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Let us continue in our worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the book of Romans, chapter 8, beginning the reading at the verse numbered 28. We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

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For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

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But then shall we say to this, "If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

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It is God who justifies? Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus who died? Yes, who was raised from the dead?

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Who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, "For thy sake we are being killed all the day long," we are regarded

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as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all

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creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And may the same Spirit who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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I cannot vouch for the medical accuracy of this, but the story that I read concerned a man who was losing his memory. He went to see his physician about it and was told by the doctor that he could give him medication to correct the situation, but that sometimes this medication had an adverse

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effect upon the recipient's eyesight. The question of the doctor to the patient then was, "Do you wish to remember or do you wish to be able to see with accuracy?" The patient thought it over for a few minutes and then said, "I will not take the medicine,

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for I would rather see where I am going than remember where I have been." I think most of us would agree with that choice. Haven't we all said at one time or another, "Oh, if only my foresight were as good as my hindsight, I would have made different choices."

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So we stand tonight on the eve of a new year, and our thoughts are, of course, directed toward the future. And I would ask you to think with me tonight about our attitude toward the future, because how we feel about the future has great impact upon the present.

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The passage of Scripture which I lift out for our consideration is in the magnificent eighth chapter of Romans, and there in the 38th verse Paul writes this, "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

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Think with me about the things to come. And let's begin our thinking with this observation. Many folks live in great fear with regard to the future. Now admittedly, some of this fear is rather silly.

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You're always seeing, for example, those statistics which are put together by one person or another and then extrapolated to have some kind of social implication, as for example, there's only two minutes left on the doomsday clock, or you have to eat twelve bowls of this cereal in order to get the value that's in one bowl of this cereal.

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You can make up those kinds of things if you wish. I've always thought I'd like to make up one that said that if Americans do not stop saving National Geographic magazines in their attics and their basements, our country will sink 100 feet below sea level.

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Well they're silly ideas, but some people regard them with seriousness. There are other fears, of course, with regard to the future that are far more profound. How will I get along on a fixed income in a world which knows such inflation? How are my children going to churn out?

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What kind of job security do I have or not have? How am I going to deal with the fact that I am getting older? That one about getting older, it seems to me, is on a lot of minds, or perhaps it's just because I'm beginning to think of myself as older that I'm thinking about it more.

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I read an article the other day that told you how you could know that you were getting older. The signs were when all of your dreams were reruns, or when the stewardess said to you on the airplane, "Coffee, tea, or milk of magnesia," or when you sit down in a rocking

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chair and you can't get it going, or when the dear little old gray-headed lady that you help across the street is your own wife, or when everything on you hurts and that which doesn't hurt doesn't work, or a pretty girl walks by and your pacemaker makes the garage door go up.

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Well, there are a lot of things that remind us, either seriously or in a silly way, of getting older, and some people fear age. There are, then, many frights with regard to the future, and when I consider people who are caught up in those frights, I'm reminded of Alan Shepard, our astronaut, who, you remember,

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went up on the nose of a redstone rocket, and as he approached the speed of sound, the rocket began to vibrate and tremble, so much so that he couldn't even see the instruments in the cabin before him, and he was about to call back to mission control to tell them what was happening when he thought to himself, "No, if I do, they will probably panic and

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abort the flight," and so he decided to just hold on. He was approaching, you see, the sound barrier, and when you hit the sound barrier, it's almost as shattering as hitting a wall, but 30 seconds later, he went through that sound barrier. He suddenly became supersonic, and at that moment, all the vibrations stopped, all the

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trembling stopped, all the noise stopped, and he was flying as no one from this country had ever flown before. Well, there are many people, you see, who, when they look at the future, begin to tremble and shake and panic, and they're ready to abort.

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They surrender to their fears, and thus never know what it really is to fly with a new kind of freedom. That first, then. A lot of people fear the future.

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Secondly, think with me about this. Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present. Notice how the Apostle Paul writes. He says, "Nor things present, nor things to come."

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He puts those two phrases side by side, showing the relationship of them. For what goes on in the future will be dependent, in part, by what occurs in the present, and what occurs in the future will be dependent, in large measure, on what occurs in the present. If we lose faith in the future, we will find ourselves without power for the living of

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today. I am so troubled by the number of young couples I'm discovering who are living together without the benefit of clergy. And when you ask them about this, almost invariably they say something like this, "Well, we're

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afraid of being married. We're not quite sure we're ready for it, and so we're trying living together now so we can find out what marriage is like, and then if everything works out all right, we'll go ahead and have the ceremony."

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Now, I'm sure that in many instances they're quite serious when they say that. But the fact of the matter is, it's a pack of lies. Living together, cohabiting with another person, is not the same thing as being married. Living in some relationship without any promises made before God or made before other people.

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Living in a relationship that has no final commitment because it could be so easily and readily smashed into nothing in just a moment of time, just deciding to pull out with nothing left to hold you there, that kind of thing is not prelude to marriage. That's not what marriage is about.

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And they kid themselves when they suggest that this is what it is to float on the sea of matrimony. They've never really left the shore. They lose the power to leave the shore because they're afraid of the future.

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I'm surprised when so many young couples say to me today that they're going to have no children. Now, that, of course, is a personal decision for them to arrive at, but when I ask them why, almost invariably they say things like, "Well, the quality of life is deteriorating,"

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or "There might be a nuclear catastrophe." And I find myself thinking that they are missing out on one of the grandest and most sublime aspects of all of life just because of some apprehension they have, unsubstantiated, concerning the future.

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I will say to you quite honestly that I am sick to death of all this alarmist talk about acid rain and the Star Wars defense system and whether saccharin causes cancer or not, and people who won't go to the doctor because they're afraid of what the doctor might tell them or California is going to break off from the United States in an earthquake or the

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economic situation is never going to improve and we will never get out of the doldrums we now know. It seems to me that all you have to do to fill an auditorium these days is to announce a topic which deals with the dire prognostications that you can think of with regard to the future.

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Suppose that everyone did that. Here's an Episcopal bishop down in North Carolina named Wright, and he said that if God had wanted men to fly, he would have given them wings. And he went on also to say that nothing good would ever come from flying.

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Now suppose people would have believed that. Suppose his two sons, Wilbur and Orville, would have believed it. But they didn't. And that made the difference.

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Here's Marconi sitting out to develop the wireless and people told him that it was absolutely of no value, that he was wasting his time, there would never be any positive communication because of any wireless. It would be at the best a novelty.

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And every week I sit down and read the letters of people from 27 states and two different countries who hear our four radio broadcasts a week. And I know what the spirit is doing in their lives. Suppose that those people, the Marconis and the Wrights, had given up simply because they

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weren't sure about the future. See this is to live without hope. And when you have no hope, you have no power. It was Robert Louis Stevenson who said, "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

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It is better to have within you some spirit that's ready for whatever may come than it is to get there." I will confess that I am prejudiced on this subject. I have been reared in an environment of hope.

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When I was a very young boy, five, seven years old, I developed psoriasis, which is a skin disease on my feet. They used to break open into great bleeding sores. I could only wear white socks.

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They had to be boiled immediately after I wore them. And every morning when I would walk to school, and later a mile and a half to junior high school, and still later two miles to senior high school, every step was an agony. And I walked slower than the others because my feet were bleeding.

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And on the Saturdays when my friends would be playing, I would be sitting in one doctor's office or another, but at that time they knew nothing about the condition, nothing to correct it. And the only thing that led me not to give up was the fact that my mother and father

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promised me that someday it would be solved. And in the hope of that, even as a youngster, I carried on. I was born heavy. I weighed nine and three quarters pounds when I entered the world.

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And I don't think I've stopped since. And with weight comes awkwardness and lack of coordination, so I was never any good at sports. Most of my friends were.

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I was the slowest kid on the block, the last one on the block to learn how to ride a bicycle. But I decided that there were other things out there that could be done, and so I gave myself to learning things like administration or magic tricks or drama, things of that kind. And I did not graduate from my senior high school class as the outstanding athlete, but

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I was voted the most talented. The only thing that moved me in the direction of pursuing that was the fact that I had a hope that I could succeed in some areas, even though I wasn't able to succeed in the areas that I most admired.

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I said I was not coordinated. I failed my driver's test the first two times I took it. Then having failed two times, I waited six years before I took it again. I was 22 years old before I could drive a car.

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And what finally motivated me to learn how to drive that car was the fact that I was going to seminary. And I knew that in God's service, that future before me, and with the hope that I'd be of some value in it, I would have to be able to drive.

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Because I had confidence in the future, I had power to master the machine. If I had not had that hope, I think I'd be walking still. In those days, college wasn't as expensive as it is now, $900 a year is all it cost. But even that was something for our family to come up with.

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We were not affluent. And I could win no scholarships. I was not an exceptional student. I was an academic grind.

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But I tried to do my part. I did magic shows and I mowed lawns and I sold wreaths and I sold Christmas cards. And I loaded clay pigeons onto machines so that hunters could have target practice. And I tried to do my part.

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Why? Because I had a hope of a degree, because I knew I couldn't go on and serve in the ministry as I felt called to serve unless I completed college. That was going to be a tough thing.

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But the future was there and I had hope with regard to it. And hope enabled me to do with my parents what I did. Then came graduate school and a wonderful opportunity presented itself, a fellowship to study abroad.

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And I made it to the finals. And on the morning we were to go and make our final presentation, I awakened covered with measles. I called the doctor, he said, "It's all right to go when the measles are out.

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You're no longer contagious." So I went. I had another fellow drive me because my eyes felt terrible, like lead balls in my head. They only gave 99 of these fellowships and I wanted with all my heart to have one.

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I wanted that to be my future and I had a great hope with regard to it. So I went there and I made my measles the basis of my presentation. And it gave me a fellowship to study in Scotland. I went to my first church and found myself in conflict with the criminal element that

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ruled the city. I was shot at twice. I had the tires of my automobile slashed 14 times. But I had a hope that we would be able to throw the rascals out and start over again.

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And it took nine years, but it happened. And I went to California and I was there a year and a half. And one day in 70 seconds, the whole church fell down in an earthquake. A million, $800,000 in losses and no insurance.

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And the task was to hold together a congregation of 3000 people and to try to build a church at the same time while we worshipped in a cemetery and in a gym. But I had hope. And if I hadn't had hope, I never would have had what it took to keep going in the midst

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of that circumstance. And if I may be even more personal and more immediate, then came the call to come to Pittsburgh and everyone told me no. I was told about the economic situation here.

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I was told about the unemployment here. I was told about how this church had lost 40% of its members in the last 15 years. About how it had finished in the red every year, how its camp finished in the red and its cafeteria finished in the red.

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I was told all of these things. But I can remember spiritual experiences that I had here. And I knew brothers and sisters in Christ and I knew that they had hope and I knew that this church had always stood for hope and I know that I believe in hope because hope

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is what drives future into present power. And I came and I have loved every minute of it. When I die and my bones are cremated and carried out and put in a little box beside my father's in the Jefferson Memorial Park, I hope there will be at least one person who will say,

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he believed in tomorrow. He believed in the future because he believed in hope. And he believed in hope because the Word of God says that nothing that is to come can separate us from the love of God.

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The word quit does not appear in the Bible. But it does say, "Forgetting those things which are behind, press on toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." It does say that.

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I have a dear friend whose mother died of cancer. And this was some years ago. Perhaps now they would have been able to solve her situation. She knew that she was dying and her family knew it too.

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She loved above all other earthly and material things, her garden. She spent a lot of time there. She kept that up after she had to give other things up, saving her strength for her garden. She did it through the fall.

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But just about the time that autumn came, she couldn't work anymore. And by the time that Christmas came, she had already gone home to be with the Lord. And that made it a very hard holiday and a very hard, long, cold winter, not only meteorologically, but spiritually.

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And then the springtime came. And when the springtime came, that family discovered that she had planted hundreds and hundreds of bulbs, more than she had ever planted before. And they came up all over the backyard in a rainbow of colors.

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She had planted all these flowers knowing that she would never see them. But her confidence was in the future and that hope empowered her for the present. My friends, if we don't plant seeds that we don't expect to see blossom, the world will very soon be without color and brightness.

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We must hope for tomorrow and let that hope empower us today. For you see, the key is, and this is the last thought I would leave with you, the key is that this is God's world. You know, Paul wrote these words about not being separated, not while sitting in an easy

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chair, not while luxuriating in some comfortable situation, but while carrying out the disciplines and the hardships of a ministry which astonishes us by its courage and its conviction in the face of all kinds of punishment. And in the midst of that, he said, nothing can separate us.

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You see, the future has two handles. One handle is a human handle and the other handle is the God handle. Now if you take hold of the future with the human handle, you're going to be disappointed. We cannot master the future.

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We with all of our accomplishments, whatever they may be, we cannot control the future. When I think of this, I think of E.J. Smith. E.J. Smith was the captain of the Titanic. He's the man who said, no condition can cause this ship to flounder.

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No vital disaster can happen to this vessel because modern shipbuilding has gone beyond all of that. He's the one who headed full speed ahead when he got the word about the icebergs because he was trying to break the record in crossing the Atlantic.

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You know what happened? How an iceberg side-swiped them, ripped open compartment after compartment. The ship didn't have enough lifeboats. That's another arrogance of those who build it.

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The SOS was not heard because the radio man on the Californian just nine miles away was sound asleep and out of the 2,208 passengers on board, 705 were saved and all the rest were lost. They recently found the wreckage, cold, murky, obscure, isolated forever.

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That's what happens when man tries to run things. If we believe that the future depends upon us, the results will be despair. But my sisters and brothers, we do not sing, "This is our world." What we sing is, "This is my father's world."

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Oh, let me ne'er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my father's world and the battle is not done. And when you take life by the God-handle, then nothing can separate you from Him. Just a few sentences before Paul wrote these words, he wrote, "If God be for us, who can

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be against us?" You know, I mentioned the Titanic. I crossed the Atlantic once on the Queen Elizabeth, not the little QE2, but the big Queen Elizabeth. It's 105,000 tons, 1,000 feet long, 16 decks, 2,300 passengers, 1,700 crew.

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I was standing one day on the deck with a purser and I said to him, "Suppose the order came right now to stop the ship, how long would it take to bring it to a stop?" Oh, he smiled. If the order came right now, why, we would hardly even slow down for a mile.

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You see, when you're dealing with a ship like the Queen, you have to think at least a mile ahead. That's exactly what Paul calls us to. We cannot know the future and we cannot control the future, but we can prepare for it.

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We can begin one mile ahead. We can remind ourselves that God owns it. We're like the apprentices to artists and we paint the best kind of picture we know how and at bedtime we go off the slumber and while we sleep, the master artist comes and

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touches up our pictures until they become so much more than they were when we were done with them. What I'm trying to say to you in the last minutes of 1985 is that the God who was the God of this year is the God who's the God of next and nothing can separate us from him.

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Sometimes when you're traveling in the big jets, the really big ones, you discover you land much ahead of time. The computer says that your estimated time of arrival should be at such and such a time and you get there 50 minutes early.

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And if you ask why that is so, how the computer could be off, the answer is, well, the computer did not take into account the fact that we happen to get into an upper level power flow. Sometimes those planes flying so high get caught up by gigantic tailwinds that propel the plane faster than any computer would imagine it could go.

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Tonight as you approach this table, you're approaching an upper level power flow. Tonight you can, as it were, plug into that power. Paul says that we become in Christ new creatures, that all old things have passed away and that all becomes new.

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That means that at this table, a new you can meet a new year and both you and the year will be in God's hands. Sometimes life hurts. We were never promised it would be easy, but we have been promised that if God is for us,

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nothing can finally defeat us. And we have been promised that nothing that is to come can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray.

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number 18. [BLANK_AUDIO]