In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that when we present our bodies to God, He wants to use every aspect of our lives to bring others to know Him. Our jobs, homes, and even social clubs are opportunities for us to be examples of God's grace and love. The preacher encourages us to understand that when Jesus died for us, we also died with Him, and now we can live our lives in Him. The sermon concludes by highlighting the importance of allowing God to live in us and using us as channels to convey His love to others.

Shall we pray how grateful we are to thee, our Father, that the word in our hands was inspired by thee. Holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, and the same Holy Spirit that moved them to write is in us and with us to apply what is written to our hearts and minds and lives. And we're candidates for everything that thou hast purposed for us. Give to us that holy greed that's not content with less than everything that the Lord Jesus purchased with his blood. Save us, Father, from being satisfied with what we think we need. Cause us to recognize in thy dealings with us what thou didst see that we need. Give to us the courage to face the worst about ourselves, to face our needs, knowing that thou hast seen it and known it, and all thou hast asked of us is honesty and tender and the willingness to admit our need and then come to thee confident that thou hast provided everything that we need to be everything thou hast purposed for us to be. We would ask thee, our Father, that we would not be embarrassed when we see thee face to face by having just gone on content with pardon and forgiveness and the hope of eternal life when thy purpose was to make us like thy sons. So let that become ours and breathe upon us today. Show us the next thing we need. We do not ask thee to show us all that thou dost have to do. It would discourage us, but just show us the next step thou dost want us to take, the next area with which thou art dealing. And give to us, Lord, the faith to see ourselves the way we're going to be when thy word has done its work. We ask this now as we come to the word. Make us sensitive. We're not talking about something. We're listening to thee as thou dost talk to us about ourselves. In that spirit, Father, let honor and praise and glory come to the Lord Jesus through this time together. We ask in his name and for his sake. Amen. We're talking about the spiritual Christian being spiritual, the spiritual life. In the first place, we saw last week that spirituality does not consist in what we do. That's too easy. That's too simple. We found that the Lord, back in Matthew, the fifth chapter, dealt with the Pharisees. And they were splendid doers. He said that, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now, in their eyes, they were spiritual. Religious, spiritual. These two words are often synonymous in the minds of those who use them. They shouldn't be. They could be. And because there is that possibility that when I speak of the spiritually minded or the spiritual life, you too are thinking of religious activity. Now, just for a moment, let's consider the Pharisees and use them as a frame of reference. In the first place, the Pharisees were orthodox in their theology, as in contrast to the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in the inspiration of the Torah, the Old Testament. They did not believe in life after death. They did not believe in the existence of angels. They did not believe, of course, therefore, in the resurrection. Nor did they believe in the necessity of blood atonement. But religion was to them a social or sociopolitical relationship. The upper class normally were Sadducees. The Pharisees are the ones who, I got my tang tumbled there for a moment. I'm going to go back. Forget everything I said after good morning. And we'll start over. Not really. The Pharisees were orthodox. The Sadducees were liberal. The Sadducees didn't believe in the inspiration of the Bible, the Torah, the existence of angels, life after death, resurrection. The Pharisees did believe in the authority, the inspiration of the Torah. And the existence of angels. And the resurrection. Life after death. The necessity of blood sacrifice. So it's the contrast between the Pharisees who were orthodox and the Sadducees who were liberal. So there would be a tendency to say, well, spirituality consists in the doctrines one holds. I'm not criticizing. Christ didn't say it was wrong. He says it's not enough. The second thing about the Pharisees is that they were evangelistic in their zeal. It was said of them that they were so successful in making proselytes that when Herod drew up the plans for the rebuilt temple, he had to put in a greatly enlarged court of the proselytes to take care of the products of their evangelistic enthusiasm. They were also missionary in their fervor, these Pharisees. In fact, what it was saying at the time, they would encircle the world to make one proselyte. Now there's nothing wrong with orthodoxy, evangelistic zeal, missionary fervor. Those aren't bad. We could also compress it a little and say that the Pharisees were premillennial in their hope. They were looking for the personal bodily coming of the Messiah to set up the kingdom of David again and Solomon and to give back the glory that once had been Israel. And they were devout in their practice. They fasted two days every week and they tithed everything they possessed down to the little mint you'd pick to flavor your tea or anise you'd use in your cookies or cumin, money so small that most people wouldn't even bother to stoop to pick it up. The Pharisees would count them out in ten piles and one they would then give to someone. This was one of several things, fasting, tithing, praying. They prayed three times a day and the shortest of their prayers would be about twelve minutes unless they were in a hurry. They also have observed all the dietary laws that had been imposed upon them. Now is there anything wrong with this, being orthodox in your theology, evangelistic in your zeal, a missionary in your fervor, premillennial in your hope and devout in your practice? Is there anything wrong with it? No, nothing wrong. Except Christ said if you don't have more than that, you're not in. Except your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now what's he talking about? Well every one of these things are things that people can do in and of and by themselves just through their own effort. If they're willing to do it, anyone can acquire those five characteristics. And therefore we see that it's not enough. This is not what he's talking about, nor is there any extension of this which characterizes the mature, the spiritually minded or the spiritual Christian. Now let's go back to the matter of salvation. What was wrong with this? Well as I said, anyone could do it. What Christ has provided is something that's new, transcendent, something dynamic and glorious, supernatural. We know that salvation is not a decision, it's not a plan, it's not a scheme, it's not a system of doctrine or a series of scripture verses. Salvation is a person. He that hath the Son hath life. Because life is in the Son. Salvation is Jesus. Now maybe we haven't known that too well, but David knew it. In the 27th Psalm he said, Jehovah is our light and our salvation. First time I read that, I said, I wish he could have had my teachers, he wouldn't have made that mistake. He just said, Jehovah is our light who sent us our salvation, because salvation was something that happened to us. But salvation is God. God the Son in His grace and mercy and love invading your heart in transforming power. He that hath the Son hath life, because life is in the Son. That's why Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. Examine yourself whether you be in the faith. Prove your own self. Know you're not your own self. How did Christ be in you? Except you be reprobate. Why? Because salvation is a person. It's not something a person did. It's something He is in you. It's not just Christ in history or Christ in theology or Christ in sacrifice or in heaven. It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. Salvation is a person. Now, in the light of this, then the spirituality is not going to be essentially something you do. That's why writing to this church at Ephesus, the apostle says that we are from the Father chosen that we should be to the praise of the glory of His grace. By the Son redeemed that we should be to the praise of the glory of His grace. By the Spirit, that which the Father purposed and the Son provided made real enough that we should be to the praise of the glory of His grace. It's all that is to be all brought back to the fact that God in Jesus Christ is gracious toward us. Now, the prayer of the apostle that we've been seeing here in Ephesians 1 is that the God of our Lord Jesus, the Father of glory, will give unto us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ. So true spirituality consists first in insight. It's something you're going to see. Christianity consists in one, a person in you that you have received. You've received Him not only as He's presented in Scripture, but in so receiving Him, He has become, as it were, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, life of your life. He has invaded you in that life-giving presence that is manifested when the Word says, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, made of womb and made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And since we are sons, He has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. How do you know that you are a child of God, that Jesus Christ is in you? Well, His Spirit bears witness with your spirit. You know because you know you know. It's not inference that you draw from what you've done, it's the knowledge that comes. If you are aware of your present state of consciousness that you're here and not elsewhere, then you have all the mechanism necessary to know whether or not Jesus Christ is in you, whether you've been born of God. Now said He to such who were saints of Ephesus, faithful in Christ, who have this kind of beginning relationship, that the eyes of your understanding may be opened. This is where true spirituality begins with insight. And what is it that He wants us to see? Well, first, the hope of His calling. And that is that the expectation Christ had that if you knew you couldn't redeem yourself by your efforts, you'd likewise know that you couldn't live the Christian life by your own efforts. Now this was the mistake of the Pharisees. They thought they could please God by their efforts, and they couldn't. It's salvation as a person. They didn't have Him, and therefore they didn't have life. Now He's writing to people who do have Him. And in effect, He is saying, now look, don't go back. Don't go back to the era of the Pharisees. If you couldn't redeem yourself by your efforts, no more can you live the Christian life by your own efforts. It's not basically and essentially something you do toward God that constitutes spirituality. So it's first insight, the hope of His calling, the expectation He has, that if you were going to come to Him and say, God, be merciful to me, a sinner, you were going to come shortly thereafter and say, God, You live Your life in me. I just can't do it. Your life is utterly unnatural to me, utterly contradictory to everything I am and have, and I can't do it. Now, Lord Jesus, You live Your life in me. If it's ever to be lived, You're going to have to do it. Reginald Wallace of England, in one of his lovely little books, said, The happiest day of my Christian life was the day I discovered I couldn't live it. Have you discovered that yet? Well, if you haven't, I've got news for you. Your family has, and your friends have, and your neighbors have, and the people who work with you have discovered. They know you can't live the Christian life. You may talk it, like I talk a good game of golf, but I don't play it. I just can't. You may talk a good Christian life, but you can't live it. And if you haven't discovered that, then the happiest day for you still, still is ahead. All the honesty that comes from saying, I can't live the Christian life. It's His life. How can I do it? Good old Sheldon, who wrote the book, In His Steps, said, If we would imitate Christ, the world would be changed. That's correct. There's only one problem. We're not Christ. Therefore, it would be nothing more than an imitation. But what He wants you to see is that the day Jesus Christ died for you, you died with Him. You were on the back of the cross. He was on the front of the cross. Therefore, you said, Oh, Jesus, if I'm going to stay here, abide in you, crucified with you, then there's a body there. There's a personality. There's a brain, eyes, ears, heart, hands, feet. Now, Lord Jesus, I'm presenting my body to you. You live your life in me. Isn't that what He said in Romans 12, 1 and 2? For years, I talked to young people, spoke to young people's group across the country. Romans 12, present your bodies a living sacrifice. And they stood ten deep around the altar because they wanted to do it. And then I'd go back and find they hadn't done it. It took me about 20 years of ministry to discover that Romans 12 comes after Romans 6. Now, have you discovered that yet? Well, if you haven't, then that's your thing for today. Romans 12 comes after Romans 6. And you can't present your body to Christ to live His life in you until you've presented yourself to the cross. What's that mean? Well, first, it's an insight. That the day Christ died, you died. That that day you died. I don't want you to play dead, think dead, imitate dead. I just want you to know. Knowing this, that the day He died for you, you died with Him. To visualize it, He was on the front of the cross. You were on the back of it. Now, if that becomes real to you, it's going to be in an event. First, the insight. First, the insight. And then, the application of it. Now, how will it happen? Is Christ going to come and bring the dagger and thrust it through your heart? No. That isn't how it'll work at all. It'll be a set of circumstances. Maybe a person. Maybe a situation. Maybe in your home. Maybe in your work. Somewhere else. And you're going to see the Lord, and He's going to say, Come to Me, child. And take one step toward Him. But right there against your heart is a sword. And you say, But Lord. Isn't it amazing? Can you visualize a cross stuck in the ground about a mile away, and you see it? What's it look like? Well, it looks like a dagger or a sword on the hilltop, doesn't it? All right. So He just brings that cross, and He lays it right up against your heart. Now, He won't push it in. But it's there. And He says, Come to Me, child. This is what I want you to do. And you say, Lord, take that sword away. Take that cross away. If I do that, if I come one inch closer to you, Lord, how am I going to pierce me through? That's right, isn't it? Well, do you love Me, son, daughter? Do you love Me? Well, yes, I love you. All right. I said, Come. Can you trust Me enough to hurt yourself or allow yourself to be hurt in this circumstance? Can you reckon yourself to be dead? Come. And you have to take the step that threads you on that cross. He isn't going to jab it through you and pin you. It's just going to be circumstances, and it's going to be put to test in a situation where if you take the next step, it's going to go right through your dearest relationship, your dearest ambition, which in the light of His wisdom is not the best for you. But you've said, Oh, Lord, I want You to live Your life in me. And so there's a situation. I present my body to You, and there's a situation. And it's as you take that step that it becomes real. You don't have to. He won't make you. He'll make you wish you had, but He won't make you. He won't make you. So it's an insight. It's an insight into a relationship. So you say, Lord Jesus, here's my body. I want You to live in me. That's the insight. That the Christian life is not something you try to live for him, but it's something he lives in you. I closed last Sunday with saying, Look at the lamps above you. They are filled with electricity. And, of course, these fluorescent tubes don't lend themselves to my illustration, but they're still filled with electricity. You don't think they'll put the switch off and the illumination goes. I don't know quite how it works. The little filament is a little easier for my non-scientific mind to comprehend, but it's there. If you don't think so, you just put the switch off and it gets dark. And so it is that He wants you to present your body just the way that tube is anchored so that there can be a flow of energy through it. So He wants you to be related to Him, abide in Him, so that there can be a flow of His resurrection life through your personality. That's, I believe, the hope of His calling. Now, the second, that you might know what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. Another insight. First, He wants to live in you. Now, if He lives in you, what's going to be the end product of His living in you? What's He going to use you to do? What did He come for? Well, He said, I came to seek and to save that which was lost. And what did He say about you? As the Father sent me, so send I you. And what has He sent you for? Again, to seek and to save that which was lost. To be a witness, to reveal God's love and God's compassion to those about you. And therefore, He wants you to know the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints. His inheritance is the saints. Oh, so many commentators dealing with this talk about it as though it were your inheritance as a saint. Trying to make it rob him of everything. No, no. This is His inheritance in the saints. And if you're a saint, you're part of His inheritance. But, more than that, since you presented your body to Him, then He wants you to understand that through you, He is going to use your brain, your eyes, your ears, your heart, your hands, your life, whatever circumstances you are, whatever opportunities of service you have, whatever your employment is, He is going to use you in the totality of your life for the purpose of bringing others to know Him. You thought you had that job to make a living. Now you're there. God wants you as a sample of His grace. You thought you moved into that house because you got a good buy. Now you're there because He wants to have an exhibition of His love in that community. You thought you belonged in that club because they voted you in. Now you're there because there's someone through that situation that you can touch for the Lord Jesus. Well, does this mean you're going around button-holing people all the time? No, not at all. It just means that you have presented to Him your brain so that living in you, He can use your brain, your heart, your hands, your feet, your whole personality, and He will then give you wisdom. It isn't that you develop some technique. I'm not talking about that. It's just that if Christ is in you and His love is shed abroad in your heart, you're going to be interested in the family business. And what's the family business? To bring out to Himself, from every kindred, tribe, and tongue, and nation, those that should be to the eternal praise of His grace, because His inheritance is in the saints. I think of that lovely, lovely woman, the Marichal, the youngest and the daughter of William Booth, one that survived all the family. When her sister and brother-in-law were missionaries sent by William Booth to open the work of the Salvation Army in Paris, soon Catherine went to work with them, learned French, began to speak in French groups and meetings, and finally became very burdened about the women in prison in Paris and in France. And so she went to the central women's prison and there spoke time after time and throughout all the corridors and halls and cell blocks. Finally she learned that there was one cell block that she'd never been permitted to visit. No one had told her about it. She went to the authorities and insisted. They said, No, Miss Booth, it wouldn't be right or appropriate for you to go there. But she did prevail. And when she got down there, she found that here were the worst women criminals in France. The vilest of the vile, the worst of the worst. Someone said the lily, when it putrefies, smells worse than any other flower. It's the most beautiful, perhaps in the eyes of some, smells the worst. So women, when they become vile, because God has given to them an intrinsic beauty, that there they can become vile. And these were, and to them she went. But down at the end of this cell block was a board, a board wall that had been built. On the other side of that board wall, in the last cell, was a woman so horrible in appearance, so vile in every attribute, that the other women prisoners in this lowest of the low couldn't stand to see her. And they'd have the authorities build a wall. And Miss Booth stood there and told that group of women that God loved them, that Christ had died for them, that he wanted to save them. And after a while she heard a high-pitched cackling laugh from the other side of that board, that board wall. Cursed, vilest of curses. And when it stopped just out of sheer hoarseness, the last words were, you're a liar, you say God loves me, nobody loves me, look at that wall, they can't even stand to look at me. And Miss Booth said, God loves you, and I love you. And then the woman said, I can't remember my mother very well. She died when I was five. But I can recall when I closed my eyes, feeling her lips upon my eyelids and on my cheeks. You say God loves me, there's only one person in this world that ever loved me, and that was my mother. And you say you love me, all right, you kiss me. And I'll know whether you're lying or not. And the other women and the matron that was with us said, oh, Miss Booth, you can't do that, you can't do that. Oh, she said, you see, I can do that, because God does love her, and I love her. And so she walked slowly back, and there was that horrible, ugly face pressed against the bars, mutilated, distorted, violent in every attempt. And without hesitation, Miss Booth went over, put her hands around the back of the woman's head as a mother would her sweet little baby, and laid her lips upon the eyelids. And after a few moments, the prisoner sank to the straw in the bottom of her cell. Coffee time. It's true, God must love me, because you couldn't have done that unless he had helped you. And that moment, that woman prayed the sinner's prayer and came to know Christ. And that's what he wants us to realize, that he wants to live in us. Catherine Booth was just as repulsed by the ugly and the vile as anyone. She was just as refined as the nicest of us here. But it was the love of God, Christ living in her, that he might see this woman, the vilest of the vile. Because, you see, he loved that woman, he did indeed. And in loving her, he became what she was so that he could become what she could become what he is. She was made, he was made to be sin for her, he who knew no sin, that she might be made the righteousness of God in him. And how else does he have to tell a prisoner in the deepest hole in French prison that he loves her, except someone in whom he can live and through whom he can convey that love. And that's what he wants you to understand. The hope of his calling is that you let him live in you. And the riches of the glory of his inheritance is in the saints. Now, this woman wasn't a saint, but she was the object of God's love. She could have died unsaved, but she never could have died unloved because he loved her. In summary, he had to convey that love. And how can he do it except through someone who permits him to be the, to use that one as the channel by which his love can be shared and known. So that's the second thing, the insight into true spirituality. And the third is right like it, right after it. Now, remember to whom he's writing. These people that had been involved in this savage, immoral worship of Diana, a few months earlier, groveling in drunken immorality, and now saints at Ephesus, not because of a long educational process, but because they'd met him and his transforming love and power. And now he is saying, I want you to understand how I'm going to work. You present your body to me, why I'm going to work, so that I can bring to myself those I love. And then the next insight is the power with which I'm going to work. Oh, you thought he was going to just depend on your enthusiasm. You thought he was going to have to depend on your zeal. You thought he was going to have to depend upon our intellect and our effort and our strength. Oh no, he knows us too well to put any long confidence in that. He knows us, he knows that we have to be cranked up and we run down so fast. He knows that we've got just such short staying power. That's why he starts out by saying, look, how I want to do my work is to live your life in you, because I really don't have that much confidence in you. I know you too well, but you're indispensable to what I want to accomplish. And so present your body to me, because through you I want to bring men. Now I want you to know what energy is going to be used, so that you might know what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead. So what is he saying? Why he's saying that I want you to know that when you present your body to me for this purpose that I've had, that the power that's going to be flowed through you, because it's the flow of energy, the power is the very same power that raised me from the dead. Now can you trust that? He wants you, in other words, to be a conduit for infinite power and infinite wisdom and infinite love, that you might know what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us or for us who believe, according to the working, what's the measure of it, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead. He used every word in the Greek language to express energy and power in conveying that truth. He exhausted that magnificent language when he tried to tell us the kind of power. Well now before we go to that I want you to notice, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead. Now when you go down to the second chapter, and some of you have King James, still have King James Version. I have, if it's good enough for Paul it's good enough for me. But I brought it today particularly because it expresses accurately a translation here in this second chapter. Notice in the second chapter that we begin with a conjunction, and you. Well if I understand it the function of a conjunction is to conjunct, isn't that right? But when you start a chapter with and, it doesn't make very good sense, does it? And when you put and you and then they have to, to make some sense out of it, put in an italicized expression which they have and you, that'd be quick. Well that's not in the text, it's and you. Now if you want to understand that then you just do take this, do this little trick. It's not tricky either. You just encircle you with your pencil and then go up the outside or the inside of your margin until you get to the twentieth verse in the first chapter. And you take that line and you take it over and you tuck it in right after him. So it's going to read this way. That you might know what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him and you from the dead. You say, wait a minute. Aren't you going a little bit beyond? You're an enthusiastic preacher all right, but you're getting carried away. What right do you have to take something from the first verse of the second chapter and put it up into the middle of the twentieth verse of the first chapter and say that's the way it ought to be read? Well I'll tell you what right I have because in the fifth verse of the second chapter he said the same thing. Just because he wanted to protect me this morning from undue criticism. I'll accept the due criticism but the undue, no. Here in the second chapter and the fifth verse, I'll read the fourth, but God who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with Christ. Now that's what I'm talking about. And true spirituality begins with an insight to the fact that the day Jesus Christ died, you died. And the day he was buried, you were buried. And the day he was quickened, you were quickened together with him. You see when he went to the cross, he wasn't performing. He wasn't performing something for an audience. He was participating as you doing what you had to do before the law. He was your representative dying your death and satisfying the law in your behalf. So the man on the cross isn't just there for the whole world. He is identified somehow mysteriously in the compassion of God with you to the point that in the Father sees him, he sees you. So he wants you to see not only that Christ died for you, but you died with him. That's what you got in Romans, isn't it? Romans 5, Christ died for us. Romans 6, Christ died as us. Romans 8, Christ lives in us. You remember that and you have an insight into the emphasis of those three chapters. So what do we find here? Christ died for us, yes, but Christ died as you. And he was buried as you. And he was quickened as you and raised. So how is it put? Which he wrought in Christ when he raised him and you from the dead and set him and you at his own right hand in the heavenly far above all principality and power. You say, now that is going too far. Set us in the heavenly? Well, I'm glad that that sixth verse is there. I would be in trouble in the second chapter. Which he wrought in Christ when he raised him and you and set him and you in the first chapter, when we read in the fifth verse, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. In verse 6, and hath raised us up together and made us sit together. So what did he say in the third verse of the first chapter? Blessed be the God and Father who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly, in the heavenly. And most Christians have to live on a soulish level. I went to a church in Greenville, South Carolina years ago. They had an all-night sing. You don't know about that. Good. Don't learn. An all-night sing. And the lady didn't come to service. I was there for dinner on that day. Oh, she said, by the way, I just come from church. I knew I'd be asleep. I was an all-night sing. I said, yes. What do you say? Yes. Yes, ma'am. Being in South Carolina. And so she said, and the Lord was there. Well, that was interesting. I hadn't known he was going, but she said he was there. I said, oh, but how did you know that? How was that? Tell me, how was that? Well, she said, there was a preacher sitting there. Just a pat on his foot. Along with the, well, I thought if that's how you know the Lord is there, then the Lord is there. I'm not going to argue with her. She'd know better. What is it? Is there anything wrong with it? No. I'm not being critical. What am I saying? I'm just saying that there's a difference between soulish blessings and spiritual blessings. And many people haven't distinguished between the two. Now, does that mean I'm opposed to your soul being blessed? No, I'm not. Let your soul be blessed. But distinguish between soulish blessings and not call them ill or evil. And spiritual blessings. If you confuse the two, heaven help you. You've got to distinguish between two things that differ. You eat with knife and fork and spoon, but you don't do the same thing with each. You have different, and so there's a place for the soul to be blessed. There's also a place for the spirit to be blessed. And he blessed us with spiritual blessings in the heaven. Oh, boy, time has gone. Father, we thank you for the privilege of coming to your word. We're asking that somehow these three insights will be more than just words that fell upon ears. They'll somehow become to us our emancipation proclamation. That we've been crucified with Christ, we have victory over ourselves, and we've been buried with him. We have victory over the world. And if we are as quickened and raised with him, then his life is in us. And if we're seated with him, we have victory over principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness. Help us to understand, Father, that spirituality begins and perhaps ends with what we know, the insight, the revelation, now that's given us by grace, and the intensity and the effectiveness with which we appropriate what's now provided. So let us not be as those who hear and forget what they've heard. Let the word have free course and be glorified in us. We ask for Jesus' name.