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Greetings in the Lord Jesus. Quite a Sunday school lesson if you stop to think about it. Trying to grasp a little bit of what God is like. Incomparable. I thought maybe a better word would be incomprehensible. I don’t have time to say half the things I thought about.
But anyway, I won’t try. We’ll come down a little bit this morning and look at someone a little bit lower. Someone that we could compare perhaps. I was thinking recently, and it’s been a while since I told my story here.
I think I’ll do it today. We did that back in the early 90s. Before a number of you were here, a number of Mark and Ronnie gave his. I’m not sure whether Dave gave his story or not on a Sunday evening. You wouldn’t talk. That was your problem. OK. Maybe we should take up some of these other people that have come along since then and let them do it sometime. Can somebody tell me what Matthew 6.33 says?
OK. See, he first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Probably if I had a life motto, that’s the one it would have been. Still is. Excuse me. Life’s not over quite yet.
As far as I know. Another verse that I found early, stuck it up on my bulletin board probably within a few months after I became a Christian and still. Think about it fairly often. Proverbs 4.23 Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Out of it spring the issues of life.
The New King James says. And seems like that’s saying be careful what you put in. Be careful what you put in.
Because what you put in determines what comes out. Well. And I thought about this. Well, this is for dumb. Talk about myself in the Sunday morning sermon.
But I’m going to do it anyway. And I want to honor the Lord. In fact, Brian started out the Sunday school class saying, Well, we could just each of us give some of our past experiences of how this incomparable God has worked in our life.
And I thought, OK, that’s sort of what I had planned. Of course, I was born in 1959. I grew up, came of age in the 1970s. And I don’t know what you know about the 1970s. But anyway, it was right after the 1960s. And they have a pretty bad reputation.
And the 70s was no better. Of course, you know, can’t spend a lot of time on my family. You know some about that. Mom was a Christian. Dad was not. We went to Morning View, Mom, and she took the children to Morning View Church, where Ernest Gaiman was the minister when I was younger, and then later Dwight Heetroll. As a young boy, I was in sixth grade.
Well, my sixth grade year, we had some neighbors that moved in from Manitoba. They were Baptists. I had a boy my age, Marvin, I think was his name. He was a Christian.
And I think he was a real one, just from what I remember. And I was impressed enough that I became a Christian too. I never told anybody. I was a secret Christian.
Well, I think I meant it. I was reading my Bible, and I was marking things in it, and things like that. It’s a little hard to tell just what I was looking back.
And I wondered sometimes whether that gave the Lord an extra hand on my life, that might not have been there otherwise. But anyway, they moved away. I gave it up. I gave it up by a conscious decision. And I don’t necessarily remember the decision.
I remember something that happened just right afterwards, though. My sister got a new car, well, it wasn’t new, but 1963 in Palo, one of those big boats. I remember her riding with her the first time, and there were three of us in the front seat. I was against the outer door, and I remember being afraid. I hadn’t been afraid like that before. What if the door came open? There was a sharp turn there above our house, little waves, and we go, I remember going around it, then, and, okay, the door. There was a new fear there that hadn’t been there before. Well, okay. Fast forward a little, get into the teenage years. Add some friends at Morning View, a number that were going pretty wild, and we were going right with them, by the way.
My brothers, I have two older brothers, three and four years older than I am, probably. And we were going right with them. By the tenth grade, I was smoking, and I was drinking, and I was in marijuana. I had a neighbor boy that introduced us to marijuana. Skipping school, eleventh grade, I had at least one class.
I think they recorded 21 absences, and they weren’t sicknesses either. I had a friend who had a car. We’d take off and spend the day running around partying.
Did that a good bit. I can remember, well, if they all kind of interesting stories. But anyway, about almost getting caught in that kind of thing.
Okay. Language was pretty rotten. Mind was pretty rotten.
Oh, anyway. It got to the point where my brothers and I, they both got driver’s license eventually. I didn’t get mine until I was seventeen, so that didn’t hurt me any. But we would take mom to church, and we would leave and run the town, and spend the time with our girlfriends, and then we’d come back and pick her up, and go back home. So, I’ve been reading some letters my mom wrote during those years, and it’s amazing the pressure she was under. Besides having boys that were in trouble a lot, one of my brothers, we thought was going to end up with a penitentiary sentence.
During that time, there were lots of things happening. We were keeping granny, my grandmother, and I had forgotten a lot, just how bad she got in those last years, her mind. I do have a mental picture of her standing at the door trying to figure out the lock. She was going to go home. She was. She got to the point where they were tying her into the chair with a rope.
You could say, well, that sounds pretty bad. Well, they’d have done it in the nursing home, too. They just did it at home. You had to do something if you wanted to get any rest. She had to. Mom had to.
Dad did it first. But, yeah, it was pretty bad. Plus, well, just things going on. Dad drank. Mom didn’t know when the weekend came. How the weekend was going to go.
Is it going to be a good weekend or a bad weekend? And pretty often they were bad. Those kind of things. But the Lord worked this incomparable God we were talking about just sort of brought things into focus to bring me back to Him. Well, and I think He did my brothers, too, for that matter.
And some others I could think of. But somewhere along the way we each have to make our own decision. Are we going to accept what God is doing with us? And I think that’s where the real difference comes. So I was thinking about some of those things that the Lord used to bring me back. Whether it was prayer. My mom prayed for us a lot. The Morning View Church had a prayer meeting that I attended regularly after I became a Christian. And they prayed a lot.
And I know that there was a lot of power there. Like I said, I didn’t have a driver’s license. So I was dependent on my brothers to run around. And they both got out of school, got jobs. And they got to the point where they stopped coming home in the evening. Instead of coming home, they went and ran around and did their thing. And guess who got left set at home?
Well, a couple things. I was sitting at home and I can remember going up to my room. And I would get out of marijuana. I had brought an elf home with me from school. The last day of school in 11th grade.
I remember that. I carried it home in my sock. $15 dollars worth.
I don’t know what the going rate is now. So I’d go up to my room and I would party by myself. Well, guess what?
It’s not much fun partying by yourself. And besides that, the more you smoke, the less effect it has on you. Just like any other drug, if you want to get more out of it, you have to do more. And with marijuana, I think it kind of wears out eventually from what I understand.
But it just wasn’t much fun. And I had a cousin from Pennsylvania who came and lived with us about that time. He was a Christian, at least a nominal one. And he did come home. And so I ran with him instead. And he went places like to my sister’s apartment. And she was a Christian. And so I ended up doing some running with him.
So you can see, well, okay, the Lord’s changing some influences in my life. Another cousin met her at school. I went to Broadway High School. There was a class. We had a literature class.
One, six weeks. And she sat there to the right of me. And she was obviously with a menonite of sorts. She had long hair and looked like a Virginia conference menonite. And her name was show altar. And I figured she was my cousin. And she thought I was sort of weird. Okay, probably I was.
Here’s this hippie type fella. And well, okay, the book we read in that literature class that month was Hiroshima. And of course, I finished it up the first day or so, read it completely through. And the teacher started chucking these other books at me.
The Last Babylon and the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. And I don’t know what all she gave me, but this, my cousin sitting there, she didn’t know we were cousins. I did.
I figured it. And she didn’t like to read. And she, well, here’s this weird fella. And so I said, I was going to shock her.
I told her one day she was my cousin. And it did shock her. But after that, she took a little more of an interest in me. And she started talking to me. And the thing I remember her saying, the thing that sticks is, but aren’t you afraid you’re going to go to hell? Hmm. I know we talked about a lot more than that, but she talked to me about being a Christian and why I should.
So the Lord keeps kept bringing things into my experience to bring me the right way. So the summer of 1976 between the 11th and 12th grades, that’s kind of where I was. And I remember that summer, one day, wandering into my cousin’s room upstairs. He was sleeping in one of the rooms upstairs. And he had a copy of Living Proverbs, a little book about this big, the Living Proverbs, a book of Proverbs in the Living Bible. And I laid down in his bed and I read it, most of it.
Maybe not all, but most of it. I was, I think it was a pretty discouraging, kind of a low time for me. The Lord was bringing the wife to bear. And I read that and I decided, I want that wisdom. I want that wisdom, but I didn’t do anything about it necessarily right then.
I did tell Russ, my cousin, sometime real soon after that, I don’t think it’s going to be very long until I have to become a Christian. What kind of a weird thing to say, but anyway. He said it blew his mind.
I could imagine that. And I found out recently something else I said right during that time to Russ. This came out of a letter, I’ve been reading my mom’s letter. I think I’ve told you that, that she wrote to her friend during that time. And one thing I told him during that time, before I was a Christian, he had something he was struggling with and I told him, well, why don’t you pray about it? I didn’t remember it.
Dwight, the pastor at Morning Views, his mom said, he said, well, maybe I should let Keith preach more of my sermons. Anyway. It’d be interesting to be able to remember a little more exactly what all did go on in my mind in that time. But the Lord was working and I was at the point where I think probably if Russ would have just gone ahead or somebody would have come to me and said, do you want to be a Christian? I probably would have been ready. I’d have been ready to do it. Well, that didn’t happen.
So, well, I’ll continue. July 27th. That was June 22nd, I think, I said.
Probably want to read that booklet. July 27th, getting on toward the end of summer, midway, two-thirds of the way through, was when, the day I became a Christian, I remember that evening going with Russ to town and, oh, we went to a softball game where he worked at Conier and they had a softball team that was playing and on the way home, we stopped by Dwight. Dwight, he was the pastor and I figured out later, I think Russ probably was going to try to get Dwight to talk to me. But he wasn’t there. Some of his boys were and we watched one of them pull a calf. They had to hook him up to some chains and yank it out of the cow.
It was sort of interesting. We went on home and Russ wondered if he could play some of his records on my record player. I had one and he didn’t. He wouldn’t have appreciated my record so much. I had Dubby Brothers and Led Zeppelin and all those 70s rock groups, some of those kinds.
But he had some contemporary Christian music, I think. So he came over and sat down and I was over there too and so I brought up, no, I didn’t bring up the subject, I said something to the effect, what do you think I’m thinking about? And so he finally went ahead and talked to me about, he figured I was ready to become a Christian. I was!
I guess I could say don’t be that hard headed that somebody has to ask you to help him, okay? But I was ready. And so we prayed and we talked a little while and finally I just asked him to go ahead and leave. Because I needed to pray about some things and so one of my big concerns that night was I smoked a pack a day in the last couple of months I had tried a number of times to quit and couldn’t. I guess it was probably one of those things, you know, trying to straighten up your life so you could become a Christian.
It just didn’t work. And so I prayed about that, though the Lord, he was going to have to help me because I was quitting. So I did never smoked again except several times I dreamed in a dream I was smoking and that bothered me pretty badly. So I prayed about that and Lord took care of that too real fairly quickly.
Well of course a quick cussing do. I remember that next morning I got up and walked around. It felt like I was in a daze. I was pretty much at home by myself right then. Mom was off to a trip to Canada.
Of course Dad went to work so I’m not sure what I was going on there. So I’ve known this first few days I called my cousin the one that I knew from school and of course she shrieked like a show altar does. Maybe you don’t know how to show altar scream but anyway when I told her she just kind of let out a squeal. Jennifer could show you. I couldn’t get ahold of Mom I don’t think for a few days because they were out in the bush somewhere around Red Lake. But they came back to Red Lake and I did get to talk to her and her my squeal.
Anyway like a show altar does too. I didn’t tell Dad right away after Mom came home she encouraged me to tell him. So I did. I didn’t know what to expect from him. I think you may have been drinking a little that evening but basically he just said well good stick to it then or make sure you stick to it.
And that’s about all he said. But I was glad that Mom made me do it anyway. Maybe she didn’t make me but she told me she thought I ought to and she was there when I did. And I probably have heard to think a lot or getting off to a good start.
With advice. Helping me get started reading the Bible that kind of thing. And I did start reading the Bible. I knew I read it a lot that summer. Again reading through Mom’s letters in December of that year she wrote that I had read through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in those four months. So she kept track I guess.
I guess I must have told her. That was the Living Bible. My sister gave me a Living Bible and I read it. And I read it a lot. Although later I had to unlearn a few things that said but I’m not sorry I started out in it.
Wouldn’t recommend starting there necessarily. Of course with that kind of a change. Life changed pretty quickly.
I had a neighbor lady that told Mom, well he even walks different. And she lived about, well there in St. Helene we didn’t have blocks but if you did it had been two blocks from the host office. And we went there and picked up our mail so I walked back and forth there a lot. And this lady kind of lived off to the side so I guess she saw. But she said he even walks different.
Well probably so. I did. I remember begging the Lord, Lord I want to serve you. Use me.
And I’ve told you this before I think. I just wanted to love God and to serve Him with all my heart. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean some good once in a while to try to remember just what it felt like during that time. And because once in a while you do get a little weary and well the wing if you’re not careful. And there can be a good reminder. Doesn’t hurt to look back sometimes as long as it’s the right way. There was another passage that I’ve always liked from the beginning and that’s Philippians 3. I thought about reading it where it says don’t look back. Putting behind what’s back there and leaving it back there and I want to do that. But at the same time I don’t think it hurts to remember where we came from and make sure we’re leaving it behind. I went back to school that fall and I decided I was going to carry my Bible to school when I carried it openly to school. I figured that might be helpful in making breaks with some of those old friends.
I really didn’t have any trouble with them. The one fellow that I had done all my running around with to talk to once or twice, but he caught on very quickly that I’d gone a different direction. I don’t know that I necessarily told him that.
I’ve always been sort of shy and backwards and it didn’t come easy to talk about those things with especially old friends, I guess. I did a couple things I thought about. That first day after I became a Christian that next morning I got up and I determined I wasn’t going to smoke anymore and I was quitting and I noticed that day one of my brothers chose that day to leave a pack of cigarettes laying in the room upstairs. Temptation right there in front of you. Well, I don’t know that it was even a temptation.
It just, my mind was made up. So, changed friends, went back to public school. There was a one-way club that met, well the clubs I think met monthly, I’m not sure. The first one I went to was a lot of people just went there to get out of class.
By the next time they had thinned it down. So, that’s the first one I remember a young girl getting up and giving her testimony and oh, she had just a glowing testimony and all that. So I talked to the instructor that was in charge of it afterwards. I thought he might want to give my testimony next time too.
So I did. But, well, I got the crying just talking to him and then when it came around time to do it, I think I got the crying a little bit too. I couldn’t handle speaking in front of people in a group that was just more than I could take. In fact, the year before I failed half a year of US history because I would not mind you give oral reports.
I just wouldn’t do it. And teacher, well anyway, I ended up taking half a year of US history again, which was probably good. I ended up teaching it and writing a book on it.
Okay. I remember going to revival meetings at the Baptist Church and singratively and I was going. I wanted to go places.
I wanted to go places with the Lord. They had revivals. There was a conservative Baptist girl at Broadway School that year and I went to the revivals in her church down at Folk’s Round, I believe it was.
I appreciated her just from what I knew of her. They had a rock concert one day. It was government class. It happened to be a class I had when she was in it.
She asked to be excused from going to the rock concert. So I did too. I wouldn’t have done it myself. But with her example, I would have. I did. Probably wouldn’t have done it myself.
I hadn’t probably got to that point. Midway through the school year I went to work at Valley Books, which is a little bookstore in downtown Hersonburg. Was then run by Arlen and Ruth Snyder. They were members of Southeastern. Probably worked Saturday some and probably a Thursday or a Friday night some. They were up on Thursday and Friday nights.
There was a young lady named Eva that worked there too by the way. I went through all those usual struggles thinking about marriage and probably I just had this desire that I wanted to be married sometime and had to go through that whole thing of coming to being able to say to the Lord, Lord, I want what you want. I don’t care how that works out. Of course, then shows up this young lady named Eva. But anyway, not till after I’d settled that issue with the Lord. So by July of 1978 I was interested in her. My sister told her I was and she didn’t believe her.
Oh, well, whatever. You told my sister that I was interested in you and Irma would say no, she didn’t think so. But anyway, we had our first date in August, went to the peak.
Martin Weber was preaching. I went twice. First time was not a date.
I ended up setting beside her anyway. Y’all remember the peak. The old peak had been just over on the side and so there was a group of us that went in. It was her and her sister and me and her brother Dale and maybe another male or two. And I was just, I happened to be first behind her. I just followed her in and sat down beside her and they dropped off somewhere else. So there we sat. So I had to make it official and go back later in the week. All right.
Lord worked about pretty good. I like to say that she asked me for the date but it didn’t quite work that way. I did ask her. I don’t have time to explain all that now. Well, there was a struggle in making the change from Virginia Conference to Southeastern. There was somewhat of a struggle there for me to make that change.
I was determined to be in the Lord’s will and do what he wanted. And I didn’t want to go do these things if they were just formed and there wasn’t good reason for them. So that was part of it. And part of it was that I just felt needed at morning view too.
They need good people there too and all that. People that are on fire for the Lord. So I did come into Southeastern and I, but for me to put on the plain suit to take some of these other things, I wasn’t willing to do it till I had looked at them for myself and understood where they came from, why they’re there and what good they are.
See how they lined up with scripture. So anyway, we were married in 1978. I remember the first topic I gave in the Southeastern Conference. Here’s this young man that scared the death of speaking. I was asked to talk on separation at the pike one Sunday night in late 1978.
Shortly after we were married. And I wrote the whole thing out. Got the J.C. Wanger’s book separated under God and I read it and then I sat down and figured out what I wanted to say. We wrote it out. Typed part of it and Eva rewrote part of it for me by hand I think because we were running out of time on Sunday afternoon or something and I read it. I stood up there with my knees shaking and everything else. But I got through it.
And then Jim Gehring came and asked for it to put into the lifelines and that was kind of a boost. And I think probably it was that and some things like that that gave me the idea, well you know maybe I can write. My mom writes, why couldn’t I?
So I started to try to write a little more too. Jennifer showed up in 1999. Whoops, 1979. Excuse me.
Can’t believe what I write. And I remember the day there in Dr. Huffman’s parking lot. Some of you know where Dr. Huffman was there in Hinton. Back then you didn’t go to the store and buy a self-test. You went to the doctor and he told you whether you were pregnant or not. And she came back out and said she was. I can remember sitting there and I can remember the weight. The realization that here I am, I’m responsible for another. So I worked in the bookstore six years.
Started in 1978, well late 77. As time went on, I got to be more and more uncomfortable with what we were selling there. This whole contemporary Christian music scene. The Snyder’s daughter was into that. She was in charge of the record department. There was strange stuff they were selling. And some of the books too for that matter.
And so let’s see. We kept Ruth Ann Rohr who taught first grade back in 1981 or so. And she stayed at our house. So we were kind of up with what was happening at school. Where the elder pastor at Bethany where we were was school board chairman. So he would at least mention the needs sometimes.
We knew there was a need for a high school teacher. And I remember talking to Danny Beery one Sunday night at the bank. I got him the front steps. I asked him if they had a teacher yet. He said no.
Are you interested in? Well, no I wasn’t. But you know it wasn’t too many weeks probably until the idea started to grow. I felt like it was time to get out of the bookstore.
They needed a teacher. So I don’t know. Probably late July is when I walked over to Campbell Coppiesland early one day from Valley Books. Just to block her two apart and talk to Eldon. So I gave my two week notice at Valley Books and started probably at the school about two weeks after that. I was pretty late for getting a teacher. Learned a lot teaching. Kathy was one of my students by the way. Let’s see.
Which year did you graduate? Okay. I don’t know. Tell it got up to be about 94 or so. I was beginning to feel like it was time to change again. I felt pretty ineffective as a principal. I enjoyed teaching. I taught three years. Nathan Good was principal. I enjoyed the teaching.
Nathan moved off to South Carolina. I was made principal. I didn’t enjoy being principal. As the years went on, I don’t know. I just felt like it was not getting better. It was getting worse. I was happy to change over to CLP when the time came.
So I’ve been there since 20 couple of years I suppose. We talk about how great God is. Probably those kind of experiences that we need more often to help us realize how small we are and how insufficient and how much we need him. I keep coming back to that. It seems like too often.
No, not too often. It’s a good place to stay. I don’t stay there like I ought to and have to be brought back sometimes.
And sometimes it’s humiliating or humbling the way the Lord does it. Well anyway, just a few more details. Get you up to date where we are now. There was a minister ordination in June of 86.
What am I, 26 years old, almost 27? It looked awful big. There were four of us in the lot.
John Weaver was ordained. I’m sorry, but we were just as happy as could be. I never felt the weight go off my shoulders quite like that. We were smiling.
I don’t know. But another ordination a little later, three months later. Deacon ordination this time. And this time it didn’t mess me.
It hit me. It was Paul Gingrich and Ben Greider and me. It was all one district at the time.
So Ben got sent to South Boston and Paul got sent to West Virginia. I wasn’t too worried. I figured they weren’t going to send their school teacher away. They kept me at Bethany. So that was at Bethany for a year. Until another ordination comes along this time.
It’s a minister ordination. That was later 87. And that’s when Brother Gerald Good and I were ordained minister together. And then the need was at the pike. So we were at the pike for two years.
1988, 89, even I were there just long enough. Maybe they get to know people, I guess. It sort of seems like now. And this last year serving at the pike is Bishop. It was kind of interesting because a lot of the same people are still there. 1989, the bishops did sort of a general shake up in the district. There was at least one minister that kind of wanted to move somewhere else. Some other church.
And so they looked at the different congregations and the needs and did some shuffling. Charles Heapwell went to bank. I went to Raleigh. See, I can’t remember the other details. But anyway, there were several. A number of us moved around. So I ended up at Raleigh Springs.
And 1996, Mission Committee started holding meetings in Front Royal there at the Union Hall. They sent Marks up to help. John Lees were in on that. Not sure who else right off. David Showalters. David W. Showalters.
Looking for a minister to move in by 1998. And John Risser’s order once said, I volunteered. I didn’t quite see it that way. I just, I’d been in on a conversation somewhere where somebody would say, well, our ministers just aren’t willing to move. Well, I didn’t like that. So there was one night I talked to John outside the bank.
He was sitting in his car and I just went over and talked to him. And I said, you know, I’ve heard people saying that we ministers aren’t willing to move. That’s not true. I’d be willing to if I was asked. Hmm. I didn’t say quite that way even, but anyway, he got the idea that I ought to be asked.
Okay. So they came and saw us in February and asked us. And we moved on June the 1st or right there about over to where Nathan’s are now. Of course, then there was an attempt at a bishop ordination real soon after that. And that was during a real rocky time when there was a lot going on in church and the bishops were under a lot of pressure.
They weren’t able to get anyone to go through and try to get in after a couple years. And by that time, I think the Lord had just made it plain what was going to happen. And I determined that if I was named in that one, I wasn’t going to say no. Just even though several others were named too and did say no, just I was to the point where I decided that that’s what God wanted.
That’s what he was going to have. But anyway, okay, so far enough for now. A student asked me once back in the early 80s when I was still new teaching school, she said, Why? How do you know it was God’s will for you to teach school? Well, anyway, I actually sat down and wrote a letter to reply. I still have a copy of it. But one of the things I sat in there and I still feel this way is that I feel that this, I didn’t say all this, but just relating it to our lesson, this incomprehensible God. I call him Father. Abba. Baddie.
Whatever. He cares about me and he leads me. And I’ve always felt that he was working in my life and leading me, especially me.
Well, okay, not just me only, but I think he does it for you, each of us. It’s just as if we were an only child. And here’s our father working in our lives, leading us where he wants us to be. He cares about us that much.
As I thought about it this morning, I also thought, well, you know God, he’s sort of a prodder too. He’s not satisfied to let us sit where we are. We like to be comfortable. I don’t think God likes us to be comfortable. He keeps shoving me at least out of my comfort zone into new things and new areas to grow in. And, oh, I, you know, I look back sometimes and I think about some of the things that I still struggle with, still have trouble trusting him with. And I’m thinking, why in the world am I not there yet? But I guess whenever we get there on this side, I’m looking forward to getting there on the other side though. And sometimes when I say things like, well, I love the Lord with all my heart and I want the survey, and I want to grow, there’s this little thing inside that says, oh yeah, really?
And then why are you doing this? You ever meet up with that person? Let’s see, they call him the adversary, the accuser of the brethren. And yet at the same time, maybe we shouldn’t ignore that completely either because sometimes we don’t really. We aren’t yet committed and given to the Lord as fully as we could be and should be. Well, we aren’t.
And that’s part of our challenge to keep on getting more that way. And I find sometimes that, you know, I’m going along and I think with me, I usually begin to realize that a little before it hits me completely that, you know, something isn’t quite or I want it where the Lord wants it to be in my heart, in my life. And I’m finding that some way or other I didn’t guard my heart. Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it or the issues of life. I didn’t guard it like I should have. And what’s there to do but to go back to the Lord and repent and start again?
He’s always there, he’s always ready. That’s one thing that I, you know, looking back at what I consider to my conversion there on July 27th. One thing that I find interesting is I didn’t go through some of those struggles some people do. You know, will God receive me? Does he want me? That didn’t seem to be a question. I guess that was probably the upbringing that I had.
I just knew he was there and he was waiting and ready to receive me. It’s true with anyone. Somehow we need to help people get that. So the older I get the more I realize, more I want to realize, more I should realize and do sometimes at least how much I need the Lord. I thought about that phrase in the song we sang a couple weeks ago, so false and full of sin I am.
Trying to think through that, is that true? Well, in a sense, no, I’m redeemed. But in another sense, you know, the addict to the sermon I preached a few weeks ago on sawing and reaping, if I feed the flesh. False and full of sin is still there in my old nature and it drags me down.
It will. If I feed spirit, I’ll live above that by God’s grace. So, I’m happy to be the Lord’s and I want to serve Him with all my heart. I want to keep on from growing from glory to glory and from faith to faith and becoming more like the Lord Jesus. And finally, being with that incomprehensible one. Comprehending in ways we never could hear.