How to Draw Near to God: Part 4

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The Calling to Purity, Be Holy for I Am Holy: Part 5

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Well, we continue our series in James, chapter 4. Let's go back to this wonderful chapter and these wonderful verses of Scripture from Holy Writ.
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The Word of the Living God. Hear God's Word, verse 6.
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But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
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Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
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Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double -minded.
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Be miserable, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom.
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Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. Our attention this morning is verse 9.
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Be miserable, and mourn, and weep.
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Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom.
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There's the gospel right in that one verse. The gospel of repentance, of saving grace.
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Let's seek the Lord in prayer, once again. Our Father in heaven,
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I want to keep this prayer short and as simple as I can. Lord, I pray, afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted.
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Lord, speak, for your servant hears, in Jesus' name. Amen. Once again, verse 9.
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Be miserable, and mourn, and weep. You would never think that the gospel lies within these small verses, and these words in which the
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Holy Spirit has directed the Apostle James, but it is. It's here.
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And here we have the sixth command from the Apostle. Be afflicted.
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That's what be miserable means. Be afflicted. So what does that word mean?
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It means to feel wretched. God saves wretches.
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To feel absolutely, totally miserable. Now think of this, beloved.
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That is the gospel. You know, I don't know that we would say that to people nowadays, and that we would think that would be an encouraging word, but actually it is.
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It sounds foreign to us, because it seems like it's not good news, but actually
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He is telling them what to do in order for the reaping of joy to come about.
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He is saying, turn from your wicked ways. Repent and believe the gospel. You know, often we would say, in our own mindset, wouldn't you like to feel good?
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And when all along we should be saying to people, to have the joy of God, be miserable.
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Now think about this. Now, what does He mean by being afflicted?
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Be miserable? Basically what He is saying, in order to get to that point of having joy, first comes the misery.
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First comes the tears. First comes the mourning. That's God's order. We got it backwards.
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And that's the way the flesh is. The flesh wants to say, I want to live for the pleasures of the world, the pleasures of the flesh, the pleasures of my desires.
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And God says, no, in order to have His desires, you must first turn from that to have
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His joy. Amen. Upside down kingdom. Thank you,
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Brother Keith. That's exactly right. We've got it all reversed. So we should be graciously, lovingly, people that needs repentance, saying, you need to be afflicted.
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You need to be afflicted over what? Their sin.
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That we've offended God. Here is the divine order.
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Now, we're going to look at, there's an order here. We're going to look at be afflicted, mourn, and weep.
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Let's look at these words. That is divine order, beloved. The word of God is never out of place.
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Let's look at this. So the feeling follows the true estimation of one's sinfulness. Being afflicted.
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It refers to a deep inner feelings and shame over sin that we have offended
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God Almighty, the Holy God. Sin has offended
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God. Shame over sin. That we've offended
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God. You can read Psalm 51. David felt this. David knew.
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And if you notice, that within that chapter, not one time does he mention Bathsheba.
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He says, it's me. Lord, have mercy upon me.
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Lord, it's me. And he was afflicted. You know,
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James is not denying joy in the Christian life here. And this is where people get it wrong. He's not denying joy.
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He never says this. Actually, if you look at James 1, it pretty much begins, count it all joy.
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He's speaking to the Christian. He says, so when you consider it all joy, you count it.
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My brethren, when you encounter various trials. Now, notice what he said. My brethren. Here, this is a call to those that are, they love worldliness.
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They're worldlings. They're carnal. They love the world. And that text, that's what it's speaking of.
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We'll be visiting that more here. But see, the truth here is really saying that be afflicted, be miserable, be mourning, be weeping is the pathway to true joy in God.
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It's the path. And that's what we need to see. God's word is never out of line.
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We're the one that's out of line. You see. So all the joy that God speaks of in this text rises out of God's good grace.
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How do we know that? Well, if you look at the text and go back to verse 6.
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But he gives a greater grace. You know, you think, people choose and pick scriptures, but you gotta read the whole.
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You gotta see, where is he going with this? Where's the travel on it?
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Where's the direction? So he says in verse 6, he gives a greater grace.
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That's favor. But he gives a greater grace to who? The humble, because God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
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Now, I don't want you ever to forget this, and this is why we're spending some time in this, brothers and sisters.
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And I don't want to forget it. It's a reminder to myself. If I want to draw nigh to God, I need to remember these things.
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Number one, I submit to God. I must be submitting to His Lordship.
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I must be submitting to His authority. I must be submitting to His sovereignty. And it's easy for me to say that, but when it comes to the brass tacks of Christian living, and when things come against my flesh,
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I say, hold on. I need to remind myself, I need to submit to God's Word here.
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I need to submit to Him. And second, I need to resist the devil. I submit to God, then
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I resist the devil, and I resist sin. So if you resist the devil, why to resist the devil?
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Because he roams about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
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And then he will flee from you. You know, I'm going to give this as a small illustration.
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I came across this video, and it's not for it's not for the faint of heart to watch.
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It was in India. And there was a spiritual truth behind this, as tragic as this is.
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And I don't like to give tragic stories, but I'm going to give it here in an illustration. We need to be sober.
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We need to awake. Because there is an enemy out there. In India, this dog just went to sleep right on the door, not realizing that he was being preyed upon.
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The video showed a stalking leopard. It was unbelievable they caught this on film, because there was cameras, of course.
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And I'm giving this for an illustration, because our enemy is real, beloved. And as that dog fell asleep in front of its door, not thinking it was being preyed upon.
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But notice, the dog went to sleep. The leopard came up the stairwell very, very unnoticeably, quietly.
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And then all of a sudden, and they showed it, for minutes and minutes and minutes, the dog was just sleeping and sleeping and sleeping.
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And this cat was preying upon this animal. Just stared.
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The dog never noticed. And then all of a sudden, snatched.
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And it was over with. And the video actually shows the huge cat taking the dog by the throat.
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And off it went. Took it down the stairwell. And you know, I didn't think,
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I wasn't searching for a spiritual analogy at the moment, but I got to thinking about that afterwards. I said, wow, what a tragedy.
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But then, it's almost like the Spirit of God quickened me and said, you know, the greatest tragedy is that my people are being preyed upon while they fall asleep.
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And there's an enemy that roams about as a roaring lion, and that was a cat, that was a lion, and seeking whom he may devour.
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And that leopard devoured that dog, as sad as that was, and as violent as that was, but there's something more violent.
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See, now we have an enemy, the devil, roams about, seeking whom he may devour, and sneaking up on the prey.
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And what happened? The animal, the dog, was asleep! And you know, is there ever a time in the church that the
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Christians need to awake? And be sober and be vigilant?
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Because we do have an enemy that preys upon us, seeking whom he may devour.
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Now we know God's keeping power will keep us, right? And God's own will persevere.
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But the Bible never, ever, because we do persevere, and we are kept by the power of God, the
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Bible never backs off from its warnings, does it? We need to always be alert, and watching, and praying.
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And I was sharing this with Brother Michael earlier this week. You know, we may get the praying part down, but do we watch?
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And there's where we slip into temptation. We may be praying, and I don't know about you, this can happen to this, and it probably has happened to me.
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I could be in prayer, but do I watch? Do I watch for that enemy, and when he brings something in front of me to tempt me of my flesh, do
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I resist him? Resist the devil. And that's why the
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Scriptures, James says that. He said, resist him. Resist means you push it away.
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You get away from it. Don't go right into it. Stay away from it.
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You see, but here, James gets to the point of how we can have real joy that arises from God's free grace.
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The first statement, be afflicted. Actually, it means to feel worse before you can even feel better.
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It sounds simple, doesn't it? But it's there. It means to have a deep, penitential sorrow over sin.
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And that's convicting to me because I think to myself, and I ask myself this question, do I have a deep penitential sorrow over my personal sin that I've offended
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God? Even as a Christian. Now, this is a call to unbelievers. We know that, right?
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But, repentance is constant in the Christian life as well. We may be saved, but, and I got to thinking about this, how in the world can we, being regenerated, get such a hard heart?
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And God has given us, and He's did a hard operation in regeneration.
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He's taken out a heart of stone. And He's put a heart of flesh. And it's almost like, again, as I was thinking about these things, it's like I've allowed that heart of flesh at times to crust over.
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And we need to break up the fallow ground. That crust needs to be broken up.
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And I get on my face and I ask God, help me. Break it up. Break up the fallow ground.
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Help me not to be hard. Be afflicted. Be miserable. MacArthur says right here in his commentary, of this word miserable, carries the idea of being broken and feeling wretched because of one's circumstances.
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In this case, that of being sinful. Lost. Separated from God.
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It is exactly the feeling expressed by the tax collector spoken by Jesus in Luke 18 -13.
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Was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast saying,
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God be merciful to me, a sinner. End quote.
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Charles Spurgeon said this, the great preacher, England's great preacher, there's a vital connection between soul distress and sound doctrine.
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Sovereign grace is dear to those who have grown deeply under, they see grown deeply because they see what grievous sinners they are.
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And here we see the components of saving faith. So again, these are the elements of true humility.
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Submission to God. Commitment and love to worship Him. A hunger for righteousness.
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A spirit of penance. Which is a turning away from sin. Turning away from wickedness.
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And the emphasis is on the prior one actually. Cleanse your hands, you sinners.
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Purify your hearts, you double minded implies the longing for righteousness and the desire and the desire to be clean and to be cleansed.
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I remember right before I came to the Lord and salvation, a very very small illustration was given.
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And she didn't even realize that she was teaching Sunday school and this is before God really got a hold of me and my uncle witnessed to me about the fires of hell and then
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I heard John 3, 3 preached on and God was doing the work. I went to visit and the first time
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I heard Father Abraham, that children's song, you know, I said wow, this is great.
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Such simplicity and I love that. But she talked about, you know, you think of it when Jesus cleanses us, she says she gave a small illustration but it's a simple one.
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She says it reminded me when I go, I get very dirty throughout the week and the day and it's like when
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I take a shower and I wash up and then when I come out of that shower, I feel so clean.
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And that stayed with me and I'm thinking, you know, that's such a simple illustration but that's what the blood of Jesus can do.
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It cleanses us from all sin, from all unrighteousness. There's a cleansing and we talked about that cleansing.
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But there's a longing for righteousness and the desire for Him and the desire to be cleansed and I don't know about you,
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I want to stay clean. You know, we get out there, we get dirty at times, don't we?
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Well, we got to stay unspotted from the world. We got to stay in the Word and stay in prayer and Lord cleanse us and here's the emotion that goes with it.
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It's being broken over sin. That's the emotion and this is why many people don't come to true salvation because they're not miserable enough.
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They're not miserable enough in their sin. They need to be miserable. When we pray for our loved ones in salvation, that's what we need to pray.
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Lord, make them miserable. Make them miserable that they don't sleep. Make them lose that sleep.
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You know, Jesus said it to the church of Laodicea. Think about what He says in Revelation 3 .17.
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Listen to the Word of God. Because thou sayest, I am rich increased with goods.
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This is all external prosperity but internally
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Jesus is saying and you have need of nothing and knowest not
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Notice that. Underscore that. They do not know. They're deceived. Knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable the same word that James uses and poor and blind and naked.
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Notice miserable. He said amen. It's miserable. And then
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James picks this up in chapter 5 verse 1. What is he saying then to the people who are trusting uncertain riches which
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Paul talks about. But James says go to now you rich man and then he says weep howl for your miseries then shall come upon you.
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You know, I wouldn't want that in my life. Eternal life.
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Then I'm going to be miserable in hell. That's what he's talking about. So in other words, what he's saying put the miseries upon you right now.
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And Jesus took that so that we don't have to endure that. He was the man of sorrows.
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He took our grief. He took our sorrows. He took the affliction. See, there's a call to repentance.
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Godly sorrow. Paul said it, didn't he? 2 Corinthians 7 .10. For godly sorrow worketh repentance.
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Don't you love that? Did you hear that? Godly sorrow works repentance.
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Amen. To salvation. Not to be repented of.
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But the sorrow of the world worketh death. That's exactly what
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I mentioned this before when R .C. Sproul was talking about there's a difference between attrition and contrition.
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Attrition is the people of worldly sorrow. In other words, well
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I'm sorry that I got my hand caught in the cookie jar. Yeah, that's what he's talking about.
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That's exactly what he's saying. I got caught. Huh? I'm sorry. Have you heard people say that?
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Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. And he goes on, does the same thing again and again and again and again.
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But contrition is it just sorry for getting your hand caught in the cookie jar?
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You're sorry to the one who made the cookies. I'm sorry
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I'm broken because you went through all that trouble and you made the cookies because you loved me and I broke your heart.
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That's being contrite. It goes to the maker. See, that's the difference.
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Psalm 126 .5 Don't you love it? They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
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I love that. You know, there's a devotion I read here a few weeks, about a week ago from Spurgeon.
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He said this about this verse. Weeping times are suitable for sowing. We do not want the ground to be dry.
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Seeds steeped in the tears of earnest anxiety will come up all the sooner.
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Listen to what he says. Spurgeon has a way with words. The salt of prayerful tears will give the good seed a flavor which will preserve it from the worm.
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Truth spoken in awful earnestness has a double life about it.
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Instead of stopping our sowing because of our weeping, let us redouble our efforts because the season is propitious.
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Our heavenly seed could not fitly be sown laughing. Deep sorrow, concern for the souls of others are far more fitting,
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I'm sorry, more fit accompaniment of godly teaching than anything like levity.
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We have heard of men who went to war with a light heart, but they were beaten.
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And it is mostly so with those who sow in the same style. And listen to what he says here.
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Come then my heart, sow on in thy weeping, for thou hast the promise of joyful harvest.
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Thou shalt reap. Thou thyself shall see some result of thy labor.
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This shall come to thee in so large a measure as to give thee joy, which a poor withered and scantly harvest would not do.
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When thine eyes are dim with silver tears, think of the golden corn.
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Bear cheerfully the present toil and disappointment, for the harvest day will fully recompense thee.
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They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Well, the next command is this, mourn. He talked about be afflicted, be miserable, now he says mourn.
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It reminds us again of our Lord's Beatitudes. Chapter 5 verse 4
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Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
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Notice the order. To those who mourn will be blessed with being comforted.
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Not the other way around. You see, what's mourning? Mourning over what? Again, mourning over our sinfulness before God.
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This is the response to misery. That's the response to sin.
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Beloved, it speaks to the broken heart, the broken incontinent spirit. So what James has in mind here is the demeanor of misery.
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The demeanor of misery. Along with becoming miserable, the contrite sinner is to mourn over his sin.
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Now what I just said is very important because MacArthur puts it in these words. The idea, he says, is that of deep grief and remorse and complete despair that laments over sin the way someone mourns the death of a family member or a close friend.
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It is one of the requirements prescribed by the Lord himself during his incarnation.
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Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. And then he says, along with misery and weeping, it defines the emotion of repentance.
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End quote. Amen. That is so good because you think about what he said. You know how we grieve over someone we truly love?
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And we deeply grieve someone we'd be close by, close to. And I think about this often.
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You know when I first heard about the death of my father and whom I was close to.
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And of course he died without the Lord and that was the most grievous thing to me. That was a hard thing.
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And I remember that grieving. It's almost part of me came out of me. Part of me was missing.
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You know what I'm saying. It's like part of me died. And it's almost like when
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I think about the grief that I went through and the sorrow when my father died then
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I need to be grieving over my sin like this before God.
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Because you look at what took Jesus to the cross. It was because of our sin.
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You know this as a child of God when you come to God. You don't say hey them
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Roman soldiers put Jesus on that cross. Amen. It's I. It's me.
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It's my sin. I'm the one that put him there. My sin put him there. I'm personally responsible.
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He died in my place. That's the purpose of it.
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And that goes deep. Now let's talk about deep repentance just a little bit here. Francis Fuller, wise godly woman.
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I got this from MacArthur's commentary. I couldn't skip this. But listen to this.
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To repent is to accuse and condemn ourselves. To charge upon ourselves the desert of hell.
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To take part with God against ourselves. And to justify him in all that he does against us to be ashamed and confounded for our sins.
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To have them ever in our eyes and at all times upon our hearts that we may be in daily sorrow for them.
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To part with our right hands and our eyes. That is with those pleasurable sins which have been as dear to us as our lives.
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So as never to have to do with them more and to hate them. So as to destroy them as things which by nature we are wholly disinclined to.
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For we naturally love and think well of ourselves. We hide our deformities.
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Listen and excuse our faults. Indulge ourselves in these things that please us and are mad about our lust.
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And follow them through our own destruction. End quote. Boy that is so good.
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It's our sin that put our savior. Spurgeon says every time you attempted to sin, he said just remember this.
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One thing. He said remember it was that sin that nailed your beloved to that tree.
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That helped us resist sin. If we but remember that.
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That's the problem. We forget when not watchful. So the person who comes to Jesus Christ is a person who is overwhelmed with a deep sense of misery and due to sinfulness and inner spirit of that person is a deep lament and grief over that sin.
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With the eighth command what does he say? First be afflicted. Be miserable.
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Mourn. Then he says weep. Weep. Now you're going to love this. Misery is a recognition of that state.
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It recognizes it. Mourning is how the spirit responds to it.
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Weeping is how the body responds. Now that is so true. Did you see that divine order there?
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It's almost as if it's the whole person. Spirit, soul and body. Spirit, soul and body.
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We see tears now. We see weeping. We see the outward. This is the outward manifestation that's previously mentioned in misery and sorrow and that is what the prophet
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Isaiah called to the unfaithful Israel in his day and his generation and he reminds them in Isaiah 22 -12 listen to this.
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Therefore in the day the Lord God of hosts called you to weeping. Now that's incredible isn't it?
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He's called you to weeping. That's a calling. To wailing.
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To shaving the head. That's what Job did. And to wearing sackcloth.
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That's a symbol of humility. All that's symbolic of true humility.
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Shaving of the head. That's why Job when all this came upon Job Job shaved his head and he fell on his face.
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He says the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord and he threw himself before the sovereignty of God.
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It hurt. It was painful. But he knew. And you know what he was doing?
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He was worshipping God. That's what he was doing. He knew that was the time to worship.
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You know, wow, that's the character of a godly person. This is what
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Peter did after realizing that just as Jesus predicted precisely he had denied
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Jesus not once, not twice but three times. And Jesus said this in Mark 14 72 where the scripture says, immediately a rooster crowed a second time and Peter remembered, notice that,
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Peter remembered how Jesus had made the remark to him.
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And Jesus said to him, before that rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.
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And he begins to weep. It is the weeping produced by godly sorrow that is according to the will of God that produces repentance without regret leading to salvation.
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There's a poem from H. Collier wrote There is a tear that spots the cheek that speaks more than the tongue can speak, and words without a name that tells of many a pain within, of many a foul and a deadly sin.
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So James by the Holy Spirit gives us the commands be afflicted, be miserable, mourn and weep, spirit, soul and body.
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Then he gives the ninth command like the fourth and the fifth in the form of a
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Hebraic couplet. He's expressing the same basic truth in two different but parallel forms.
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Notice the latter part of verse 9. Let your laughter be turned into mourning.
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He mentions mourning again. And your joy to gloom. Now he's talking about being serious about repentance.
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That's all he's saying. He's saying be serious about repentance. Be very serious.
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And again James That's good. I'm glad I'm glad that phone is listening.
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That's excellent. Praise God. We need to listen. Right response for a change, serious is.
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James is not condemning legitimate laughter is he? Because the Bible says laughter is good medicine for the soul.
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That's the Bible. So what is he doing? He's not condemning joy. You know what he's doing?
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He's condemning really the flippant, the trivial. He's really pressing upon those who are worldly and self -centered.
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Sensual kinds of unbelievers that revel that are despite and often in their sinful pleasures.
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That's what he's talking about. And that's exactly the context. Now this corresponds to something that Jesus said in Luke 6 25.
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This is a good verse. Jesus speaks as like a prophet. He was the greatest of all prophets actually.
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God in the flesh. But he says Woe to you who laugh now. For you shall mourn and weep.
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Notice that. You laugh now but you shall mourn and weep. Now this is opposite of the beatitude that's given a few verses earlier that is recorded.
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And by the way it's only recorded here in Luke 6 21. When Jesus said
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Blessed are you who weep now for you shall laugh. Notice the reverse.
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Brother Keith said it earlier. Upside down. And we got it all upside down. So in both verses
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Jesus used a verb form of that noun. And in present text is rendered laughter.
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Now confessing his sins of his people who can we go to?
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The prophet Jeremiah. The weeping prophet. He was a man that lamented.
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He was a man who lamented. Lamentations 5 15 and 16 says this. The joy of our hearts has ceased.
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Our dancing has been turned into mourning. The crown has fallen from our head.
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Woe to us for we have sinned. Notice what he said there. This was a godly man.
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This was the prophet. He said we have sinned. He brought himself into that confession.
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Daniel does the same thing. Over Jerusalem. Over his people. We have sinned.
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Just not I or Israel. We have. And he knew confessing that was critical before God.
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In closing, let me mention some things here. Go with me to Ecclesiastes and let's look at something very important.
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If you really want to see the context of what James is saying, Ecclesiastes chapter 7 says it very very clearly here.
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Don't you love the book of Ecclesiastes? You talk about wisdom for living? Yes. If you want to know what's profitable for the wise, but you also see what's vanity upon vanity in this life.
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And he talks about the follies of many things like riches and the futility of life.
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But here he talks about in this chapter, wisdom and folly contrasted. So if you notice, let's start with verse 2.
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It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting.
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For that is the end of all men. And the living will lay it to his heart.
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This is wise. Listen to this. Sorrow is better than laughter.
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Now he doesn't throw out laughter, but he says sorrow is better than laughter. For by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better.
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So he knew that. Verse 4. The mind, or literally the heart, or the heart of the wise, the mind of the wise, is in the house of mourning.
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While the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure. It is better to listen to the rebuke of a wise man than for one to listen to the song of fools.
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And then he says this in verse 6. For the crackling, that word crackling means the voice.
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And that's interesting. Something crackling. It's a voice.
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It speaks. The voice or the crackling of thorns brushes under a pot.
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So is the laughter of the fool. And this too is futility.
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MacArthur says here, the point of this section is to emphasize that more is learned from adversity than from pleasure.
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That is so good. True wisdom is developed in the crucible of life's trials, though the preacher wishes that it were not the case when he writes, this too is futility.
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Such wisdom there, isn't it? Isn't it more sobering to go to the house of mourning?
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How often I've been there and you've been there. But oh, the soberness that people have.
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Even the loss for eternity. And I cannot help but think of the times
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I've seen people in mourning of losing a lost loved one.
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Someone dear to them, a child. I've been to many of them, beloved. I've been to infants.
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I've seen infants go on. And we know they're safe in the arms of Jesus.
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And then there's some I've been to that's been so, so tragic. Died before their time.
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A young girl once died in a car accident. I visited one time. A school, a whole school showed up to comfort the parents.
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And she was 16 years old. She died in a one car accident. And that was one
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I will never forget. But there's such wisdom in that. People were mourning.
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Oh my goodness. And all you can do, you can't say the right words. All you can do is embrace them and love them.
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Just say you're there for them. Pray for them. But why
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I bring that up? Because there's more wisdom for the betterment of our soul in a place of mourning.
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There's something that awakens us to eternity there. And you notice that's where James goes next.
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You'll be seeing this. What is your life? It's like a vapor. You're here and then you're gone.
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What's a vapor? You ever try to grab a vapor? You can't. Because you see it, then it's gone.
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When are we going to wake up to eternity and set our mind on the eternal things and set our mind, as Luther says,
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I live according to two calendars, today and judgment day. Well, that's sobering, isn't it?
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Paul said this, and this is by a man that suffered affliction constantly. For our light affliction.
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Our light affliction. Wow. Paul said it.
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Our light affliction. Look at how Paul was afflicted. Yeah. Which is but for a moment.
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You hear that? For a moment. What's he saying? In compared to eternity? Worketh for us a far more.
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Exceedingly an eternal weight of glory. Come on, Pastor. Praise God. Good. Now that's being eternity minded.
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I don't know that you want to be like that. Praise God. And then James says,
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Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, that he will exalt you. I want to close with something here, and I don't do this quite often, but I don't have time to read the whole thing because of my time.
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As a matter of fact, time is almost gone. Tozer said this in Three Faithful Wounds. I want to skip some things.
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For the good of your soul, if you've got time, get a hold of this devotion. This is a sermon that he preached called
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Three Faithful Wounds. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, he said, says the
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Holy Spirit in Proverbs 27 .6. At least we imagine that the preacher is the one who does the wounding.
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I want to read Job 5 .17 and 18. Tozer says, Behold, happy is the man whom
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God correcteth. Therefore despise thou not the chastening of the
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Almighty, for he maketh sore and bindeth up. He woundeth, and his hands make whole.
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Tozer says, You see, the one who does the wounding here is not the servant, but the master himself. So with that in mind, he says,
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I want to talk to you about Three Faithful Wounds of a friend. And then he talks about the lady, the little lady in Norwich, England.
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I'm paraphrasing some of this. A little woman that had much light and she hadn't had any way to get much light in her day.
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But the beautiful thing, Tozer says about her, was that with what little biblical light she had, she walked with God so wonderfully close that she became as fragrant as a flower.
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Long before the Reformation times, she was in the spirit of an evangelical. She lived and died and has now been with her
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Lord nearly 600 years. This is in 1958 he preached this. And she has left behind a fragrance of Christ.
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Now I'm going to share this fragrance with you. Because it gives personal application to everything
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James is saying. And Tozer said this, England was a better place because of this little lady, where she lived.
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She only wrote one book, a very tiny book that you could slip into your side pocket or your purse.
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But it was flavorful. So divine, Tozer said, so heavenly that it has made a distinct contribution to the great spiritual literature of the world.
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The lady whom I refer to is one called Lady Julian. And he said this, before she blossomed about into this radiant glorious life which made her famous as a
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Christian all over part of the world, she prayed a prayer and God answered. And this is the prayer with which
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I am concerned tonight, and Tozer says this, and this one I promise you, you will never forget.
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The essence of her prayer was this, and this is what she prayed, Oh God, please give me three wounds.
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She's praying that God would wound her. Wound? The wound of number one, contrition.
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And the wound of compassion and the wound of longing after God.
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Don't forget those three faithful wounds. The wound of contrition, the wound of compassion and the wound of longing after God.
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And then she added this little postscript which I think is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.
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This I ask without condition. She wanted three things that were all for God's glory.
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Now that's being serious. That's what James is talking about. Be serious about the repentance. And I ask this without condition.
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Father, do what I ask and then send it, send me the bill. Anything that it cost will be alright with me.
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Wow, can we pray that? Now listen to what he says here.
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All great Christians have been wounded souls. It is strange that a wound would do to a man.
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Here's a soldier who goes out to the battlefield. He's full of jokes and strength and self -assurance. Then one day a pierce of strappled tears through him and he falls and whimpering.
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Beaten and defeated man. Suddenly, his whole world collapses around him.
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And this man instead of being the great, strong, broad -chested fellow that he thought he was, suddenly becomes a whimpering boy again.
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And such has ever been known, I'm told, to cry for their mothers when they lie bleeding, suffering on the battlefield.
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There's nothing like a wound to take the self -assurance out of us, to reduce us to childhood again, and to make us small and helpless in our own sight.
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Tozer goes on to say, I love this. Many of the Old Testament characters were wounded men, stricken of God, afflicted indeed as their
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Lord was after them. Twice, take Jacob for instance, twice
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God afflicted him, twice he met God and each time came as a wound. One time it actually as a physical wound and he limped on his thigh for the rest of his life.
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Take the man Elijah. He was not was he not more than a theologian, more than a doctrinian.
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He was a man who had been stricken by God. He had been struck with the sword of God and was no longer simply one of Adam's race standing up on his own self -assurance.
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He was a man who had an encounter with God and he had been confronted by God and had been defeated and broken down before him.
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And when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up you know what he did and what it did to him.
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Or take the man Ezekiel. How he went down before his God and became a little child again.
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Oh there were many others. Now the wounded man is a defeated man
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Isaiah. The strong, robust, self -confident Adam man ceases to fight back any longer.
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He lays down his sword and surrenders and the wound finishes him. He said let's talk about this wound.
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Now I don't have time to go into all this but let me just shorten this up very quickly. Contrition.
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You've heard for the last 30 years that repentance is a change of mind. I believe it of course as far as it goes.
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But that's just what the what's the matter with us. We have reduced repentance to just a change of mind.
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Is a mental act? Yes indeed. But he says, but I point out that repentance is not likely to do much good until it ceases to be a change of mind only.
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It becomes a wound within our spirit. Well how true and how right this is.
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No man has truly repented until his sin has wounded him near to death.
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Until the wound has broken him and defeated him and taken all the fight and self -assurance out of him he sees himself as the one who nailed his savior on the tree.
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He goes on to say this, I don't know about you, but the only way I can keep right with God is to keep contrite.
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To keep a sense of contrition upon my spirit. And he said, now there's a lot of cheap and easy getting rid of sin nowadays.
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And getting your repentance disposed of, but the great Christians in and out of the Bible have been those who were wounded with a sense of contrition.
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So that they never quite got over the thought and the feeling that they personally had crucified Jesus. He said of the bishop
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Usher, each week used to go down by the river bank there all Saturday afternoon, kneel by a log and be well his sins before his
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God. Perhaps that was the secret of his greatness.
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Let us beware of vain over hastily repentance, in particular let us beware of no repentance at all.
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We are a sinful race, ladies and gentlemen, and a sinful people, and until the knowledge has hit hard, until it has wounded us, until it has got through and passed the little department of our theology, it has done us no good.
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Now listen to what he says here. We were just talking about this brother Keith. A man can believe in total depravity and never have any sense of it for himself at all.
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Lots of us believe in total depravity who have never been wounded with the knowledge that we have sinned.
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Repentance is a wound, I pray, that we may all feel. He goes on to the next.
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Compassion. Now compassion is an emotional identification of Christ had that in full perfection.
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The man who has this wound of compassion is a man who suffers along with other people.
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Jesus our Lord can never suffer to save us anymore. This he did once for all when he gave himself without spot through the
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Holy Ghost to the Father on Calvary's cross. But he cannot suffer to save us but he still must suffer to win us.
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And he does not call his people to redemptive suffering. That's impossible. It could not be because redemption is a finished work.
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But what is he getting to? Listen to this. But he does call his people to feel along with him and feel along with those who rejoice and those that suffer.
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He calls his people to him the kind of earthly body in which he can weep again and suffer again and love again.
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For our Lord has two bodies. One the body he took on the tree on Calvary and was the body in which he suffered to redeem us.
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But he has a body on earth now. Composed of those who have been baptized into it by the
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Holy Ghost at conversion. Amen. In that body he would now suffer to win men.
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Paul said that he was glad that he could suffer for the Colossians and fill up the measure of the afflictions of Christ in his body for the church's sake.
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Now my brethren I don't know whether I can make it clear or not. I know that things like this have been have to be felt rather than understood.
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But the wounded man is never a seeker after happiness. There is an ignoble pursuit of irresponsible happiness among us.
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Over the last years I have observed since 1958. The humans sing and have watched
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God's professed people live and die and I have seen that most of us would rather be happy than to feel the wounds of others people's sorrows.
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I do not believe that it is the will of God that we should seek to be happy but rather that we should seek to be holy and useful.
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The holy man will be the useful man and he is likely to be a happy man too. But if he seeks happiness and forgets holiness and usefulness he is a carnal man.
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I for one want no part in carnal religious rejoy. There are times when it is sinful to be happy.
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When Jesus our Lord was sweating it out there in the garden or hanging on a tree he could not be happy.
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He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. And the great saints of the past were those who conquered and captured parts of the world for Jesus.
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And when they were in travail were not happy. The woman said to Jesus whose giving birth is not happy at the time of her travail but as soon as the child is delivered she becomes happy because a man is born into the world.
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You and I are in a sense are to be mothers in Israel. Those through whom the
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Lord can suffer and grieve and love and pity again to bring children to birth. Then he brings up the last one.
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Longing after God. Longing after God. This little woman wanted to long after God.
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Isn't this what we're talking about? Draw near to God and draw near to us. Listen to this. Longing after God with a longing that becomes a pain in her heart.
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She wanted to be lovesick. She prayed in effect, Oh God that I might want thee so badly that it becomes a wound in my heart that I can't get over it.
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And then he says this. Today accepting Christ becomes turnable. That's the end.
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And all evangelism leads toward one thing. Getting increased numbers of people to accept
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Christ. And there we put a period. My criticism of most of our
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Bible conferences is that we spend our time counting again the treasures that we have in Christ but we never arrive at the place where any of that which is in Christ gets into us.
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He has blessed us in all spiritual blessings and heavenly places in Christ but you can no more buy food with money still in the bank than you can live on the treasures that are in Christ unless they are also experimentally to you and you.
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Well he goes on and on. Oh my, this devotion is so rich.
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He talks about it except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die and bideth alone but if it died bringeth forth much fruit.
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Let me say one more thing about this. He quotes. He says this. I've been greatly deeply concerned that you and I do something more than just listen.
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That we dare to go to God like Lady Julian and dare to ask him to give us a faithful fatherly wound.
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Maybe three of them if you please. To wound us with a sense of our own sinful unworthiness that we'll never quite get over it.
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To wound us with the sufferings of the world and the sorrows of the church and then to wound us with a longing after God and a thirst, a sacred thirst and a longing that we carry us on toward perfection.
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The lack of desire is the ill of all ills. Many thousands through a dark pathway have tried but the bosom is the wine of predestined wills is a jubilant pining and longing for God.
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A jubilant pining and longing for God. He said write that down. Almost every day of my life
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I'm praying a jubilant pining and longing for God. Might come back to the evangelical churches.
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Beloved this is what we need. We don't need to have our doctrines straightened out. We're as orthodox as the
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Pharisees of old. But this longing for God that brings spiritual torrents and whirlwinds of seeking and self -denial this is almost gone from our midst.
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Yes. Powerful. God loves to be longed for.
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He loves to be sought. He sought us himself with such longing and love. He died for desire of us marvelous thought and he longs for us now to be with him above.
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I believe that God wants us to long for him with a longing that will become lovesickness. That will become a wound to our spirit and keep us always moving toward him always finding always seeking always having always desiring so that earth becomes less and less valuable and heaven gets closer and closer and we move into God and up into Christ.
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And he closes with this. Dare we bow our hearts now and say Father I've been irresponsible childish kind of Christian more concerned about being happy than being holy.
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Oh God give me three faithful wounds wound me with the sense of my own sinfulness wound me with compassion for the world wound me with the love of thee that will keep me always pursuing and always exploring and always seeking and always finding.
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If you dare to pray that prayer sincerely and mean it before God it can mean a turning point in your life and it can mean a door of victory open to you.
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May God grant it that it be so. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Lord as I opened and said
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Lord speak for your servant listens you have spoken you have spoken through stammering lips but you have spoken
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Father be glorified grant this be true of us. Wound us with the wound of contrition compassion and a longing after you.