FTGC-07b – Can God Forgive A Mortal Sin – In The Life Of A Believer? – Yes!

FTGC-07b

Revelation chapter 1 verse 5 is a tremendous reminder that sets the stage for everything we’re going to look at both at communion and in the life of David. Revelation 1:5 is the celebration of the greatest possession we have. God sent his Son to accomplish for us something that not only is once and for all completed at the cross, but is operative today and everything that we’re going to do tonight fits together in that way. We conclude the service celebrating the One, look what it says in Revelation 1:5, the One who has set us free, washed us, removed the eternally destructive sins that were upon us by nature that we have practiced by choice. That’s what this verse says because it says, “and from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the Kings of the Earth.” Look at this summary of Christ’s work, “to Him who loved us and washed us”, that’s New King James version. You notice we have another one of those variants.

There’s one, a macron, difference between the NIV, the NAS, the ESV, the New King James and the King James. That one unpronounceable letter is either L O U, and then the ending, or it’s L U and the ending. That O in there is a difference between washed, that’s what New King James says, or loosed or free, that’s what the other manuscript family says. What’s the wonderful thing? It’s all true. He did love us. He did wash us. He did free us. He did loose us from our sins through His blood. Tonight, communion is a celebration of the One who has loved us so much that He has loosed us from the prison house of sin. He has washed us from all the stains. He has freed us from the ongoing power of sin.

That’s why the early church celebrated communion so often. They were so aware of how much Christ had done for them. This evening we are loved, we are loosed from our sins, we’re washed. We’re supposed to live out every day as pilgrims and strangers going through life remembering what Christ has done. Let’s turn to Psalm 32, right in the middle of your Bibles. Just before we bid farewell to this Psalm, I want to just remind you that this morning we looked at Paul telling younger men to “be on guard.” Paul says, “I implore, beg, exhort you, don’t let those dangerous elements in that are going to start internally corroding the life out of your spiritual reality here on Earth.”

Here in Psalm 32, we’re looking at not a young man. We’re looking at a man that was probably forties to fifty when this event happened. Much of what our culture would call a midlife crisis. In the back of your mind, as we open to Psalm 32, there’s this nagging thought that people think, and that thought is, is it possible to be completely forgiven and cleansed of all your sins?

That’s one of the things that is asked over and over again. Even at Cedarville this week when I was meeting with all the students in their little groups. I had to go and answer all their questions and sit in the coffee shop and do whatever. It usually gets around to asking, are there some sins there that are too bad? It’s one of those questions they are hoping that you will affirm what they hope, but they’re fearful that maybe there is one of those. Complete forgiveness may seem impossible if you’re the type that others would never dream of any kind of struggle you would have with sin. Most people, if you see a drug addict or a convict that through Prison Fellowship comes to Christ, we’d say, “oh, they were really bad, but they got saved.” Then there’s a person like David, who probably never missed a day in the tabernacle. He lived in Bethlehem, he was right there, and they were raising all the sheep to be sacrificed and he was in the fabric. Usually it’s those kinds of people, the faithful church goer, or someone really reared in a godly Christian home, or just someone who’s never been into anything, that others would think is really bad.

What if that person falls headlong into sin? The kind of person where others are tempted to question if that person was ever really saved. When someone dives into sin, one of the initial questions, and it’s justified, is to say were they ever really converted? How could they do that? When the godly land in the ditch, when someone who is known so much of God’s Word and falls like David did, can they be absolutely sure that God has completely forgiven them and can others around them be absolutely sure. That’s exactly where David was before he put the pen to the paper, the ink to the parchment. This is what David’s testimony is about in Psalm 32. He’s talking about the joy of complete forgiveness when you have dived into sin headlong. A few weeks ago we talked about David, in the process, broke all 10 of the commandments. That’s a headlong dive into sin. Psalm 32 is an Old Testament expression of Revelation 1:5. The One that loved us so much that He came to wash us with His blood and to loose us from the power of sin is the same One who offered to David full and complete forgiveness. David says what God wants all of us to know when we celebrate communion.

He said, “blessed is he, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” It’s off the books. Verse 2, “blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute”, payback, reckon, charge to his account, “the iniquity,” the twisted, warped things that are done “and in whose spirit, there is no deceit,” no more covering, no more hiding.

No matter how far we go as believers, no matter how many steps away from the Lord we ever take, God says, remember, it’s only one step back. That’s why we should preach the gospel to ourselves. Satan wants us to think that as we go off and skid and slid and slide and go into the ditch of sin, that it’s going to take twelve tow trucks to get us out of there.

The Lord says the one step back, the pathway back to God, is the choice to repent. Remember repentance begins right here. It’s a change in our minds, it leads to change in our behavior. The one step back is a choice to repent and then asking God to release us from the power and stain of sin. That’s what Revelation 1:5 is about, to release us from the power that enslaves us and the stain that makes us ashamed. It’s wonderful to know the miracle of complete forgiveness. How far can we go away from God? Far away. The path of sin is horrible. Always remember where David was when he fell. Even as a young shepherd boy, before his sin with Bathsheba, David had been a living testimony. He put God ahead of his personal comforts. He confessed in the 132 Psalm. He had maintained a habit of devotions. He said, I won’t go to bed until I have time with the Lord and that was before there were personal copies to carry around, he had to have it memorized. He made time for the Lord. He longed to be with the Lord even when he was at work. In Psalm 132, he said, I have made a covenant of purity. David, from a boy, had practiced and cultivated holy habits. I guess what I’m trying to say is, as we get deeper into this that it isn’t like you can bar the door enough that you can walk away from the door and say that’s settled. You see, it takes daily vigilance. It takes daily resistance. It takes daily and conscious choices to keep uncorroded.

I don’t know just when David began to diminish his daily caution. When David became king of Israel, he laid out his plan for integrity. Now he’s grown up, he’s become, at least probably in his twenties or thirties. He says, I want to live a life of integrity. I want to never allow sin to build up. This is the 101 Psalm that we studied months back. He went through all this reminder to himself. He said, I’m going to clean out anything in my life that displeases the Lord. I’m only going to have proper heroes that I hold before my eyes. As wonderful as all those personal, private, and public commitments may have been in 2 Samuel, David drifted away. We don’t have to speculate, he just did, we know he did. He got out of touch with the Lord, and he took what the New Testament would describe as a porneia look over his rooftop. Porneia means to look with central desire at a woman, to look at her body as an object, and he did that. Porneia, he did it.

The Puritan commentators often say that the wagons follow the ruts. To the Puritans, as they comment on the life of David, they said that the deeds of immorality are always preceded by repeated secret thoughts along the lines of impurity. Whether it was David’s first look or not, on the rooftop looking down, we know the thoughts were there because he had, in his mind, brought himself to the place that he had thoughtfully decided on that woman that wasn’t his own. David fell headlong into sin. His fixation on the naked form of a woman he was not married to is closely mirrored by what goes on today, around the world, around the clock. Our culture has risen to the point, what David did at night at a certain instant, can be reproduced endlessly. How did David get into such a place spiritually, that he fell so fast and so far? Like a terrorist, the powerful addiction that pornography can produce overpowered him.

No matter how many times he looked at that image in his mind of Bathsheba, it overpowered him. Don’t forget that. That David, the man after God’s own heart, was overpowered by an image he would not let go of in his mind. That’s the essence of what pornography does, whether a believer or an unbeliever, anyone who is not vigilantly denying ungodliness on a daily basis, succumbs to it.

What I’ll share from this study from Wheaton is that pornography works by hijacking the brain. You remember hijacking? I remember the first time I consciously remember hijacking was the PLO, Achille Lauro, and they took Leon Klinghoffer in his wheelchair, tied him to it and threw him overboard and he drowned, and they hijacked this cruise ship. The idea of terrorism is, hijackers always work by slipping in innocently and then overpowering an unsuspecting crew, be it an airplane, cruise boat, whatever. What happens the world over online, as Satan uses easily accessible media, to slip in innocently and to then overpower.

This is an analysis that I share with you of the recent study from Wheaton college, and I’ll be reading 583 words of it. They’re very interesting words, and I’ve read it over and over again, and tried to cut out as many things as I could without losing the message of what they’re saying.

“We are fast becoming the pornographic society. Over the course of the last decade, explicitly sexual images have crept into advertising, marketing, and virtually every niche of American life. This ambient pornography is now almost everywhere. It’s from our local shopping mall to our primetime television.” Since this article was written, the U.S. federal communications commission decided last week that they will no longer fine stations for nudity. It used to be that you weren’t supposed to do it and if you did it, you were fined. Now, they said we’re not going to fine anymore. That’s like saying no trespassing, but if you trespass it’s okay. It’s just an open door. Continuing to the study. “To no one’s surprise the vast majority of those who consume pornography are males.” That’s not a new development as ancient forms of pornography attest. What is new about it all is the access. Today’s men and boys are not looking at line pictures drawn on cave walls, and they have found that. Way back in caveman times, a generation or two after the fall of man and woman from the garden of Eden, the decline downward, I’m sure that there became people that left the civilized world of Cain’s city and went to the caves. After the flood there were lots more of them, but instead of line drawings and cave walls, today’s men have almost instant access to countless forms of pornography in myriads of forms. William M Struthers of Wheaton college, a psychologist with a background in neuroscience and a teaching concentration in biological bases of human behavior writes in his study “men seem to be wired in such a way that pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their brains and has a long lasting effect, not only on their thought process, but their lives. The simplest explanation for why men view pornography or solicit prostitutes is that they are driven to seek out intimacy. The urge for intimacy is a God-given essential to the male, but it is easily misdirected. As men are tempted to seek a shortcut to their pleasure via pornography. The problem is our culture has made that shortcut easily accessible. In a fallen world pornography becomes as addictive as any poison.” This is his analysis. “Viewing pornography is not an emotionally or a physiologically neutral experience. It is fundamentally different from looking at a black and white photo of the Lincoln Memorial or taking in a color map of the provinces of Canada. Men are reflexively drawn to the content of the pornographic material, as such, pornography has a wide reaching effect to energize that man toward intimacy, it is not a neutral stimulus. It draws them in. Porn is a whispered promise. It promises more, better, and endless pleasures. Pornography is a poly drug. Boredom and curiosity lead many boys and many men into experiences that become more like a drug addiction then we are willing to admit. People have sympathy for a drug addict, and they smugly smirk when they hear of a Hollywood actor going into a clinic in Palm Desert for his addiction to immorality.”

Truly what he’s saying is they are addicted as to drugs. Why men, rather than women? As Struthers explains, “the male and female brains are wired differently. Over time, a man’s exposure to pornography takes him, or a boy, deeper along a one way neurological superhighway, where a man’s mental life is over sexualized and narrowed. This highway has countless on-ramps, but almost no off-ramps.” Amazing. Pornography is visually magnetic to the male brain.

“These experiences with pornography and pleasure cause their hormones to develop new patterns in the brain’s wiring and repeated experiences will formalize a rewiring of the mind. Enough is never enough, is what they find. If it takes the same dose of a drug over and over for my body to begin to tolerate it, I will need to take a higher dose of the drug in order for it to have the same effect that it did with the lower dose the first time. When men are stimulated by ambient sexual images, and then by explicit pornography, it increases the effect. Something about pornography pulls and pushes at a males soul. An image begins to pick up steam and no longer does he just look at it. It gains momentum and he can reach a point when it feels like he is a tractor trailer truck rolling downhill with no brakes.” Struthers does not leave his argument to neuroscience, nor does he use the category of addiction to mitigate the sinfulness of viewing pornography. Sinners always look for fig leaves to hide their sin. Biological causation is often cited as a means of avoiding moral responsibility, but the addict is always responsible for his addiction.

Look back at Psalm 32 because the addict, at whatever level David had gotten to, explains his responsibility for his addiction. David took that road back to God. When the initial consequences happened, which precipitated Psalm 32, it is followed by 2 Samuel 12’s confrontation by Nathan the prophet. When that initial consequence of guilt and shame multiplied, David finally came to the end of himself, he repented and sought God’s cleansing from the power and stain of sin. That’s why he says, “how blessed is he whose” not his neurological or addictive behavior that he’s not responsible for? No, he says whose transgression. He said that it was my personal choice to defy God’s law. That’s been removed. Why? Because he took responsibility for it. The second line “whose sin,” again, I have missed the mark. God says, this is where I’m supposed to be. That’s where I am. That was my choice to miss the mark, my sin. He says in the second stanza of verse 1 “is covered.” It has the Revelation 1:5, as we would look at it, the blood of Christ to wash and to lose him. David had deeply reflected on his sin. He had one of his most loyal friends murdered. He took that friend’s wife as his very own. He angered her family, which included two of his most trusted bodyguards and one of his most senior advisors. David sin was far more than just Bathsheba Sheba and Uriah. It just rippled through the entire court. It took his life into a complete downward spiral, not only inside, but with those around him. Now God has revealed to the whole world why his baby died, why his loyal friend was killed and what David had been up to when everybody else was out of town. That was the ultimate humiliation of David, but David, no matter how stricken with guilt and with his pride being crushed, David longed for God’s forgiveness. In the back of his mind, David, who had known the Lord so well, so close, wondered, can I ever be completely forgiven? That’s why in the second stanza he said, “blessed is the man into whom the LORD does not impute“. Doesn’t log it in the record book, doesn’t charge it to the account of the one that commits it. “Blessed is as a man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity.” That word iniquity we studied means warped behavior. David says this was warped. David says in light of my horrendous sin, will God completely forgive me?

That’s what Psalm 32 becomes. It’s a place to flee if you ever find yourself wondering what David wondered. The last part of verse 2 says, “in whose spirit, there is no deceit”. Usually hand in hand with corrosive sin is deceitful behavior to cover it. This is internal hardening of the heart as it’s covered and covered.

I always remember when I was taking Bibles into north Africa and the Muslim countries that we had to act like tourists. One time we went to a leather factory where they took and stacked camel hides. I don’t know whether they wear out and die or what, but boy, those were huge hides. They would have them stacked and they look like sheets of plywood, their hides. They would be taken one at a time and thrown into a series of multicolored pools where canning solutions were used. First to clean anything off the hide that was still on, the meat that was left, and then to slowly soften it and to get it just right. When it finally made it through all these pools at the other end, they’d sell you the softest leather you ever had seen from the camels. During our little tour around those Moroccan leather pits, I remember being fascinated that they use no machinery, it was all humans. It was men who would jump up and down in these pools and they were just wearing shorts. They were just jumping up in blue and pink and red and green, all these different colored agents that were the process of tanning. I said to the guide, “does that hurt him?” and he said, “doesn’t really hurt him, but it does do something to him.” One of the men was standing next to the pit and he said something in Arabic, he said, “just touch his leg”. I remember poking that leg and it felt like a countertop. Something had happened. The chemical that softened the leather. hardened the leather worker’s skin. There was a hardness that was not like muscle tone. It was just like plastic. I thought about that. That just like deceit softens up a situation and takes away the potential damage we’ll get, in the process of softening the situation, it hardens our hearts.

That’s why in the second verse, David says there’s no more deceit, no more covering. I don’t want any more hardness of heart. David experienced what we celebrate in communion. The miracle of salvation is that the One who loved us and loosed us from our sin has completely forgiven us. He does not impute; He doesn’t write in the record book a record of our sin. He says it is forever gone. The gospels record 37 specific miracles that Jesus performed during His ministry. 60% of those He performed around the Sea of Galilee. In fact, 60% of them He performed in the Northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee. Of those 37 recorded miracles all of them were wonderful. Sadly, if you analyze all 37 every one of those were temporary. Every one of those paralyzed people Jesus restored the usage of their limbs, by the time they got to the end of their life, were back to impairment. Every set of eyes Jesus restored, by the time they got to the end of their life, were starting to fade, and on we could go. The food that Jesus miraculously created to feed thousands was consumed and used up and their hunger returned the next day. Every miracle Jesus did was temporary.

The greatest of all Christ’s amazing miracles was the one that has never faded. It’s the one that people that have died and are around the throne right now are singing about. The One who loved them, redeemed them, forgave them. The greatest of Christ’s miracles is the one that Jesus still performs every day. It’s the miracle of Psalm 32:1-2, complete forgiveness.

For us, it’s very hard to think of complete forgiveness because we are attached to people that sin against us. It’s a hurt that’s hard to forget. Jesus said, I have taken the penalty upon Myself, so I have been hurt, but My hurt for you is because I love you. I was hurt by your transgressions in My body. I was pierced through for your iniquities and the stripes that pummeled My body are what heals you. He said, I did that because of my love. Up until the moments just before Psalm 32, a distraught David was uncertain about the total forgiveness that God would give. As the Spirit of God moved upon him, and in his heart he believed the truth, that a substitute, a sacrifice that was not guilty, would be offered in his place. David looked beyond that lamb and that altar and he saw the promised One. David trusted in another to take his place. Psalm 32 was David’s song of testimony. It was his joyful heart praising God for complete forgiveness. The greatest miracle that Jesus performed was that every time He would solve the physical thing, He’d say to those that He healed, go and sin no more, or your sins are forgiven. That’s the ultimate touch of Jesus. That’s the touch, especially in light of Revelation 1:5, that all of us need to remember because Satan wants to say, you have sinned one too many times and you can’t get out of that ditch. Jesus extends His hand and says, let Me touch your life. I love you, let Me loose you and wash you and free you from your sins again. Remember what it says in Hebrews 7, He “saves us to the uttermost.” That means He keeps coming to the ditch when we go into sin and keeps pulling us out, washing us up, clothing us anew and afresh so that we can come before Him boldly.

I think about how Bill Gaither, many years ago when I was a little boy, wrote a hymn that most of us know. “Shackled by a heavy burden, ‘neath the load of guilt and shame. Then the hand of Jesus touched me and I am no longer the same. He touched me. Oh, He touched me, and oh, the joy that floods my soul.” That’s what David was feeling. The joy that comes from the healing touch that made him whole.

One more verse for you to turn to, as we go to the New Testament is John chapter 8 verse 11. This is not intentional, but this is another one of those verses that you might have to find in your Bible, in the footnotes. I got a sweet Facebook note from a college student here in the church, and they said, “you keep quoting that 11th verse and it’s not in my Bible.” I said, “look at the bottom.” And oh, they found it down there. It’s in the footnote. Look at John 8 and verse 11. It’s the story of the woman taken in adultery. It says in verse 11, or actually Jesus said in verse 10, and “Jesus raised himself up and saw no one, but the woman. He said to her ‘woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?’” That is such a beautiful verse. Accusers, that’s one of Satan’s proper names. He is Satan, the accuser, the one who accuses us, the adversary. Satan is the Devil, the accuser of the New Testament. He says, “where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” Remember, “there is now therefore, no condemnation” Romans 8:1 says. Jesus says, “where are your accusers?” Then verse 11, “she said, no one Lord. And Jesus said to her, neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” Go, leave your life of sin. Repent. Receive My cleansing. Receive My freedom from the binds that sin had on your life. Go. God’s forgiveness is always based on sins penalty being paid.

That’s what we celebrate at communion. We celebrate the penalty payer. Only an acceptable payment can satisfy God’s holy justice. A substitute, a perfect sacrifice, has to die in each sinner’s place so it had to be the perfect, chosen substitute and the only one who could qualify was Jesus as the lamb of God. That’s what we celebrate tonight. Salvation, both in the Old Testament with David and the New Testament with us, is always based on Christ’s sacrifice. When we come to God, convicted like David was, by the Holy Spirit knowing that we can’t ever undo what we have done. We have sinned against God. We have transgressed. We are warped. We are deceitful when we come agreeing with God about what we have done. God promises us forgiveness when we believe the truth of what forgiveness is all about. Modern tragedy is that so many Christians are depressed about their sins and failures. Which causes them to start in an endless cycle of feeling bad, sinning more, coming out, feeling bad, sinning more, and they just get into this spiral that Satan wants them to be in. Like in Pilgrim’s progress, in Doubting Castle, doubting God can really forgive me and keep me. They operate under a false notion that God still holds some or all their sins against them. They always seem to forget what the scriptures say.

Look at Revelation 13 with me, here’s a little theology of forgiveness. In the time of the introduction of the antichrist, we see a truth about God that affects us to this moment. Those misguided believers who forget what forgiveness means forget that God looked down the corridors of time, even before He made the Earth, and He placed the sins of the world on the head of His son, the lamb of God. Look what Revelation 13:8 calls Jesus. It says, “slain from the foundation of the world.” God’s plan was for Christ to be the perfect substitute, so Jesus, at Calvary, took the sin of all who would believe and eternal distance away from them. I carefully said that Jesus, on Calvary, took the sin of all who would believe because the only limit the scripture gives on the atonement is unbelief.

Jesus said, you believe not in Me, you will die in your sins. He only attached, as a limit to the atoning work He would do on the cross, belief in that sacrifice. Finally, one more verse before we go to communion tonight is Romans chapter 8 because Jesus Christ who loved us and loosed us from our sins can soon not be as powerful in our lives when we forget.

Romans 8 affirms Christ promises us to never condemn us. When Jesus comes into our lives as Savior and Lord, He says to us, there is no condemnation to you. You are in Me, you are in Christ Jesus and verse 2, because “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death.”

I’ll never forget when I was counting down the days to be married to Bonnie. I spent 96 days traveling the wrong way to the wedding. I traveled with a group for 96 days and we went to 36 countries. Until we got past India, we were going the wrong way, we were going away from Bonnie. Finally, after about maybe the 80th day we got to India and the airplane was going the right direction toward home. I’ll never forget longing for that airplane to take off in New Delhi and our little tour group was on it. If you know anything about India, you can sit in a jet airplane and look out the window and see cows. Now they’re just at the end of the runway, but they’re sacred so they let them be out there. I remember sitting in that 747 and if you’ve ever been on an Air India flight you know they pack them too full, and it was shuttering. You could just feel them pushing and shoving stuff into the bottom of that airplane. It seemed like the wings were drooping. Finally they said, “okay, take your seats in the most uncomfortable and upright position, we’re going to take off,” so we did. That thing started lumbering down the runway and it went too long. In fact, I could see the end of the runway and we were still looking at the cows and I was worried I would never get to marry Bonnie. When all of a sudden, look at verse 2, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ, that’s that we can rise, has made me free from the law of sin and death. That’s the downward law and it’s like gravity pushing that 747 down while all 860 some thousand pounds of it was overcome by the law of lift. That plane actually groaned and just at the very end of the runway it went “rrrrrrrr” and we couldn’t see the cows anymore.

Did you know that’s exactly what Jesus wants us to remember at communion? Romans 8:2, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ is more powerful and can set us free and loose us from the law of sin and death. The law of sin is sin stains and death cannot be avoided, but the law of the Spirit of life in Christ, if we will trust and believe and cling to Him, all of a sudden lifts us up above that downward path of sin and death. Never forget Christ promised to never condemn us and then when He comes into our lives, He sets me free from the law that sin and death have to forever enslave me. Communion is a time when we hear Jesus say, do this in remembrance of Me. Tonight we celebrate Christ’s power to set us free from sin.

Living here in Kalamazoo, just up the road in Grand Rapids, is a monument to Mel Trotter. One of the most notorious drunks who took his baby’s shoes off their feet in the wintertime to sell it, to get one more drink, who terribly abused his wife and family and children.

What a testimony that Mel Trotter mission is to what Christ can do when He sets us free. He has the power to set us free, but at communion, it’s also time to renew our desire to abstain from every lust. From not, like David found, to allow our minds to fixate on an image until that image overpowers us like a terrorist and hijacks our mind to start that downward spiral.

Through the bread and the cup tonight, we get to thank the One who loves us and who has once and for all, and will over and over again, come to rescue us from the ditch of sin, clean us off again and get us back on the trail with Him. Let’s bow for a word of prayer and as we bow the men are going to prepare to serve communion to us, but let’s prepare to partake of communion.

The way we do that preparation is by making sure that we have clean hands and a pure heart. This evening, if there’s any unforsaken sin, if there’s any exposure to evil that we have not repented of, Jesus said, change your mind about that. Cry out to me for help and I will save you from the power that sin.

Father in Heaven, I pray that this truly will be a celebration of, “oh, the blessedness” as David said, the one whose sins are forgiven. To whom the record of those sins is not recorded in the books anymore. Oh Lord, how I pray that we will worship You with clean hands that You have washed, and with pure hearts that You have renewed and with the settled assurance that there is no temptation that’s going to chase us through life that you have not already overpowered, and you have made an open door of escape. May tonight be that renewal of our promise to You. Oh Lord, we will take that way of escape. We want that wonderful, loving and loosing that you have done to operate in our lives.

Thank you for this bread and bless us as we worship You together tonight. In Jesus’ name. Amen.