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[Silence] Lift him up. Number 411, in your hymn, lift him up. [sniff] [ Music ]

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Let us all stand. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]

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[ Music ] ♪ All to preach the message ♪ ♪ In a very mighty heart ♪ ♪ And so we must sing today ♪

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♪ That love is rising up ♪ ♪ From the earth and from our days ♪ ♪ Up to me ♪ ♪ Oh lift it up ♪

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♪ Lift it up ♪ ♪ This peace from eternal peace ♪ ♪ Our God and land is in you ♪ ♪ And the earth, our home, will go to you ♪

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♪ For the world is hungry ♪ ♪ For the living bread ♪ ♪ Give the Savior a comfort to sleep ♪ ♪ But still I use the devil's words ♪

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♪ And he says I'm all alone in the heart of me ♪ ♪ Oh lift me up ♪ ♪ Lift me up ♪ ♪ To be free from the devil's deeds ♪

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♪ Oh God if I could lift me up from the earth ♪ ♪ And draw all men unto me ♪ ♪ Lift him up ♪ ♪ Lift him up ♪

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♪ 'Til his spirit from eternity ♪ ♪ And I, if I be lifted up ♪ ♪ From the earth ♪ ♪ I'll draw all men ♪

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Here this word is recorded in 2nd Corinthians, the 12th chapter, and the first six verses, Using the living Bible paraphrased. This boasting is all so foolish, but let me go on. Let me tell you about the visions I've had and revelations from the Lord.

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years ago I was taken up to heaven for a visit. Don't ask me whether my body was there or just my spirit for I don't know. Only God can answer that. But anyway there I was in paradise and and heard things so astounding that they are beyond a man's power to describe or put in words. And anyway, I'm not allowed to tell them to others.

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That experience is something worth bragging about, but I'm not going to do it. it. I am going to boast only about how weak I am and how great God is to use such weakness for his glory. I have plenty to boast about and would be no fool in doing it, but I don't want anyone to think more highly of me than he should from what he can actually see in

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my life and in my message. Thus endeth the reading of the scripture. The subject of the message, Paul the uplifted. Paul the uplifted.

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Paul is one of the most outstanding converts to the Christian faith in the first century. He is one to whom we are greatly indebted, but one cannot prayerfully study the life and work of this great Christian without becoming an admirer of his keen intellect and his profound

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conceptions. One of the things about Paul is that his heart was as wonderful as his brain. He has determined the course of the history of Europe for 2,000 years. And this whole world would be different had Paul never lived. He was great in mind. His intellectual equipment was superb. His breadth of vision was unprecedented. He saw into the

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soul of things. He could unerringly separate the incidental from the essential, the temporal from the timeless. He saw the true meaning of Christianity and proclaimed the universality of the gospel. He saw the greatness of the church. So it might be said of Paul that he stands as a lonely tower in his

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contribution to the development of the early Christian Church because he was uplifted because he was uplifted. And that is why I have chosen to entitle this message, Paul the Uplifted.

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For he was lifted up from the narrow and particularistic thinking of his contemporaries. He gave himself unreservedly to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he preached that people outside

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the boundaries of Palestine may come to know the Lord. Here is a man who possessed unusual spiritual power because at the foundation of his life there was a deep and abiding religious experience that strengthened him. Oh, Paul himself describes it in this fashion when he says, "I was caught up into the third

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heaven, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know, God knows. And I heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. I know a man that was caught up into the third heaven. Let's look at the early development of this man.

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About 15 years after the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, another boy was born in the city of Tarshish. He was born into a family of the tribe of Benjamin. He was circumcised on the eighth day and given the Hebrew name Saul after the first king of Israel. Tarshish was the capital of Cilicia. It was in Tarsus that Saul spent his youth. He was

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born a Roman citizen so it's by his Roman name Paul that he is best known. Tarsus was the melting pot for both the Jewish and Greek cultures and because of this Saul as a lad learned to speak both languages Greek and Hebrew. Jews and Gentiles got along together well in Tarsus in fact they got along better

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there than in almost any other great city in the Roman Empire. And this you see peculiarly fitted Paul for the work which he was to do later in life. Saul's parents were pious Jews and zealous Pharisees and plans were made for him early in life to have rabbinical training. Like many men who leave home to

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secure college training, Saul left his home in Tarshish and journeyed to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel, one of the most distinguished teachers of that day. In addition to that he learned a trade, the art of tent making, which would permit him to earn his livelihood. But one of the weaknesses of the Pharisees

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was that they were concerned about spiritual fellowship with God, not as as they should have been, but that they were guilty of talking about having spiritual fellowship with God and yet they were specializing primarily in outward forms of religion that had to deal more with meticulous details and they had become so involved in these

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meticulous details and they had focused all of their energies on these things and they were neglecting those weightier matters. Saul became a great champion of the beliefs of Phariseeism. But suddenly there appeared on the scene a religious group peculiar in their worship and possessing a different interpretation of

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the established religion and they were followers of one whom they called Jesus. They claimed that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, and that he had risen from the dead. It was not long before this group was brought face to face with the opposition of the Pharisees. It was Stephen, a deacon in the

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early church, who with boldness of spirit and fluency of speech defended the Christian cause and here we find Saul present holding the coats of those who stone Stephen who becomes the first martyr of the Christian Church. And so strong was Paul's opposition to the Christians that he was commissioned to

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carry out a house-to-house search for other followers of Jesus. Many of them fled to Damascus but Saul set out for that city with letters from the high priest giving him authority to bring back to Jerusalem any Christian he found in Damascus. As Saul and his company rode gallantly toward Damascus in search of

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Christians whom they might persecute, Spirit of Christ was riding its way into Saul's soul. And there shone round about him a great light, even though it was noon, that this light was a heavenly light that was not only light that was around him it was light that was within and as it appeared he heard a voice from

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heaven saying Saul, Saul why persecutest thou me? And he said who art thou Lord? I am Jesus whom thou persecutest and then Saul fell from his beast and he cried out, "Lord what will you have me to do?" It was that experience, that experience of Jesus Christ in his life, that mysterious happening on the

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Damascus Road that completely changed his life. And he came to speak of it saying later that I was obedient to the heavenly vision. It was this experience that changed his life. Now some people had a great deal to say about it. They've had something to say about it. Some say it was a trance. Some say it was a dream.

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Some say it was a nightmare. Some say it was an epileptic fit. But 14 years later Paul says modestly as he writes to the Corinthians in this 12th chapter, he says speaking of himself in the third person, he says, "I know a man who was caught up in the third heaven, lifted up from acting like a child of God on the

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outside to being a child of God on the inside. So little did I become, so much taken out of self was I that I do not know whether it was in the body or out of the body only God knows but I discovered that I had been blind to the higher vision and unheeding to the inward voice of God's Spirit but I thank

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God that I was caught up into the third heaven yes lifted up from the hypocrisy of the Pharisees to the sincerity of the Christians. This is the end of Saul the Pharisee and the beginning of Paul the Christian. Paul was swept off his feet. His idea of religion and of himself underwent a great transformation. His

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companions led him by hand, by the hand, into Damascus because he was blinded by that experience. Dazed as he was, he could not eat or see and it was Ananias who gave him courage and welcomed him into the Christian fellowship. Paul got up from his bed and accepted baptism and joined the brotherhood. Here we find him

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going from Damascus to Arabia and there like Jesus he wrestles in the wilderness with the devils of ambition and self-display and he emerges victorious And at the end of his stay in Arabia, Paul returns to the city of Damascus, preaching the gospel of the risen Christ.

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So enraged did the Jews become over Paul's preaching, so disturbed were they that they decided that they would kill him. And Paul tells about it. He tells of the experience that he had when they were in wait to

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take his life, that somehow he was miraculously delivered by one who was taken and let down over the walls of the city in a basket. God has a way of protecting his own. Somehow when we are faithful in the service of God, the dangers are there. We find that we encounter reverses in life,

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we find things going against us, but God has a way of protecting his own. And so Paul goes on into the work. He becomes an outstanding leader in carrying the gospel to those who are outside of Jerusalem, who are outside not only Jerusalem but who are outside the boundaries of Palestine. Oh, he goes on

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proclaiming the universality of the gospel. He tells men of different races, of different cultures, of different backgrounds. God loves you. God is not partial to the Jew.

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God loves everybody. And that's his message. He travels everywhere that is possible for him in his time to bring the impact of the Christian gospel to bear upon those where he goes.

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Many listen and believe and become Christians. Oh, he goes on, he takes the gospel and establishes churches in Galatia, in Philippi, in Thessalonica, in Corinth, in Berea, in Athens, in Ephesus,

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and finally he establishes churches in Rome, the very seat of the empire. And he says that this is done with much suffering. with much suffering.

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And he faced a great deal of opposition. Life gets hard no matter who you are, where you are. Life gets hard. Whenever you set yourself to do something that's worthwhile,

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whenever you give yourself to really walking up the King's Highway, there are some difficulties along that way. It gets hard.

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And Paul encounters those difficulties, and yet in the midst of it, he tells us that he is strengthened by the Spirit of God. He says, now I've had a difficult time.

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Things haven't been easy for me. People said, now look, Paul. Say, you know, you call yourself an apostle, but you're not one who was in that apostolic band

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known as the 12 disciples of Jesus. You weren't in that number. You didn't walk with the master as one of those 12. You weren't in his class.

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You weren't there when he broke the loaves and took the fishes and multiplied it. You weren't there. And Paul says, no, I wasn't there.

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I didn't have the blessed privilege of walking with him in the flesh. That's right, I wasn't. He said, "But nevertheless, I'm an apostle." Nevertheless, even though I was not one who saw him in the flesh, nevertheless, I know him because I met him. I met him in the spirit. And I, I know one who 14 years ago was caught up in the spirit. And you know that's important.

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was caught up in the spirit. You know they talk about whether religion ought to be taught. And we emphasize that religion ought to be taught. We have our Sunday school classes, we have our training union, we have our mission classes, and all of that's important to teach religion. That's very important. And Paul could have boasted about that, but he doesn't. He could

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have boasted. He said, "Now look, what do they have? I've got all the things these people who talking about they have, they begin to talk about their credentials. I've got some credentials too!" He said, "Oh I could talk about what I have if you want to talk about credentials. I'm a Jew just as those who are talking about me. I am of the tribe of Benjamin. I was

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circumcised on the eighth day. I've been a rigid observer of the law. I've got all of the credentials and not only that I sat at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most distinguished teachers of my, I have all of that. I have all of the degrees I can boast of that he says but I don't want to boast of these things. What I really

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want to boast of is what Jesus means to me. He said I know, I know because I was caught up and you see that's that's really what makes religion meaningful is to be caught up no matter how well we've been taught and how well we can memorize verses in the scripture what really is important is whether or not

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we've been caught up in the spirit and you see that there are times when you're gonna be down you've been Paul knew what it was to be down in the valley he'd been down there in fact he tells us about it he begins to catalog it he says Now you know five times, five times I was beaten and they gave me 39 lashes.

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The rule was to give 40 lashes but they always gave 39 for fear they missed the count and violated the law. They'd only give 39. You say I've had that experience five times of being beaten with the lash.

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my flesh being ripped and torn and riveted by the lice. I've had that experience. I've been down in the valley. I've been buked and I've been scone. I've had that experience, he says, five times. And then not only that, he said three times I was beaten with rods. The penalty was more intense. And then he said, "Well, I've been shipwrecked three times."

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I've been out there on a ship wrecked three times. I've been out there at night and a day without food. I know what it is to be down in the valley. He said I know my life has been threatened. I have been at the very jaws of death. I know what it is to be down in the valley. He said, "But what I really want to boast about is that I know also what it is

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to be caught up in the Spirit." You know sometimes you can be on a sickbed. Sometimes it can be when you have heavy burdens and when life seems to be all all around you and yet somehow God has a way of catching us up in the Spirit. And we are taken out of ourselves and God gives us a vision of his glory and of his power and of his

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presence being caught up and when you're caught up, when you're really caught up in the Spirit. You really don't belong to yourself when you are caught up. You are grasped by the eternal and you can't help yourself. You know there's some people who can run from church to church, they can drop out of the

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church, they can be active or they can not be active, it really doesn't matter. It's because they really haven't been caught up. Because when you've been caught up you are grasped by the Spirit and sometimes when you don't feel like doing it you do anyhow because you're caught up and somehow you are taken out of

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yourself and you're not concerned first about yourself but you are concerned about God and his glory you're caught up caught up caught up See, he said, "Oh, I saw visions. It was such a wonderful experience. I've been on the mountaintop. I've been caught up in grass by the Eternal. I've somehow been

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possessed by the Spirit of Righteousness. I've been caught by the Spirit of God. And in this experience, it has made my life different. It's changed. I've been I've been lifted. I've been lifted.

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That's what religion is. I'm talking about the Christian faith. It's a lift. It's a lift.

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Talk about an elevator, the Germans have a word for that, and it really means a lift. You can be down in the basement, but you step on the elevator and it takes you on up.

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It's a lift. And that's what God does through the Christian faith. down in the dumps, but he gives you a lift, lifts you out of those dumps. You can be down there where it's dark and where it's gloomy and where you're depressed, but somehow he

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lifts you up and permits you to see the mountaintop of his glory. He lifted me. That's the song, say, "From sinking sands he lifted me, he lifted me." Oh, if there's anything we ought to be able to boast about, ought not be our material possessions,

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because they appreciate and depreciate. It may be worth something more tomorrow, it may be worth less the next day. It just changes.

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But when you're grasped by the eternal, God doesn't change. And he's always there to lift us. He's always there to comfort us. He's always there to strengthen us.

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And that's what Paul told, oh, he is lifted up. And so he's able to do so much because he's not only one who has been taught, but he's been caught. Taught and caught.

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Paul, the uplifted. Have you been lifted? Has he lifted you? Has he lifted you from the waters

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that would have drowned you? Has he somehow lifted you up and has he placed you on a solid foundation? The psalmist says, "Well, I was in the muck and I was in the mire, but he took me up from the muck and the mire.

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Took me up, took me out, took me up and placed my feet on a solid rock and put a new song in my mouth." I was caught up, caught up to be caught to be lifted. That's the joy of being a child of God, is to be caught by His Spirit.

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And so as we come now to the invitation, higher ground, hymn 309, we ask that you would make decision for Jesus Christ, ask you to come give your life to him, ask you to yield to that spirit that would grasp us wherever we are. We might make the journey safely, be caught by his spirit. I'm pressing on the upward way,

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new heights I'm gaining every day what you come now as we extend the privilege of the church won't you accept Jesus watch what you permit him to grasp your life what you come down what you come [ Music ]

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I'm facing home, I'm facing home. I'm a woman, and I am home. Born with my feet on my ground. ♪ I'm dressing all clear for the way ♪

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♪ Though I'm sun-kissed in every day ♪ ♪ Still praying that my old horse will ride ♪ ♪ Lord, I'm glad to be on higher ground ♪ ♪ Lord, I'm glad to be young ♪

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♪ Lord, I'm glad to be safe ♪ ♪ I'm glad to be on the edge ♪ ♪ I'm glad to stay for a while ♪ ♪ Oh, I am brave ♪

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♪ And I am proud ♪ ♪ Oh, I'm glad to find me on a higher ground ♪ ♪ My heart has known ♪ ♪ These lines to say ♪

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♪ And that's alright ♪ ♪ I'm here to stay ♪ ♪ Oh, some may dwell ♪ ♪ Where the earth around ♪

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♪ But where my hate is high around ♪ ♪ Oh lift me up ♪ ♪ And let me stand ♪ ♪ Oh let ♪

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♪ Let's take the plunge ♪ ♪ I am ready ♪ ♪ There I am bound ♪ ♪ Lord, at my feet ♪

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♪ Oh, I am found ♪ - Amen. That's what it means to be lifted up, to be caught up in the spirit of God.

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Let us listen now to the report of our church clerk, Pastor, we have Sister Wynette Salls, who is a student here, attending the University of Texas, and she would like to join on the watch here. From Greater Bethlehem Baptist, Reverend Bryant.

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All right. This is my home church. that when that Saul's comes to unite with our church on the basis of our Christian experience,

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Sister Saul would you stand? All who are in favor of receiving her as she has applied, would you say aye? - Aye.

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- Opposed no, it's carried. Sister Saul, we are happy to have you. God bless you as together we seek to work out our soul salvation in serving our Lord and our King.

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May God bless you as you work with us and we want to work with you when all of us work with the Lord in carrying out his will. Amen.

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Let's all say amen. Amen. I think here is an announcement which I neglected to make concerning the M.W. Mount Carmel Grand Lodge,

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AF and AM musical, there's a musical rather, that is to be given on Tuesday night. That's Tuesday night of this week at 730 at David Chapel Baptist Church.

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It features our choir, our chancellor choir and other choirs of the city. Brother I, a Craig Jr. 33rd degree Mason is the grandmaster and brother RL Grant Garrett, senior 33rd degree Mason is president. of the music department. So that's on Tuesday night of this week at David Chapel Baptist Church.

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May we bow our heads. Gracious God our Father we thank you that you do provide a lift for us along life's way. Though we may descend to the valley, that you give us that lift, that lift not only out of the dark valleys, but over the steep hills, that lift that enables us to have joy, that the Apostle Paul speaks of is such a great experience that it's almost

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indescribable, grant that we may continually seek to be grasped by your spirit, we may be caught by your love, by your faith, and by that hope which is eternal. Now unto him who is able to keep you from falling and present you faultless before his glorious presence with exceeding joy to the only wise God our Father be glory

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and majesty dominion and power now and forevermore. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]