Omri Jenkins expresses gratitude to the congregation for their support and prayers, emphasizing the loneliness of the pulpit and the importance of the Holy Spirit as a minister's true companion. He reflects on John 15, where Jesus describes Himself as the true vine and believers as branches, urging the congregation to abide in Christ to bear fruit. Jenkins warns against superficial faith, encouraging self-examination to ensure true connection with Christ, and highlights that genuine fruitfulness leads to effective prayer and glorification of God. He concludes by discussing the joy and love that come from abiding in Christ, which not only brings joy to believers but also glorifies God.

I just want to say a brief word of thanks to you all. Quite a number of people have been thanked publicly by Mr. Powell, and rightly so, and our chairman has been thanked, and I've been thanked, and just about the only people who have not been thanked so far are the congregation as a whole. And I want to thank you for the kind way in which you have welcomed me, and the kind expressions of gratitude, and everything else. Most of all, I want to thank you for your prayers on my behalf this week, and many of you have said down through the years that you have prayed for me and the work that I have been associated with. And I want to thank you warmly and heartily for all that you have meant to me down through the years, and not least this week. Many of you have told me that you felt for me on Tuesday morning particularly, and indeed each morning as I was abandoned by the chairman and the brethren who introduced the meeting in a devotional period. I think I knew something of the Elijah feeling. I only, I am left. I would want to assure you, however, that the chairman offered to remain on the platform, although he did express his preference to be down facing the preacher. And in any case, no matter if I had a whole array of men behind me in the pulpit, the pulpit is a lonely place. It is a lonely place. And no matter where you are or what kind of a congregation you have, it is a very lonely thing, humanly speaking, to be standing before men and women to proclaim the gospel of Christ. And the real companion we have is the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. He is the one who stands with us and beside us, and that the Lord has promised for us his people. And that is why one is grateful for the prayers of God's people when it comes especially to the preaching of the gospel. May I exhort you to pray for your ministers, pray for your preachers of the gospel, not only that they should pray faithfully, preach faithfully the gospel of Christ, but that they shall know something of the presence of the Paraclete. It is, I say, a lonely place, the pulpit. I know some ministers in our country who are faithful and who preach the word, fearing no one save God, that they are going through the mill, as it were, at the present time. And those of you who know something about that kind of situation, I would exhort you to pray as you have never prayed before for your ministers and uphold them and stand with them. Stand with them. They are waging the warfare of faith and they need the people of God to be with them as they seek to wage that warfare. I commend them to you as I thank you for remembering me this week. Now, we have been trying to look at that allegory in the 15th chapter of the gospel of John. I feel I should read it again. They say that the art of teaching is repetition, or at least a part of it, and it won't harm anyone. I'm sure that it will help us all to come to the word of God again and read it as we have read it each morning. The 15th chapter of the gospel of John, and we read verses 1 to 11. I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away. And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean, ye are purged. That is what it means. The word is catharsis. Now ye are purged, ye have been cleansed through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can he except he abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me he can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered. And men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If he abide in me, and my words abide in you, he shall ask what he will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that he bear much fruit. So shall he be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love. Even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. We looked briefly at some of the earlier statements, beginning with the first verse, noting there that we are told something about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in his relationship with God, in his equality with God, my Father, which means that he partakes of the same nature and the attributes and the character and the power and the majesty and the glory of God himself. He is God, my Father. We reminded ourselves that this was the great offense to those Jewish people who became his enemies and were instrumental in bringing about his crucifixion, that he had made himself equal with God. But we noted, and we cannot emphasize this enough, particularly in our days, when the person of Christ, as in other times, is under attack from one direction or another. People in high places, theologically and ministerially, are denying that person of Christ, his divinity particularly, and would turn him into the best man that the world has ever known, but nothing more than the best man. We have to resist all that. We have to reject it. No matter where the attack comes from or what it costs, we must stand and stand uncompromisingly, because the moment we lose the divinity of Christ, we have lost Christianity itself. But we also noted that he speaks of himself as the vine, the vine who has been planted by his father, the husbandman, denoting the relationship that our Lord had with his father in this world, being made flesh, taking our bone and our blood, and being made flesh, found in a manger, having no place to lay down his head, fastened to a cross of shame and anguish, and suffering the death of sinners. The vine in the hand of the husbandman, having given himself to obey the father. Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me. I come to do thy will, O God. That is what the vine really means. God had planted him in this world in order that he should bring forth that fruit that is in the purpose of God, that a vast multitude, which no man can number, out of every kindred and people and tribe and tongue, should be gathered into the kingdom of God. That was his subordination, giving himself. You remember how the last chapter that our brother read to us, the preceding chapter finishes, having been telling his disciples in the upper room that what was awaiting him within the next few hours or so, hereafter, he says, I will not talk much with you, for the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. It wasn't because of him. Ultimately, the Son of God was not going to the cross because of the prince of this world. He was involved in it, but there was something behind him. But that the world may know that I love the Father. And as the Father gave me commandment in eternity, before time was, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the Father gave him this commandment in eternity and he came willingly and gave himself because he loved the Father. And as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. That is our Savior, he who was equal with God, who divested himself of the glory and the majesty of his deity to come into this world as flesh. He is now restored to his majesty and his glory again with an added luster to it, an added luster to it. He is the first fruits. He is there in heaven in the body that he took with the prints of the nails in his hands and the scar of the wound in his side. He is there in the glory and he is the first fruits of the many multitudes of redeemed sinners that will be brought to everlasting glory in him and with him to share in that glory. That is our Savior. I am the vine. And then we noted briefly in verse 5 about the branches. I am the vine, he are the branches. And we tried to consider briefly how it is that men and women who are wild branches of trees in the desert bringing forth the most poisonous, dreadful fruit imaginable, the works of wickedness from hearts of corruption, that they are taken by the Spirit of God and they are grafted into him whose body was broken and an opening made so that we, by faith in him, should be grafted into him and become branches of the vine. And we noted that being branches of the vine that we are required, we are exhorted to cultivate that relationship with him. We are to abide in him. And he is to abide in us, his words in us, his grace in us, his strength in us, his enabling mercy day by day. We also noted briefly that there is such a thing, alas, of men and women who appear to be branches in the vine, the outward manifestations are that they are branches like others. We reminded ourselves that Judas was like that, but that he was not a true branch. He had been in the company and he had done the things that the others had done and he had sat at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and he had carried the purse and to all intents and purposes he was in the vine. But when it came to this ministry in the upper room and preceding the cross of Calvary, he had to go. The knife fell. The knife fell. And he was cut away. All of which is a warning to men and women that they are required to make their calling and election sure. We are called in scripture not merely to enjoy ourselves but to examine ourselves and see whether we are in the faith indeed. It isn't enough for us to be church members. It's not enough for us to be living the best we can and seeking to keep and recognize the Christian standards of morality and ethics and all the rest of it. We can be in a kind of a superficial relationship with Jesus Christ the vine and yet not being truly in him. We addressed some of our remarks at that point to some of the young people here. I know some young people here concerning whom we cannot but lament the fact that they do not appear to be branches of the vine. The fruit is not evident as yet. It is not for any of us to pass judgment on any and in any case the end is not yet but having said that I do want to pay this compliment to the young people in here. I am grateful for the way in which you have listened to me and indeed in the evening meetings that I have attended I've noted also that you have listened to the word of God being preached and I commend you for that and I'm grateful to you but my friend, all that is a subsidiary thing, a secondary matter. What I would plead with you once again this morning is to make sure, make sure that you're in the vine. Don't leave this conference to go on possibly in the way you have been going on before you came here. Don't be content to be a hanger on because you know you can settle in that kind of thing and it will become harder and harder for you to consider these things and your life will be a sham and a counterfeit down through the years to come. And unless God invades your life and breaks you down you will be found at the last to be like a branch that is cut away and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. Now it is Christ who says that, not I. Yesterday we considered something of the fruit and time must not be taken to enlarge on that. It is Christ likeness. It is the vine that reproduces itself in and on the branches. It is Christ sending His life up into the branches. It is Christ sending His grace and His strength into the branches so that in the branches, in the lives of men and women as they continue in Christ, as they abide in Him as they seek Him daily, as they pray as they read His words and His words are not only in their minds but in their hearts and as they pray for the power of the Spirit to be with them enabling them day by day in everyday situations bringing forth the fruit. This is one of the greatest concepts it seems to me when we come to talk about Christianity. There are so many people who have been everything that is vile. We are all vile. Is there anything more vile than self-righteousness? Is there anything more vile than people who believe that they are right because they are doing this, that and the other? There is nothing more vile than the pride that we have secretly and the selfishness which characterizes each and every one of us though manifesting itself in different ways. It is vile. The love of self is the opposite of loving God. And it is of the very essence of sin. And I say to you that it is an amazing thing that God can so work in our hearts and the Spirit can so apply the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ to us and the work that he accomplished for our redemption that we are changed. What a wonderful change in my heart has been wrought since Jesus came into my heart. That is what happens when we begin to love God instead of loving ourselves. And we begin to think of pleasing Him and obeying Him and begin to bring forth the fruit the fruits of righteousness. You remember how the Apostle Paul puts it Having been made free from sin and become slaves of God ye have your fruit unto holiness. Christ-likeness. Unlike the world. Unlike sinners going to hell. Unlike society which is riddled with corruption of every description. Marked out because we are different. That is what the fruit is. And in and through it all having a concern for lost men and women. We come now to look at briefly at some of the last verses. Let me read verses 7 to 11 again to you. If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. We have a very simple heading for each one of the previous mornings. The vine the first morning the branches the second morning the fruit yesterday morning. A title this morning is rather different rather difficult and I have tried to think of something that would embrace what we find in these verses and the best I can come up with is this. The fruit of the fruit. If that sounds a little bit difficult to you well then you don't have to memorize it. It seems to me that this is what we have. In these verses. That there is a fruit of the fruit. It is of the very nature of fruit of course to increase itself and to multiply itself. But there is here it seems to me a fruit of the fruit that our Lord has been talking about. In other words that Christ likeness in you and me produces something else. It leads on to something else. And that is what I want to consider with you this morning this last session we have together. Look at verse 7. If he abide in me and my words abide in you he shall ask what he will and it shall be done unto you. In other words our Lord is saying that effective praying is in fact something that results from this fruit that we bring forth in Christ likeness and godliness. He makes this statement several times in this private ministry as we have described him. As we have described it. He refers to it in the preceding chapter he refers to it in the next chapter about his people and for our purposes this morning those who are branches of the vine being able to come and to ask what they will of the Father and he will give it you he says. And the same thing here. He shall ask what he will and it shall be done unto you. Now really that appears to be a kind of a blank check. And in a sense it is. But of course it is a blank check on the bank of heaven. Not on any old bank. It is not in your bank or the world's bank or any other bank. It is the bank of heaven. And the currency that you can draw out with that check is the currency of heaven. That is one way of looking at it. There is another way of looking at it. It is these people who bear fruit and who bear fruit because they are abiding in Christ. And he and his words are abiding in them. It is they who are able to ask what they will. It is not any old Tom, Dick and Harry who can do it. I can remember passing a church in South Wales many years ago. I think it was in Britain Ferry. In case you don't know where Britain Ferry is. The chairman comes from Neath. And somebody else who comes from Aberavon did you say? Oh, Reverend Howard Jones comes from Aberavon. And in between those two terrible places there is a worse place. It couldn't be otherwise with those two on either side you see. Britain Ferry. And I passed a church there on one occasion and I saw a wayside pulpit there. Do you know what it said on the wayside pulpit? God shall supply all your needs. That was all. A total misrepresentation of that text to start with. Paul made that great statement having acknowledged that the Philippians had sent once and again to him. There was no Concord those days. No jet planes. And yet when Paul was in Thessalonica having left Philippi after being half the night in jail there with his feet in the stocks etc. and 95 miles to the south he had come to Thessalonica. And while he was there preaching the gospel the Philippians in Philippi spontaneously because the love of God was in their hearts you see. And they had a concern for the ministers of the gospel and the propagation of the gospel. And they sent once and again to Paul down in Thessalonica and having thanked them for that he says, My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Ah my friend we do not have a blank check on any old bank. We have a blank check on the bank of heaven as Spurgeon has put it. That is what prayer is. It's the checkbook of the bank of heaven. And what our Lord is saying here and elsewhere is that when we bring forth that fruit we become pleasing to almighty God. And I do not think that it is going too far to say that we begin to have influence with God. Have you got influence with God? We have that example specific example in James chapter 5 where we are told that the effectual righteous the effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In other words, a man who is Christ-like a man who is bringing forth a fruit that is the man who has power with God in prayer. And we are given an example there. We are given the example of Elijah. He was not a superman. He was a true and an ordinary man as you and I are men and women and have the same failings. And you know he didn't pray. He didn't go to the northern kingdom and commanded the rain to fall because God had appointed that. No, no, no. That is not how I understand it. How I understand it is this, you see, that he was sent of God to the northern kingdom and his eyes were opened to see what the plight of that kingdom was. Jezebel was sharing the throne and Jezebel had brought her pagan deities with her and the whole land was corrupted with paganism and Elijah was to bring the word of God to them and this is how he began. He asked God to intervene in punishment. Stop the rain, he said. Let's bring these people to their senses and he had power with God. He prayed and it did not rain and he prayed again and it did rain. It was a man who had the fruits in him and so it is if he asks anything in my name. In my name. If he asks anything, if he agrees together, two of you agree together, it shall be done. And so on. There are many statements. The point is this, you see, that so much of our praying, does it go beyond the ceilings? Oh, the abuse of prayer among us. Even public prayer. Even public prayer. So many of us preach when we pray. So many of us preach when we pray. And oh, we go around this, that and the other. And it seems to me that we are only wanting to be heard so often. Our prayer, my friends, should be something which is drawing upon heaven, not displaying ourselves and our eloquence or whatever else we might have upon our minds, even unwittingly and unconsciously. It is drawing from heaven. And those who have power in heaven, in prayer, are those who bring forth the fruits. He shall ask what he will and that it shall be done unto you. That is a fruit of the fruit. Another thing that we have here is this. Our Lord says in the next verse, Herein is my Father glorified, that he bear much fruit. I was thinking about this as we sang the last hymn. I wonder if God was glorified and our Lord Jesus Christ truly exalted. As we sang that last hymn now, and the one before during the offering, what an amazing hymn it was. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, as vast, unmeasured, boundless, foundless, free, extolling the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God in him, of course. My friends, our praise is intended to glorify God. It is intended to glorify God. But, you know, mere sound and mere words, even tuneful words, sung by Welsh voices, does not glorify God. What glorifies God is the praise that comes from those who are bringing forth the fruits of righteousness so that there is no contradiction between the praise that is upon their lips and the fruit that is in their lives. That is what it amounts to. My friends, oh, they sing greatly, they sing tremendously on Cardiff Arms Park, you know, when they play with that right-shaped ball. Oh, they sing wondrously. And, you know, they talk about the singing not only in England and Scotland, they talk about it on the continent. I have seen them watching the television when there is a football match in Cardiff Arms Park and they extol the singing, the great singing. But, my dear friends, thousands of those voices that are raised in singing guide me, O thou great Jehovah, they are under the influence of drink. Is that glorifying God? It is not glorifying God. It is mere entertainment that the BBC has taken up and used as far as it possibly can because the BBC is in the entertainment business. And that is why it is throwing it out, broadcasting it into the whole wide world. They want to entertain people. They want to make them comfortable and they want to make their ease for them as they go on their way to a lost eternity. There is nothing glorifying to God in that. This is what glorifies God. A person who has been grafted into Christ and bringing forth the fruits of righteousness and Christ-likeness despite the temptations, despite his own frailties, despite the wickedness. Every believer, a branch of Christ, bringing forth the fruit, an island in a desert, an oasis where there is no water. Glorifying God. Oh, God is glorified, dear friend. When you'll be in your office on Monday and you'll be surrounded by men whose interest will be what was on the telly last night and will be cracking dirty jokes or pursuing the ways that all men pursue and you, godly, a godly man, a godly woman, having brought forth and bringing forth in that office, in that school, in that college, wherever it is, bringing forth the fruits of righteousness. Herein is my Father glorified, a candidate for hell, a citizen of heaven, in the office in Cardiff, in the college. Herein is my Father glorified. Why? Oh, your salvation and mine and the fruit that we are bearing, it is of His design and it is of His decree and it is of His activity and power. He sent the Son into the world and He commissioned the Son, gave Him the commandments as to what He was to do in this world. It was He who appointed that His Son should die in order to save sinners. It is He, and therefore, when sinners are saved and they bring forth the fruits of salvation in their lives, that is glorifying God more than anything else could ever do in this world. Herein is my Father glorified. That is a blessed fruit, isn't it? That is a sublime fruit that a candidate for hell should be bringing glory to Almighty God. So shall He be my disciple. I'm not going to stop with that. Time does not allow. We've been through much of that already, not only this morning, but throughout the week. Our Lord goes on to say something which must be the culminating point of our time together this week in this conference. He says that there is something else. By way of fruit of this fruit, as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you and that your joy may be full. In other words, summarizing it, He is saying that there are two things that result from the fruit, namely, love and joy. Love and joy. The love, He says, for you and me, is the same as it was between Him and His Father. I suggested to you earlier this week that there is a link running through these relationships that we have here. The Son with the Father, the Son with His people, the branches, His people with one another, and His people and the world in general. There is a link there. We have not worked that out in detail. We'll just have to accept it for this morning. And here is another link. Namely, our Lord is saying that the Father loved Him in such a way that He loves us who are His branches bringing forth the fruit. That is one of the most difficult statements in some senses for me at any rate in this passage, and indeed in many passages, as the Father hath loved me. How did God the Father love the Son? What is our Son talking about? This affection that the Father had manifested towards Him. Well, you know, we talk about the love of God. We've sung about it this morning and throughout the week we're always doing so. And we're preaching it and talking about it and rejoicing it. The love of God in redemption. Indeed, we say that this is the sublime manifestation of the love of God in redemption in Christ Jesus. God commendeth His love towards us. God makes an exhibition of it. That is what is meant. He displays His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. But you know, that could not be the aspect of God's love that our Lord is talking about. The Father did not love the Son redemptively. He was Himself the Redeemer. He was the instrument, the servant of the love of God in saving men and women. How then did the Father love the Son? And then, of course, we can talk about the love of God in providence. I'm sure that very few people, comparatively speaking, are aware of the love of God in providence. You remember how our Lord puts it that He sends the rain on the just as well as the unjust, makes the sun to shine upon the evil as well as the good. Oh, the long-suffering, the general love of God towards humanity in its wickedness. Why hasn't He swept humanity out of His sight with its sin and dreadful state and all the arrogance of wicked men? How is He so forbearing? Oh, there is a general aspect. To the love of God, you see, in providence, sends the rain and causes the sunshine to bring forth of the goodness of the earth to feed men and women who will take what it produces and use it to trample everything that is godly beneath their feet. And still it goes on. The love of God in providence. But our Lord Jesus Christ is one with God in providence. He was the agent of creation and He is one with God in everything that is providential for us so that He cannot be talking about that love. Our Lord gives us a clear indication of what He is talking about. He said in that verse I have already quoted to you at the end of chapter 14 that the world may know that I love the Father and as the Father gave me commandment even so I do. And here again in verse 10 even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. In other words, it is the love of the Father because of His delight in His Son. His Son having been sent into this world to fulfill that work entrusted to Him and the Son loving the Father and delighting only to do His will despite the awful cost involved keeping the Father's commandment and bringing pleasure to His Father who was in heaven. Can you see? Can you see God the Father in heaven looking down upon His Son here on earth having sent Him into this world and His Son committed to fulfilling His Father's will. Do you remember what happened when He made that public commitment to fulfilling the task His Father had entrusted to Him at His baptism? That is what His baptism means at least in part, my friend. He had been those silent years in Nazareth and now He was entering into the public ministry and taking up the path that was going to lead Him eventually to the cross of Calvary and He is baptized publicly and the blessed Spirit of God comes down upon Him and there is a voice from the excellent glory that says, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. It was as the Son took up the path that was to lead Him to the cross because that is what the Lord of glory had sent Him into this world to do. And the Father is delighted with His Son that He has taken the steps towards Calvary. And then, you know, later on we read in Matthew 16 that there was a turning point in the ministry of our Lord His public ministry. You remember that He asked His disciples, Whom do men say that I am? And they told Him, Some Elias and some Jeremias or one of the prophets. Who do you say I am? Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, says Peter. And then we read, From that time forth Jesus began to show unto His disciples how that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the priests and to suffer and to die and be raised again the third day. Peter says, This shall not be unto thee, Lord. Be it far from thee, impossible, unthinkable that the Son of God should be going to die at the hands of men and women. But that was the explicit statement of our Lord of what He was going to do. Very shortly, in the next chapter, and you know there are no chapter divisions in the original manuscripts. Chapter 17 of Matthew says that He went up to a high mountain with Peter and John and Moses and Elias appeared to Him. And you know what we are told? We are told that they talked to Him about His coming death. That's what they did. And then the voice comes from heaven again. He having been transfigured so that He was glistering white, something of the glory of heaven descended upon Him. And the voice came again, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Make no mistake about it, my friends. The Father delighted in His Son. And the Son is saying that as He brought forth the fruit required of Him that you and I bring forth our fruit in and through Him. We bring pleasure to Him and to God the Father. And they love us not only redemptively I am not talking about more than one love. There is only one love but there are different aspects of it. Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free to His emotion, vast of blessing. We bring pleasure to Almighty God as we bring forth that fruit. And He pours out His affection upon us to ravish our hearts. I wish time were available for me to refer to other things in this connection but I must leave it there and finish with this. Joy. Joy. His joy in us. His joy. That my joy might remain in you. That was the great joy that He had. What a joy it was to take those early disciples and graft them into Himself and to know that soon they would be bringing forth that fruit, preaching in powerfully, suffering for His name's sake, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for Him. He was seeing all that, you see. He knew what was coming and His joy was in them. These things have I spoken, He says. This fruit that He has been concerned about. These things I have spoken that my joy in you. For the joy that was set before Him. He endured the cross because it was going to save people like you and me from the fires of hell and bring us to everlasting glory. The joy that He finds He shall see of the travel of His soul and be satisfied. Oh, my friend, do you know that the Saviour finds joy in you and I? Come to faith in Him and are saved for time and for eternity. And when we bring forth that fruit which glorifies Him and glorifies God, oh, He finds joy in you and me. But not only does He speak about His own joy, He speaks about our joy. That your joy may be full, complete, fulfilled. We have the joy of salvation. We have the joy of the Lord in our hearts and lives. And we have a joy that is not dependent upon outward circumstances. They can be grievous, they can be terrible. The devil can be after us, the storms of life could break upon us. But we have what Jonathan Edwards describes as the calm tranquility of the soul. That is what Christian joy is. Not excitement, not something worked up with a repetition of many choruses and ditties, but the calm tranquility of the soul within. Men and women bring in forth fruit for the glory of God and His love being shed abroad in our hearts by the blessed Spirit. And we find Him in knowing that joy that even is with us when days of sorrow have overtaken us. I am told that in the Straits of Gibraltar there are two currents. There is a surface current and there is a lower current in the sea. One current flows from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean and the lower current flows from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic. The surface current is cold. The Atlantic waters are chilly. And those waters flowing from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean through those straits, they are cold and chilling to the bone. But that other current from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, oh, it is warm and balmy. And, my friends, that is how it is with men and women who are grafted into Christ and who are bringing forth the fruit. They are abiding in Him and He is abiding in them. And the joy of the Lord is their strength, you know. And although there are chilling waters in this world and there are trials and tribulations and you and I have to face the enemy and contend with Him and battle for the things of God in our world, and men will say this, that and the other about us, it matters not, my dear friend. There is another current underneath me, all around me, is the current of His love leading onward, leading homeward to my glorious rest above. Your joy may be full.