I bet some of you haven't sung that song for a while, huh? In fact, how many of you have never sung it before as far as you can remember? I suspected that was the case. How many of you have sung it before? Would you lift your hands? Well, now look at that. See, that's sometimes when we lift the hands we think that's everybody, but when we do the other side of the coin, why we find out that's not quite everybody. In fact, I would guess that more of you have sung it before than found it new.
Well we're talking this evening about the church that people were afraid to join. Can anybody give me the text for the message tonight? I have about 14 fans buzzing in my ears up here, so if you have that text, let me know loudly. What is it? Thank you, Acts chapter 5, now what am I going to say about it, Mark? But you are correct, that's right, thank you. Acts chapter 5, would you turn there with me please?
Every now and then I'll hear a sincere believer say, what we need is to get back to Pentecost. What I'd like to say to you tonight, that is not our need. We don't need to go back to Pentecost any more than we need to go back to Calvary. We only needed one Calvary when the Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself, and there's only one Pentecost that's needed too, the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Our need is not to get back to Pentecost, but I would like to suggest that perhaps what we do need is for some of us, indeed all of us, to tap afresh and anew the power of Pentecost, the dynamic of the Holy Spirit. I would like for you to look at Acts chapter 4 with me, and we'll begin reading in verse 23, and then conclude with chapter 5 verse 16. The church has suffered a persecution earlier here in this chapter as two of the apostles were arrested for their preaching and then released.
It says in verse 23, and when they had been released, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them.
And when they heard this, they lifted up their voices to God with one accord and said, O Lord, it is Thou who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of our Father David thy servant did say, just time out for a moment, isn't that a marvelous way to describe the miracle of inspiration and how the Holy Spirit said the words by the mouth of David? This is what David said in Psalm 2.
Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For truly in this city they were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever thy hand and thy purpose predestined to occur.
And now, Lord, take note of their threats and grant that thy bond-servants may speak thy word with all confidence, while thou dost extend thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of thy holy servant Jesus. When they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.
And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own. But all things were common property to them, and with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all.
For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of lands or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need. And Joseph, a Levite of Cyprian birth, who was also called Barnabas by the apostles, which translated means son of encouragement, and who owned a tract of land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.
But a certain man named Ananias with his wife, Sapphira, sold a piece of property and kept back some of the price for himself. With his wife's full knowledge and bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control?
Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God. As he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. And the young men arose and covered him up, and after carrying him out, they buried him. Now there elapsed an interval of about three hours, and his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Then Peter responded to her, Tell me whether you sold the land for such and such a price?
And she said, Yes, that was the price. Then Peter said to her, Why is it that you have agreed together to put the Spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they shall carry you out as well. And she fell immediately at his feet and breathed her last. The young men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.
And at the hands of the apostles many signs and wonders were taking place among the people, and they were all with one accord in Solomon's portico. But none of the rest dared to associate with them. However, the people held them in high esteem.
And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were constantly added to their number to such an extent that they even carried the sick out into the streets and laid them on cots and pallets so that when Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on any one of them. And also the people from the cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem were coming together, bringing people who were sick or afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all being healed.
We certainly see a great deal of power in the early church, don't we? God has done some amazing things in our midst in the last year and a half. As we have witnessed Him begin something new in our midst, we have witnessed the Lord to be pleased to do a work that none of us had anticipated and which none of us could have created. I am sure that God might have done more if all of us were completely yielded to Him.
But what He has chosen to do is certainly above all that we could have asked or thought. I must confess to you though as your pastor tonight that I am concerned. I am concerned lest we think that we will continue as we have by the power of the momentum that we have going for us. In other words, I am concerned that we will think that what we have seen happen thus far will continue to happen no matter what. I would like to say to you tonight that that is not the case.
What we have seen happen has been of God. Unless God is pleased to continue it, then we will be stopped dead in our tracks. The momentum that we have at the present time is not sufficient in and of itself to see great and mighty things done for the glory of God here. God alone can see those things accomplished as He is pleased through us. I am also concerned that Grace Church Roseville should become a popular place to be.
Oh, it is not that I do not enjoy hearing people say that they like to come here. I feel that way. I enjoy coming here. When I go on vacation, I can hardly wait to get back. There is something about what God is doing here that my heart rejoices in and I hunger for just the atmosphere of your fellowship. It is very, very special.
But I fear lest we should ever become the popular place to be and that that popularity should then become an end or a goal in itself to us so that we lessen our standards or we weaken our preaching so that it will continue to be popular to more and more people. I believe God would be displeased with that. I believe that any time you and I are living godly in Christ or any time we as a church are being effective, we can expect some persecution.
Maybe not in terms of bricks being thrown through the windows or shots being taken at the building, but we can expect people to take pot shots at us with their tongues. That's all right. As long as we are obeying the word of God and taking the stand we ought to in the word of God, that's all right. Jesus said, beware when all men shall speak well of you. I don't want this to ever become the society church in this area or the place to go because everybody else is going there.
I want our church to continue to be what it is, a place where people want to come to worship God and to be taught his word. I pray that that will ever be the motive and the reason for our assembling together. As I have been thinking about these things and pondering over them with some other burdens that I will share as the message proceeds, I thought regarding the early Jerusalem church. I think I would like to have been a part of it, but what was taking place there was so unusual.
You see the early church was absolutely alive and dynamic with the very presence of the Lord, so much so that some of the people on the fringes were afraid to join themselves with the apostles and the other believers. They were afraid of what might happen there. There was an atmosphere, as G. Campbell Morgan put it, of fiery fervor and irresistible dynamic.
It's true that this text that we read tonight was not long after Pentecost, and there are some things that are in the text that are there because of the timing of the whole event. But, folks, does your heart like mine long to see something of the power of God in our ministry as God was pleased to display his power then? I believe that many of you would agree with me on that. What kind of a church was it, this church, that people were afraid to join?
Well, in looking through the text, there are several characteristics that we see. In the first place, it was a praying church. After that persecution had ended with the release of the apostles, they came back to their own companions, their own company, and reported what had happened, a very natural thing. And their immediate response after they heard was that they lifted up their voice in prayer. These people knew how to get a hold of God.
I am very frankly burdened in my own life that I grow in that. That in my praying I may know how to truly get a hold of the throne of grace and talk to the Lord. Do you feel that way, too? So often we say prayers instead of praying. We use phrases and words that are familiar to us because we hear other people say them. We repeat them by rote and they have no deep root in our spirit. The Apostle commands us in Ephesians 6 that all of our praying should be done in the Holy Spirit.
Now, what does that mean? That means that our praying should be done with the Holy Spirit being the source of the power involved in our praying. Not ourselves, but the Holy Spirit. I believe that is the kind of praying that we see here in chapter 4. I see several things about their praying. First of all, it was characterized by fervency. It says in verse 24, they lifted up their voice to God. This was not a quiet little prayer meeting where everybody got in their corner and prayed silently.
They lifted up their voice to God. I notice it says their voice. However it was, it wasn't confused and everybody praying at the same time. But apparently their hearts were so united in this that as one of them, whoever it was, lifted his heart to God in speaking the prayer, the rest of them joined right with him. That's the way our praying ought to be whenever anybody leads us in a group.
We should not use that time to think what we're going to say to impress upon others that we are spiritual or know how to pray. But as another person is praying in any group, whether it's two or three or in a congregation, we need to be listening to every word and lifting every word with our hearts to God. There was a fervency about their praying. There was an urgency in it. I judge myself for the lack of urgency in so much of my praying.
I don't see too much urgency in praying in our church either. That's a great burden to me. That is one reason that we are giving Wednesday nights to intercession in prayer. We have been having a Bible study and some singing as well as a prayer time. The folks, I am so burdened about the need for prayer in our church and for our church that we are setting aside that time on Wednesday nights and I want to encourage you to come and join us in prayer if you can at seven o'clock.
That is an important time to me during the week. Now I realize that some of you are in growth groups or have other commitments so that you cannot be there to join with us, but if you can be, I hope you will join with us. We need to learn something fresh about urgency and fervency in praying. Then I noticed that there was unity in their praying. They lifted their voice to God with one accord. Their hearts beat together.
There weren't the petty kinds of things that so often dull the cutting edge of our unity. That is often true in persecution hits. It seems to take away the differences among believers. Why does it have to take persecution or some affliction or some deep trouble for those differences to be melted away? Why don't we just allow our hearts to be unified with our brothers and sisters in Christ so that in praying there is a unity, there is a oneness of spirit and of mind about our praying?
That's the kind of praying that gets a hold of God. Notice too that their praying was word centered. You notice that? As they're praying along they don't mind quoting from the Old Testament or maybe they got out of scroll, I don't know, and they began to read. But the word of God was a part of their praying. That is a good discipline for us. It's a good example for us to follow.
In our praying we allow the word of God to stimulate our mind and to lead us in the direction of how to pray regarding certain things. Now the Holy Spirit was leading them here very obviously as they brought this passage from the book of Psalms to bear upon the situation.
What a great discipline it would be for us as we consider those requests and burdens if we would first go to the word and allow the Spirit of God to give us a promise or some word from God about our burdens and then lift our burden to Him and pray as the word tells us to pray. Their praying was word centered. I don't know of a better way to get a hold of God in our praying than to make our praying Bible oriented. And then I noticed they recognized the sovereignty of God.
They weren't wringing their hands for fear of persecutors as they prayed. The first place when they started out they said, oh Lord, that is not the typical word for Lord in the New Testament. This is a word that we would translate literally into the English despot. Now we don't think of the Lord with that term, but that's what it means. It means one who is absolutely totally sovereign. He is the master. That's how they address Him.
And then notice as they recount how prophecy had been fulfilled in verse 27, they go on to say in verse 28 that these people did whatever the hand of God and the purpose of God had predestined to occur. You see these people are aware that they are a part of something a lot bigger than themselves. God is at work here. And oh my, how that will orient our praying, how it will open the windows of heaven.
As you and I get our eyes off of our little concerns and begin to see that we are a part of something big, something that stretches from eternity to eternity, something that involves the very purpose and the will of God as He has predetermined it to occur. As you and I recognize the sovereignty of God, we'll get a hold of God. And then it says in verse 29, they prayed this, now Lord take note of their threats. I kind of like that.
I'm sure God had taken note of the threats, but they mentioned them anyway. But notice then they don't say, and cause them to stop threatening us. Nor do they say, and Lord deliver us from their threats. What do they say? They say, Lord grant that thy servants may speak thy word with all confidence. Lord just help us to keep on keeping on doing what we're supposed to do despite the threats. You see their praying was specific and it was right. That kind of praying gets a hold of God too.
I see so much in the praying of this church that instructs me as to how as a pastor and as to how we as a church can know something afresh of the Pentecostal power of God. We're not going to know that folks unless we get under the burden of prayer. In verse 31, it says when they had prayed, the place they had gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.
The second thing I see about this church which characterized it is that it was a power-filled church. So much so that when they had finished praying, the place where they were literally shook. Have you ever been in that kind of a prayer meeting? I haven't. It would probably frighten me a little bit. I don't know how they took it. But so powerful did God hear them and answer them that the very room, the very building perhaps in which they were located literally shook.
They had their own localized earthquake. I have a friend who pastored in the Midwest for a number of years. They got a call to a church in California. When the call came, he was reluctant to go. It was about a year in fact that they kept in contact with him saying they were praying and they felt he was God's man. As he and his wife talked about California and the ministry out there, they recognized the obvious differences between here and there.
One of the things they knew that was different was the possibility of earthquakes in Southern California. So one day as they were talking about it, finally his wife came up with this statement. She said, you know, the thing that really keeps me from considering that ministry out there very seriously is the earthquakes. I would not believe this if I had not heard it from him, I mean her husband. He told me himself, I got this first hand.
No sooner had she said the thing that keeps me from considering the ministry out there as earthquakes than they had an earthquake in that little Midwestern town where they had an earthquake in years. And their whole house shook. She said, Lord, that's enough. We're going to California. And that's where they are today. God shook that place they were in. But the real power was not in the earthquake. The real power was in their witness.
God answered prayer and they began to speak the word of God with boldness. And why? Because they were filled with the Holy Spirit. It doesn't say that they spoke in tongues. It says they spoke the word of God with boldness. That's the real proof of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Time and time again you will find that as the apostles and as the early church came up to a new opportunity of witness or preaching, the Holy Spirit filled them afresh.
It doesn't say they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. It says they were filled with the Holy Spirit. There is a difference. The baptism of the Holy Spirit occurred on the day of Pentecost. Never are we commanded in the New Testament to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Did you know that? Not once. The baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs at the moment we're saved. It's not something we sense. It is the work of the Holy Spirit placing us into the body of Christ.
That's the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But there is such a thing as the filling of the Holy Spirit. And so often when we see that word, we get the picture of a glass that's empty that needs to be filled up with water. And that really is not the thrust of this word. This word has to do with empowering. It is filling in the sense of a sail on a boat that is put up and the wind fills it. Now the result of that filling is that the boat has power. It's moved. And you see, that's the thought here.
The Holy Spirit, as it were, filled their sails and they were made bold. They were empowered by that Spirit. There is no genuine spiritual fruit apart from a ministry that is empowered by the Holy Spirit, period. You can have statistics. You can add numbers. You can multiply numbers. You'll usually end up dividing in numbers. You can do anything you want to with numbers. But there is no genuine spiritual fruit apart from the empowering of the Spirit of God in the ministry.
Dear people, we need that here more than ever before. If we have known a certain empowering of the Spirit of God in Grace Church, Roseville, and so forth, I want to say to you tonight that I believe God is trying to tell us that what we have known thus far is only the tip of the iceberg that is available. And not only that, what we have known thus far is insufficient to carry us on. I believe that God is challenging us.
God is telling us that we need to trust Him for a fresh and deeper infilling than we have ever known in our ministry. And dear people, unless we know that, we are going to finish our ministry. It's just going to stop. It's going to level off. And we're just going to go through the routine of things, unless we know a fresh and a deeper empowering of the Spirit of God in our midst. Now, how does that happen? Do you have to work up a lather of emotion?
No, the filling of the Holy Spirit occurs very naturally when sin is confessed and gotten out of the way. You see, it is the natural thing for the Holy Spirit to be in control. It is unnatural when He's not in control in the Christian's life. God's plan is that the Holy Spirit is just there and He's flowing through us, bringing the life of Christ to others. When sin comes into our lives, then the Spirit of God is quenched, and He's grieved, and He draws back, and His power is not evidenced.
To the extent that there is sin in my life, the Spirit of God is not in control. He is not empowering me. To the extent that I confess sin and I am honest before God and humble myself before Him, the Spirit of God is in control and is empowering me. The same is true of you, and the same is true of us collectively. The more sin there is in our church, the less the Spirit of God is going to do. God will not pour the pure water of life through a dirty vessel.
He will not use this church to glorify Jesus Christ and to bring others to a saving knowledge of Christ unless we are clean and pure. This was a power-filled church, and we need to know something more about what that means. I notice also that it was a loving church, and I see that in the way that they shared with one another. This love was not the syrupy, goopy kind of love that seems to be so common in some circles of Christianity.
This was a kind of love that was not in word only, but in deed and in truth, and involved their helping each other. I don't have time to go into it at length, but I would like to emphasize that this is not Christian Communism, as though those two words were somehow compatible. What is seen here is the early church simply loving each other and caring for each other. There's no coercion. What each person had was his own until he willingly gave it.
It says that some of them gave everything, and Barnabas was an example of one who owned a piece of land and sold it and brought all of the money and laid it at the apostles' feet. He did not do that, obviously, in a showy way, or God would not have been pleased. God is never pleased when we show our money. He did this in a way that was sincere and humble, and it encouraged the church, undoubtedly, as they saw the generosity of this man.
They rejoiced in the way that God was providing for the needs in the church. I tell you, it cost them to do this. Love always costs. It costs time, it costs money, it costs energy, and it's great. We need to know something more about this, too. I overheard a statement that Pastor Dave Busby made some time ago. Some of you know him. Pastor Dave is the youth director at the Edina Church, a godly young man.
He's going to come over here and preach one of these days on a Sunday night, and you'll get to meet him. Someone was asking him about evangelism in the youth group when he first came back in the winter. He said, how can these people lead anybody to the Lord? They don't even like one another. He was talking about the youth group. You know something? That's the truth. He didn't begin with evangelism. He began to try to get those young people to like one another.
And folks, evangelism does not occur where people are not loving each other sincerely, deeply, sacrificially. It means giving food when a staff member comes. Maybe it means cleaning a house, helping to do that. Maybe it means going to the hospital and seeing somebody or ordering a flower for another or just sending a note of encouragement. Perhaps it means coming up beside and just putting your arm around somebody and saying, you know, I know you've been going through the battle. I love you.
I'm praying for you. Maybe it means slipping a gift in their pocket. Love. And love is something you don't organize. It's just something that happens. It's spontaneous. The fruit of the Spirit is coming out of lives, being produced, affecting the church. And I tell you, when people sense that kind of love, you can't keep them away from church. And then to close, I'm kind of like Paul. I say, finally, brethren. I see another characteristic in the church. It was a pure church.
This kind of ties together with what I was saying a while ago. You'll notice that Satan could not get to them from the outside. He tried to persecute the church. It was repelled as they responded to that persecution in the power of God. And so he got into the church through a couple of the members. And you know, it's amazing how often Satan will go back and forth on something like that. If it's not persecution from outside, then it will be something within the church.
Some member will fall into his trap and be used of Satan. That's what happened to Ananias, the Sapphira. Their sin here was not that they did not want to give all the money. It was their choice as to whether they gave all the money they got from the land or just part of it. But their sin was that they were deceitful about it. They gave only a part of it, but pretended that it was a whole thing, that that was the whole amount. And it was that hypocrisy that God judged.
It was that deceit that God found so harmful to that fellowship. Peter had awareness of it. God apparently gave him understanding to see what was happening. I notice that he says, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? You see, it was the work of Satan. He yielded the temptation and he sinned. And that sin could affect the church. As he says over in 1 Corinthians, a little leaven leavens the what? The whole lump. So he says, purge out that leaven. Get it out of the dough.
What he's really saying there is, that member in 1 Corinthians 5 who's living in open sin and who will not repent, remove him from your fellowship so that the church is not affected. You see, if this had gone undetected and unpunished, the early church would have been weakened by it. Charles Ryre said, nothing will seep the power of a church's testimony more quickly than pews filled with sinning Christians. It saps the power of a church when our pews are filled with sinning Christians.
God doesn't always judge sin like this by death. If He did, maybe a lot of us wouldn't be here tonight. Why He did it in this way at this time I think can be explained if you know a little bit about the book of Acts and the fact that we're on really Jewish territory in this part of the book of Acts. As you move through the book, it increasingly becomes Israel and increasingly becomes church. And at this point, it's still heavily into the Jewish thing.
And I believe that what God did here was to strike these people in the kind of immediate judgment that will take place during the kingdom when Israel will again be restored. Without having said that, let us take note that it is not unknown that God judges sin in the church by death. There is such a thing as the sin unto death. That is not a particular sin. The sin unto death is a persistent sinning in a Christian's life when he refuses to repent of it and goes on a stubborn, self-directed way.
And after a period of time as God tries to bring that child of His back into line if He refuses, then that sin becomes the sin unto death and He is taken home to heaven. That happened in the Corinthian church. Some of them slept because of sin in their midst. And I believe that that happens occasionally still today.
I think I've shared this with some of you, but I remember so well an incident that was related to me of a woman in the state of New York probably 20 years ago now, a woman who was well known in her church as a gossip. Whenever a pastor came into the church, she saw to it that he was miserable and humbled. And there came a new pastor to the church and she started her old routine again of gossip and tail-bearing.
And as he ought to have done, he went to her and pled with her in private in her home that she would cease this. She denied that she was ever guilty of such a thing. Why that was far below her dignity to be a tail-bearer in a gossip. The pastor knew that he had the proof on her that she was lying and deceiving him or trying to deceive him. So he knelt down right there in her living room and said, Lord, I've tried. She's yours.
The next Sunday in church, he went into the adult class where all the adults were. As he came in, he saw this lady sitting there and he saw her nod around the room to all the people, obviously she had been talking to about his coming to her house and praying such a prayer and hermits. And about the time she finished her last nod, she fell out of the chair dead on the floor. It does happen occasionally. God is merciful and gracious with us.
Dear people, the thing I want to emphasize tonight is the fact that when we sin, it not only impacts us, it affects the church. If you're here tonight as a Christian, you're living a life of sin and you're out in the world living for the devil. When God is not being pleased and Jesus Christ is not the Lord of your life, then you are impacting the ministry of this church. And I plead with you on the basis of that alone to repent and to get your life straightened out with God.
If a church is going to be the kind of a church that knows something of Pentecostal power, then it has to be a pure church. A church where sin is judged by every member in the life. Not that he judges others, but he judges himself and keeps his account short with God. I tell you, I'm burdened tonight to see our church be more of that kind of a church. With all the great things that have happened this year, we have much to be grateful for, but I am not the least bit content in my spirit.
I do not think for the moment that we have somehow arrived and attained some kind of a plateau of success. God forbid that any of us should ever have that kind of a haughty, arrogant attitude. God has only begun to do what he wants to do. If he's going to do what he wants to do, it depends upon me and upon you, for we are the church. God help us to be the kind of people that we need to be so that the Spirit of God can fall upon us in a new way.
Back in 1978, I got burdened for this same thing in the church I was pastoring in Kentucky, and we invited a revival team, Life Action Ministries, to come in. We scheduled them for about a week and a half just around Thanksgiving. You never have a meeting around Thanksgiving, but that was the only time that they could come. We had the best time on our calendar that fall, so we scheduled it. We canceled everything in the church.
We started those meetings at seven o'clock at night, and we didn't get through some nights until midnight. I've never seen in my ministry anything like it, as the Spirit of God began to work. We had all night prayer meetings as we asked God to do something new in our midst. I witnessed before you tonight that God saved people that we thought were impossible. He broke through their hearts as we began to pray for them, urgently and fervently. We saw Christians restored.
I'll never forget the night that the daughter of our minister of music came forward. Several years before that, when I first became the pastor of the church, we had to put her out of the church publicly because of sin. You can imagine what a difficult thing that was for her parents and for all of us in the church. We had prayed for her. She had gone out into the world.
During that meeting, she came back to the Lord, and we saw her two weeks ago, and she's still walking with the Lord, going on for Christ. We saw God do amazing things. The meeting went for the week and a half and for another week and another week, and we had to stop just before Christmas. For nearly a month, we went every night except Saturday night from 7 to 10 or 11 or 12, and then prayed hours after that, and God did something. I don't know that we're going to do that here.
We may, but I can tell you this. I'm hungry for the same thing, and I know that many of you join me in this kind of discontent with just going on doing the same thing in the same way, counting the numbers, counting the offering. There is so much more to it that God wants to do. Let's let Him do it.
Oh Lord, I've just tried to share tonight what you've been placing on my heart and what you've been wanting to do in my life, and I sense that there are many of us here tonight who share something of the same burden. God help us to put away pride. Help us to put away playthings. Give us to discard sins that so easily beset us. When Lord God do a work in our lives and in our church, we may see something of a deeper moving of the Spirit of God in our midst. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.