation of weakness to know that strength and now that you know that you know it it's your provision in the last days because eventualities are coming that we cannot anticipate that will come upon us suddenly for which we will have no preparation that past experience or logic can give us an answer but only the knowledge of God will sustain us if he is indeed our refuge and our strength that no matter what the eventuality God is the greater and God is the sufficiency.

Psalm 90, Psalm 100, and Daily Devotion

So our everyday, our fellowship, our coming together our own personal devotion is the questing for the appropriation of this reality of God this is the seeking of him. And just to take a quick look at my psalm for the day it's remarkable how often the psalm will correspond to the proverbs or I read also from Oswald Chambers, my utmost for his highest the selection for that day.

I have one or two other devotional books and there seems to be such a confluence like almost a theme, God's thought for the day is echoed in the psalms, in proverbs, in Oswald Chambers. And that's how you've begun the day.

And you take those thoughts with you into the day, into the practicality of what you're about. And it's remarkable how you'll find application. So I'm commending again beginning the day in God and devotion but not as an obligation.

I've read chapter one, I've read so many chapters I have fulfilled my obligation. Devotion is the antithesis of obligation. You don't want to get religious about this. So it's no longer a devotion. It then becomes a requirement, an obligatory thing.

I've done my duty for today, I've read so many chapters I've read so many verses, it hasn't benefited you a bit. It has got to be a devotional thing. You linger over it. That means that you can't rush this.

That means that you're not just giving the Lord fifteen, twenty minutes or even a half hour, you're up early enough to luxuriate in the scripture to dwell upon it. You're immersing yourself, you're letting it come into your spirit.

You're thinking of its application. You're relating what is being said here with something else that was quickened recently in your devotions. Or you heard someone speak as a message. This is devotion, basking in the word of the Lord and the presence of God whether or not it's felt.

Don't become sensate. Don't measure the success of your devotional time by whether you feel the presence of God. He's trying to wean us from that very dependency. But whether you feel it or not to be in the word of God is to be in God.

You're in His presence. Whether it's felt or not something is being communicated. Some dimension of God is coming into your inner man and into your being. I even have the audacity to believe that not only am I invoking the blood of Jesus to be washed afresh that the Lord would make chaste my soul and my spirit from whatever may have impinged upon it or any taint of things spoken or heard or done that I might freshly receive of Him but by that same blood I can enter by that new and living way into the holiest place of all that I'm not just on my knees in an upstairs room in Tracy, New Brunswick.

I am actually in the Holy of Holies before the Shekinah presence of God. Believest thou this? Have you the faith to believe that? See how we have fallen short? Merely to reduce the death of Jesus and His resurrection as atonement for sin, however glorious that is.

And to stop there is to fall short of a greater glory by that same blood a place of entry was made, a priestly place into the holiest place of all where the veil has been rent and which we are now bidden come to find help in time of need at the throne of grace.

Well in what day do we not need that? In what day are we free from need for help? If we're living at the radical edge of faith in the last days, in a world that is hostile and at enmity with God where is the day that we don't need to find Him at the throne of grace to find help in time of need and as a place provided the veil has been rent by the flesh of Jesus.

And if we are in the blood we have entry, not by any qualification of our own but by virtue of the blood that the Father deeply honors and respects. And we can come into the high priestly place so that as we're making our petitions before the throne of grace I'm asking the Lord at the same time that I might be imbued with something of the radiance of His own glory.

He's in His Shekinah presence. He's above the mercy seat and between the cherubim in His Shekinah glory. And certainly you can't abide there, even in prayer without some infusion coming out of that great radiance and into ourselves.

And occasionally we'll see a saint with a radiant face rarely but occasionally. And you can believe that that radiance like Moses has come out of the place of communion. All of our faces ought to be shining in God if we are consistently and daily beginning the day in His presence in the place of communion.

So Psalm 100 one is not like another. This happens to be a brief one. But I've not found the psalm yet that has not been rewarding. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, O the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness.

Come into His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God. It is He that made us and not we ourselves. We are His, we are His people. And the sheep of His pasture enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise.

Give thanks to the Lord, bless His name, be thankful unto Him for the Lord is good, His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations. I'm reading it much too fast. Don't follow my example.

When you're reading this devotionally you want to linger over this. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. O the earth. This is God's intention for all His creation. But a joyful noise is not some feigned thing.

Joy itself is an ultimate statement of an elevation of your spirit that can only come out of communion with God. You can be happy over many things. But joy that is some inward thing that is not affected by external things is the inescapable truth, the testimony of a quality of relationship with God.

The joy of the Lord. You can't manufacture it, you can't produce it when you have it, you can have it in the face of all circumstances. Disappointment, business failure infidelity of your wife failure of a friend, the most shattering kinds of things that can happen to a man in the world and particularly to a godly man.

And God will allow some of the severity of these things will not impinge upon or diminish your joy. It's constant, it's something inward. It's not some supercilious or superficial thing. It's not affected by circumstance.

Making a joyful noise unto the Lord is an ultimate statement, not a minimal statement. And that's how the psalm begins. Where did the psalmist get it from? From the depth of his own relationship and knowledge of God comes into our spirit.

It will be brought up to the level of our consciousness. It will not be wasted. We cherish your word Lord, we live by your word. We love the sound of it. It doesn't have to convince us by its logic and prove and demonstrate itself.