00:00:00.000 - 00:00:32.640

What to do when your spiritual goal has got up and went. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. To take our scripture lesson this morning from a translation which is not usually used, The Living Letters of Kenneth Taylor. I choose this particular translation or paraphrase, not because I would make a regular practice of using it in worship, but because the passage

00:00:32.640 - 00:00:57.560

which is before us this morning is a very difficult one. And the King James, while faithful to the text, uses some words which are rather difficult to understand in the sense of the passage. So this morning I want to use a more modern translation as we read the sixth chapter of Hebrews. And it may be, if you have your own version with you, you would like to follow

00:00:57.560 - 00:01:26.080

along in it. "Let us stop going over and over again the same old ground, always teaching those first lessons about Christ. Let us go on instead to other things, and become mature in our understanding, as strong Christians ought to be. Surely we don't need to speak further about the foolishness of trying to be saved by being good, or about the necessity

00:01:26.080 - 00:01:49.160

of faith in God. We don't need further instruction about baptism and church membership, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. But Lord willing, we will go on now to other things. There's no use trying to bring you back to the Lord again if you have once understood the good news, and tasted for yourself the good things of heaven, and shared in the Holy

00:01:49.160 - 00:02:13.960

Spirit, and know how good the word of God is, and felt the mighty powers of the world to come, and then have turned against God. You cannot bring yourself to repent again if you have nailed the Son of God to the cross again by rejecting him, holding him up to mocking and to public shame. When a farmer's land has had many showers upon it, and good

00:02:13.960 - 00:02:35.840

crops come up, that land has God's blessing upon it. But if it keeps on having crops of thistles and thorns, the land is considered no good, and is ready for condemnation and burning off. Dear friends, even though I'm talking like this, I really don't believe that what I'm saying applies to you. I am confident you

00:02:35.840 - 00:03:02.840

are producing the good fruit that comes along with your salvation. For God is not unfair. How can he forget your hard work for him, or forget the way you used to show your love for him, and still do, by helping his children? And we are anxious that you keep right on loving others as long as life lasts, so that you will get your full reward. Then, knowing

00:03:02.840 - 00:03:32.680

what lies ahead of you, you won't become bored with being a Christian, nor become spiritually dull and indifferent. But you will be anxious to follow the example of those who receive all that God has promised them, because of their strong faith and patience. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word.

00:03:32.680 - 00:04:13.440

Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I want to speak this morning to the theme, "What to do when your spiritual go has gone up and went." And I want to begin by expressing my appreciation to those of you who have pointed out the, shall we say, syntactic infelicity of that sentence. I might reply in the words

00:04:13.440 - 00:04:37.520

of the famed television commercial, "What do you want, good grammar or good taste?" But I'm not so sure that the title represents good taste, and I'm very sure it doesn't represent good grammar. I've used that title, however, because it does sum up what I want to talk about this morning. I get a letter from a lady in our congregation, a fine Christian

00:04:37.520 - 00:05:05.560

lady. And in the course of this long letter, she comes to a closing paragraph, and in the midst of that closing paragraph is this sentence. "Having tasted the joy of forgiveness from sin, am I now defeated, because I've grown weary battling all those nasty sins that wear away at one's victory." Do you hear what she's saying? She's getting tired of the ongoing

00:05:05.560 - 00:05:31.400

battle of discipleship, and she kind of feels as if, well, as if her spiritual go has gone up and went. Or I go a few weeks ago to visit a man here in Glendale, a very fine Christian man, not a member of this congregation, but a man who's known very serious illness in the last weeks, perilous illness, close to death. And in the midst of his period of time

00:05:31.400 - 00:05:52.400

in the hospital, he was overwhelmed by a sense of despair. For the first time in his life, he just couldn't seem to pray. His prayers were splattered all over the ceiling of his hospital room, but they went no higher than that, and he was afraid, and he couldn't sleep, and he felt in the grip of a pervading anxiety. And even now when he talks about this, his

00:05:52.400 - 00:06:16.080

eyes mist over. It was such a frightening experience to him. He knew what it was in the midst of that situation to feel that his spiritual go was no longer with him. Or a young college girl who's a member of our college department comes to one of our seminarians. She just met the Lord a little over a year ago. She goes to a non-Christian campus, and

00:06:16.080 - 00:06:38.480

most of her friends are not Christian. And she's constantly in circumstances and situations that are sucking her away from the Savior, that are leading her to drift into the paths of what we would call unrighteousness. And in the midst of this kind of temptation and this kind of spiritual vicissitude, she puts her foot on the gas pedal of her spirit, and

00:06:38.480 - 00:07:05.400

all she gets is a cough or a sputter. And that's a very frightening thing, to have the experience of knowing in one moment or another that, well, that your spiritual go seems to have gotten up and went. Now we don't know who wrote the letter to the Hebrews. Some say it's Ariston, some say

00:07:05.400 - 00:07:29.800

it's Paul, some say it's Apollos, some say it's Aquila and Priscilla. We don't know who wrote it. But we know many things about the person who wrote it. And one of the things we know about this person is that they sometime in their life had the experience that I just described. The experience of reaching out for faith and discovering that their faith

00:07:29.800 - 00:08:00.160

was not giving to them the power that they expected. Whoever wrote this epistle, he knew what it was to be in the doldrums of spiritual deadness, of spiritual aridity. And he also knew how to get out of that position. And he tells us how to get out of that position in this epistle. He speaks to Christians, and he says, "This is the way to get your

00:08:00.160 - 00:08:29.120

spiritual go again." I want you to notice that he is writing to Christians. He is not writing to non-Christians. He is not writing to unbelievers. He is not writing to those who have been utterly unwilling to risk anything in the name of Jesus Christ. Teddy Roosevelt, one of our most exciting presidents, wrote on one occasion that he would rather win great

00:08:29.120 - 00:08:58.320

victories or lose great defeats than dwell in that gray twilight which never knew either victory or defeat. Well, there are some people like that. They never make the risk of real faithful involvement. They never make the investment of real significant and sacrificial service. They never open themselves up sacrificially to the full power of God moving through them.

00:08:58.320 - 00:09:21.160

They play a game of casual and careless commitment. I call it "sitting down commitment," because they sit down in church and worship, or they sit down in Sunday school and let someone else do the teaching, or they sit down and write a check, which usually isn't very sacrificial, to say the least, or they sit down on their hands and let other people carry on the work

00:09:21.160 - 00:09:48.240

of the kingdom enterprise. They're sit-down people. Well, it's not to those people that this man is writing. He is writing to the committed Christian who's thrown his life in a magnificent gamble on Jesus Christ, and at some point in the midst of that gamble he feels to one degree or another that his spiritual power is being dissipated, is being

00:09:48.240 - 00:10:23.400

spread too thin. He feels that his spiritual go has got up and went. And to that person the writer of Hebrews says four things. He says, first of all, "Remember that your crying out for your spiritual go is itself a sign of spiritual sensitivity." He says this in the ninth verse of the chapter which we just read. "Beloved," he writes, "I am confident

00:10:23.400 - 00:10:48.280

you are producing the good fruit that comes along with your salvation." He does not begin with an accusation. He does not begin with a criticism or a charge. He says, "Beloved," and then having said that he goes on to say, "I am confident that the fruits of faithfulness are going to be produced in your life." And how does he have this confidence? He has this

00:10:48.280 - 00:11:19.320

confidence because he hears these persons crying out for a greater power of the Spirit in their lives. And you don't make that kind of cry unless you are spiritually alive. Let me put it to you in these terms. There is only one sin that's unforgivable. That's the sin against the Holy Spirit. Now that sin is unforgivable not because God does not want

00:11:19.320 - 00:11:43.800

to forgive it, but because he can't forgive it. You see the Holy Spirit is the agent of God's forgiveness. If a person rejects that Spirit, they reject God's forgiveness. God wants to forgive them, but he can't forgive them, for they reject that forgiveness. Now of course he could overwhelm them. He could knock them flat and say, "I'll forgive you

00:11:43.800 - 00:12:07.240

whether you want to be forgiven or not." But God never violates our freedom. He wants our love because we want to love him, not because we're forced to love him. So a person can turn on the forgiving grace of God and not accept it. And that sin is unforgivable by definition. Now occasionally some people come to me and they're very worried about whether

00:12:07.240 - 00:12:31.400

they have committed the sin against the Holy Spirit. And as soon as I hear them ask that question I stop worrying about them. Because you see, no one who had committed that sin would be worried about whether they committed it. If you don't care about being forgiven by God, you would never be worried about whether in point of fact you've been forgiven or not.

00:12:31.400 - 00:13:00.640

The very fact that a person is concerned about whether he's in a right relationship with God is evidence at least that the beginning of that relationship is there. Else they would not be worried. Think of David. Now here's a man who murders a husband and then sleeps with his wife. A double sin. Murder, adultery. And then he's overwhelmed with an awesome

00:13:00.640 - 00:13:29.680

sense of guilt. And in the midst of this tremendous sense of guilt, this tremendous sense of being without God, he sits down and he writes a prayer. It's the prayer we now call the 51st Psalm. And in the midst of that 51st Psalm he puts these words, "Take not thy Holy Spirit from me." David you see is so overwhelmed with his sense of guilt that he cries out,

00:13:29.680 - 00:13:57.360

"Don't take your Spirit away from me." But look at the very psalm in which he writes those words. It's one of the most magnificent Spirit-filled passages in all the scriptures. In other words, the very moment when David is crying out for forgiveness, the power of the Spirit moving through his life is dramatically and dynamically evident, and his cry is the

00:13:57.360 - 00:14:25.440

evidence of the power of that Spirit. Well think of it in terms of Calvary. "There came a moment on that cross when the weight of all the world's sins settled on his shoulders. And there was no beauty in that moment, only ugliness. And there was no hope in that moment, only death. And there was nothing in that moment that was lovely, only that which was

00:14:25.440 - 00:14:56.440

hideous. And in that moment Christ cried out the words which have been traditionally described as the cry of desolation, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I've thought about those words many times, but I don't think I ever really got to the center of them, until one day I wandered into a back chapel of the St. Geronimo's

00:14:56.440 - 00:15:23.200

Church in Lisbon, Portugal. And in the back chapel there's a picture of Christ on the cross at just that moment when he cries out, "My God, my God." And as I stood and looked at that painting, I noticed that the artist had put all kinds of black and forbidding and ominous clouds behind the cross. And as I looked at those clouds I discovered that

00:15:23.200 - 00:16:01.880

he had woven into those clouds the very arms of God coming down to encircle his Son. So that at the very moment when Jesus cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" God was perhaps never closer. And that's the reason why a moment later Jesus could say, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit." You see, the very reason for the cry, that

00:16:01.880 - 00:16:42.000

which motivates us to say, "God, my spiritual goal is going," that's evidence that we care about spiritual goal. That's evidence of spiritual sensitivity, and that's where the author of Hebrews begins. "Remember that your very concern is testimony to some spiritual health in you." And he goes on to say this, "Remember, too, that God always focuses on your finest hours."

00:16:42.000 - 00:17:09.440

He says this in the next verse, the tenth verse. "God is not unfair. How can he forget your hard work for him, the way you showed your love?" Henry Ford once asked a colleague of his who his best friend was. And the colleague began to deliberate and debate and evaluate various names, and Ford interrupted him and said, "Wait a minute. I'll tell you who your

00:17:09.440 - 00:17:40.440

best friend is. Your best friend is the one who gets the best out of you." By that definition, my friends, Jesus Christ is the best friend anyone ever had. For Jesus Christ always draws the best out of us, and he draws the best out of us because he focuses on the finest in us. What did Jesus see when he looked at Zacchaeus? Not a stealthy, sniveling old tax

00:17:40.440 - 00:18:11.400

collector, but a man who by the depth of his sacrifice could win a town. What does Jesus see when he looks at Peter? A bumbling, loud-mouthed, shifting sand fisherman? No. But one on whom whose rock of commitment the whole church could be built. What does Jesus see when he looks at Mary Magdalene? A cheap, scarlet woman of the streets? Or one whose active

00:18:11.400 - 00:18:46.000

devotions would inspire people for ten times ten centuries? What did Jesus see when he looked at Nicodemus? A legalistic, curiosity-ridden Pharisee? Or a man who really wanted to know what was truth? Jesus, you see, always looked at what was best in an individual. And just so when God looks at our lives, even when we feel we're in the spiritual doldrums, he

00:18:46.000 - 00:19:15.520

does not forget the good things we have done. He focuses on our finest hours. Henry David Thoreau, the New England transcendentalist, in his masterpiece Walden, asks this question. Have you ever thought how much you would have missed had you not been born? That's a good question. The moon was orange on Tuesday night. You would have missed it had you never been

00:19:15.520 - 00:19:42.480

born. The streets of Glendale a few days ago were royal purple when the Jacaranda was in bloom. You would have missed that if you'd never been born. You'd have never seen the lines that love carves in a countenance. You'd have never felt the chubby finger of a little girl holding on to one finger of your hand. School's out now, and the schoolyards and

00:19:42.480 - 00:20:05.360

the front yards and the backyards are full of kids. And their eyes are filled with stars and their hair is filled with sunlight, and they're surrounded with clouds of freedom and happiness. And you would have missed it all had you never been born. Now I'm not one to presume that I can improve upon the questions of David Thoreau, but I think I can ask a

00:20:05.360 - 00:20:31.320

question that's as relevant as that one. And my question would be this. Have you ever pondered why you've been born? What the purpose in your being born is? Everything we as human beings do has a purpose. And so if we are smart enough to do things because they have purpose, we can certainly assume that God is. And that means God has made you, God has

00:20:31.320 - 00:21:00.320

put you in this place, in this time, in this circumstance, with some definite purpose. And have you ever paused to ponder what that purpose is? And have you ever paused to ponder that like any other father, God always focuses on you in terms of the way you're fulfilling that purpose? How does a father look at his son in terms of all the things the boy does

00:21:00.320 - 00:21:25.280

wrong? Only if he's a poor excuse for a father. No, he looks at his son in terms of all the possibilities that are in him, in terms of all the things he does right, in terms of all his hopes for that son and dreams for that son, in terms of all the capacities which bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh he has put into that son. And that's just the

00:21:25.280 - 00:21:52.680

way God looks at us as his children. And he looks at all the possibilities that are in us. And he looks at all those moments when we've lived up to those possibilities. All those times when we've done the things that are worthy and beautiful and full of good report. That's what God focuses on. So when you get spiritually down and you find yourself

00:21:52.680 - 00:22:27.800

in commitment cellar, remember that when God looks at you, he's looking at your finest hours and measuring you in terms of those. There's an old legend which I think sums it beautifully of a Italian who was an acrobat in a circus. And he left the circus and became a monk. But he was a failure as a monk. He

00:22:27.800 - 00:22:54.920

wasn't a very smart fellow. He couldn't even learn the Lord's Prayer. He was always making liturgical blunders of one kind or another, missing the appointed hours of devotion. He was a complete catastrophe insofar as being a monk was concerned. And one night in great despair, feeling so far short of having satisfied God, he went to the chapel after everyone

00:22:54.920 - 00:23:31.120

else had retired. And there before the great wooden crucifix, he did the one thing for Christ which he could do well. He did his acrobatics. He did every stand and every fall and every roll that he knew. And he did them as best he could. And when he was done, he fell exhausted to the ground. And the stone wall stood silent, and the stained glass did

00:23:31.120 - 00:24:14.360

not blink its colored eyes, and the candles flickered but did not say anything. And then Christ stepped down from the cross, wiped his perspiring brow, and said, "Well done." Well there are times when you feel like your spiritual life is nothing more than a stunt, and not a very good one. But remember that God bends low and remembers what's finest

00:24:14.360 - 00:24:47.120

in you, and says, Christian brother or sister, "Well done." Please turn your cassette to the other side. Focus on your goals, on the rewards that are going to be yours. The writer of the Hebrews puts it very specifically in the eleventh verse. "Keep right on loving others, so that

00:24:47.120 - 00:25:18.520

you will get your full reward." Now the Christian, and remember these words are addressed to Christians, has two great rewards. First he has the reward of seeing the fruit of his service in the lives of those whom he serves. I was talking to David Ingram, who's the leader of the Pilgrim Twenty group. Not a private conversation, I was talking with him in front

00:25:18.520 - 00:25:46.040

of about eighty high school young people who were gathered in John and Virginia Headland's backyard last Wednesday night, and we were having a little testimony time. Now the Pilgrims have just completed a ninety-day tour of about a hundred and fifty campuses in the Midwest, and in that ninety days they played three hundred and six concerts. If you've seen them

00:25:46.040 - 00:26:11.160

play a concert, you know that takes a lot of energy. And in that time, incidentally, there were over fifteen hundred decisions for Christ on the basis of their witness and thrill. In any case, I was talking to David and I said, "Three hundred concerts in ninety days. You must be exhausted by that grind. What keeps you going? What excitement is there

00:26:11.160 - 00:26:37.080

in this that charges you up when you start to run down?" "Oh," he said, "that's easy. What keeps us going is seeing that person come down the aisle and offer themselves to Jesus Christ." Now I should have expected that he'd say that, because David is a devoted Christian boy, as are the other boys and girls in the group, and I should have anticipated

00:26:37.080 - 00:26:59.320

that because I know them, but also because I know myself. You know, it used to be in the early days of the Church you preached when you felt inspired. In other words, you weren't expected to preach every week. You felt inspired, and when you felt inspired, that's when you preached. Now we don't do that anymore. Now we have preachers who are

00:26:59.320 - 00:27:25.880

automatically to be inspired every Sunday morning. It makes no difference what the week in the Church has been like or what the week in their own life has been like. At 930 and 11 o'clock in the Glendale Presbyterian Church, I am supposed to be inspired and inspiring. And that's a very difficult task. I despise writing sermons. I really hate it. Sometimes

00:27:25.880 - 00:27:52.480

I walk around my office for 20 minutes before I sit down at my desk, and that's no joke. It's because I don't want to sit there. I love to preach, but I hate the preparation that's necessary for preaching. And only one thing really keeps me at it. That's the fact that every once in a while, by the grace of God, someone comes to me and says, "The Holy

00:27:52.480 - 00:28:23.720

Spirit used your words to clean my soul." You see, if you keep your eyes focused on that reward, that gives you spiritual go again. But we not only look at our earthly reward, we look at our heavenly reward also. We look at the kingdom of heaven, which is going to be ours, and the greatest blessing of the kingdom of heaven, which is going to be to

00:28:23.720 - 00:28:51.040

be with Jesus Christ. That's the one note that the New Testament strikes again and again and again about heaven. "We shall see him as he is. Blessed are the pure in spirit, for they shall see God." What does it say of the servants of God in Revelation? "They shall see his face." And that's going to be marvelous. To be with Christ, to know that

00:28:51.040 - 00:29:21.920

glory. An event happened this last week in our staff which took me back. On the day that I began my first work in my first church, a Tuesday, 1959, my father's mother died. So that the first funeral I ever conducted as an ordained minister was of my own grandmother. And she

00:29:21.920 - 00:29:52.360

had worked very hard to see me through into the ministry. She gave me the Bible, which I still use more today than any other of the many different versions and translations that I have to have. She was buried on a Saturday. That's Saturday. And the next day I was to preach my first sermon in my new church. And the whole family was going to be there. And

00:29:52.360 - 00:30:22.280

when I stepped into the pulpit, none of the family was there. And when the service was over I went to my office and called my home only to discover that my mother's mother, my other grandmother, had died while dressing to come to hear me preach my first sermon. So the second sermon of my second funeral of my ordained ministry was of my other grandmother.

00:30:22.280 - 00:31:00.520

And she too devoted herself to my coming into the ministry. The robe that I'm wearing now was her gift, although she never got to see me wear it. Now they loved me very much. I know that to some of you that may sound strange, but remember please that those who are the greatest lovers need the least lovable person to love. So they loved me very much. And their

00:31:00.520 - 00:31:36.840

greatest reward, to hear them speak of it, was for me to go into the ministry. And they did not see me in my first church. And I miss them very much. But how good God is. Will you see what he did? They knew that I was in that church. They had the reward of seeing the mission which was theirs accomplished. And then, in a twinkling of an eye, they were

00:31:36.840 - 00:32:16.960

taken to the more magnificent reward of seeing and being with the Lord Jesus Christ. They were great ladies. And they were great ladies because they always had their eyes fixed on the goals of their service on earth, and the reward for their service in heaven. That kept their "go" quotient high. And the author to Hebrews says one last thing. He says if you

00:32:16.960 - 00:32:48.640

want to gain your "go" again, keep an eye on the saints who live before you, and notice the patience and the tenacity which typifies them. He says it in the twelfth verse of this chapter. He puts it this way, "You won't become bored if you'll follow the example of those who receive all that God has promised them, because of their strong faith and patience."

00:32:48.640 - 00:33:15.560

I never knew what that meant until some years ago when I was in Washington, D.C., visiting with a minister friend who means very much to me. And I confessed to him that my devotional life was completely shot. I was in the midst of a spiritual desert. And he immediately confessed to me that the same thing happened to him. He told me of how he had broken out

00:33:15.560 - 00:33:42.160

of it on many occasions by stripping himself naked and stretching himself out on the floor of his bedroom, and there in abject humility pleading for the power of God in his life. I've tried that many times, and for me that's not as effective as it was for him. Different methods of seeking the grace of God in your life work for different people. But what did

00:33:42.160 - 00:34:10.920

work for me was this. He was a man that I looked up to and still look up to as being the personification of everything the servant of God should be. But he testified to me, in response to my plea for spiritual power, that he often prayed the same prayer. In other words, he showed me that I wasn't the first person to be frustrated in faith, that I wasn't

00:34:10.920 - 00:34:37.880

the first person to know what spiritual ennui is, that I wasn't the first person to have the battle with being in the cellars of commitment. He said to me, "Look at all the saints, and in their lives you will discover that they too have known the hardships that you know. They knew what it was to have their go get up and go, and in the midst of that they persevered

00:34:37.880 - 00:35:10.800

and showed patience. Remember that, and you'll gain your go again too." And I've never forgotten what Dick Halverson taught me that day. You see, down deep inside we all want to be saints. We really do. We want to be courageous people. We want to be loving people. We want to be filled with joy, not just with happiness which comes and goes, but with joy which is like

00:35:10.800 - 00:35:37.640

a spring down deep inside, always welling up within you. We want to live lives that are so full that we can give to everybody always and still be filled to the very top. Well, if that's the kind of life you want to live, and I believe you do, you've got to remember that in the course of that pursuit you're going to have some difficult times.

00:35:37.640 - 00:36:10.080

And when you come across those times, the words of this writer in Hebrews should mean a great deal to you. "Recognize that your very cry for assistance is evidence that there's still spiritual life in you. Recognize that God always looks not on your worst, but on your finest hour. Remember to keep your eyes focused on your goals, your goals here and

00:36:10.080 - 00:36:37.200

your goals hereafter. And remember to look at the example of the saints who've gone before you." That may sound easy, but it isn't. Jesus spoke of it in terms of selling everything you have in order to buy the one pearl of greatest price. Or he spoke of it as buying a great big field just to have the treasure that's in the middle of it. It does cost your

00:36:37.200 - 00:37:09.440

life and everything you have. But oh my, is it worth it. I was in Washington, D.C. for the Civil Rights March almost a decade ago. We were standing at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial and Dr. Martin Luther King had just finished giving that magnificent speech in which there's that recurring line, "I have a dream, I have a dream, I have a dream."

00:37:09.440 - 00:37:34.560

I stood just a hundred feet away from him when he gave that speech, one of the greatest thrills of my life. And when it was done, more than a quarter of a million people who were there all began to sing, "We shall overcome." And as we were singing, I looked over and not very far from me there was a very old black man and his face was wrinkled like shoe

00:37:34.560 - 00:38:08.240

leather and his suit was very sleazy and he had a look of absolute befuddlement and confusion on his face. And as I looked at him I thought to myself, "You poor fellow, what in the world are you doing here? Who could you ever overcome? What in the world are you doing here?" And then I thought, "I know what you're doing here. You're here because you want to be everything

00:38:08.240 - 00:38:49.680

God made it possible for you to be. And my black friend, that's just the reason I'm here. Because there is within me, as there is within the heart of everyone who loves Jesus Christ, the desire to be everything he wants us to be. So we can sing, "We shall overcome." Because he stands ready to help. And the chorus of that song becomes magnificently true. Deep

00:38:49.680 - 00:39:44.880

in my heart I do believe that we shall overcome someday. And that's the only thing in your life that really matters. Oh God, in those moments when our spiritual go seems to have gone, teach us the lessons of this man of old. And in those lessons may we find our strength. And in that strength may we find new life. And in that life may

00:39:44.880 - 00:40:29.660

we find glory, glory, glory. 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 you and all those whom you love his peace. ♪ Amen ♪

00:40:29.660 - 00:40:42.140

♪ Glory forever ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪

00:40:42.140 - 00:41:03.860

♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ (wind blowing)

00:41:09.020 - 00:41:19.020

[BLANK_AUDIO]