Samuel
From the Series: Legends
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: July 4, 2010
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Transcript
Happy 4th of July weekend! Thank you so much for making NCC part of your weekend. This is the one holiday that people actually come to D.C. We have like 33% attendance at Christmas because so many people head home, but welcome! It is wonderful to have you here. I believe God has something for us this weekend.
Before we jump in, let me say that our baptism, you saw the video, what a wonderful opportunity to go public with your faith. A lot of you have made a decision in recent months to follow Christ and this is the way, like a rite of passage, an act of obedience, an act of faith and the Lord will honor it. We want to encourage you to take the step of faith on July 18th.
I also want to give you an update. We announced about a month ago that our sixth location will be at Potomac Yard and we are getting so excited about this launch. Here’s the deal – we will have an informational meeting in a couple of weeks, so we are looking at July 25th, make a mental note and we will talk about it over the next couple of weeks. But we do want to let you know who are Campus Pastor is going to be. A couple of months ago, we welcomed Curtis and Sara Parks to our team. Curtis leads worship at our Gala location as well as some of our other locations and he is going to continue to do that, but along with that, Curtis will serve as our Campus Pastor at our Potomac Yard location. We are so excited about that. They are such a tremendous gift to us as a congregation. I believe that their leadership is going to help get that location off the ground. We wanted to let you know that. We are so excited about that. We will share more information. I can’t wait for September 12th to get here, our public launch of that sixth location.
This weekend, we continue our series called ‘Legends.’ Last week, we talked about Gideon. This weekend, turn over to I Samuel and we are going to talk about Samuel. Samuel is actually the last of the judges, the first of the prophets, he is in leadership at a very critical moment in the history of Israel. I love this entire book. We are reading through the Bible together as a congregation. If you want that reading plan, go to www.fromgardentocity.com and this weekend, we begin reading in Samuel, so the story we are going to look at is in Chapter 7, but it is so hard to skip over these first couple of chapters, but the good news is you are going to read it. I love so many descriptions of Samuel. Most legends, we meet them a little bit later in life, have you noticed that? Even Jesus, there is just one little glimpse when He is 12 and He goes to the temple, so we don’t know a whole lot about his childhood. But here’s what’s cool – with Samuel, we meet him before he was Samuel because we meet his parents. His mother, Hannah, could not conceive and year after year would go to the temple and ask God to give her a child. So when God did, Hannah lent him to the Lord. That’s interesting language. I would suggest that our children our on loan to us as parents, and in a sense, giving them back to the Lord, one reason why we practice baby dedications is because it is patterned in this book of I Samuel. So, Samuel is given back to the Lord and when he is weaned at probably two or three years old, he goes to live in the temple. So he grows up, the Bible says, in the presence of the Lord. What a wonderful description! So many things about his life, it says in Chapter 2, verse 26, that he grew in both stature and in favor with the Lord and with man, so you see him growing up as a child and then there is this beautiful story in Chapter 3 where, for the first time, he hears the voice of the Lord speak to him and he discerns that calling that God has placed on his life. He continues to grow up and finally, in Chapter 7 we find the story that I want us to talk about this weekend. Let’s dive in. Chapter 7, verse 2
2 It was a long time, twenty years in all, that the ark remained at Kiriath Jearim, and all the people of Israel mourned and sought after the LORD.
That may not be that meaningful to you but this is pretty significant to the Israelites. What is the ark doing in Kiriath Jearim? Here’s the deal. The ark was supposed to be in the tabernacle at Shiloh. One little problem, Shiloh was controlled by the Philistines, so what you have is Israel really at a place of slavery and oppression to the Philistines. I think we can identify with that can’t we? This is a weekend where we think back to our history as a country and on July 4th, 1776, a Declaration of Independence, but before that, one of the most influential voices in the Revolution that our country went through was Patrick Henry. Certainly you’ve heard the phrase he’s famous for. On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry stood before the Virginia House of Burgesses, do your patriotic duty and read the whole thing this weekend, but the last little statement is such a powerful statement and it was a rallying cry for the colonies in the pursuit of independence. Patrick Henry said, “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it almighty God. I know not what course others may take but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” It is one of those moments in history where the pain and consequence of just staying the same and inaction becomes even greater than the possible pain and death that would ensue if we pursued our independence as a country. I think this is that moment for Samuel. I think that helps us appreciate what is going on. Ok, 20 years, see, we read it in the Bible and we can read it real quickly can’t we? We read about 20 years that they are being oppressed and that they mourned, and we are reading it in two seconds and we are talking about 20 years. 20 years of mourning and seeking the Lord and I think there comes a moment where a guy named Samuel steps up and says, ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ and he begins to lead the people of Israel. So 20 years in all that the ark remained at Kiriath Jearim.
3 And Samuel said to the whole house of Israel, "If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, [the word ‘only’ there is probably the critical word] and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines." 4 So the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths, and served the LORD only.
If you are taking notes, jot this down. Breakthroughs often follow breakdowns. Breakthroughs often follow breakdowns. All of us love breakthroughs right? We love spiritual breakthroughs when God answers a prayer or some miracle happens. We love breakthroughs, but in my experience, those are typically preceded by breakdowns. So the Lord isn’t going to deliver Israel until they break it down. What do they need to break down? In this case, some Baals and Ashtoreths that were idols in their lives. I don’t doubt that many of them thought that they were serving the Lord and worshiping the Lord, but they had their little Baals on the side. You know what I’m talking about? I went to KFC this weekend and they’ve got the option of two or three sides, biscuits and cole slaw and I like sides, and I think spiritually many of us like two or three things on the side. What we want is to follow Christ but we have this little Baal over here and Ashtoreth over there. I just don’t know if I can give those things up. I love the Lord but the Lord only? To put everything in? Yes! Listen, I think what we need to understand is that we have a loving God who is a jealous God. He is a jealous God for all of us. He doesn’t want part of us, He wants all of us. That means that sometimes we have to go through the process of God breaking us down. I feel like over the last three months, I shared last weekend about the miracle that happened, we have a contract on a piece of property at 733 Virginia Ave. If you missed that announcement, go ahead a have a silent rejoicing inside. Why weren’t you in church last week? You can read my blog post on it, but I’ve been reflecting on it this week and I feel like I want to process some of that with you. Here’s part of what happened. For three months, there was a process of breaking down. I spent a lot of time on the rooftop of Ebenezers praying and praying around this property and three times, that deal died and it was so disappointing, but when I look back on it now, I think part of what God was doing was breaking me down emotionally, spiritually, and this one hurts, have you ever been broken down motivationally? Where the Lord begins to reveal your true motivations and not all of them are right? That hurts, but here’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned not just to endure but to embrace some of the breaking down that God does in my life. I’ll tell you why, because when God breaks me down emotionally, here is what I believe He is doing, He is expanding my emotional capacity to handle more stress! Awesome! How exciting! You want to be used by the Lord? You want Him to expand your influence? We all want the promotion and the paycheck that comes with it, but you know what else comes with that? More stress! So we are not seeking the stress, per say, that tends to be the thing that we put up with for everything else that comes with it, but what I’m suggesting is that there are situations where God expands our emotional capacity. Motivationally, He breaks us down and purifies our motives to make sure that what we are doing, we are doing for the glory of God. Spiritually, I’ll tell you what happened, the three times we thought we had this contract and we lost it, just the gut-wrenching disappointment that came with it. I’ll tell you what happened, it broke down my faith. You ever been there? Those moments where God I was sure this was it, what are You doing? The Lord was breaking down that faith. Why would the Lord do that? There are a lot of parallels between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. Hopefully some of you know this, when you go to the gym, in essence, you are trying to build yourself up, but how do you do it? You do it be breaking down your muscles. That’s the only way you can grow stronger. You’ve got to break them down. By the way, it’s that last repetition where all the value, when it’s most painful, when you feel that breaking down, what happens is your body builds itself back up stronger. You know this. Spiritually, isn’t that true? God often has to break us down. Here’s why I say that, because I have a hunch this weekend that some of you are in that building up stage and you are loving God and you are loving life and everything seems to be good, but there are a lot of you this weekend in the breaking down stage and it hurts and it is painful and you feel just like the Israelites who feel abandoned for 20 years. Why is God so busy answering everybody else’s prayer but mine? But maybe it is a season where your heart has become a little hardened. Maybe there is some sin that has been calcified in your life and maybe, just maybe there is some pride or some bitterness or some anger or some lust that God needs to begin to break down. And He begins to break those things down so that then He can build us back up.
I think that’s what you see here. I guess the question I want to ask you is are you serving the Lord only or is there something else? If there is something else, that needs to be broken down in our lives so that God can build us back up. Ok. Verse 5
5 Then Samuel said, "Assemble all Israel at Mizpah and I will intercede with the LORD for you." 6 When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the LORD. On that day they fasted and there they confessed, "We have sinned against the LORD." And Samuel was leader of Israel at Mizpah.
7 When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them. And when the Israelites heard of it, they were afraid because of the Philistines. 8 They said to Samuel, "Do not stop crying out to the LORD our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines." 9 Then Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it up as a whole burnt offering to the LORD. He cried out to the LORD on Israel's behalf, and the LORD answered him.
Walter Wink once said that history belongs to the intercessors. I like that. History belongs to the intercessors. I love history. At one point, I wanted to teach History. I love Paul Harvey, The Rest of the Story. I have two of his books and I love reading between the lines of history. If we had time this weekend to read between the lines of our founding fathers, what a profound experience that reveals in many instances a tremendous faith in Jesus Christ. So there is something about reading between the lines. There are some people who make the headlines, but I think there are also intercessors who are the unsung heroes. They are the footnotes of history but those footnotes are huge. So I think when history itself is reread, if you will, I wonder if prayer or intercession that is that invisible ink that is only revealed with black light. You can’t visibly see it but with the right light and in the light of eternity and in the light of God’s grace and goodness, I believe there is a light that is going to reveal not the written part of history but between the lines what has happened.
As I look back at my own life, the critical turning points, the defining moments are always in answer to prayer. That’s the story of my life. I dedicated my last book, Primal, to my grandparents. It was one of those moments where you actually have to think about that when you are writing a book, it is a hard part of writing a book. Who am I going to dedicate this to? There was one moment where I knew that I needed to dedicate it to my grandparents, but here’s the thing, both of them passed away a long time ago. So in one sense, it seems strange but here is a little by-line that I said to my grandpa and grandma Johnson, your prayers outlived you. My grandparents prayed. They prayed for me and the reason we know that is because my grandfather was hard of hearing and at night he would take off his hearing aid and kneel beside his bed and pray and he couldn’t hear himself but everybody else in the house could. So we could hear him interceding for us. That’s a powerful experience when you can hear someone praying for you. I want to tell you that there are moments in my life where the Spirit of God has come out of nowhere and said, ‘Mark, right now the prayers of your grandparents are being answered in your life.’ Those are profound moments where I recognize that I am not responsible for the blessings, for the favor, for the goodness of God but that there are prayers that were prayed, some of them before I was even born, that are being answered in my life.
Moses gets all the credit doesn’t he? What about Aaron and Herr? What about the two guys that held up his arms, and without holding up his arms in prayer, that battle is not won? What I want to suggest is can we be grateful for the intercessors that have gone before us? I wonder if Samuel does not set an example in this, that he was an intercessor. His initial reaction to everything was to intercede, to seek the Lord, to cry out to the Lord. I think that if we want to make a difference, we’ve got to find ourselves on our knees because every move of God, every blessing, every breakthrough traces back to that moment where we find ourselves on our knees praying like it depends on God. And not just any kind of prayer. Do you notice the language used here? Maybe we ought to read it more literally. What does it say? It does say he prayed. It says he cried out to the Lord. There is a difference between those two things. I don’t want to suggest that every time you pray you have to cry out to the Lord, like before every meal. When I was in Peru, I cried out to the Lord for a couple of meals that I was concerned about, but generally speaking, I think there are moments to just have conversations to the Lord. In our human relationships, we are not always crying out to each other, but aren’t there moments where something goes deeper and what we need to do is cry out to the Lord.
I had one of these moments and it’s a moment I don’t think I’ll forget. During the season of three months of praying for this piece of property, there is one experience in particular that I won’t forget because our staff was praying for this property and I just felt like all of us ought to get on our knees, so we are all on our knees praying but I didn’t stay on my knees very long because I felt like God was getting me on my face before the Lord, so I was on the ground and my head was buried in my hands and I was crying out to the Lord. In fact, it was one of those moments where you feel a little out of control and a little uncomfortable, there was a little bit of heaving going on because I felt like something in a spiritual realm was happening and I found myself there just crying out to the Lord, and I believe something happened in that moment. I believe some kind of breakthrough happened in that moment. I think that experience in prayer gave me a little glimpse of the way the Holy Spirit prays for us. Romans 8:26 says that He doesn’t use words, He doesn’t use words, it says specifically that the Spirit of God intercedes with groanings that are too deep for words. It is like the Spirit of God is interceding with these gut-wrenching groans. If this doesn’t change the way that you approach your day, nothing will. Long before you woke up this morning, long after you go to sleep tonight, the Spirit of God is interceding for you, not with words but with groanings that are deeper than words. I think that there are moments where the 26 letters of the English alphabet aren’t enough. I think those are the moments where I thank God for the gist of his Holy Spirit, where it takes us beyond a natural realm and into a supernatural realm that maybe some of us have not experienced. I know a lot of difference church traditions are represented at National Community Church, but there are moments in my life where English doesn’t cut it and I begin to pray in another language. It’s one of the gifts of the Spirit that is talked about in Corinthians and what happens is, I don’t pray with my mind, but as Paul says, you pray with your spirit, and it is in those moments that you begin to give expression to something that is far too deep for words. I wonder if some of us don’t have potential to maybe go a little bit deeper in the prayer realm. I wonder if there aren’t some experiences, some gifts that maybe God has for us. And they are gifts and when I get a gift, I’m generally really excited about it, but I think sometimes in the church world, the gifts are scary. I’ve never gone into Christmas morning like I’m so scared to open this gift. No! I love gifts! If you give me one, I will receive it and open it gladly. Sometimes we are so afraid and I’ll tell you why. It is because we haven’t gotten to the end of ourselves and we are still trying to do this thing in our own strength and might and we can’t do it. So thank God for the Holy Spirit that does so many different things but fills us and empowers us and gifts us and helps us. So I think that is part of what is happening here. Interceding, crying out to the Lord and then in verse 10
10 While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the LORD thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.
Can I share something I’ve learned? Generally speaking, we have Plan A, B and C right? We’ve got our plan, then we’ve got our back up plan, then we’ve got our back up plan to the back up plan because, well, we just don’t know if God is still sovereign right? So we have our plans and back up plans. But I’ve found that it is so often Plan D, how many times in Scripture does God solve the problem in a way that no one considered? Scripture is so replete with so many unbelievable stories that we could just spend the rest of the time, they are so fun and so funny and so awesome. Like, I owe the temple tax, how am I going to pay this? Why don’t we wire transfer a coin and put it in a fishes mouth and go fishing and catch it and pay the tax? That’s exactly what I was thinking! Yeah, that was my plan! Ha! That was not your plan. Nine times out of ten, Plan A, B and C don’t really work out. I think the Israelites are like, the Philistines are so much bigger and stronger, how is this going to happen? That day the Lord thundered and it says it threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.
11 The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth Car.
Can I remind you of something today? The battle belongs to the Lord. I think that the trick, the spiritual trick, if you will, is to live our lives in a way that I don’t fight my own battles. It is so exhausting fighting your own battles. I’ve learned this on so many different fronts. I think a couple of the lessons I’ve learned, like you can’t write something or blog without someone finding something wrong with something. At first, it really bothered me, and this is not a pity party, it’s not that bad, but occasionally someone will brand me a blasphemer or a heretic or something and I don’t know why but when that happens, I’ve learned that I’m not going to play defense. I don’t think I have to defend myself. I’m going to let the Lord defend me. A couple of other examples, I’ve learned that there are battlefields that I will die on, but there are some battles that the Lord hasn’t specifically called me to. Are they important? Absolutely and I’m glad that people are fighting those battles and I pray for them, but I’m not called to absolutely every battle field. I think that’s why this is called the body of Christ, because He calls us to fight different battles. You need to know which battle you are called to and which one you are not called to. Here’s what else I’ve learned. I’ve learned that I don’t want to be responsible for myself. So when I don’t pray, when I don’t intercede and cry out to the Lord, I’m responsible for me. The outcome is my deal, but the beautiful thing about prayer is that it puts the responsibility into the almighty hands of God and it allows us to step back and take our hands off of it and let go and say it is in the Lords’ hands. That’s not easy to do, that’s hard to do! I white-knuckle things because I’m obsessive compulsive, and so are you. How many control freaks here? Let’s pray for the liars who didn’t raise their hands! I’ve got control issues and I’ve learned that sometimes I want to control things but sometimes you need to let go and I think prayer is one way we do that.
By the way, I think tithing is another wonderful way. I’m not responsible for my finances, because I’m honoring God with the first ten percent of my income and beyond that, and I’m giving God the responsibility because I believe He can do more with 90% than I can with 100%. I think the spiritual trick is living in a way that it is not my battle to fight, it is the Lord’s. It is in his hands. That’s how this story is approached and the Lord delivers in an amazing way. Verse 12, here’s my favorite part.
12 Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the LORD helped us." 13 So the Philistines were subdued and did not invade Israelite territory again.
Can I share something? We have a lot of folks that are knew to NCC and not everybody knows the story or the back story but next time you are at Ebenezers, there is a little coffee sleeve and I want to explain what’s on here. When we first purchased this piece of property, it was full of challenges. At one point we had to get it rezoned and if it didn’t get rezoned, the entire vision would be dead, and guess what, the initial response was a no, and we had to go back again. I think it’s where we learned our core value – work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on God. I’ll never forget, we packed out that zoning committee room and we put a lot of prayer into it and I’ll never forget that unanimous decision in our favor. It was an Ebenezer moment. Hitherto, the Lord has helped us. Then we had to go before Historic Preservation and a lot of hurdles to get through, then we had to build it, and there were so many moments where we felt like, oh, God you just delivered! Hitherto the Lord has helped us. That’s why we named this coffeehouse Ebenezers. I better watch my language carefully because this is not a coffeehouse, it is an altar to the Lord that happens to serve coffee. That really is what our coffeehouse is. So what you’ll find on here, it almost looks like a skew but it is I Samuel 7:12, the verse we just read, Hitherto the Lord has helped us. Then let me explain the SFSG. During the process of constructing our coffeehouse, we had to meet with every group imaginable on Capitol Hill. It is a corporate process, getting the neighborhood to embrace what you are doing and who are you and there was one experience in particular that was a profound experience for me personally. I consider it a defining moment of my life. There was a committee meeting at Northeast Library on Maryland and 7th Avenue and they asked for an update. These are our neighbors and I’m describing the coffeehouse to them and giving them updates and we did some Q&A and someone asked the question, ‘What does the name Ebenezer mean?’ I said it meant so far so good. But, my friends, that’s not what it means, because that takes God out of the equation. Let me put it in context. I was in a defensive mindset and I’ll tell you why. A few weeks before that, we had done our Easter Extravaganza, an annual thing we do, and one of the people at that Extravaganza complained that we were talking about Jesus too much. Now, it is a holiday that marks the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the whole reason for Easter. We are a church, we tend to talk about Jesus. There’s such a thing as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, we shared that we had funded the entire thing and we told them that we had permits from the parks service. It didn’t pacify her. There was this antagonism towards us and towards what we were doing, it was hard to explain because we were just out there blessing people. This woman was at that meeting, and I think it put me on the defensive, and I’m just calling it like it is, I decided not to offend this woman but instead I offended the Holy Spirit. After that meeting, I felt a conviction by the Holy Spirit and my wife. I thank the Lord for a godly wife that can speak the truth in love and I realized in that moment, and I was so sorry and I felt so bad because this whole thing was a miracle and I made a decision in that moment that I will unapologetically and unashamedly from this day forward give credit where credit is due. And everything I am, everything I’ve done, all of the credit belongs to Jesus Christ. And when I find myself in those situations where I can sort of duck a little bit and soft step it around the topic of Christ or the name of Jesus, I don’t do it, because I’m not going to play chicken again and I’m going to stand up for what I believe in. In that moment of the convicting of the Holy Spirit, I’m reading I Samuel 7:12. I believe the Lord gave this to me. I love this and I hope you love this too. I came up with this little SFSG, hitherto the Lord has helped us. Here’s my translation, my personal translation, so far, so God. Let’s take good out of the equation. Say so far so God. Hitherto the Lord has helped us. We are where we are and we are who we are because of the grace and the goodness of Jesus. I believe that with all of my heart.
This week, I was unpacking as we moved into our new house, half a block from our old house, and I came across the old shoebox. I hadn’t looked at it in years. Inside were all of those mementos like walking down memory land. I found lost of stuff in there, things that are priceless to me. One of them was a little bit gross, the oxygen mask from one of my hospital stays, it looked well used. That particular visit, I was code blue, I thought I was taking my last breath. I believe it was one of those moments where the Lord spared my life and so I hung onto that. There was an old photo album, I showed my kids and they were laughing at me. I came across an old occupational assessment or inventory when I was in graduate school. I was seeing what I was above average and below average and what I had a proclivity towards in terms of occupation. I love this, writing was one of the categories I was below average! I got such a laugh out of that. I didn’t know at that point that writing would be such a calling or such a part of my life, but it reminded me again, as I looked back through that shoebox, here’s what kept coming to mind, hitherto the Lord has helped me. Hitherto the Lord has helped me. I am so grateful for the faithfulness of God.
In closing, I want you to see what Samuel does. I think this is what makes him legendary. He doesn’t take any of the credit. What I love about Samuel is he does what each of us should do. It says he went home to Ramah and he built an altar there to the Lord. Not one, but two and probably many more than that. Samuel had a practice of building altars to the Lord.
Let me close with this. Fast forward to a story you will read this week as you read through I Samuel. Samuel has anointed Saul as the King of Israel. I Samuel 14:35, jot that down, says that Saul built an altar to the Lord. He is following the example that Samuel set. He built an altar to the Lord. It was the first altar that he built to the Lord. So at that point, is it not so far so God? Listen, you turn one chapter, it is one of the most dramatic chapter changes in all of Scripture, one chapter, I Samuel 15:12 says: And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning and it was told to Samuel that Saul went up to Carmel to build an altar to the Lord. That is not what it says. It says that Saul went up to Carmel to what? To build a monument to himself. I don’t know all that happened, but there is a moment in his life where he stopped building altars to God and started building monuments to himself.
Let me ask you the question – are you building monuments to yourself? Is your prayer life really focused on self-interests? Are most of those requests really about God doing this or God doing that or is the genuine motivation really to glorify God no matter what the circumstances are? Is it about God building a monument to ourselves or is it about us building an altar to the Lord? I just wonder if that isn’t where all of us will live the rest of our lives, in the tension between the selfish ambition that needs to be crucified. But how many of you know that there is another ambition that is mentioned in the New Testament? It is not a selfish ambition, it is a godly ambition. I want to suggest that there is not a single person that has the level of godly ambition that they should. So it is this tension where we need to crucify the selfish ambition and the building of monuments to ourselves and we need to sanctify that godly ambition and continue to build altars to the Lord. Let’s pray together.
Father we come to You right now and I pray Lord that your Holy Spirit would convict us where we need to be broken down. Lord I pray that there would be a courage to confront those things in our lives, those places where our hearts have become hardened to You, Lord would You break us down so You can build us back up. I pray that our lives would be lived to your glory and that we would recognized today that even though this series is called ‘Legends’ it is not the people that we are talking about, it is the legend of Jesus Christ, it is the kingdom of God, it is the story of redemption that You are writing though all of history and that You are writing in each one of our lives that matters. So Lord to You today God we bow the knee and humble ourselves before You. And God I pray that our lives would be about building those altars to God. We thank You today that hitherto the Lord has helped us. May our hearts be filled with gratitude for your faithfulness. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
