In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes that coming to God and learning about Him is not achieved through processes or steps. He shares the story of a simple missionary who, without any formal education, felt called to the mission field and prayed for revival. The missionary faced challenges and setbacks but remained faithful to God's calling. The speaker highlights the importance of our actions and works, as God is interested in what we do. He concludes by emphasizing the need for a conscious awareness of the life that is in God and the necessity of the moving of the Spirit in our lives.

John, first chapter, maybe one of the reasons it's hard to keep hymns alive is that the body they may kill doesn't mean much to us anymore, it did to Martin Luther, and it did to all his followers. The body they may, and life does not will, kill. Yet once again, I believe there's a spiritual participation which is beyond the natural, and if God gives us to understand it in the spirit, which is what he wants us to do, cause the, not only the word of God, but the hymns of God, they were all inspired, practically all inspired in the beginning. If we could get back to that and let God illuminate them, it'd be a new hymn book besides a new Bible. Okay, John, chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Verse 4. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. There's been a lot written about the gospel, about the Bible, about John. The fact that John in his gospel goes back to the beginning before creation ever was. But, let me just say tonight, these first five verses are the history of the world. The history of the church, and in a sense the history of each individual believer. I think I've said before that in Hebrew, this is not written in Hebrew, but Hebrew was the language of John and the apostles. Hebrew was the language of their country, the language of religion. And if John were thinking in Hebrew when he wrote it, the significance is that the word, word, and the word, reality, are one and the same. John points back and he said, Before there was ever any false thing, before there was ever any twisting of the truth, before life had ever been mixed with death, or purity had ever been mixed with sin, before there was ever a word of temptation spoken in this world, before the mind of man, as the old Jewish interpreters used to say, had become like the Tower of Babel scattered abroad, one part of his personality saying one thing, another part of his personality saying another thing, incoherence reigning within the kingdom of Babylon, the kingdom of the enemy, the kingdom of Babylon, manifest on the earth and all the way through. It's almost the last enemy that will be destroyed, Babylon, in what is it, Revelation chapter 18, 19, Babylon is fallen. Babylon speaks of confusion, Babylon speaks of every false thing, every evil thing, every twisted thing, every hurt thing. It all goes back to there. When the enemy somehow was able to take what God had formed and, as it were, blow it apart into a million pieces so that it's all scattered and nobody can put it back together again. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Only God can put it back together again. But we've got to get back beyond all of that in our faith. If we're dealing, and there are a lot of people dealing all through their lives with trying to bring God into a fractured universe, trying to bring him into a, I don't know how to say this exactly, but a fractured, you understand what I mean by that? A scattered abroad, a broken, destroyed lifestyle, and trying to get God to put it back together again. Creation was not that way. Spiritual creation is not that way. Once again, as I've said, in all these months I've never really been able to talk about the church and the purpose of the church. But if we look at the church, the church is not that. The church is God taking people out of that and bringing them into something else. In the beginning, there was perfection, verse 1. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. We know from other scriptures God was complete in himself. God was perfect in himself. There was nothing lacking. But then the existence of perfection brought about the expression of perfection. In a creation, God spoke, God formed, God expressed himself, bringing into formation the universe. And verse 4 is talking about the process of the transmission, the transmitting of that which was in eternity into time. Now, we're only complete. We're only balanced. We're only of any value to the extent that we can take hold of these eternal things of God. But God never gives less than himself, never comes with less than his fullness. There's never a day when we come into the presence of God or come into a meeting and for some reason we cannot have all the blessing we'd like because God isn't ready because he's busy at a conference in Dallas or somewhere where God is. It doesn't mean to say that God needs all the help he can get. I'm just saying, hope the Lord's there blessing him. But it doesn't mean that because he's in Dallas or New York or China or South America that he's not with us. It doesn't mean that if he blessed us yesterday, he cannot bless us today. Whenever God comes, once again, he comes with his fullness. Going back to what I said at the beginning, this is the reason why it's so important and I believe above all else it needs to be a heart cry, it's a heart cry that God wants to produce within us, that there be that sensitivity to realize who God is and to be able to come before him as he is and receive that which he desires to give us. In the beginning was reality. Our prayer as we pray, our meditation as we meditate, our faith, our life must have its roots in something perfect, something which existed before, once again, there was ever any imperfect thing. As it was in the beginning, it will be in the end. We hope to participate of the end, the heavenly eternal realm, and we can only participate once again as we get our roots out of time and into eternity. In the nature, in the character, in the person of God. All things were made by him. Without him was not anything made that was made. I guess I mentioned in passing before how much frustration there is in the church. In the lives of Christians, through a lack of understanding of this, the fact that I am called to walk, to live, to conduct myself in the presence of God, a God who holds all things in his power. There is no excuse for defeat, for error, for not knowing, for putting earthly things before heavenly things. All things are of God, and as I come to God, there's a process of enlightenment. This is a phrase that's been going round and round in my mind today. In him was life, this last two or three days. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. I believe we're in a time in which God is calling his people back to himself. Christian theology and Christian preaching, like the pendulum, always goes from one extreme all the way across to the other. We're in a time, and I hope we're coming out of a time, when there's been a lot of emphasis upon truth. There's been a lot of emphasis on what is right. There's been a lot of emphasis in what is correct interpretation. There's been a lot of concentration in trying to understand the times, and the reasons, and the seasons, and so on. Yet what I want to say tonight, in synthesis, is this, that there is no light without life. And light can never be separated from life. And light does not bring life, but life brings light. Tozer used to say that the mind is a great instrument given by God, capable of many things, but it was not given to man to know God. God is spirit. Man must learn in the world of the spirit. There's something which permeates, runs all the way through our Christian service and our Christian lives, our hymns, our prayers, our preaching, teaching, interpretation. And it's a tendency to make an end of the way, and to put the truth, as it were, above everything else, and to stress our relationship to truth at the expense of life. The worst errors in the church and the worst errors in my life, your life, is not when we get out into error, per se, when we get out into some, what's the word now, some wrong interpretation, some wrong doctrine. The most subtle thing is when we take truth and apply truth without the spirit of God. When we take truth and we try to make the truth itself productive, I know there's a sense in all of this which it is the truth, and yet it's not the truth without life and it's only through life that the truth is made valid. Let me take you back, you don't need to look at it, to the Old Testament, when Elijah was the prophet. The country was in apostasy, the country was in sin. Elijah came with the word of the Lord, came to the presence of the king, had this word of rebuke, closed the heavens for three years and six months. There was no rain upon the face of the earth. The land was blighted and blasted by the drought. Everything was dying, the people were suffering. There was a curse from one end of the land to the other, north, south, east and west. There came a time when Elijah, once again in obedience to the voice of the Lord, presented himself again before the king, told the king to call the people. As the people were called, prepared the altar of God. You all know the story. And there the fire of God fell upon the altar. But that wasn't the end of the story. The end of the story is what scares me, because it's relatively easy to get the truth and to get as far as the first altar of Elijah. And it's very, very, very hard to get beyond that. I think we could maybe mention dozens, maybe hundreds between all of us, of churches which are strong in the truth, strong in presenting that which God says, can get as far as the first altar. You know, for Elijah it was a very easy thing to call down fire from heaven. Just three or four words, Lord, now, please, now's the time, I'm ready, they're ready, please show what's right. But then there's a second process where Elijah goes to the top of the mountain. Mount Carmel is there on the sea coast, sticking out in a promontory of land. He looks all around and sees the sea, as far as he can see. Tremendous, measureless abundance of water. And there's not a drop of water in the whole countryside behind him. Thousands of square miles of countryside, millions and millions of acres, not a drop of land. And the thing that scares me is this, that whereas with three or four words he could call down fire from heaven, the process to getting the water of God was a lot more involved, a lot more costly. Symbolically, the story's interesting, he climbs to the top of the mountain, evidently he wasn't at the top of the mountain where he made the altar. He climbs to the very top, as high as earth can carry him. I don't want to get into that, just say in passing that there are natural demands that God puts upon our lives, that we have to have the earthly before our feet before we can even start talking to God about sending us the heavenly. Places of discipline, places of consecration, putting things right, so on and so forth, many, many, many things involved there, until all the earth, so to speak, is underneath our feet, until we're standing right on the top of it. But then when he's on the top of it, he still cannot just raise his face toward heaven and ask God to send down the rain. The Bible says he throws himself on his face, he puts his head between his knees, or symbolically puts all his mental, intellectual capacity beneath the knees, the place of prayer, and he calls out to God once, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and one more, again, seven times, okay, somebody was counting, thank you. You know, and he sends his servant, now go see, now when Elijah prayed, the Bible said he prayed fervently. So it doesn't mean he prayed, you know, let's see how long this takes, he would pray kind of in a reserved, laid-back, passive manner. He's praying fervently right from the beginning. I'm sure the people down there in the valley are probably hearing his voice. You know, the fire has come, and they're probably still hanging around. Now what's he done? He's gone up to the top of the mountain, maybe like Moses he's going to come back with a revelation from heaven, the tables of the law, or a new covenant or something. I'm sure they probably heard his voice down there crying out, God, God, I've done it, and there's still no rain. The country's defenseless, and there's still no rain. But the thing I wanted to say about this is there's a process, there's water out there, like I said, measureless water. And yet that water's no good to the land. They couldn't go with buckets, they couldn't take it and pick it up and start watering the land. There needed to be a process of the Spirit of God. As Elijah prays, the breath of the Spirit, the breeze of the Spirit starts to blow over the sea. There comes a time, the seventh time, after Elijah's prayer, the servant goes, he looks again, he comes back and he says to Elijah, now there's a cloud. It's interesting, I read something yesterday, today, about clouds and how much does a cloud weigh. And it said that a thunderstorm weighs several million tons, and a cloud can weigh half a million tons. You know, we think of it as just kind of nothing floating in the air. And yet, it got me thinking, and it got me, so I grabbed a calculator and started calculating that if we have two inches of rain, according to my calculations, which may or may not be accurate, but anyway, that's about 200 tons of rain in an acre. So the amount of rain in a cloud is tremendous. And what he does is far more than what Israel could have done with their buckets. Because this is not a thunderstorm. This is clouds that cover the face of the earth. These are clouds that come rolling in until the land is covered from end to end and all of a sudden they burst. There's life comes down in the place of death. This is the process of the Spirit of God. That which God has, that which God holds in reserve, can never be directly applied to us without going through the steps which God has ordained. He says, in the beginning was the Word, in Him was life, and life was light. Not that the Word was light. The Word must become life. Just the same as that water in the sea must become clouds through that process of evaporation. The salt must be left behind. It must be put in a form which can be applied to man's need. So also the things of the Spirit of God must be made life before they can ever be made light. Let me say it again. They must be made life before they can ever be made light. And even light without life is only condemnation. There's no way that I can partake, there's no way that I can absorb, possess, identify with it unless God gives life. We hear a lot about faith. The Bible says faith cometh through the Word of God. We hear a lot about exercising our faith. I believe there's a degree to which we have a measure of faith and we put it to work and God blessed it, but there's a totally different realm when God speaks and says, I want to do something. And I say, Lord, I believe. Because the faith has come with the Word of God. It's a different realm. One of the great healing evangelists, Dr. Price, talked about this process, about praying and then receiving the Word of the Lord and then it didn't matter what the sickness was, it didn't matter what the condition was, it didn't matter how long the time had been, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered. God had spoken. There was release. There is release. God wants us to live in the realm of the supernatural. There are so many things we believe with our minds, so many things we nod our heads at, so many things... And once again, it's a very subtle thing. I say many times to our people in South America that, you know, it's easy to mistake our assent, our saying yes, for our carrying through on a spiritual process. It's easy to say, in the words of the hymn that we sang, I surrender all. And it's another thing to work it out and to let God take those things away that He wants to take away. Never forget years ago, there was a tremendous time of blessing and I went to a place in Argentina where the Spirit of God was moving and I got there and the Lord gave me a verse of Scripture. Beautiful. Except that the verse said something to the effect that you have come to my holy mountain and now I will demand my offerings and the payment of your vows. You know, and I thought I'd come to the holy mountain to be blessed. And God said, you've come to my holy mountain, now give me. Well, Lord, aren't you going to give me? No, you give me. You know, unless we start to realize who God is, we're always going to get it wrong, we're always going to be frustrated. God can only give us, I believe, in the measure that we give Him. He can only enlarge us in the measure that there's an intense desire. God can't do anything with passive Christians. God can't do anything while we're waiting on Him. God is where He's always been. His word is the same as it's always been. The invitation is always toward man. Come. You won't believe me, but I heard Amy Stemple McPherson preach on this, on an old record that we used to have in the house when I was a kid. And she preached on, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And talked about the invitation of God, as she said it, all through the Bible. From Genesis, as she said it, clear through to Revelation. She went into it. God calling, come in Genesis, come in Exodus, come in Leviticus, all through the offerings, all through the prophets, all through the history of Israel, all through the kings, all through the captivities, into the New Testament. Repent, why? Not, once again, not because of your sins. Repent, because the kingdom's come. And the words of Jesus again, come unto me. Maybe a little further, it puts it more clearly over here in John. John chapter 5. 5, 5. And then I start at verse 37. Jesus talking. He says, To the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me, ye have neither heard his voice at any time. Now he's speaking to the Jews. He's speaking to those people who were so full of the word of God, as it's expressed in the Scripture. They're full of the word, but they never heard the voice. And it's easy to be full of the word, and it's very, very hard to hear the voice. He makes this blanket statement to all of them. He said, you've never heard at any time, not even once. Never, ever, ever, ever. Nor have you seen his shape, nor have you seen the manifestation, any manifestation of God. He says, ye have not his word abiding in you, for whom he hath sent him ye believe not. In other words, if they knew the voice, they knew that the same voice was speaking through Jesus, but they didn't know it. And I've said before many times, it shocks me to go to a meeting and hear somebody expounding the word of God, and if the atmosphere is right and the people are in agreement, everybody gets carried along, and they say, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, even when the guy gets off in his interpretations, even when he's saying things which are definitely not right, because we either give ourselves to a preacher or not. You know, we're never supposed to do that. We give ourselves to God as he expressed himself to a preacher. But look at the Bereans there in the book of Acts. They searched the scriptures to see whether it was true that which Paul the Apostle spoke, and they were commended for it. And Paul says, though I or an angel from heaven should say any other thing. In other words, there's a knowledge of God, a knowledge which these people, in spite of the word, did not have. Ye have not his word abiding in you, then, for whom he has sent him you believe not. Search the scriptures, for in them you think that ye have life. You think that you have life in the word. But he says, they testify of me. And here's the condemnation, verse 40. You will not come to me, but you might have life. You will not come to me, but you might have life. In him was life, and the life was the life of man. There's so many voices today, so many maybe self-anointed, or maybe God-anointed, but people that have lost the anointing, prophets, teachers, preachers, yet the church has never been as sick as it is today. Now, if that word were the word of God, it would not be that way. The word of God is creative when I hear it. I don't want to get into Greek interpretation, but you know, in Greek there are two words. One means the word as it's given the letter. Another means the spoken word of God, that which God speaks to your heart. And I can have this and never hear the other. Remember one time we were with my father in a certain place, and a man came. He'd gone to church 22 years, a church with a very, very, very strong emphasis on Bible exposition and teaching. And he came and he said, you know, I've gone to the church for 22 years, and he said, now I realize that I've never really known God's salvation. And I need something which I've heard about, I thought I possessed, yet I never really had it. You know, we can't separate what God has joined. We can't change the order. I know it seems almost too simple to spend the whole evening talking about this, but I think there's one thing the Lord wants to find on the earth is a people conscious of the life which is in him, conscious of the fact we must return to him. He is the fountain of salvation. He is the fountain open for sin and uncleanness. He is the one who gives life. You know, a dead man has the same eyes that you and I have, but he can't see because there's no life. If we could just somehow get the emphasis back where it belongs. It's not so much a battle between truth and untruth. In the worst of cases, the Bible says the devils believe. They know better than I know. They know better than you know. They know about that world. They've experienced it. They know they believe and tremble. It's not the knowledge that can save us. Once again, as with the waters, somehow there must be a moving of the Spirit of God, and that which exists in a spiritual potential through a miracle must be transformed and made life to my soul, made a quickening influence to my soul. Spiritually speaking, that which does not give life gives death. There's no such thing as a neutral condition. The Bible is very clear, and there are dozens and dozens of verses that we could go into about the natural world and the spiritual world and the fact that this world cannot participate of this world and this world cannot understand this world and that which is born here must die here and that which is born here pertains to this world. There is no mixture, never ever in any way, shape, or form. And so, I don't know how other people are in their intimate relationship with God, but I know for myself, there comes a time when all that's external, even all that the mind knows must be left behind. I must come before God in spirit, as though I didn't have a mind, as though I didn't have a body in a sense. Come before God and say, God, cause me to live today. Lord, somehow give me that life which you want to give me today. As I have life, I'll see. As I see, I'll walk. But first I must have that life, beyond everything else. Light will not cause me to live. Light may even condemn me. Notice in the Old Testament, interesting story, David bringing the ark of God to Jerusalem. The ark, the tabernacle of Moses, was still in existence. And as we read the scripture, we find that David had a fear of going to that place. Have any of you studied the tabernacle of Moses? Some of you. Okay. The tabernacle of Moses is full of symbolism. The way to come to God, the narrow way, the hard way, the demands of God, the holiness of God, the judgments of God, the different types of offerings, the different courts, the different processes, the altar, the labor, the holy place, the holy of holies, all speaking of that God which is almost inaccessible. So we come to the holy of holies where only one person in the whole nation can go in one day in the whole year. You just have to take my word for it because we can't go into it tonight. But when David came, he brought about a revolution in the worship in Israel. The Mosaic order, as far as the tabernacle, passed away. And David brought the ark, which typifies, represents the presence of God, brought the ark of God to the place of his own dwelling, and he built a simple tent for it called the tabernacle of David. And when we get over in the New Testament, there's that great discussion there in the book of Acts about the the proselytes, what he called them now, the Gentiles being converted, and whether they should keep the law or not keep the law. After a lot of discussion, James gets up and he says that God has promised through the prophet that in the last days he'll raise again not the tabernacle of Moses, not the law, not all that the law represents, but the tabernacle of David. And the only thing that there was in the tabernacle of David as far as I know, the ark of God and the altar of God. And for us, this is what God wants to bring us into. There is an altar. There is a sacrifice, complete, eternal, finished, for each one of us. There is a continual relationship with that. I'm not saying we just go there once. Maybe we have to go many times, but there's one simple altar. And then the presence of God. What God says he's doing then as the gospel starts to extend, the apostles are gathered together to ask how the church is going to be built. God makes it clear that what he's building over the face of the earth throughout all nations and all generations is the tabernacle of David. Building a church which knows the altar of God, which knows the finished work of the cross, which knows the cleansing, which knows the renewal, and a church which knows the presence of God. It's a very simple thing. You know, we hear so much complicated, so many complicated things nowadays, but it's a very simple thing. And yet it'll cost us everything we've got to be simple. It costs us a lot more. It's harder. It's a lot harder is what I mean to say. I'm kind of thinking in Spanish still. It's a lot harder for us to come into something simple than it is to something complicated. Seeing the human personality is so mixed up. We delight in complicating things. And I'm not knocking anybody's interpretation. I know it serves for certain purposes. But, you know, somebody hears a message on the 15 steps into such and such an experience, and they kind of think, well, where am I? I'm in number three. Well, then if I can get through number four and number five, and then number six is going to be real tough because there's a real demand there. And then maybe I can get all the way into the, you know, place of the promise or the place of power or the place of communion or whatever, you know. And I'm not saying it's not good. Maybe it is good sometimes to explain because those steps help us understand things. But basically, it's not through processes like that that we come to God. It's not through processes like that that we learn about God. I told you before about a missionary in the north of Argentina. Very, very simple missionary. Never even been to Bible school. Maybe that's an advantage. But anyway, very simple. He got converted. Felt the Lord called him to the mission field 18 months after his conversion, something like that. He was down on the mission field. He started praying for revival. Got sick, almost died. The Lord moved him from one place to another. Settled in this totally hostile environment. Here, this ignorance. Somebody, I think, used the word uncouth. This uncouth, backwoods type. I won't tell you what state he was from. He wasn't from Texas. This backwoods type personality was down there and he was saying, God, we want a revival here. He was in the kind of situation where everybody just turned their back on him when they knew he was evangelical. They wouldn't, I mean, they wouldn't help him. He'd go out in the country. He'd get stuck. He'd be sitting by the roadside. He was an outcast. Total outcast. He prayed. He's dead now. Met a man that knew him and he said, I don't believe in everything you did. I couldn't go agree with him in everything. He said, but one thing. He told me I'm going to get a word from God and he said he did. He went and got a word from God and it produced. You know, this is what life's all about. It doesn't matter what we have up here. It doesn't matter what we, what the organization is or isn't. God can work through or without organization. It doesn't matter. But there's one thing that he does demand. That there be within us an intense reaching out to the truth of God. That there be a tense reaching out to say, Lord, teach me. The life which is in all of this. Lord, let me not be one of those as the Jews. Some of those Jews, I mean, not some of them, all of them. Hardly a one of them that wouldn't put all of us to shame. As far as their knowledge of the Bible is concerned. They didn't do anything else except read, memorize, meditate, talk among themselves, brilliant minds, tied in with the tradition and the thinking of the fathers down through generations. Now, what does this mean? What does this mean? What does this mean? Think of it. When Jesus was born, they knew exactly, sure, he's going to be born in such and such a place. They could almost tell him the street and the number. But not one of them went there. Those that did go there were people that didn't even know what it's all about. Hey, hey, we've seen the stars. Do you know anything about the star where the king is going to be born? Yeah, sure, over there. You know, and like God said, one of these days somebody's going to read this and believe it. We're all going to be ashamed. But I think one of these days somebody's going to hear these things that we've been saying all our lives. They're going to say, wait a minute. This is God. This is life. This is power. This is reality. They're going to take hold of it and we're all going to be looking. A very different thing, the theory than the practice. Brother Andrew told about learning English. He had an English teacher that taught him for, I think, maybe two or three years. Then the time came when he had the opportunity to go to Bible school and he went over to England. And just before he left, the lady came and said, Brother Andrew, I want to tell you something. She said, you know, I've studied English, but I've never actually heard English. I don't actually know, you know. Well, you imagine. I mean, take a book written in German and try and pronounce it to somebody that speaks German and see what they think of it. Yet it's a lot more incongruous and there's a lot bigger distance between the natural and the spiritual than there is between English and Dutch. There's one prayer that God will always answer. It's a prayer that's in the Bible. The prayer for his quickening. Lord, quicken me. Lord, cause me to live beyond my mind, beyond the written word. Lord, make that into life for me. We never had more missionaries around the world. And yet, as I've said before, we've got countries that are worse today than they were a generation ago and worse today than they were last month. We need to, as a church, recognize, and as the Old Testament says, give God no rest until we possess that which he desires to give us. The devil laughs at our reading. He laughs at our learning. The angels weep as we think that we can put it all together in our mind. In him, no other place under heaven. In him was and is life. The life was and the life is the light of man. I cannot have any more light than the measure of his life within me. And I don't believe I can have any more life than the measure of my seeking it before the presence of God. God does not cast his pearls before swine. The Bible speaks about hidden treasures. This is the most important thing. This is the greatest thing that God could ever give us. His own life, that life which will never die, that life which will never be defeated, that life which can go anywhere, do anything, that life which is in itself our own endowment for everything we need. The fullness of his life. The fullness of his spirit upon us. The spirit of life. So that wherever we are, whatever we do, if we had time we could get into that. All things were made by him. He calls us to make. He calls us to do. The Bible has a lot to say about our works. I think there's a passivity that's so prevalent that we kind of think, you know, I can't do anything. I can't, why can't I? If I can't, it's because of what I am, not because of what God is. If I can't do, it's because of, because I'm missing God. God has a task, has a work for each one to do. When he left the twelve, he sent them all, go ye, all, into all the world and preach the gospel. He sent them all to, to perform a work. There at the end of the Bible, the dead are judged according to their works. God is vitally interested in what we do. What we do comes once again from what we are, comes once again from the life within us. Let's pray. Lord, thank you tonight for your life. Thank you, Lord, that it's still as fresh and abundant and powerful as it ever was. Lord, ask somehow that the quickening of your spirit might be upon us, that we might know the things which the spirit would say to the churches today, Lord. We might know those things which are for our life and for our light. Lord, that there might not be darkness in the midst of your people, but there might be that life which breaks every fetter, every bondage of death and then flows from within through each of us to this world around. Amen. You know that chorus caused me to come to that river, oh God. Love you.