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[ Silence ] [Music] may see. [Music] [Music]

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Open my eyes and I will see Glimpses of truth that are there for me Lifting my head to a wonderful beat That shall unclutch my faith to be free [MUSIC] Open my eyes, reluctantly, with fear, dreadly now.

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Open my ears, that I may hear, voices of truth, of sin, disclear. And when the windows fall on my ear, everything close will disappear. Silently now I wait for Thee, pretty my God, I'm here to stay. Open my eyes and open me, Spirit divine.

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Open my mouth and let me in, Let me know more truth than prevail. ♪ Open that door to every prayer ♪ ♪ Open that children's house to share ♪ ♪ Silent be thou, our name will be ♪

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♪ Ready for all on hill to see ♪ ♪ Open that door, we hope and weep ♪ ♪ Spirit be kind ♪ - May we bow our heads.

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Speak to our hearts, O God. We ask in the strong and perfect name of Jesus Christ. I want to lift up just part of that last verse, Genesis, the 12th chapter, portion of the third verse.

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And in thee shall all families of the earth "Families of the Earth be blessed." The subject, "God bless the family." We hear this quite often in our time.

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Many political leaders close their messages words, God bless America. We're continually asking for God's blessings. We want his blessings upon us individually and as a family. One man prayed,

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God bless me and my wife, my son Joe and his wife, us four no more. Keep us free from sin for Christ's sake, amen.

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Well, we're talking about a family that includes more than our immediate family. Family values, that was the topic of a great deal of discussion during the 1992 presidential campaign. We recognize that something is radically wrong with the family.

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That primary, that basic social unit on which all else depends, the family, foundation on on which all other social institutions rest. The family is suffering from the shaking of the foundations. Something is radically wrong.

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But we are asking here in the title of this message, bless the family, the family. The family is inclusive. No one is to be left out.

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I was a student at Bishop College. In fact, it was my freshman year. I went to the dining hall and the meals were served family style.

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And on Sunday morning in those days, one of the main things that most students liked was sausage and eggs. The rest of the time you had grits

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and something like that and other things, but that was a meal that everybody with sausage and eggs and the like, and I think you had grits with it too.

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But the sausage was the main thing. And when the waiter brought the plate, I observed that there were two sausages for each person there. And so I've been trained to be very polite, so I just took one sausage, expecting to get

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the other sausage at a later time. I was the only one who took one sausage. I was the first one and I took one and the others went around and when it got to the last person there were three sausages there and he just dumped them in his plate.

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Well that was the last time that that happened to me in family style. We have had through the media Archie and Edith Bunkley with all in the family and now they they have a sequel to that based on the black family. And in both of these families,

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we get a glimpse of prejudice and bigotry. But this particular word concerning the family is addressed by God to Abraham, to Abraham and his family.

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It's God's call to Abraham to engage in an exciting and rewarding adventure of faith. It is a divine call. It comes from the great beyond into the here and now.

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God calls Abraham by name. Abraham Get thee out of thy country and from thy

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kindred and from thy father's house unto a land I

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Will show you Now he's identified as I said by name and the call and His name as given in this chapter is Abram

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Later his name becomes Abraham and the name Abram means father some have said that this means little father And in the course of time he becomes a great father God calls

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this man and Promises to do something wonderful wonderful

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Through Abrams family he's going to bless him in a miraculous manner Now Abraham later the scripture says is is a hundred

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years old and his wife Sarah is 90 and They're finally going to have a baby they've been promised a Child as a sign of God's special favor

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Now it comes after all these years Abraham Comes close as one person puts it to knocking himself out fell on his face and laughed And in another version of the story his wife Sarah is hiding behind the door eavesdropping

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and Nearly splits her gut when she hears the news When God asked her about it later, Sarah, why were you laughing? Sure I wasn't laughing. He said yes you were But God

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says to them, these two senior citizens that they will have this child in the evening of their

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lives. They're facing the sunset, what we call the golden years, the retirement period. They laughed because

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What they heard seemed impossible. They laughed because only a fool would believe that a woman with one foot in the grave would soon have the other foot in the maternity ward.

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Here it is. God calls Abraham. He's an heir of Chaldees, Abraham. is called in the land of Babylon.

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And it seems to me that the call comes to us in the land of Babylon. Because the family is in Babylon. In Babylon, family is in Babylon.

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The discard, the crime in our neighborhoods indicate that the family is in battle. The family abuse that we face And what is happening to our young men?

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I'm serving on the grand jury. And you go into the court and you watch those young men. Many times they are handcuffed one to the other and they come up and they receive sentences

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that have to do with good portions of their lives. for crimes that are really senseless. And to sit there for a time is to watch what is happening to the flower of our race.

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Flower, it's the same thing, same thing. To the families in Babylon. People are more concerned about how much money they can make, no matter how they can make it.

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And so they sell their souls. No, we were taught that to be honest, be honest, no matter what, be honest. but people today are selling themselves,

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drugs and the like, selling their future in Babylon. And there is a tendency to place our problems on others. Now some people say, you know, the problem is the schools.

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The problem is the educational system. That's what many say. That's the problem. If we can get the teachers to do and the school,

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you know what, that is called in loco parentis. In other words, we are trying to put the schools in the place of the parents. And that is not the way God intended it.

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The family has this responsibility. It's like this man who went to a college with his son and he says to the president, said, "I want you to take my son and I want you to make him a genius." The president said,

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"Oh no." He said, "We only cultivate what we receive. If we receive watermelons, we get watermelons. If we receive peanuts, we cultivate peanuts. We only can cultivate what we get. So we cannot put this problem at the door of the school. We must place it where it belongs.

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There is a tendency to do this, but the miraculous change that is promised by God to Abraham comes through the family. It's based on Abraham's response to the divine summons.

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In order for Abraham and his family to be heirs to the promise, they must obey the divine command. The family must follow God's guidance and His discipline, His rules. In other words, we have what is called a permissive society.

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No rules. No rules. you know, at least a large number of people are upset over the caning that occurred in Singapore

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The young man is accused of spraying paint on some cars and so the rule was that he should be caned and understand he received four strokes there with the cane and and everyone is concerned about whether or not it discolored his skin and

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And I said to myself, as many canings as I received, (audience laughing) it would have been altogether a different day if we had had that kind of situation.

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But we understood that there was to be discipline. We understood that. And somehow people have got to learn that when you're in someone else's house,

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that you obey their rules. You know, you obey their rules. You know, my wife and I have been to Singapore, a very clean city. You can get into trouble by just throwing anything around in Singapore.

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And people keep it clean and they're orderly and all of that. And somehow America must somehow recognize that when we go other places, not to, you know, display ourselves as what you call the ugly American. But the family has its rules.

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The family of nations, America as a family, South Africa as a family has a right to establish its own rules and somehow there has to be discipline. And the word here is get thee out of thy country. In other words, we have to leave just being selfish.

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The problem, one of the problems we face in our country is that America as a nation has been built on individualism. In other words, you know, get all you can for yourself, don't worry about anybody else. That's been the basic principle that has been followed in the building of this nation.

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So it's, "Aye, aye." I, I. But Abraham, get out of Babylon, get out of selfishness, get out from just being wrapped up in yourself so that you may be able to walk with me, Abraham, in taking the journey from I to we, from being just the individual to family. So you are to engage,

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"Abraham, if you follow me, you are to engage "in a journey without maps when you go with God. "No map, just walk with me." >> Yes, Lord.

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>> Where are you going, Lord? Just, just, Abraham, pack up! Get out of Babylon! Leave your family, leave your kindreds!

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Leave all that you've accomplished in Babylon, leave it. I can see this old man as he comes home saying to Sarah, honey, we've gotta go. Where you going, Abraham?

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I don't know. I've just heard the call of God. And God promises to bless Abraham, to make of Abraham a great nation.

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He says, "I'll make your name great. "I'll make you famous. "I will magnify your name "so that you will be a blessing."

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The family is blessed by God. If you hook up with God, if we hook up with him, God has promised to bless us. In thee, he says, not only will you be blessed of God,

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but you will become, Abraham, you and Sarah will be a channel of blessing for all the families of the earth. The Mahatma Gandhi says,

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In a way, we are thieves. He says, "If I take anything that I do not need "for my own immediate use and keep it, "I steal from somebody else.

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"I venture to suggest that it is the fundamental law "of nature without exception that she produces enough "for our wants from day to day, And if everybody took enough for himself but nothing more, there would be no pauperism,

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there would be no more dying of starvation in this world, but as long as we have inequality, we are stealing. He says I'm no socialist. I do not want to dispossess those who have possession, but I do say that those of us

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who want to see light out of darkness have to follow this rule in their own lives. God bless the family. shower upon us that vision that we need to go where you lead. God bless the family. Esau comes running to his father and his father has just blessed Jacob. He has given to Esau

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the blessing that Jacob expected to receive. And when he comes in and he tells him, who are you? You're Jacob, well I've already blessed Esau.

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I thought Esau was Jacob. And he says to him, do you have a blessing for me? If we wanna ask that question,

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do you have a blessing, Lord, for us? And the answer is yes. God has a blessing for the family. God has a blessing to give guidance on the road

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that we have to travel if we hook up with him. He tells us what we ought to leave behind. Certain things have to be left behind if we're gonna travel with God.

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God blessed the family. He enables us to somehow recognize the unique contribution that the family has to make in relationship to other social institutions. God bless the family.

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Heal the family of sickness. Oh, there's so much sickness in the family. You listen to the Geraldo, or see the Geraldo show. He has mothers and daughters having the same sweethearts and all kinds of things that you

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can hardly imagine to say nothing to see that they're taking place in families of the earth. God bless the family. In other words, heal the family of sickness so that the family may be declared by you as alive and well.

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God bless the family. Empower the family with your grace so that we may learn not only to accept ourselves, but how to accept others.

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Bless the family indeed. God be merciful and bless the family. God can do that. what no one else can do in our lives.

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And I learned that when I was quite young, when I was a youngster listening to my mother and I was talking about how I was going to go to college and all that, she said, "Marvin, we don't have the money,

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but if you get there, God will provide a way." Put it all on God. God. If you get there. And when announced to the people that I was going away to college they shook their heads, he'll never finish. So what we did was to

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borrow money from loan sharks. We just had I think about $42 that you had to pay to enroll. We borrowed it from loan sharks and somehow I got there. And after Forget it, now, the president. After the first month or so, and I wasn't paying the bill,

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supposed to pay $22 a month at that time, and I had a job that was giving me $8 a month working. And the president said, "How do you expect to stay here? "How much income does your family have?"

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I said, "My mother's the only one working, "and she's just making $32 a month." He said, "Well, you're supposed to pay $22 here." and says, "My, my, what faith?"

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If you trust in God, somehow you can make it. And a little later he said, "I'll tell you "what I'm going to do. "I'm going to give you more scholarship.

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"You'll only have to pay $15." And somehow, somehow, at every step of the way, When you see the face of wall, God is there to open the door.

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God will bless us if we trust in him. He is there, he's there to bless us. He's able to bless us by taking us from the sorrow of Babylon to the joy of Canaan.

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God will bless us. He's able to take us from the doubt that surrounds us into a land of faith if we trust Him. God will bless us.

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In other words, God, God, God, God will shower us with blessings. God will do that. You know, who can, you know, when God has something for you that nobody can keep from giving it to you?

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God will bless us and the shower, the fact that you have showers of blessings, showers that come down from above, showers, showers. You don't have to worry about anybody stopping the showers. God controls the showers.

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And God just showers us with the blessing every morning when we get up and we're able to address someone else in our right mind. That's God blessing us. God bless the family and call the earth to heal her increase.

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God shall bless us, says the psalmist, and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. So bless the Lord. Bless the Lord. Lord, I hear of showers of blessings.

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scattering full and free, showers the thirsty land refreshing. Just let some drops fall on me. Even me, even me, let some drops now fall on me. Lord, bless the family. And this black family that you have permitted to come across the seas under great persecution, this family that has endured servitude in this country like no other nation, Lord bless

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the family. Bless the family, but not only bless the black family, but the brown family, the yellow family, the red family, all the families of the earth. Lord God bless the family. And as we sing now the hymn of invitation we ought to

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bless the Lord, magnify his name, that we belong to his family. I'm a child of the I'm a child of the King, but Jesus my Savior, I'm a child of the King. So we invite you to unite with the people of God here at Ebenezer. Unite with the family here, God's family, by letter, by Christian experience, on professional

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faith we invite you to come. The door of the church is open. I invite you to come. If you're living in Austin without a church home,

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I invite you to make the decision now to become a part of the family of God here in Ebenezer. The door is open. ♪ Lord and father of the world in His hands ♪

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♪ How good is that job ♪ ♪ Longs after that call ♪ ♪ His Father's love for me ♪ ♪ He has great responsibility ♪

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♪ I'm a child of the King ♪ ♪ I was child of the King ♪ ♪ I was child of the King ♪ ♪ With Jesus my Savior ♪

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♪ I was child of the King ♪ ♪ I was the Son ♪ ♪ The Savior of men ♪ ♪ The fire of love ♪

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♪ Has the rose of death ♪ ♪ But now is free ♪ ♪ The fire of love ♪ ♪ And in thy peace ♪

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♪ We come one at last ♪ I'm a child of the King, a child of the King, with Jesus my Savior, I'm a child of the King. I once was a young, a stranger on earth, a sinner that chose a life beyond my birth. But I cannot obtain my praise without love.

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I'm headed to the best of all, a Roman of God. I'm a child of the King, a child of the King. ♪ With Jesus I stand now ♪ ♪ By your side I'll believe ♪

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♪ A tender and kind ♪ ♪ I'm strong to my end ♪ ♪ He'll build me a palace ♪ ♪ Far beyond the bend ♪

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♪ Go and tell the moss ♪ ♪ That still I may sing ♪ ♪ Of love which you hold ♪ ♪ I'm a child of the King ♪

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♪ I'm a child of the King ♪ ♪ I'm a child of the King ♪ ♪ With Jesus Christ, Savior ♪ ♪ I was child of the King ♪

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- Amen. >> Goes to. [BLANK_AUDIO]