Daniel 4 • Faith of a Lamb
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Part of the gospel that we want to share is that which is in Daniel chapter 4.
And I'll ask that you would look in your bibles there today: Daniel chapter 4.
As you're turning, let me tell you that what's happening in Daniel chapter 4 is that we are fast forwarding 32 years from the time that Daniel began interpreting dreams for King Nebuchadnezzar, three decades, time enough for a king to forget Daniel's God, the one he formally declared to be Lord of kings and God of gods.
Nebuchadnezzar is back to his old ways.
And so it is time for another dream.
The Lord gives Nebuchadnezzar a dream that he does not understand.
He dreams of a great tree that rises above the earth, providing shelter for many, grand and glorious in its scope, and then a voice from heaven comes and says, "Chop it down and bind the stump with bands of iron and bronze until he acknowledges that only the Most High is Lord over the kingdoms of men."
Daniel interprets the dream.
He says, "King Nebuchadnezzar, you're about to have a great fall.
You are the tree."
He interprets accurately, and then nothing happens.
Until verse 28 of Daniel 4.
Let's stand and we'll read what happens next as Daniel interprets and then the king experiences.
Verse 28 of Daniel 4, "All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar.
At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, and the king answered and said, 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?'
While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, 'O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field.
And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.'
Immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar.
He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles' feathers, and his nails were like birds' claws.
'At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'
At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me.
My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me.
Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.'"
Let's pray together.
>>> Heavenly Father, humble us, for we know in our humility is the path of Your graciousness: not when we boast, not when we compare, but when we come to You with the empty hands of faith and say, "Lord, unless You fill us up, we are empty; unless You enable us, we are weak; unless You save us, we are lost."
We come asking today that what a king long ago learned be a lesson that our hearts would claim and in doing so would know the great mercy of the God of all grace who sent Jesus in our behalf.
Grant that we would know Him better by what we see in Your Word this day we pray.
Amen.
>>> Please be seated.
I met a traveler from an antique land who said, "Two trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
Beside them, half buried in the sand, a shattered face lies whose frown and sneer of cold contempt well tell that its sculptor knew the person he represented.
And on the pedestal beneath the legs, these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
Look on my works, ye mighty and despair.'
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay of the callosal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."
Percy Shelley's fabled Ozymandias well reflects the account of the real Nebuchadnezzar, a king who boasted of a power, of a wisdom, of an accomplishment that supposedly elevated him to immortality only to discover that it could be ruined in a moment.
Ozymandias, despite his boasting, ultimately is ruined by time and erosion and nothing is around him but desert sands.
Nothing is around Nebuchadnezzar by the end of this account than the grace of God.
It really is important that we see that.
I mean, if we only see in this account of Nebuchadnezzar a reiteration of Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall, we really haven't got the picture.
Yes, it is certainly true that we are being taught here that pride comes before a fall.
But that's just the first line.
The deeper message is: And God picks up those who are fallen.
Those who boast will not know Him, but the broken can.
And it's that message of hope for those who have lost wealth, wisdom, respect, or believe that they could that Daniel chapter 4 is written, a message of amazing hope.
If you think about what we are to take away from Daniel chapter 4, you really can't miss it.
It's actually said three times in verse 32, verse 35, and mostly clearly in verse 17.
I'll ask that you look there, because there we actually read the decree of what is to be learned.
Verse 17, "'The sentence is by the decree of the watchers, the decision by the word of the holy ones, to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdoms of men and gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of men.'"
What's the takeaway?
The first takeaway is the living are to know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men.
Nebuchadnezzar gets a text from heaven: "Nebuchadnezzar, God's in charge and you're not."
And the text gets forwarded to you and me: "God's in charge and you're not."
The way we sometimes think we are in charge is by measuring our wisdom or our power or our accomplishment and think that they will provide some hedge against the trials and the storms of this world.
But what Nebuchadnezzar is here to demonstrate is the very things that we bank on to guarantee the world that we want are always insufficient.
After all, Nebuchadnezzar had great wisdom.
It's stated for us here in verse 18.
"'In the dream I, King Nebuchadnezzar, saw.
And you, Daniel, tell me the interpretation, because all the wise men of my kingdom are not able to make known to me the interpretation.'"
Hey, I'm wise.
I've got lots of wise men.
And the thing that I think will give me some happiness right now, they can't explain to me.
Our wisdom is not enough.
It's an old message but one that we have to learn over and over again.
Steve Jobs, amazingly smart, but could not outsmart the cancer.
Wisdom is not enough.
Lehman Brothers, the smart guys on Wall Street until 2008, and now we don't listen to E. F. Hutton or Lehman Brothers.
Detroit, Pittsburgh: trophy cities of American ingenuity, now skeletons of their former glory.
Accumulate your wisdom, bring it all together, it will not be enough to hedge against what can actually happen in the world.
We don't just have to think on the macro scale: Think of individuals you know, smart people, capable people, who ran against circumstances greater than they.
I think about my dad, one of the smartest, most able people I have ever known.
My dad started farming as a youth driving mules in front of a plow.
At the apex of his career, he was actually directing farming operations for hundreds of farms through satellite imagery.
Incredible knowledge that he had, incredible ability, worked his way up after college from being a copy editor for a farm magazine to actually being second in command of the company that he worked for, only behind the boss, who was the owner of the company.
Everything was great.
He had great position.
He had wonderful income.
He had lots of ability that was able to be expressed and the wisdom that he was applying himself to, until the boss retired, sold the company, and my father in his senior management years was now without a job.
But he was smart, so able.
And so he bought an unproductive region of the former company from the corporation that had purchased it and turned it into a money producing machine.
It worked fantastic.
He's smart; he's able.
But the backbone of his region was a large farm in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
Ring a bell for anybody?
The home of the Saturn plant.
General Motors bought the farm that was the backbone of my father's business and suddenly that disappeared.
Of course, you know now that to smite the wisdom of General Motors, Saturn isn't exactly their premiere product anymore either.
Wisdom doesn't guarantee the world that you want.
There are forces in the world beyond any human wisdom.
Even Nebuchadnezzar could not hedge his security by his wisdom.
So perhaps power would be enough.
He refers to it in verse 30.
Right?
"The king answered and said, 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power.'"
I've got sufficient power.
But, of course, the message that's here and that we all know intuitively is that you cannot have enough human power to shield you from greater forces in this world.
You can be Lebron James and still win the--, and still lose the championship.
You can have the power of an Alexander the Great, of a Napoleon, of a Saddam Hussein and still lose it all.
You can be the nation's longest consecutive running Speaker of the House and despite all the power lose it all.
You can be one of any number of Illinois governors.
[Laughter]
And lose it all.
The message that we are being taught over and over again is: It does not matter how much power you have; only the King of glory has sufficient power to guarantee the world that He needs to bring into being.
And us knowing that intuitively, that we're actually insecure, that no one has enough wisdom and power as a hedge against all things, that our typical response is, "Then I better get while the getting' is good; I will have my accomplishment and accumulation, what I need to prepare for the bad times."
And so acquire, accumulate, insulate becomes our mantra.
I'll just get enough so even when the bad times come, even when the trials come, even when the business cycle turns around, I will be prepared to face it.
The difficulty with that, of course, is that you cannot acquire so much that you can insulate yourself from the things of this world.
And we know it.
East of Westcliffe, Colorado, where my family spent a lot of summer vacations, is a castle, a medieval castle, rising into the clouds from a mountaintop.
A half crazy man is building, by his own wisdom and strength, a medieval castle right out of the mountains.
And he's not very pro-government, so he has all kinds of anti-government signs around his property, which, of course, means that what's known as Bishops Castle does not exactly meet O.S.H.A. standards.
[Laughter]
He pays for his resources by tourists who will come and look at what he's building.
And we've gone there.
And I can remember when my children were little and we would go up into the towers, up the circular steps into the towers, not meeting O.S.H.A. standards so there were very few handrails: When we were down low, my children were bouncing off the walls and I was saying over and over again, "Hang onto my hands; hang onto my hands."
But the taller we got, the higher we went, the less I had to command.
[Laughter]
Their hands are now holding onto mine like little vise grips.
[Laughter]
Because the higher you go, the less secure you actually know you are.
We try to secure ourselves with what we can accumulate and ultimately realize, every single one of us, that we are building mountains out of marbles.
And the more you push together, the more you heap together, the more jeopardy you're actually in.
We could lose it all and we know it.
And I'm not just guessing about that.
I just look at what characterizes even the church through its history.
Right now, if you went to look, according to the Association of Religious Data, who keeps track of churches in this country, what does the average believer give to the purposes of the kingdom?
The answer is two percent.
In 1968, it was two point five percent.
During the Great Depression, it was three point three percent.
The more affluent we have become, the more we have accumulated, the less we give.
We actually feel less secure.
We back away; we back away.
Forty percent of the people in the church today give less than two hundred and fifty dollars a year.
Twenty percent give absolutely nothing.
Not because they are not blessed: because they fear loss.
And if you take away something from this message, if it's just guilt, that's not my purpose.
For what Nebuchadnezzar is here to remind us of is that the God of all creation is the one who is granting us blessing so that we could be free from the pressures of this world, the kingdoms that we would build here.
I think of a book some of you will know, Joe Battaglia, in his book "The Politically Incorrect Jesus" talks about an interview that he did with Corrie ten Boom.
Remember who she was?
In the Nazi prison camps, lost her sister, lost her other family members, lost their worldly goods.
And toward the end of her life as she had been used marvelously by the Lord through the writing of the book "The Hiding Place," he asked her what lessons she could give him.
And in one of the very last interviews of her life, she said, "Don't hold onto anything so tightly that Jesus can't take it away."
Why?
Because if you are holding onto something so tightly you can't let Jesus take it away, it probably has a hold on you.
If you can't let it go, it chains you.
You are a slave to it and may not even know it.
People's expectations, our own expectations, our bank accounts: What is it that says, "I'll be happy, I'll be secure if I can just get this"?
And as a consequence, we end up living in fear and the gospel is calling us to freedom, to recognize that in generosity we are actually depending upon the graciousness and goodness of God and believing He will provide the daily bread, He will provide what is necessary for our happiness and for our families.
And so we are freed by our own graciousness to understand how good our God is.
It's living the radical notion of Christianity that is saying: I recognize that the mighty God that I trust holds me and therefore I can let go of things to the extent that He is calling me to for His kingdom purposes.
God is saying to us through Nebuchadnezzar, "Yes, the Most High rules the kingdoms of man and it's not your wisdom and it's not your power and it's not your accomplishment.
That is not what is going to give you rule in this kingdom of humanity."
As we begin to sense that, we begin to say, "Alright, what does God mean for me taking away, if it's not just I'm to be accumulating more?"
He tells us, verse 17, right in the middle again, not only that the Most High rules the kings of men but "'He gives it to whom he will.'"
God gives kingdom blessing to whomever He will.
Now, we need to hear that, because I begin to think at times if I'm going to get kingdom blessing, I need either wisdom or wealth or power, and if I get enough of that, that will work.
Well, I've just been told that doesn't work.
So maybe I secure kingdom blessing not by wisdom, wealth, or power but by goodness.
If I'm just good enough, then I get the kingdom.
Then the blessings come to me.
If I can just kind of measure myself against God's standard or you, then I will get the blessing.
Totally contradicted by Daniel chapter 4.
Who, after all, gets the greatest blessing in Daniel chapter 4?
Who had the kingdom when the chapter opens?
Nebuchadnezzar, because he's such a nice, sweet guy.
[Laughter]'
Right?
No.
This is the guy who lops off peoples' heads when they cross him.
This is the guy who enslaved Israel by taking the people with fishhooks in their mouths and transporting them across land.
It's the man who through torture and intimidation maintained his status.
Now, I'll grant you at some point he suffers for his pride, but by the end of the chapter, he gets it all back plus more.
Who's the one who actually doesn't get good stuff in Daniel chapter 4?
Who starts out as a slave and ends as a slave?
Who was that?
That's Daniel.
Wait, the bad guy gets the good stuff and the good guy gets the bad stuff.
It's actually just exactly what Ecclesiastes 8:14 says.
Remember?
"There is a vanity that takes place on earth, there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous."
Okay, let's have the benediction.
[Laughter]
No, no.
There's got to be more than that.
There's got to be some message here.
And, of course, the message is that God's blessing is not based on any human factor.
God is taking out wisdom and power and he's also taking about human goodness as a factor of His own mercy and grace.
It's a grace message that sometimes is hard for us to hear, because the initial conclusion is if God is not blessing based on any human factor, then one thing I have to recognize, of course, is that it's all vanity.
That's what the writer of Ecclesiastes said.
It's pointless; it's senseless.
That is the only conclusion, unless you keep thinking as the writer of Ecclesiastes did or Daniel here instructs us.
Yes, it is certainly true that there is no human factor, that whatever happens to us is guided by a divine hand.
But we are also being told that that divine hand is being guided by a great heart, a heart whose mercy and goodness is beyond our fathoming.
After all, what do you just know if you think about who's receiving blessing and how it is coming in this passage?
King Nebuchadnezzar gets his kingdom first and again.
He doesn't deserve it.
He is totally undeserving.
And Israel, the nation of Israel, rebellious, idolatry, under the discipline of captivity in this moment, Israel, despite its great rebellion, gets Daniel, a leader to tell them about the goodness and graciousness of God for eons to come.
And Daniel, though he exists in captivity, gets eternity opened before him.
He is a slave who sees into heaven for all nations to come.
Amazing.
No one deserving what they get.
I must tell you something: That's not a message you want to hear on your good days.
It's a message you desperately need on your bad days.
On the good days when you're kind of saying, you know, you know, "Look at what a good boy am I," that you want to say, "God, I did my part; now pay me off.
Pay me back.
I did--, I was good; pay me back."
But on the days that you know that the payback ought to be suffering and judgment, how desperately we need to know that mercy is not guided by any human factor but by the heart of a merciful God.
I think of a young man who came to me some years ago.
He had struggled with addictions.
He had struggled with sexual orientation.
And as we worked months and months together, God did wonderful things in his life.
He went on a new path.
He went on a new way.
He was prospering so well until tensions in his family and tensions in his job led to one devastating weekend of sin.
Just to find some release, just to find some way out of the pressure, he went back to his old ways.
And when he had the courage to come see me again after that, he said, "Bryan, I don't understand what has happened in my life.
I sinned against God.
I betrayed you.
But since that moment of my great sin, God has opened up a job for me in another town, which is away from the people and the temptations.
He has given me new income.
Because of the sin and its devastation that I experienced in my own heart, the things that have tempted me for years, at least for the moment I don't feel as much anymore.
I sinned terribly, and all God is doing is blessing me and blessing me and blessing me.
It's not supposed to work that way, is it?"
And then I had the privilege of saying to him what I would say to you, the words of the apostle Paul: "When the kindness and mercy of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of the righteous deeds that we have done, but according to his mercy."
There is no human factor.
Our God will do whatever is necessary for the eternity of our hearts to experience mercy.
Sometimes it will be amazing pardon and forgiveness.
Sometimes it will be difficult discipline
But whatever God does is a mercy driven heart.
It's a plan for our redemption.
It's a plan for our salvation.
It's a plan to bring us back to Him.
God will do whatever is necessary, so that His grace would come to fullness in our lives.
And He will know what that is better than you and I will do.
But I will tell you this: It is not driven by my goodness or your goodness.
It is driven by His mercy.
And I know that because of what He tells me is the basis of His own blessing upon Nebuchadnezzar.
If you look at verse 17 again as it ends, these messages that we are supposed to take away, "'The living are to know the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.'"
And the last message: "'And sets over it the lowliest of men.'"
If there really is mercy and grace and it's not driven by human factors of accomplishment, wisdom, power, or goodness, how do I claim that grace?
How are kingdom blessings to come?
The lowliest get it.
God blesses low lives.
Like me.
And like you.
If we have said, "God, You have to help; I can't fix this."
I want you to look very closely at verse 34 and think what we are being told spiritually through the experience of Nebuchadnezzar.
Verse 34 of Daniel 4, "'At the end of days,'" that is the seven years that he has lived like an insane beast in the fields, "'at the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever.'"
As long as Nebuchadnezzar is walking upon his palace top looking down at other people, he experiences God's judgment and the unhappiness that life can bring.
But the very moment that he looks up to God, "God, I'm in destitution and in darkness; I can't fix this," the moment he looks up, he receives the blessing of God.
You sang it earlier today; we'll sing it again: "The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives."
All he did is look up.
I know look.
I'm not looking down on people and I'm not looking at my accomplishment, claiming it: I'm just looking at God.
It is the wonderful message of the grace of God, that when we say, "God, I need Your help; I don't have enough wisdom; I don't have enough power; I don't have enough wealth; I don't have enough accomplishment and I don't have enough goodness to claim Your grace; You're just going to have to be merciful to me, God; I just need You," that in that wonderful call is the wonderful claim upon the grace of heaven.
When Nebuchadnezzar looked down on others, he began to suffer.
How's it happen to us?
I've related to you that this summer I had the sweet opportunity to raft down the river of the Grand Canyon.
And in one of the nights that was a desert area, it was the monsoon season, so we had this terrible thunderstorm that came upon us.
And we saw it coming.
I was able to get to my gear faster than some, and I got on my waterproof pants, my waterproof coat and hood, got all bundled up, got my baseball cap where the bill was down where the rain would come off, and I just laid down on my cot, snug as a bug in a rug, the rain just coming off of me, looking at the other people suffering.
[Laughter]
Until I began to feel the water running down my back.
[Laughter]
And I knew I had a leaky seam.
[Laughter]
Folks, we all got leaky seams.
[Laughter]
And if you don't know it, you're not going to get help.
If you say, "Lord, I'm not better than this people, I'm not better than those, I'm not better than those, not everything I can accumulate of the things of this world or even my own goodness is going to protect me from what happens in this wor--, I need Your mercy, and I confess it to you."
And when that happens, the grace of God begins to flow.
No matter how dark the sin, do you recognize what an awful man Nebuchadnezzar was who God is claiming by his destitution?
He is a man who is cruel, wicked, murderous, and God is saying, "But as you turn to Me, I bless you.
When you look up, when you claim you need My help, My help is there for you."
It does not matter how dark the sin.
It does not matter how desperate the life.
Look at this man.
He has gone insane from his kingdom perch.
He's now living in the wild like an animal.
He now has fingernails like birds' claws.
He's just soaked by the dew of heaven.
And, yet, when he looks to heaven, mercy comes.
You and I recognize what may be being said in our own lives, whether by the difficulty of drugs, of alcohol, of the destitution of what's happening in our families, we recognize that we are just desperate in life.
And even in oppositions of desperation, some by our own hand as in Nebuchadnezzar, God is saying, "But if you call to Me, if you turn to Me, I am there for you."
We sang in the earlier service, "There is a fountain filled with blood."
You may know it by William Cowper.
William Cowper is a man who spent his years as a Christian in and out of insane asylums.
And, yet, we sing his words, which are so meaningful to us, because they so graphically speak of the mercy of God to a man whose mind was often away from him.
It's the message of God.
It doesn't matter how dark your sin or how desperate your condition.
But the thing we have to say to one another is it also does not matter how hard the heart that we're trying to reach.
I just want you to do the math.
I said to you this chapter is starting at 32 years from the time that Daniel began to interpret dreams.
It's now another years, 12 months, that go by from the time of the interpretation to when it's now implemented.
And it's another seven years that Nebuchadnezzar is now living as an insane man before God reaches him.
It's been 40 years of the ministry of Daniel to King Nebuchadnezzar before his heart is actually turned.
And he's a prophet and he interprets dreams and he's got a straight line to God.
And it still takes 40 years.
Who have you given up on?
Who do you say, "Lord, they're too hard; it's been too long"?
Maybe a boss, maybe a family member, it may be a professor, it may be a president.
That you say to yourself, "It would be foolish to pray, to seek, to ask God again in that person's behalf."
But for the sake of the kingdom and the loved one that you may have, I urge you to read what God is saying to us through the life of Nebuchadnezzar.
He could still be changed.
Jeremiah tells us that the Word of God is like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces.
It is not too hard for God to work in the human heart, no matter how hard it was.
And that message is what I want you to think upon as I ask you to do something very particular right now.
Listen, in just a few moments, we're going to go have a picnic.
And the words I'm saying to you hopefully will be drowned in the fun.
But for right now, as you are thinking of a child, of a boss, of a relative, of a neighbor who needs the Lord Jesus, I'm going to ask you to do something.
I'm going to ask you to take out that little card that's in the pew in front of you and in that holder, as you open it up, you will see that there is just a place that you can put a prayer request at the bottom.
We are a New Testament church.
We believe in the power of prayer.
And we believe that prayer may work in your lifetime.
And as we are teaching our children well, they may pray for those that we love after we're gone, before the salvation of God comes to them.
Pray for them.
Help us to help you to pray for them.
If we can pray for someone with you, we will do so.
Write down what we can do to pray with and for you.
We would delight to do so.
Does it work?
Can it work?
I think of a friend of mine.
He and I started ministry together and soon after he was ordained, he was called to a church in Washington, D.C.
Prestigious, powerful people worshipped there, and they knew prestigious and powerful people who weren't always believers.
So early on, this young minister was asked to visit a man in a hospital who was dying of bone cancer.
The man was in many ways the quintessential self-made man.
He was raised in Spain by godly parents, but his father was killed by Franco the dictator.
And Franco's Spain was supported by the church of Spain.
And so the young man came to the United States swearing off the church as well as anything that would hinder his rise to greatness.
Though he spoke not one word of English, when he came, by his great wisdom, by his great ability, he became one of the most powerful people in the medical profession in this country, rising to leadership in one of the nation's most prestigious hospitals.
And, yet, despite the abilities of mind and body, it meant nothing when the bone cancer came, attacking body and position and mind.
My friend was asked to go talk to him.
And the man challenged right back: "Preacher, I have treated people in my position; I know the dangers.
I know what's going to happen to me.
I know the depression I'm currently in.
What word do you have for someone like me?"
And my friend, just new in ministry, said, "I don't know what to tell you.
Everything that you've gotten in life, you have gotten by your wisdom, by your ability, by strength of mind and body and effort.
And you have known great success in this world.
But you will not know success in the spiritual world until you turn to Jesus as a helpless lamb."
The man did not respond in those moments.
But a few days later, even as he was lying in his hospital bed, due to the advance of the cancer, his leg spontaneously broke, even as he was lying in bed.
Surgery was scheduled, surgery from which he never recovered.
But before the surgery, he wrote a note to my friend.
It contained these words, first in Spanish.
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord," the words of the Apostles' Creed in Spanish, that his mother had taught him the decades before.
And then these words in English: "Jesus, I hate all my sins.
I have not served or worshipped You.
Father, I know the only way to come into Your kingdom is by the blood of Jesus Christ.
I know You stand at the door and knock and will answer those who do knock.
I knock.
I want to be Your lamb."
And those who come as helpless lambs, for them the kingdom opens.
I urge you: It does not matter how dark the sin, how desperate the life, or how hard the heart.
The grace of God is greater.
>>> Father, would You work in our hearts even now?
Where there is sin that we feel has blocked You, where we see it, sense such desperation in our lives that we think You could not work, and where there are people in our lives whose hardness to the gospel has made us doubt that You could ever claim them, would You open our hearts again to the reality of a mighty God and a merciful one who sent Jesus, so when all human factors have been wiped away we, looking to Your grace, would know the mercy that is eternal?
Grant us the grace that is greater than all our sin and teach us that the vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus forgiveness receives.
Grant us this grace for our life, we pray.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.