The Word — Leonard Ravenhill

Baggage with praise. We turn again from the husks of this world to partake of heavenly manna. As we have drunk physically we would come and drink spiritually of this fountain of life. I think of Wesley's hymn when he said, Thou of life, the fountain art, freely let me take of thee, spring thou up within my heart and rise to all eternity.

As we have earlier expressed we need the every hour, we need the every hour, we live. We need thee particularly in this hour. Your presence again makes the feast. We need the every hour, we've come from a world that doesn't need the any hour so it thinks.

The Church’s Compromise With a World That Rejects God

Crowds thee out of its thinking, out of its legislation, out of its education, out of its social program. It still is a choice and it's still made the same way, not this man but the others. We're still a crazy world, we still prefer the unholy things to the holy and the visible to the invisible.

We live in a bunch of people who set their affection on things that are beneath and not things that are above. People have eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear and hearts that do not feel. We remember Paul says, such are some of ye but ye are washed, ye are sanctified.

We'd still get up with that mob of lost people but for your infinite grace. We thank you this afternoon for the love that sought us and the blood that bought us and the grace that brought us to the fold.

The wondrous grace. I suppose not one of us came the first time you called us. You were like stubborn sheep, we went everyone to his own way and you called and called and we deafened our ears and we steeled our wills and we went on our way and it was a broad way that led to destruction.

We're glad you didn't give up on us, you didn't fail to pursue us. We have to sing as that old hymn says, he drew me and I followed on, charmed, to confess that voice divine. We thank you in the midst of the chaos of modern life that there's still a pillar of truth in our midst.

We thank you feeble as it is for the voice of the church. We thank you for the book you've given us, this indestructible book. It is a book that needs no correction, it needs no P .S. at the end of it.

You don't call it in and revise it, you've no second thoughts to add to it. When you said it, you said it and you made it perfect. We thank you for those who pioneered and made it possible often at the price of their own blood to bring this book to us.

It is indeed a golden casket where gems of truth are stored. It is the heaven drawn picture of Christ, the living word. We pray this afternoon, Lord, that you take the veil from the book and speak to our hearts afresh.

The Church’s Neglect of the Persecuted and Unreached

We think again of the terrible, terrible injustice of the fact that we've kept the book to ourselves for centuries as it were and there are millions and millions of heathen. In fact, there are more heathen in the world we believe at this moment than any period in history.

As we saw the closing of Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos, we realize they shut up to a materialism, a militant atheism, something which is opposed to all that's righteous and true and holy and it must be a hell on earth to live there these days.

We wonder about the persecution of the believers, wonder how many of them have already met a martyr's death, how many homes have been torn apart, how many churches have been pulled apart. We can't understand their misery, we can't because we don't know a thing about it.

It's all shut up. The papers suddenly drop their headlines on Vietnam, they turn to lesser things, to other things. A girl away there in California suddenly captures the headlines of all the newspapers in the world by endeavoring and impurity and insanity.

We can turn the world upside down with a headline in the newspaper of people who gossip the day through about that one thing and make their speculations and find a way out of the situation while millions perish.

While in our ghettos there are people half-starved, well, around us. I think so often of the Indians. There are tens of thousands of them almost unreached in this very land, almost in the shade of the spires of our tall churches.

It's an unholy world, it's an unequal world, it's an unrighteous world, it's an unlovely world. It's an untrue church really because you told us first to preach the gospel of Jerusalem, then Judea and Yemen was part.

And yet we thank you for the truth that does shine amidst all the error. We thank you for all the courageous Christians amongst all the timid ones. We thank you for those who go to countries where there are solid walls of heathenism and darkness and superstition, still in some areas cannibalism, unbelievably ugly and unbelievably unclean, unbelievably violent.

And often it's young women that have to face the horrors of this thing. There are more women on the mission field than men anyhow. God, we thank you for all of God to carry the light and the truth into the darkness and heathenism.

We thank you for those who have tried to reach others in the ghettos, for those who have tried to reach them now in colleges and universities, where morality seems at an all-time low, where nobody seems to bother too much.

Courageous Witness in a Hostile Culture

And yet again we thank thee for truth, we thank thee for righteousness. Think about that young man we met this week who said his eyes had been opened and he realized it was easy to run down the street and give out traps, but not too easy to stand on the corridor in the university and oppose homosexualism, lesbianism and vice right outside of his own door.

And he said, this will cost me a lot. Bless him, bless others like him. Youngsters just gone to universities and their eyes are suddenly opening to the wickedness and the violence and the total absence apparently of conscience in many areas.

No thought of God, they live like animals, die like animals, forget there's an eternity. We don't have it in us to arouse them. Your spirit must do this. Lord, it will take the work of the Holy Ghost to come to those whose consciences are seared.

Think of this man asking to come back in the country as an open murderer, a rapist and now he wants to get back because he's been around the world and hasn't found anything better. Lord God, we again see that unless you reign the heavens and come down, we'll go over the precipice like other nations, like other empires.

And we are asking again, we tell thee we're not throwing our harps on the willows, we're trusting in thee. As Wesley said in that hymn, Jesus, thou art all compassion, pure, undaunted love thou art. You don't get exploding, you don't lose your temper like so often we have done in the past.

Suddenly get ignited, if you didn't, surely you'd pull the switch and burn us all up. You've threatened even to spew the church out of your mouth, so what you'll do with the world is past guessing. You must be near that situation.

You must be almost impatient with the patience of the church in her iniquity. Our incredible satisfaction with our spirituality, our unbelievable coldness toward thee and toward lost men and women. Our cries with Isaiah, arm of the Lord awake and put on strength.

Or as Wesley put it, spirit of faith come down, reveal the things of God and make to us the God that had known and witness with the blood. Or again he said some other hymn there, give me the faith which can remove and sink the mountain to a plain.

Give me that child like praying love which longs to build thy house again, thy love, let it my heart or power and all my simple soul devour. Enlarge, inflame and fill my heart with boundless charity divine.

So shall I all my strength exert and love them with a zeal like thine and turn them to a pardoning God and quench their brands in Jesus blood. More again we recognize that in ourselves we're totally inadequate.

We can't do a thing of ourselves. We may have all the zeal, we may have all the information, we may have all the statistics on how many people are lost or how many communists there are in Russia or how many planes they have to fight us.

And when we've said it all, what have we said? We might as well quote three blind mice. It doesn't do up for us. It means that you must come and invade these personalities of ours and so dominate them and rule them and control them that we totally have no will of ours.

We sing take my life and let it be. We sing take my will and make it thine and yet often our wills get up and get in front of your will. Teach us all to resist this. Teach us again to put on the whole armor of God, to withstand the fiery darts of the enemy.

Spiritual Warfare and the Need for Holy Dependence

We know Lord it's a warfare that we're in. It's not an escalator ride to heaven we're in. Not carried to the skies as one said on flowery beds of ease. You want to mature us. You want to get us to the place where we can bear the burdens you want us to carry.

And have the understanding you want to share with us that the will and the zeal to do the perfect total will of God. Remember they had some friends today. There were a few who were away. Bless them. You can see them.

They're as near to thee as we are. We ask your blessing on their lives. We pray for Henry and Annie as they go off this week across the world there, across the Atlantic. We pray you'll bless them and guide their steps and may be inspirational to them, quicken their hearts as they see some of the sights and remember the history and think of the martyrs who were burned and the people who did so much to get the gospel to the ends of the earth.

And yet the nation itself is a morally, spiritually bankrupt nation. Again our God we see again our helplessness. Money can't help us right now. Armies can't help us. Science can't help us. If you don't help us we're finished.

We can dig our grave and write our epitaph and say we passed on like other nations and other empires. But be merciful to us. Again we say as we've said before give us a year to dig around the tree and fertilize it.

Like the man who saw his tree threatened and he said spare it one more year. Let me fertilize it and if it doesn't bear fruit cut it down. Lord it's a hazard to ask you to spare us only one year. But you have said somewhere in one of the prophecies that you'll come and you'll do a swift work and we look for you to do it.

Just as a fire can burn down a multi-million dollar building in hours and ruin it forever. So we believe the fire of the spirit can come and burn into all these societies and corrupt forms of government and all these other things that are around burning and destroying and hastening and bringing the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So again thank you for blessing each of our lives since we were together. Thank you for the blessing in our meetings, the lives that sought thee particularly the preachers that were humbled and broken before thee.

The Word of God as the Target of the Church’s Corruption

We ask that they may go forth and carry the word with power and authority. That Christ may be glorified and they may help to hasten your coming in your kingdom and we give you praise in Jesus name. I think that the whole mess that we're in now is really, you can trace it right back to the church.

The corruption that has ended the church and the attack of course again has been on the word of God that I want to talk about today. One of the contemporaries of John Wesley, a very brilliant man by the name of Voltaire, he was a brilliant man.

Somebody talked to him one day about Jesus Christ and this very eager Christian said there's never been a man in history like Jesus Christ. Voltaire said forget it. What do you mean? He said there's a man living in England now who is exactly like Jesus Christ.

He's as pure, he's as gentle, he's as loving. What's his name? John Fletcher. He lives in Shropshire. That's valid testimony when the world's leading atheist says of a Christian he's as pure and lovely and gracious as Jesus Christ.

John Wesley's testimony of John Fletcher was when he said I can die comfortably and hand Methodism over to John Fletcher is so spiritual. But John Wesley, the great side of John Fletcher unlived I think about 50 years after so God had other plans.

But when he buried him, somebody said to him don't grieve, you're going to see him in eternity. And reputedly John Wesley said my friend, this man is so pure and holy, maybe the greatest man since the Apostle Paul.

He'll be so near to the throne of God and I'll be so far away I'll only see the reflected glory of Jesus in his face. It's quite a thing for John Wesley to say. Well if John Wesley is going to be all that way back, I don't know where I'm going to find him.

Obviously he'll be angry somewhere. Way back 2009, I don't know. You see we've got a silly sloppy idea, we're all going to be a crowd in heaven singing and wanging hearts and no distinction except because you wear a Methodist badge or a penny castle and all the rest of it.

But the good book says one day there's going to be one shepherd, one foal, one name in their foreheads, one song in their mouth. That's the only one there's ever going to be as far as I can see. But the other thing that Mr. Voltaire said was this, when somebody challenged him about the Bible, he said look I'm going to make a prediction.

A hundred years from this date he said you will not find a Bible anywhere but in a museum. Well that was somewhere, I don't know, Wesley died when? 1791. So he said that in 1780. We're nearly 200 years ahead of that.

And instead of the Bible going out of existence and being a museum piece, it's still the most printed book in the world, it may not be the most read, people have it in the home often as a fetish. But by the same token again, what that man said, because the house in which he wrote that statement became the distribution centre for the Geneva Bible Society and the very house where he wrote that prophecy distributed Bibles all through Europe until World War II when the house got bombed.

The Indestructibility of Scripture

Why do men have said the word of God? Well, for a lot of reasons. You see, the Bible to me is like Gibraltar. I haven't seen it, my wife sailed through there some years back but I know it's a famous rock and the waves beat in anger against it.

They blast up against that thing, they knock a ship out into pieces, they kill you if they got behind you. But they break on that rock. What do they do? Do they break the rock? All they do is break themselves.

Or as one man said, I don't remember the poem, I remember years ago, something like this last evening or last eve I paused beside the blacksmith's door and heard the anvil ring its vesper chime. And looking in I saw upon the floor old hammers worn with beating years of time.

How many hammers have you had to wear and batter, how many anvils have you had to wear and batter the hammer so? Only one said he with twinkling of an eye, the anvil wears the hammers out you know. And thus I am used beyond God's word are for centuries sceptics of beat upon.

But as I looked around I see the anvil still. The anvil lies unharmed, the hammer's gone. And every man that beats against this word dies and it stands at his graveside. This is as indestructible as God himself, forever, forever.

And this is what I'm saying because somebody did say that Bailey Lawson that many of us know, in building a house she's followed the prescription that they said the last few years that if you're building a new house be sure you hide some bibles in the wall.

Because we're going to live to see the day when if it isn't destroyed by an act of government people will come to your door and say do you have a bible? Yes. Have you seen this one? Let me see your bible.

Oh that's an old one. This is worth $30 but I'll give you it for that. Because they do not want King James Version particularly around so they're going to give us a corrupted bible which is agreed upon by Jews and Gentiles and the Roman Catholic Church.

It will be a corruption. And the only way that they can penetrate and break down the church of the living God again is really to get the word of God to be corrupted, polluted. And this got me thinking this week about how precious the word of God is.

Psalm 119 and the Vocabulary of God’s Word

The Psalmist said in Psalm 119. In Psalm 119 you've got 176 verses I think. Let me check in case you think I'm wrong. 176 verses. How could I be wrong? 176 verses and it's divided you see first Aleph and Beth and Gimel and that really is just the Hebrew alphabet dividing the whole of that book up.

Now do you know that every verse or every other verse in the 119th Psalm mentions the bible? Let me read this section from verse 9. Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word.

With my whole heart have I sought thee, O let me not wonder from thy commandments. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Blessed art thou O Lord that teach me thy statutes.

With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies as much as in all riches. I will meditate in thy precepts and have respect unto thy ways. I will delight myself in thy statutes.

I will not forget thy word. Now it rings the changes. I remember a lady used to come to our prayer meeting and we used to let women pray too you know but boy did she kill me. You know every time, every verse end she'd say and Lord and Lord and she lauded it I'm sure a hundred, two hundred times in her prayer.

And that gets remarkable because you can change that. Now look what he says here. He says in this verse 9 according to thy word. In verse 10 he calls the word the commandments. In verse 12 he calls the word of God the statutes.

In verse 13 he calls it the judgments. In verse 14 he calls it the testimonies. In verse 15 he calls it the precepts. And in verse 16 he says I delight myself in thy statutes. I will not forget thy word.

The Word Exposes Sin and Divides Soul from Spirit

Now remember it's the word of God which is as Hebrews 4 says which is quick and powerful. Why do men object to the word of God? First of all because it exposes our morality or lack of it. It not only exposes our morality it exposes carnality.

Not only that it exposes all human failure and nobody likes exposure. You see again Hebrews 4 says that the word of God is quick and powerful. You know that word quick actually means like pushing something in your flesh and twisting it.

You know it hurts. And I'm not sure that it's right to say to people who are unsaved if you go into a decent gospel meeting oh you'll come you'll enjoy it. I never enjoyed going to the dentist. Never in my life.

He was a liar and he asked me and he just sat in a chair. He said it won't hurt and he knew it would. You never go anywhere like that without getting hurt do you? The word of God is quick. The other night before we left this meeting a very charming lady came up and she said I want to tell you something I haven't slept for five nights.

The Lord spoke to me on Monday night and for five nights I haven't had a wink of sleep. And until yesterday I was wishing boy I hope it goes on before the weekend. I can't take this one. But then she said the Lord so God to me she said I wish it stayed for three months.

Not the church didn't wish that just one woman. But again you see the effectiveness of the word of God. The word of God is quick and it's powerful and it's sharp as a two-edged sword. It hurts. It can divide between soul and spirit and not many people know the difference between that anyhow.

If they go to a meeting where they get disturbed and they clap their hands and sing and get you know tears jerk and suffer it's a great meeting but it may be totally soulish anyhow. It may not be on the spiritual level at all.

But the psalmist says thy word have I hid in my heart. Now let's make sure of this I've tried to say this to you so often. We ought to particularly if you have children that they should at least memorize one verse of scripture a week.

In fact I know a home where they memorize one every day. And they not only memorize one verse of scripture a day they memorize one word of the one letter of the Greek alphabet. And those kids who recite the scripture then by the end of the week they'll be saying an alpha, beta, gamma, delta so forth.

Then a bit later they have to quote a word. And then after that they were taught doctrine. And that man who is a brilliant doctor and his wife's a brilliant doctor too. And they've taken those children and they've had their own bible school in their own house.

They have drilled the word of God because you see the time may come when we don't even have a visible bible. I would be at all surprised if I may not live to see though I'm totally in disagreement with what Schaeffer.

Schaeffer is the head of the Abra Fellowship and he certainly has a very wonderful rapport with scholars, with students and what not. But I don't think the world has got thirty years to repent. Forget it.

If we don't repent in the next five we've had it. We don't have all that time. You just can't have detente with Russia and all this other rotten stuff that we have and with China. You don't mix up with that kind of thing and make pacts with them.

They're not sincere anyhow. They don't mean business anyhow. We're just stating off the evil day before what the bible calls the time of Jacob's trouble. I'm quite sure a number of us, maybe all of us will live to see the invasion of Palestine in what we call again from the word of God the battle of Armageddon.

This is an unholy pact. The Jews right now are raging mad. Why? Because they've made such concessions. They've had to make such concessions. For Kissinger maybe to get a little glory. But anyhow it's so temporary.

And we better not throw dust in our eyes and think that we're entering a peak. In fact the book is just the very opposite of that. It says when do they say peace and safety? Then come a sudden destruction as travail upon a woman with child.

It's no good saying everything's alright and the woman's going to carry a baby and she knows it's due tomorrow. You say forget it, it's not coming till next year anyhow. Boy she'd look at you and say you're crazy.

No sir, there's going to be an outbreak. There has to be. And the only way to stand the tide again is through the church of the living God. This particular book from Holland, this magazine said how could Christians let the war go on in Vietnam?

Why didn't we stampede round here there and raise war against it? Well I can understand that to some degree but by the same token as I've said to you before, has anybody suggested we have a week of prayer and fasting for revival to come to these countries?

The Sleeping Church and the Parable of the Ten Virgins

When Peter went to prison in the New Testament the whole church stayed out of bed because one man was in prison. Now with more than a hundred million in prison I don't hear anybody suggesting we have a night of prayer.

I'm sure Gerald Ford isn't, Christians don't even know they exist. Who's going to do it? And again I believe that the whole deterioration of the world is due again to the fact that the church of Jesus Christ has gone to sleep.

And we're going to pay. You see those virgins, and they were all virgins that slept there before the bridegroom came. There weren't five virgins and five harlots they were all virgins. But they all slept too.

They all slept. And at midnight, in the midnight hour, the time of when it's darkest, we say it's darkest before the dawn, intense darkness immediately before that. When it was expected, why had they gone there waiting for the bridegroom but they fell asleep?

You've got people all over the place. You know I believe the Lord may come before tonight. They don't believe that at all. If they did they wouldn't live as they do. I think folk would live the way they live if they believed that Jesus was coming tonight.

They'd know the chance to straighten their accounts out. How many of us have read on our tiptoes and say Lord as far as I know I'm walking in every bit of light you've given me. I'm obedient to the vision.

I've been grieving over the lost world this week. I've been traveling in birth at Christmaker. I'm more burdened maybe for Russia than I am for America. How many of us are really living tiptoe like that for God?

I don't think there are many. And yet this is what is required of us. If we are the children of light we don't walk in darkness as others do. Now this book has been attacked by the intellectuals but it's been attacked by the fundamentals to some degree or at least it's been attacked by the scholars.

Liberalism, Modernism, and the Abandonment of New Birth

The best way to pollute the preachers was to pollute the colleges and this is exactly what happened. This is what we call liberalism or again in England they call modernism as so polluted these young men that they come out without any sense of responsibility as to what a church is all about.

To them it's a job. To them it's how many buses you have, what your Sunday school attendance is. But when you come right down to the spiritual level, talking about being born again of the Spirit of God.

I was thinking the other day we're going to be saying an awful lot this next year in the bicentenary about famous people but I remember there was a remarkable letter written by a remarkable Englishman to a remarkable American dated if I remember right 1700 and what was the date?

1745? Anyhow it was George Whitfield writing to Benjamin Franklin and he said as I see you growing more and more important in the world of learned men I commit to your diligent and unprejudiced study the mystery of the new birth for remember that without of it not one of us can enter the kingdom of God.

What a pity George Whitfield didn't get the message through. Oh yes it's true that Franklin was interested in his voice. People got saved a mile away listening to George Whitfield preach in amplification.

He must have had a voice. Remember God was so on him that when there were only 12 ,000 people in Boston he drew 14 ,000 people at night. You don't have a preacher living that can do that. Some of them can't do that apart from TV.

And yet the anointing of God was on that man. One of the great classics was written by a man called Scribble. Henry Scribble wrote a book called The Life of God and the Soul of Man. It was that book that brought George Whitfield to Christ.

He was going down one of the corridors in the University of Oxford and the man was sitting there and he saw George Whitfield. George Whitfield was oversized, too big physically. He was a daily cross eyed.

You can go to Morsey and it was a twist church. My friend passes that church right now. And as he went down the corridor remember here is a man who like John Wesley was a man of impeccable morality. He never drank in his life.

He never went on night shows and stuff. He was a gentleman. He was a scholar. There hasn't been a greater brain in England perhaps since John Wesley. And comparable was George Whitfield. And Whitfield said as I went down that corridor this young man, it wasn't John Wesley it was Charles Wesley, said when I saw him I envied him for God.

And later George Whitfield said you may think me superstitious but I can show you the crack in the floor where I read that book when I met God. I read the life of God. To him religion was a matter of morality.

And Christianity is not morality on its tick toes. A man could be passed particularly these days for church membership like Nicodemus the ruler of the Jews. He was a scholar too. He was a member of the Sanhedrin.

That was the holiest club in the world. He had everything going for him. He was a Pharisee. And Jesus said you've got to be born again. I don't think there's anything leading. You turn your TV on, they're talking about miracles and signs and wonders.

The greatest thing we need in America tonight is a message on being born again at the Spirit of God. What it really means for a person to come out of darkness into light, from death to life, from the power of Satan unto God.

And the reason that this world is so unpalatable is it punctures our pride. It says it doesn't matter if your grandfather was a duke or if you're an intellectual or if you've never done anything wrong as far as you know.

That doesn't get you into heaven. That's morality not spirituality. A man must be born again. And that's why Jesus later says when he talks in John 6 he's talking about this word, this word. The preacher kept saying to me this past week, he said, Brother Rayfield, I ache in my spirit when I think of how great preaching has died.

The Decline of Preaching and the Authority of the Living Word

I never hear anybody that can preach. I go to a meeting and a fellow gets up and says, well praise the Lord, this way, that way and the other. I was just really, I don't want to keep you too long. I know the choir sang a little bit too long.

You ought to be out by twelve o 'clock. But just let me tell you this. He almost apologizes. Man, he ought to go till they're prepared to tear him out of the pulpit. He ought to blister them, at least on their souls.

He ought to come with such a message from heaven that people, I think the church, Martha's church away in the hills of Ireland there, if I remember right, the door is right behind the pulpit. The door's right behind the pulpit.

Why? Because it's the only way the preacher could escape. If you had a staircase up at the side, people might rush up. But there was a time when men used to present truths from it. Simeon of Oxford, if you go to Oxford University, you should go.

Simeon was at Oxford. And you know, he saw preachers, they'd nail the door up. They'd nail the door up. He couldn't get in his church. He had to talk outside, speak outside. So powerful was the word of God.

But he stayed there and won the hearts of the people until he stayed there fifty-two years and saw a revival. You see, the word of God is quick. Oh, if there's no Holy Ghost on it, it's dead. You may as well read Queen Anne.

You may as well read the Encyclopedia Britannica and expect to get blessed. You see, the word of God condemns itself. It says, the letter killeth. You know, you've got to walk down the aisle, kiss the preacher, we'll put you through with the tank tonight, and you remember, pay your tithes and that's it.

Oh, no, no, no, no. If you do that every night of the week, as far as that goes, for ten years it wouldn't save you. But when a man comes into a real living relationship with God, it is through the word of God which has been quickened to him.

And the word which has been a dead letter suddenly becomes alive. It's quick and it's powerful. And the thing that amazed those people that listened, there were lots of orators in the days of Jesus. Some of the great orators, Romans and the Greeks were around at that time.

You're not going to suggest they never heard any of these men. But when they heard Jesus, they said, this man speaks with authority. And Jesus himself says in the sixth of John, verse 36 there, he says, the word I speak to you, their spirit and their life.

I think it must have been lovely to hear Jesus. He was always emphasizing he was life. I heard of a preacher recently who belongs to a fundamental group. He said, if you go into one of our churches, you'd never figure that we belong to the group whose name is on the door.

There's no life. And yet Jesus said, well, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Without the way, there's no going. Without the truth, there's no knowing. Without the life, there's no growing. I am the ways external.

I am the truth is internal. I am the life is eternal. I'm come that they might have life. This was a sole purpose. And as I said to you often, you see, we've lost the wonder of our salvation. We've got theologically minded.

Listen, you can't push anything over me. I happen to be a good reader. I know this, I know that. Yeah, but when did you last get over these feet? As I said the other night to a congregation, the night before I was wishing with all my heart John had been there that night, when the glory came down.

When did you last take Jesus by the feet and forget all about your prayers and forget all about your praises and just worship him and adore him and magnify him? And make almost the angels envy that you're such a heart full of love and adoration because that's what worship is.

Worship is speechless adoration very often. Or is it like loud adoration? But adoration it certainly is. But you see, until you have life, it's like reading a love story. You laugh at the silly things in a love story.