SPEAKER_00 0:00

Our scripture this morning is 1 Peter 1, 17 through 21. And if you call on him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourself with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb, without blemish or spot. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world was made, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

I hear uh I hear from people that have been here for a good while that we had a wonderful Easter here. Is that right? I saw pictures and I was with three of your deacons at our deacons retreat. And I, by the way, just so you know, I'd say that those deacons behaved themselves pretty well, maybe with the exception of Deacon Denny a couple of times acting up. But for the most part, everybody was behaving and represented the Oxford campus well. If I've not got a chance to meet you, uh, I hoped my wife and I, Mrs. Lee, after the service, would love to do so. And Garrett tells me, Pastor, you you schedule too many things when you preach at Oxford, so don't rush off this time. So I'm not rushing off this time. I might even stick around and bug people in the nursery and that kind of thing as well. Well, have any of you sports fans out there ever done your fair share of what you might call fussing at the referee? It's a pastime for sports fans, especially in live sporting events. I remember when I first got here, someone took me to a gator game, and I, those gators, they don't like the refs if they, you know, the definition of a bad ref is somebody that puts a call against you, you know, when you're a real sports fan. And there was a uh there was a chant started behind me that went like this I'm blind, I'm deaf, I want to be a ref. Over and over again, man, that had ice in his veins right there. But I have been a little milder with ref fussing ever since I became one for a day. How did that happen? Well, it was like this. When my oldest son was in seventh grade, we were living back in the motherland, back in Texas. This church I was pastoring there had a Christian school like ours does. By the way, if you didn't know that your church has a Christian school, we have a K through 12 called First Academy that we would love to have your kids and grandkids be a part of. It is an outstanding school. All five of my boys are graduates of there. But anyway, we were playing another Christian school in town in Corpus Christi, where we were living, and it was some miscommunication, and the refs did not show up. So you have two teams already warmed up, ready to play, battle it out. And uh the coaches kind of can't. I think there was an athletic director of the school there who said, by the way, our refs didn't show up. We're gonna have a forfeit unless any of you want to be a referee. Nobody raised their hands. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm a big basketball fan. I was not ever a great player, but I did. I was pretty good in church league. So I'm I guess I'm qualified. It was funny though. When they gave me a whistle, we started a game, and it was funny. I saw things so much better in the stands. I'm sitting there going, is that a travel? Oh, but you gotta call it quick. You can't call it travel 10 seconds. I think that was a travel. But one of my biggest fears was I did not want to play daddy ball. My son favors me, poor guy, in appearance. So it's pretty obvious who my son was. And I was sitting on the side of our team, and I just was so afraid that I was gonna show favoritism to him that I think I ended up being harder on him. And I got a little bit ribbed by our school by going, Pastor Cliff, what's your deal? You called so many fouls on Nathan on your son. I was like, you know, that guy. And when it was over, I hung up my whistle and said, I think I'm retiring. My illustrious career in refing is over. I just couldn't, one, I couldn't figure out it when I was watching it in real time. And also, I struggled with the issue of being partial and impartial. I bring that up this morning because we're gonna see that word in verse 17 that was just read a moment ago. It's part of our discussion today is understanding who God is. We've we're off to a great start in our sermon series on 1 Peter. A few weeks ago, we talked about living in hope, which is the theme of our whole series. And then a week after that, Pastor Garrett preached to you about living in God's joy. And then last week we saw the very challenging passage about living in holiness. Be holy because I'm holy, declares the Lord. And today, one of the first admonitions we're going to see is to live in fear, the kind of reverence for God that we all should have. And you combine that with a few verses about the cross and where our hope and faith should lie. Today, if we apply these principles to our lives, I think we're gonna all end up, by God's grace, end up soaring in hope. That's the message today. How to keep hope soaring. So let me again read verse 17 and where we get point number one from. Verse 17 says, If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. Principle number one on your outline this morning is simply this: live awestruck by the Father. Don't you want to live awestruck by God, just in awe and amaze at who he is? Now, Peter's making an assumption to his audience, those who would read this letter, the general letter to the churches who were suffering Christians, he was assuming they were believers because he says, and if you call on him as Father, it was Jared Packer that said the most important thing about a believer is what comes into his mind when he thinks about God as his father. What a beautiful trait of our Heavenly Father that he wants to be described in a term that should mean the one that is our provider, the one that is our leader, the one that we can be close to. Now, I would say in our day there's sort of an epidemic of family trouble and you might say of bad fathers. And I guess I want to give a shout out to the dads in the room and a word of encouragement. I know that we're we have one shopping week before Mother's Day, everybody. And you have five or six weeks before another holiday that no one really cares about, Father's Day. Big deal. But I do have a pre-Father's Day challenge for you if you're a dad. And that's a dad of any age and of any stage. By the way, those who have grown kids like myself, I'm starting to notice something. They don't get off the prayer list, do they? There's no graduating from mommy and daddy's prayer list ever. Hopefully they graduate from your bankroll. But they don't graduate from our hearts. We're always a dad. And my encouragement to you is this don't make it hard on your children to understand who their heavenly father is. Because when some people hear the word father, they think, oh, the guy who's distant, that guy who's surly, that guy who's aloof, that guy who wasn't there, that guy who couldn't get his act together, that guy who was mean. And I'm not saying that our kids' understanding of the father is completely dependent upon the way we treat them, but I just want to say, let's don't make it harder on our kids to understand how much God loves them. So much of our influence on their life can help them grasp that there's a heavenly father that will be there for them, that will be their provider. And so Peter's saying, first of all, you can be close to God because he's your father, but they weren't so wild about the next two words. And if you call on him as father who judges. So he's your father, but he's a judge at the same time. That's wild, isn't it? Uh was your father your judge? Well, in a non-technical sense, yeah, most dads, you're gonna have to give an account to them. You can't just do what you want, live at the house, and expect no consequences. Hey, imagine though that your father is your judge in real life. Imagine there's a local criminal, and that the circuit court wasn't paying close attention to last names, and so the accused comes in with the defense attorney, and the bailiff comes out and says, All rise, and out comes the criminal's father. And let's say it's not, maybe he's on that TV show called The World's Dumbest Criminals, and he speaks up and says, Dad, hey, it's me. Hey, son.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

By the way, I like what you cooked on the grill last night at home. I'm looking for what are you and Mama cooking tonight?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

All of a sudden, the prosecuting attorney's going, what is going on here? I call for this case to be thrown out, or this to be reassigned to another court. What's gonna happen? Probably gonna get reassigned, isn't it? Because a dad is gonna struggle like I did when I had a ref when I had a whistle in my hand, a dad's gonna struggle with partiality. And it's just not the right thing to do. But when it comes to our faith, our father is our judge. But I do got some news for you. It's good or bad, depending on how you view it. There's another phrase after the word judge. If you call in a father who judges impartially, uh-huh. So you're not getting special kid privilege by the one true God. He's your father, yes. He's your judge, yes. But he's a judge that is not partial. Now, the word impartial means this: to not receive a face. It means you don't judge somebody by how they appear. One of the worst things about our justice system in the past, and I'm not denying there's no element of it in our day, but I do know that before the civil rights movement, basically you had Southern judges that would size someone up, look at them, and then decide how you wanted to judge them. You ruled based on their face. And I imagine that it's difficult for judges if someone, you know how some people just kind of have that face where they look like they committed a crime or two? A judge is not allowed to receive someone's face and make a judgment after he or she sizes them up. And I guess I want to say this morning, you're not getting anywhere with God based on how you look. If you're super handsome, if you're real pretty, if you're loaded, you got, if you're so rich you're having to stack money sideways around the house because you don't know what to do with it. If you're super talented, if you're uber successful, if you're, no matter what you're, if you're a man or a woman, if you're black or white, you're not getting anywhere with those external things with God. Why? Because he judges each man's work impartially. He doesn't receive or faith, you stand or fall based on, what's the next phrase? Impartially, according to one's deeds. Wait just a minute. Did he say that you're judged according to your deeds? What does that mean? Notice it doesn't say on the basis of your deeds, that would imply there's a work salvation. He says, according to one's deeds, meaning there is a correlation between our behavior and our faith. There's one thing we're judged on ultimately, and that's our faith, but you can tell the reality of our faith based on what? Based on our deeds. And so the impartial judge looks at how we're acting how we act because it shows whether our faith is for real or if it's spurious. Now, he says all this to get up to the admonition. With verse 17, with the admonition, the commandment is this conduct yourself with fear. Your version might say, conduct yourself with reverent fear. You are reverent, meaning you're standing in awe. That's why the point is live awestruck by the Father. How do you grow in fear? Well, I will tell you one thing I've been praying for our church this weekend is Psalm 86, 11. And that verse is David saying, Give me an undivided heart that we may fear your name. It is wanting to please God so desperately that all you want to do is honor him. And you want to please him so desperately because you have high regard for who he is. Now, sometimes when you live life so much for the Lord, you don't always notice your fear of him. It's not always detectable. Why? Because it becomes a lifestyle. Now, you've heard before that I have five sons, by the way. I don't know if I've ever mentioned in this place that I have grandchildren. Have I ever said that? Or is that every month when I come, or every three months when I come? It is raining babies in the Lee House. We're expecting our ninth grandchild this month. And number 10, by the grace of God, is coming in October. Anyway, we have one. So what happened is our four of our five sons got married, and Mrs. Lee took these beautiful photos we got and made them into these long pictures that are across our back wall. Now we have four of them, but we have five sons. Fortunately, there's a spot for him. Sometimes he's looked at those, he's like, didn't even make it on the wall. One time he took a selfie of him doing this, printed it out, and taped it up there. That was kind of, I guess we deserve that. But I will tell you this, the boy's working on it. There's a young lady that goes, that lives in West Palm, that where he lives, that he's taken home a couple of times recently. And he was talking to me the other day and goes, Dad, she really likes her family. She really likes Leesburg. I'm like, huh? She lives in West Palm and likes Leesburg, all right. But what he told me was this what she liked most is how everybody respected mom so much. And I thought back and I said, What did we do? You know, we did. We just lived how we always live. In awe of the lady of our home that we all completely respect. Now, I don't I wouldn't say the boys always acted respectful back in yesteryear. But as they're adults, they treat her based on their regard for her. And it's so innate to them because of they of her character. There is a verse in Jeremiah chapter 32, verse 39, that says, I will give them singleness of heart and action that they may fear my name. So singleness of heart and action means we want to please God so much that we stand in awe of him. There is a story about two, about a group of boys that were acting up and their behavior got more and more off-center. And one of the boys in the group was not participating in the activity that was getting outside of the lines. And they made fun of the boy and said, I bet he's afraid if he joins us, his dad will hurt him. And the boy spoke up and said, I'm afraid that if I join you guys, I will hurt my father. That's what fearing God is is to love him so much that all you want to do is please him because of reverence. It says this conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. By the way, don't forget that we're all a bunch of spiritual immigrants, that we are not in our final eternal home. We can love our country, thank God for our home and where we live, but this is not our final resting place. You ever been out of the country and you go to a customs in another country, and it says if you're from this country, you have a local passport, go this line, and then the other line that says all foreigners go this way. Well, when you come back home to the land of the free, the home of the brave, you are happy to see customs that says, if you have a U.S. passport, go here. All of us are taking the foreigner route as long as we live on this earth, because we are in exile. That means we don't unpack our bags all the way. That means we, if we fit in too well here, there's something a little off with our faith because we are strangers. Verse 18 that we read a moment ago gives us our second principle, which is this know that Christ's ransom frees us from emptiness. Did you catch that verse? Knowing that you were ransomed. The word ransom is a synonym of redeemed, which means to buy back from slavery. Christ hinted that he was going to give his life as a ransom for many in Mark 10, 45. By the way, we occasionally hear that term on the news when there is an abduction. And occasionally you'll have some criminals that will ask for a ransom payment. And the promise is that if you give the money, we will give the abductee back to you. And that sort of, there are sometimes we take a term in the Bible and we read in some things not stated. Here is a theory of the atonement that is sometimes read into the ransom theory, and that's this outside of Christ, we are all owned by the devil. And when Jesus paid the price on the cross, he paid the payment to Satan. You can understand why someone would assume that. But note this the Bible doesn't state that. Well, if it's a ransom payment, who's the payment to? I'd like to suggest that God's holiness is the one that demanded satisfaction, demanded appeasement, demanded payment, if you will. And God's holiness demanded a perfect payment. And the only one qualified was his own perfect, sinless son. So the ransom was owed to God, and by God's grace it was paid by God. Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways. Your version might say, the empty ways. Have you ever just felt empty inside? Maybe especially before you came to know Christ. There was a little sense of what am I doing here? I'm a I used to like the Beatles and still kind of listen to some of their songs every now and again. By the way, growing up, I listened to the Oldie Station, and now the songs I grew up with are on that oldie station. It shows you've had a few birthdays there, but one song I liked by The Beatles was called Nowhere Man. Do you remember the chorus of that? He's a real nowhere man living in his nowhere land, waiting on his nowhere plans from nobody. You know what I wonder, Lennon and McCartney, that rose to fame with their songwriting and performing, likely argued by all by most rock historians, as the greatest rock band of all time. I bet their experience in writing that song, I bet that was a bit of an autobiography. They were just kind of a club band in Liverpool, England, and then all of a sudden they became an international sensation. Have you ever in your area, quote, wanted to make it to the top of your field? And maybe some of you got there. What did you find when you got to the top? What you found, because there's nothing really there. That's why Tom Brady said, Yeah, I thought I would feel different after seven Super Bowl rings. Most people would feel a little different, Tom. But I think that the most popular band in the country, like, there's nothing that satisfies. All we have is emptiness. That's why Christ said, if anyone's thirsty, let him come to me and drink. And streams of living water will flow from within him. If you're empty this morning, quit glutting yourself with external stuff that will make you a little less empty for another minute, only long enough to create greater emptiness. Christ's redemption is an inside job that takes away emptiness by giving us, meeting our greatest need. Notice this: from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, there was emptiness passed down. This might be a reference to the law. All that was passed down was the law. And the law is not a ladder that helps us climb up to God. The law is a mirror that shows us our need of God. And then it says, not with perishable things such as silver or gold. Have you ever looked in your wallet and thought, I thought I had more money than that. Where did it go? Only to remember the verse from Proverbs that says, Cast but a glance at riches, for surely they will sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. Anybody ever had wings on your dollar bills you couldn't see, and they were gone. Well, imagine that the ransom price was some dollar bills. Imagine it was more precious metals. The most precious currency in that day, likely in ours as well, are the two things that Peter mentioned: silver or gold. Those are nice to have, but they're perishable. They aren't eternal. So what kind of ransom price would be sufficient? That gives us our third principle from verse 19. And the third principle about how to keep hope soaring is this rest in the perfection of Christ. Verse 19 says, But with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. The word precious is a word that means valuable. Ladies like to use the word precious. Your hair looks precious. That little dress is so precious, that baby is so precious. Men aren't as big into the word precious, but I would say it's a very fine word. It just simply means of high value. And by the way, what determines the preciousness, the value of something? Well, I guess there's a lot of factors if you're an economist, but one that is foolproof that determines something's preciousness or value is scarcity. Have you ever heard in the old West that the economy got so bad that people were paying outrageous prices for a chicken or this or that during the during the Great Depression? All the lack of things made prices rise. We know when we were overpaying for toilet paper during the pandemic. We were overpaying for eggs a couple years ago because they didn't have as many. Maybe you have a luxury vehicle that only so many were made, or maybe you've seen a painting that there's only this many in the world. When something's rare, the value increases. Do you know what is the rarest thing in this world? Blood that is sinless. With the precious blood of Christ. Now, the blood is not the red fluid from his veins merely. The blood is the analogy of the life of Christ. And the reason that you know if you have life is blood. There are no corpses in our mausoleums or funeral homes that are bleeding, because blood is what shows that you still have life. So the blood of Christ is like that lamb. So remember when John the Baptist saw Jesus says, there's a lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. That was obviously in this verse is hearkening back to the Old Testament. If you needed to pay for your sins, you took an offering to the temple and you didn't look in the back part of your stall where you found the mangiest mutt of a crinkled up, two-legged lamb, and say, Here you go. No, that's not going to fly. You bring your best one. One that would symbolize payment that was righteous. And Jesus Christ is that lamb without two things, without blemish or spot. Two words describing perfection. Brothers and sisters, the sinlessness of Christ is our only hope for a proper ransom fee. If Jesus had a little bit of sin in him, he would not be a compatible savior. It would be like if you were in an accident and you're leaking lots of blood, you need a transfusion stat. But it doesn't matter if you have people that are willing to help you and care enough to help you, they have to be a match with blood type for it to work, right? They don't just pick a vial up and put some blood in somebody. It's got to be a match. Jesus had to match the requirement for the job of savior of the world, and his blood is without blemish or defect. Why do we know that Christ was perfect? How do we know that? Well, John Stott in his book, Basic Christianity, defined the sinces of Christ in three ways. The first way is not proof, but it's part of the occasion. One way we know Christ is sinless is because he said so. There have been other kooks and clams through the years that have said they're perfect, but their lifestyle was observable and it didn't match the perfection, right? But Christ said, I always do what pleases the Father. Another way we know Christ is sinless is because his friends claimed he was sinless. Now, you might be someone that is close to people. And have you ever heard someone say, the more you get to know me, the less impressed you'll be? That's how kind of we are with people. I mean, we we love them and we are endeared to them, but the closer you get to somebody, the more you see their flaws, right? Not so with Christ. The people closer to him, like Peter, are gonna tell us in chapter 2 that we'll read in a few weeks or months or whatever, that he committed no sin and no sin was found in his mouth. John, he said it in his best friend was probably John, in him was light and no darkness at all, 1 John 1, 5. But Christ claimed it, his friends claimed it, and also his enemies claimed it. You remember Pilate, who was there to save his life, it was ultimately an enemy that sent him to the cross? He said, I find nothing wrong with this man. Judas, who was an enemy of Christ, came and took the gnarly-looking 30 silver coins that he got for basically betraying Christ, threw him at the high priest's feet, and said, I'm guilty of an innocent man's blood. The Roman guard at the cross said, Surely he was a righteous man. His enemies knew he was innocent. That's why the only thing they could bring to his trial was what? A lie. Christ's sinlessness is the bedrock of our hope of salvation. And I want you to know this morning if you're a really huge sinner, you need a perfect Savior. And so don't sit there and dwell on how big a sinner you are. Rest in the perfection of your sacrifice, of your Savior, of the one who is a lamb without blemish or defect. That's how God sees you. Well, you're like, it's hard to believe. Of course it's hard to believe. That's how big of boneheads we are. But we can't see ourselves through our own lenses. We've got to trust in the perfection of Christ. Or we're cooked for life. The last principle is found in verses 20 and 21. Verse 20 says, He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you. Now, what does it mean that he was foreknown before the foundation of the world? Well, that means that the cross was always on God's mind before Genesis 1:1. It wasn't like the Lord saw a bunch of people that were sinning and said, Oh my word, what am I going to do now? I've got to get up a plan to redeem these rotten folks. No, he's we're not an afterthought, we're a forethought. Have you noticed that people don't like being an afterthought? Imagine, ladies, you're in your wedding dress, you're getting out of a limo, walking into the church, and on the sidewalks it's an old friend of yours. And she looks at you and says, Hey, honey, what are you doing? Well, I I'm actually getting married. That's what it looks like. I didn't know if you normally just roll that way anymore. Um, and then you look at uh kind of the awkward friend and you say, Do you want to come to my wedding? No, is she gonna come or not? It depends on her schedule. I guess it depends on a lot of things, right? But I'll tell you one thing she's not gonna do and go, I am so honored to be invited to your wedding. No one is honored at that moment, are they? Because they're an obvious afterthought. I didn't think of you, but if you want to come in, just hop on in. We don't like being an afterthought, but it's incredible to be someone that is thought of in advance. Now, notice this he we were on his mind before the foundation of the world and was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you. So our sake is important to Christ. What does the word manifest mean? It means to be revealed. And Christ was the one who was manifested, made clear, revealed in the eyes of the world. By the way, have you ever noticed when the world kind of hijacks a phrase from Scripture? I don't know if you have noticed this, but manifest is a big word for the young folks these days. Matter of fact, he was voted manifest. I don't know who votes on this, but manifest was the word of the year in 2024. The thought behind manifest is this positive thinking brings results. You might hear somebody say something like, along the lines of, hey, I'm manifesting wealth by thinking rich thoughts. I'm manifesting happiness by my positive vibes I'm emitting. Some of you are going, that sounds like a mixture of weird softs. And it is. Now, there's a bit of just common sense. Hey, if you think a bunch of negative stuff, negativity is about to follow you around. And that's just common sense. You think more positively, you're gonna have a brighter outlook. Yeah. But we don't get to manifest, we don't speak anything into existence by our words. No matter what they tell you on TBN network, we don't speak anything into existence. It is God who makes things happen. We don't manifest things. That's just bonus material for coming to the Oxford campus today. Verse 21, though, it says, Who through him are believers in God? How did you believe in God? You might say, Well, I chose to believe in him, yes, but how did you choose to believe in him? Through him, we are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory. God, Christ received glory from the resurrection, from the ascension. He'll receive more glory in his return. So that your faith and hope are in God. Where is your faith and where is your hope? It's faith for our present, hope for our future. It says that they should be in God. That last principle this morning about how to keep hope soaring, keep Christ as the object of our faith. Mrs. Lee and I went to visit our Texas grandkids a few weeks ago. And they are, my our kids there are strict bedtimers. I mean, they put them down at 7 a.m. I think if they start acting up at 6:30, they're going down then, you know. They have a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and some baby twins. They are serious about production down there. And we got we got off our flight. By the way, my favorite airlines has gone kaput yesterday, man. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm a spirit airlines kind of person. That's my people right there. But anyway, we got there about 7:45 to their, they have a little five-acre ranch outside of East Dallas. We get there, and on the porch, to our great delight, are our two oldest grandcats, number four, four-year-old and two-year-old. And they have a long driveway, and we're pulling up, and the kids are running to the car, making me a little nervous, running to the car. But they're screaming our names, Pop, Roo, Pop, Roo, and they're smiling ear to ear. And I park the car. This is kind of like the moment of your life, you know? Why you had kids. And I get out, I'm like, come here, buddy, come here, Jack, come here, Blake. And they run right toward me and then skirt around me. And then they run around the five acres for the next 20 minutes. I'm like, hey guys. And I was thinking that we were what they're so excited about. When I really found out what they were so excited about is skipping their bedtime. I don't suppose I blame them. But listen, sometimes God is a tack on to help us through something. And he's not the object of our faith. I go to church, I start doing churchy things, and I feel better because I used to do bad things, now I do better things. And we're not into behavior reform here. We're not hoping that God will be a nice little side hustle for you to make it in life. No, he's the absolute object source of our faith for today and our hope for tomorrow. And if your faith is put in something besides God, it's fool's goal. It was David Paul Tripp that said, if your hope disappoints you, it's because you have the wrong hope. For the scripture says, no one whose hope is in him will be put to shame. Well, we're coming to the end of the message. Some of you are going, I was ready several minutes ago. Thank you. But we're coming to a time of response. And as we enter into a time of response, my question to you, that Pastor Garrett would ask you as well, is where is your faith? If you're still putting your hope and your performance and what you bring to the table spiritually, you need to know that Christ is the only one that can save you. And that his perfection, the Lamb without blemish or defect, is the one that today can wash you clean, make you a new person. I'd like us to take a moment and bow together. And as we enter into a time of response, we're going to remain seated today with our heads and hearts bowed before the Lord. And after I pray, you'll hear a song. And as the music is playing, we invite you wherever you are in the room, if you want to come forward for prayer today, to simply come forward. We have our pastors will be in the front. But maybe you're here today and you realize you have a misplaced hope and a misplaced faith. You've never placed your trust fully in Christ and Christ alone to save you. We'd love to talk and pray with you today about that very thing. Maybe there's some here today that need to be baptized and immersed scripturally after conversion. You've never done that, and God's sort of knocking on the door of your heart. We would love to talk and pray with you as well. Living Lord, we humble ourselves before you today. And as we remain with our hearts and heads bowed before you, we pray that there would be response by your grace. We ask, living God, that you would make a name for yourself and you would draw people to your truth. Thank you, Father. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. You come as the Lord leads today.