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It is never too late to begin again, the first step to a fabulous future, by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in the gospel according to John, the third chapter, beginning at the

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verse numbered one. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him."

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Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?"

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Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born anew.'

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The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can this be?"

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Jesus answered, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things that you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell

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you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

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For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

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He who believes in him is not condemned. He who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men love darkness

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rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his

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deeds have been wrought in God. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. I would like to begin with a question. If you had the opportunity, would you like to start your life over again? There is an old saying which goes, "Sow a thought and you reap an act.

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Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny." All right then.

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Are there any thoughts, or acts, or habits, any dimensions of your character which lead you to wonder or to be in any way doubtful about your destiny? If so, then you are certainly one who would like to begin over again. There is but a single standard set up for all men with regard to the living of life.

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That standard was established by our Lord Jesus Christ. He summed it in a sentence. "Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." Well then, on the basis of that standard, would you like to have the opportunity to

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begin your life over again? Perhaps you've already done this on many occasions. Perhaps you've made many resolutions. Perhaps you've told others about the resolutions which you have made.

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Perhaps you have gone at the task with all of the determination which you could personally muster only to discover that your resolves turn into retreat and that your promises turn into defeat. That, of course, is a frustrating experience, and if it's been yours, well, then you are

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one who would want to begin over once more. I think one of the most obnoxious questions which older women often put to other people is this, "How old do you think I really am?" I've always wondered exactly how to answer that question.

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I learned the perfect answer a few weeks ago. It was addressed to a bus driver, and this is what he responded, "Madam, you have the legs of an 18-year-old girl." Oh, she was delighted.

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"You have the figure of a 25-year-old young woman." She blushed. "You have the complexion of a 10-year-old girl." Oh, she clucked with delight, absolutely.

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This was marvelous beyond all of her imagining. "And you have the mind, the alert, sharp mind of a 30-year-old woman." And with that, she just barely stubbled over. And then looking at her, he said, "Add all those together and you get 83, and that's

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how old I think you are." All right, as you look at your life, could it be that one particular part you find satisfactory, that with regard to one dimension or one facet of your experience, you are at least reasonably pleased?

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Could it be that there are some areas in your life that you really believe are acceptable, but when you put the whole thing together, you'd like to have the opportunity to begin over again? What I'm asking you in ultimate terms is this.

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Are you still bearing the burden of your sin? "Oh," you say, "Preacher, that word 'sin' is an old-fashioned word. It's kind of out of style now. The preachers don't even talk about it anymore."

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Well, it is an old-fashioned word, but it's certainly not out of style, and any preacher who does not speak of it is speaking of peace when there is no peace. I could address you on the subject in different terms. I could say to you, for example, "Would it be true to say of you that every thought you

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have ever had was so pure that you would not care if everyone in the world knew about it? Would it be true to say of you that every word you have ever spoken was so pure that you would not care if everyone in the world had heard it? Would it be true to say of you that every deed you have ever done was so pure that you

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would not care if everyone in the world saw it?" Now, if your answer to any of those questions is no, then you are surely one who would like to begin once more. And the passage of Scripture which is before us today must be of interest to you, for in

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it Jesus says these words, "Truly, truly, I say to you, ye must be born again if ye would enter the kingdom of heaven." At least that's the way most Bibles translate the phrase. Actually what Jesus said is, "Ye must be born from above," or "Ye must be born of God if

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ye would enter the kingdom of heaven." In the Greek the word is "anothen," and that word can mean "to be born again." But Jesus did not speak Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic.

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And the Aramaic word which he used, and there is only one word which he could have used in this context, is "milaela." And that word can only be translated "to be born from above" or "to be born of God." It is the same idea that Paul develops in his Roman and Ephesian and Galatian epistles

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when he asks, "Are you the adopted children of God? Have you entered into a relationship with God in which he becomes, in the most deep and personal sense, your father and you his child? Have you been born of him?

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Have you been adopted by him? Have you become his, and has he become yours?" If this question is on your mind this morning, I would make a few suggestions. First of all, I would point out that this miracle of being born again, of being adopted

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into the family of God, is nothing you can earn. It is a gift. Just as a child cannot determine to be conceived because if he has not been conceived he cannot determine anything at all, just as a child does not determine the moment at which it

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will be born into the world, so an individual cannot choose that precise moment in which he or she will be born anew, born of God. It is a gift. It is nothing that we can bring to pass by our own effort.

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It is determined by God. This is true also if one pursues the figure of adoption. When Paul wrote of adoption in the New Testament, he was thinking of adoption in Roman terms. Now one of the basic principles of Roman law was called the patria protestat, which said

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that the father had all authority. The father even had the right to execute his children if he wished. So in a proceeding for adoption, the younger one, the one to be adopted, could never initiate the proceedings.

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Only the one who was going to do the adopting could begin the procedure. Adoption you see was nothing that was earned. It was something which was given as a gift. No man can earn admission into the family of God.

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Now there are people who have tried to do this. I think this morning of a young girl who noticed that Christians are generally effervescent and exuberant people. I'm not saying that all Christians are that way, but I am saying that Christians who are

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growing and deepening in Jesus Christ are that way, and she noticed that and she decided she wanted to be like that. So she went around all the time with a smile on her face, trying to bubble over with enthusiasm and joy, always saying the right words, you know, "apples of silver and pictures of gold."

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And at night she'd go home and look in the mirror and realize it was all on the surface. It was all a mask, a mask, something manufactured. She was trying in some way or other to earn her way into the kingdom, and it can't be done.

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As a matter of fact, it becomes a very frustrating experience. You end up being like Lucy in Peanuts. Charlie Brown looked at her on one occasion and he said, "You're wearing your crabby face today," and she responded, "I like being crabby.

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I'm proud of being crabby. Always remember, the crabby young girls of the day are the crabby old women of tomorrow." Well, if your life is built on trying to earn admission into God's family, you become crabby, and in the midst of it, you settle for it.

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And the reason you see that you cannot earn it is simply that even if you could be perfect from this day out, what would happen to the burden of all of your yesterdays? Imagine just for discussion purposes that you could, by resolution today, begin living a perfect life.

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From this point on, never again sinning against God or your brother man or yourself. What would that do with all of the days of your life until today? Assume, if I may carry the argument to the level of the absurd, that you've committed an average of ten sins a day, which would be far below my particular average, but may

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be satisfactory for you. Maybe just ten sins a day. That means in any single year of your life, you've committed about 3,600 sins. And if you happen to be, shall we say for discussion purposes, 30 years of age, that

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means you have a backlog of 109,500 sins. Now assuming that you begin today to live a life which is altogether right before God, what takes care of all that has gone before? When one tries to earn, one can earn only in terms of today or tomorrow.

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What about yesterday? That's the frustrating thing about trying to earn your way into God's family. And the other frustrating thing about it is that if you begin by resolution this process, and if you have any success whatever, the nature of ourselves as human beings leads

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us to become rather boastful about it, so that eventually we are turning to God and saying, "Look, here is my score. Pay off and let me into the family." And no man can ever put God into his debt.

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And thus on both hands, we find ourselves frustrated. What is important is that we note at the outset that you cannot earn your way into God's family. It is a gift which he gives. And that says something very significant to those of you who have said at one time or

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another, "Well, I guess I'm just not good enough to be a Christian." You're starting off on the wrong foot. Being a Christian is not determined by one's goodness. Being a Christian is not determined by having some kind of marvelous track record which

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you can vaunt before God and earn admittance into the kingdom that is eternal. Being a Christian is receiving a gift. The Apostle Paul puts it like this, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.

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It is the gift of God, not because of works, lest any man should boast." Now the second thing to notice about this process is this, that while it is a gift, it is a gift which is very painful and costly. Painful for the one who gives, and it is painful for the one who receives.

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It is costly for the one who gives, and it is costly for the one who receives. Jesus spells this out when he says in this same passage that we must be born of both water and the Spirit. Now the word "water" refers to the ministry of John the Baptist, who baptized with water.

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And the message of John the Baptist can be summed in a single sentence, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Jesus says then that the first part of receiving this gift of salvation which God offers is to repent, and that's painful.

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Just as being born is painful, and if you've ever heard a child scream when it's first slapped after being born, you know what a painful experience it is for that little one. Even in the process of adoption, as Paul knew it, there was pain involved because there was a place in the process in which the person being adopted performed what was called the

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"De testatio socorum," and in that he would stand up and he would renounce all of his past, all of his former allegiances, all of his household gods. He would in every way turn his back on all that had gone before and constituted his experience. It was a decisive reversal, and that's exactly what repentance is.

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It is coming before God and confessing that all that has gone before is prelude and to be forgotten. And this is a hard thing to do. A few years ago there was a terrible train wreck back east, and in the wreck the engineer

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of the train was trapped in the cab of the engine and was dying. A college professor was trying to comfort him, but he noticed that there was a magnificent peace and calm about this dying engineer. And finally he said quite openly, "I would give everything I have to know the peace and

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the strength that you do." And through his pain the engineer said, "That's exactly what it costs me. To enter into the kingdom one must give everything one has." Please turn your cassette to the other side.

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Repentance is offering up to God not only your sins, but also your successes. Not only your defeats, but your victories. Not only those places in your life which are dark, but to admit to him once and for all that even the brightest places in your experience are under heavy shadow.

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Repentance is to come to him claiming nothing and offering everything. And that's painful and costly. You see, we don't have a great deal to be proud of, so we have a tendency to hang on to it with everything we've got.

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But if this process is painful for the one who is entering the kingdom, for the one who is being born or adopted, it's even more painful for God. Just as the pain of the mother is greater than the pain known by the child in birth, so the cost to God of our coming into his family was infinitely beyond anything we are

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called upon to endure. It's true in the process of adoption long ago there was this desto tatio socorum in which the man turned his back on things, but there was also an act called the mansapatio in which the one who was adopting literally bought the one who was being adopted, bought

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him not once and not twice, but three times and at tremendous cost. And what is the cost of our coming into God's family? The cost to God was the life of his only begotten son. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever liveth and

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believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The cost was the cross. Now how do you talk to people about the cross? Well perhaps we might say a word this way.

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I think most experts would agree that the finest collection of architecture in the world sits on top of a hill in the city of Athens in Greece. That hill is called the Acropolis. There the most perfect architectural gem in the world, the Parthenon, stands, magnificent

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to behold. Now the gate through which you enter the Parthenon is called the Propylaia, and it is every bit as magnificent as the temple that is behind it. That is, the gate is as splendid as that which is entered into through it.

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And this is true of the kingdom of heaven. What I'm saying to you is nothing less than this, that the cross is as magnificent as heaven itself. That the glory of the cross is not shadowed even by the glory of the kingdom that is eternal.

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When Jesus hanged upon that cross, the stars paused to ponder. When Jesus hanged upon that cross, the whole earth sobbed so that its surface was quaking. When Jesus hanged upon that cross, the clouds from the four corners of the earth drew near and were dark, dark with their despair.

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And even the sun veiled its face while the walls of heaven ran wet with the tears of Apis. When Jesus died to satisfy justice, when Jesus died to satisfy truth, when Jesus died to gain for all those who believe and repent in their belief sonship to the Father that

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is eternal. This is what Jesus means when he says we are to be baptized of the Spirit. Being baptized of the water is repentance. Being baptized of the Spirit is to let the Spirit of God take the power of the cross

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and stab it through your heart like a five-inch nail as it stabs through the heart of God. I cannot explain to you the process by which the Spirit does this. It is mysterious. Jesus in this passage likens it to the wind which comes and goes.

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We cannot measure it. We cannot determine its source or whence it will go. All we can see is the evidence of it. Just so, I cannot tell you how this miracle of grace happens, but that it does happen

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cannot be denied. And when it does happen, then, just as Jesus says, you enter into the kingdom, that is into a new relationship with God, just as that child being born now has a new relationship to its father and mother, just as the one being adopted now becomes part of the family

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of the one who has adopted him, so you become an heir of God. So you become part of his family. And when this happens, well, everything changes. It's beyond my capacity to describe and beyond anyone's imagining.

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For example, all those yesterdays are taken away. All of your debts are taken care of. God drops the record of your sin, your transgression, your iniquity into the deepest seas of his forgetfulness and then puts up a sign which says, "No fishing."

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And we never have to look back at them again. Never have to look back at them again. So that I can stand before you and say what for a non-Christian to say would be outrageous. I feel no guilt because of my yesterdays, no fears because of my yesterdays, no dismay

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because of my yesterdays, for I am freed of them by the power of God working in me, leading to repentance, working in me through the power of the cross. Born of God, adopted into his family. And not only this, but on top of this, we also get the tremendous presence of God through

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his Holy Spirit in our lives. And how much that means. About five weeks ago, I was waiting for an airplane in the city of Kananga in the center of Congo.

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Now waiting for an airplane may not sound like much to you, but I had been waiting for that airplane for twenty-five and a half hours. One day, one hour, and one half hour. The only white man in the air terminal.

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Pushed, shoved, ridiculed, and derided because of my whiteness. And when, at the end of twenty-five and one half hours, the plane came, they wouldn't let me on board, and it went off without me. Now I know that many of you were praying for me while I was gone, but at that particular

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moment I did not feel prayed for. I had been taught in all situations to try to keep my cool. That was the basic law around our house. But at that particular moment, the memory of that training did not influence me very

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much. What enabled me to turn around and to walk away, to turn around and to walk away without the thought of my witness, feelings of vengeance and anger and bitterness, was the fact that I was overwhelmed in the midst of that situation of total rejection.

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I was overwhelmed with the consciousness of the presence of Jesus. And that's what comes with being part of his family. So the question, "Would you like to begin over again?" really can be reduced to this. Would you like to be rid once and for all of all of the mistakes, errors, and transgressions

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of the past? And at the same moment, would you like to receive into yourself the power of his presence to confront all of your tomorrows? That's the question.

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Jesus draws a very clear line. He says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. We are all born of the flesh, for we are alive and here and kicking.

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But are we all born of the Spirit? Have we all become a part of the family which is eternal? Are we set not only for here, but for hereafter? Do you want the fabulous future which God holds out to those who believe?

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If you do, then commitment is the route and the way. Not just casual intellectual acceptance, but authentic commitment. There was a tightrope walker once named Blondin who said he would go across Niagara Falls on a tightrope, and he did.

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And hundreds of thousands of people stood and watched. As like a little fly on a string, he went across Niagara Falls, a great balancing pole in his hands. And when he got to the other side, tremendous applause, and one man stepped forward, representing

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the crowd, and he said, "Surely you are the greatest aerialist of all time. There is none better than you. You are the top." And Blondin said, "I thank you for that.

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Now I'm going to go back, and I would like you to go across on my shoulder." Well, it's not enough, my beloved friend, to say to Jesus, to God, to address the Holy Spirit, "You are wonderful. You are magnificent.

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You are the top." There comes a moment when he turns and says, "I thank you for that. But now, are you ready to walk out on the thin wire of life with me?" That's the kind of commitment that he's called for.

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I ask you today, are you ready to walk the rope with God? I ask you in his name today, are you ready to give yourself in total dependence upon him? I ask you, under the influence of nothing less than the Spirit of God, are you ready

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to repent and to accept the gift of a fabulous future? There are other steps, but step one is to be born, and the moment to be born is now. Think of it. You could go home today saying, "Father," and hearing him respond, "Yes, my son."

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Let us pray. In this moment of silence, when we are the people of prayer, I'm addressing a special word to those of you who are in this time ready to accept Jesus Christ as Lord. I'm asking you to get up and to come down the aisles here to meet with this counselor,

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to talk with them about this tremendous opportunity for a fabulous future. If the Spirit is moving in your heart at this moment, whether you are seated behind me in the choir or before me in the congregation, get up right now and come forward. Those about you will not be disturbed.

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They will rejoice and be exceedingly glad, or perhaps they will be encouraged by your courage to do the same. Now is your opportunity, and we will wait for you to come. And let us all be in prayer as we await.

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O gracious Lord Jesus Christ, bestow upon those who have come to this place this morning to begin life anew such a blessing, such an outpouring of thy Spirit, such a magnificent demonstration of thy grace, that they might be born of God, renewed, adopted, empowered, and forgiven.

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Do it through the ministry of those who speak to them now. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you his peace.

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