Proverbs M3 The Way of Integrity (Sep. 24, 2006)
Proverbs M3 The Way of Integrity
Big Idea: our choices put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
Recently my wife and I saw Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt…
The main character in the play Peer has a certain charm, certain endearing qualities… but he’s aimless, indecisive and unable to commit…
He allows his lust to overcome him and ends up violating a bride on her wedding day.
Though Peer is poor, he aspires to be rich and ends up pursuing “easy money” by getting involved in the shady businesses of the slave trade (the play is set in the 19th century).
As an older man Peer, meets an angel named Button Moulder…
The angel says, Peer is going to be reduced to a button for eternity--not because he has done any one thing that’s particularly heinous, but because he has failed to become his true self…
Peer has always been living outside himself… and therefore faces the possibility of becoming a button forever.
If we are a “character in a drama” are we making the kind of choices that will shape us into the kind of person enabling us to become our true self or destined to melt down and become some life-less plastic?
To use the metaphor of the book of Proverbs--are we walking the path enabling us to become our true self, the self God created us to be?
We’ve recently begun a series on the book of Proverbs, which is a book that deals with wisdom.
The book of Proverbs describes wisdom as a path one walks…
Wisdom is not just about getting knowledge, but it’s about walking down a path that enables us to have an understanding of the moral/spiritual order created by God and therefore to flourish and experience life.
The book urges us to avoid the path of the wicked, but to pursue the path of wisdom…
And the path of wisdom is aligned to moral and spiritual order of God…
This morning we are going to explore more of what it looks like to walk that path.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Proverbs 4.
Notice the two paths that are contrasted in these passages.
Proverbs 4:
14 Do not set foot on the path of the wicked
or walk in the way of evildoers.
15 Avoid it, do not travel on it;
turn from it and go on your way.
16 For they cannot rest until they do evil;
they are robbed of sleep till they make someone stumble.
17 They eat the bread of wickedness
and drink the wine of violence.
18 The path of the righteous is like the morning sun,
shining ever brighter till the full light of day.
19 But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know what makes them stumble.
Please now turn to Proverbs 10
9 Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,
but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.
In Proverbs 11:3 we read
The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.
The choices we make set us down a path that will make us either people of integrity, that make us whole or they split us.... they either makes us the people God created us to be or they will destroy us.
I remember as an undergraduate student, hearing Richard Chase say--don’t just want your wants, but want what your wants lead to… Don’t just want your wants, want what your wants will lead to. Don’t just want your wants, want what your wants will lead to.
There was a news story about a man who was put in prison for a hit and run. The man had hit a child with his car at night-- he thought no one saw him do it, and so he sped away from the scene of his crime… When a reporter interviewed him and asked him what caused him to flee the scene of the crime (knowing he would be more culpable), the man said when I was a child I went to my dad's drawer when he was away, and I was playing with his prized watch. As I was playing with the watch, I accidentally fumbled it, it fell out of my hands, and it broke the face of the watch and then I put it back in the drawer. When dad got home from work, he noticed the watch… he lined each of us children up and asked each of us if he had broken his watch. When he asked me if I had dropped it, I said no, I didn't play with your watch. I lied. From that time onward, every time I got in sticky situation, I lied. I hid.
Proverbs 4:16 reads, For they (those who walk the path of the wicked) cannot rest until they do evil…
This is the language of addiction (the word addiction was not used in Solomon’s day).
The addiction in the words of respected psychiatrist Gerald May, is something you can’t say no to.
There are points down a path, where we can choose not do something, turn and go in an opposite direction… but then there is a point where we can no longer really say no to something, we become slaves… as Proverbs 4:16, we can’t rest until we do whatever is consistent with our addiction…
Our choices of a path shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
Jim Collins, author of acclaimed business leadership book, Built to Last and Good to Great, wrote about the crisis of business ethics in the wake of the scandals at Enron and Worldcom.
He describes how some business people went wrong:
He writes about how people who, in the presence of an opportunity to behave differently, got drawn into the scam, one step after another.
If you told them 10 years ahead of time, "Hey, let's cook the books and we will all get rich," they would never go along with it.
But that's rarely how most people get drawn into activities that they later regret. When you are at step A, it feels inconceivable to jump all the way to step Z, if step Z involves something that is a total breach of your values. But if you go from step A to step B, then step B to step C, then step C to step D…then someday, you wake up and discover that you are at step Y, and the move to step Z comes about much easier.
In Milton Mayer's essay, "They Thought They Were Free," he explains the process this way: A farmer never notices the corn growing minute by minute. But if he stays in the field long enough, he wakes up one day to discover that it has grown over his head. The people who get involved in scandals weren't necessarily bad at the outset. But through a series of gradual steps, they ended up in bad situations—in over their heads….
Little steps down a path, shape our character and our character determines our destiny…
It’s the little steps that get us going down a particular path…
You’re “committed” to someone, but you're attracted to someone… or your not committed to someone, but you’re attracted to someone who is “committed” to someone, but you choose to flirt… you take a little step, then you think of an excuse to get into contact with that person… little step… before you know you’re heading down a path that is shaping your character and your destiny.
You’ve been slighted by someone, but not so overwhelmed to the point where you have no control over how you feel, and you choose to keep re-playing the offense in your mind, you choose to resent the person… instead of letting it go... you may be heading down a path that will shape your character and your destiny….
Little steps put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
The opposite is true as well… when we choose good--we choose a different pathway all together…
The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, a very good friend of Thomas Merton, in his book The Responsibility of the Artist
"Any person who, in a primary act of freedom deep enough to engage his whole
personality, chooses to do the good for the sake of the good, chooses God,
knowingly or unknowlingly, as his supreme good; he loves God more than himself,
even if he has no conceptual knowledge of God."
Our choices put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
A couple looked at their bank statement and realized that the bank had inadvertently credited them X amount of dollars.
Usually when the bank makes a mistake, it’s in their advantage, but this time they made some kind of error in the advantage of the couple.
So the couple explained how the bank had made an error, but bank said we have no idea how that money got there… The bank said because we don’t know where the money came from we can’t take it back… and the couple prayed about it felt this money wasn’t there’s to keep, so they ended up giving it to a Christian relief organization which is committed to helping the poor.
Small step, but it’s the kind of step that takes us down a path, a path that shapes our character and our character determines our destiny.
I know of a man, who was on a business trip and some men he was with invited him to go see some strippers. The men said, why not? The man said, “I’m married and I love my wife too much to do something like that.”
Small steps take a person down a path.
A step down a path shapes our character and our character determines our destiny.
Some of us here may be saying, what’s the big deal?
If I say to a client “I’m working on that” when I’ve forgotten… or what’s the big deal if I chill out by viewing a little porn from time to time…
And if we are going to live just for 80-90 years, if it’s just this lifetime we’re thinking about, may be it’s not such a big deal…
But God through the Scriptures, tells us that we have think to further ahead, much further ahead…
God calls us to think not in terms of a 10, 20 or 50 year plan, but in terms of eternity.
Our small steps put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
C.S. Lewis in his work the Weight of Glory…says we have never met a mere mortal.
Lewis says,remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare.
All day long we are in some degree helping ourselves and each other to one or the other of these destinations. ..
In his book the Great Divorce,
Lewis says that hell is a place where you lose your true self… He says, for example, it begins with a grumbling mood, and you are still distinct from it, perhaps even criticizing it. And you yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, and embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no more of you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine."
Sin deforms and shrivels the soul, turns the grumbler into a grumble.
It’s one thing to be a cranky old man at 85, it’s quite another to become a grumble on into eternity.
So, how do we avoid becoming a grumble… into eternity?
Again back to the image of the path.
Proverbs 14:2
2 Whoever fears the LORD walks uprightly,
but those who despise him are devious in their ways.
Recently I was with a Vancouver pastor in JJ Bean and he said, “There’s no ‘fear of God’ in Vancouver!”
I think a lot of people in Vancouver if they heard the term “Fear of the Lord” either would be confused or be turned off.
But as we discussed last Sunday the fear of God, is a kind of reverent awe of God that leads to following God’s design for us that leads to life.
For years, the opening of ABC's The Wide World of Sports had the expression "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat…" They illustrated the agony of defeat part through the painful ending of an attempted ski jump. The skier appeared in good form as he headed down the slope, but then, for no apparent reason, he tumbled head-over-heels off the side of the jump and bounced off the supporting structure.
What viewers didn't know was that he chose to fall. Why? The jump surface had actually become too fast, and midway down the ramp he realized that if he completed the jump, he would land on hard ground, beyond the safe landing zone, which could have lead him to his death. The skier chose instead to tumble off the side of the jump suffered no more than a headache from the tumble.
The fear of the slope, the fear of flying too high, and the fear of the fall led him to change course. Fear led to life. The fear of the Lord likewise will turn us from the snares of death.
Jesus said… Don’t be afraid of the one who can kill the body… fear the one who has the power to throw you in heaven or hell….
What would it look like to fear God? As we discussed last Sunday it would mean having a reverence before God that leads us to submit to his Word, even when God’s word seems counter-intuitive, even when we don’t understand why God says this, or even when we don’t want to follow it…
Many of us begin our relationship with God gradually…. We begin by first checking God out, wondering if it’s going to help us somehow, givig us an advantage somehow, to relate to God… if it does we stay, if it doesn’t we’ll bail out.
Many of us don’t want God to be our God so much we want God to be our administrative assistant.
Many of us want God as our consultant. Someone I know says I pay someone to consult and then I ignore what he says… unless I think it will help me.
According to the research done at the Australian National University there are about 70 sextillion stars in the known universe, that’s 70 with 22 zeros. That means about 10 times as many stars in the known universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts of our planet.
God called each of the 70 sextillion stars into existence in our universe and according to Isaiah, even the ones we don’t know about, by name.
Our journey into a relationship with God will be gradual and tentative, but God is not someone we invite into our life as our administrative assistance or even as our consultant, we invite him as our LORD, MASTER, as who he is, as GOD…
When we do, we submit to his wisdom, even when it seems counter intuitive, when we don’t understand why, or don’t want to follow God’s way, we find that we are on a path that is consistent with our true self, consistent with the grain of our life, one of integrity, one that integrates us and makes us whole, makes us into the people we were created to be, and that leads to life here and on into eternity.
So how do we become that way?
I believe it’s through a new heart that longs to walk in God’s way…. And loves to follow God’s path…
Some years ago, I was in the former Soviet Union, in Kazakhstan at a conference for public school teachers, sponsored by the local government.
I was there to give lectures on how to teach ethics in a post-communist educational system, and I decided since I’m a Christian minister to base my remarks on the Ten Commandments.
During my final lecture… in government initiated conference, I said something like… we’ve been looking at the greatest guide for ethics in the world, but they won’t do you or your students much good, if you only have a head knowledge of the Ten Commandments, but not the will and heart to live them out…
So if you would like the author of the Ten Commandments to come and live in you and give you the desire to live them out, I am now going to invite you to pray to Jesus Christ and if you’d like Christ to come and live in you and forgive your sins and make you into the kind of person who longs to live in a way that reflects the beauty of the God who made us…
As I close this message, I will invite those who want to walk the path of wisdom and integrity… and who want to invite Christ into your hearts for the first time or in prayer of re-commitment… to fill us with His Spirit and give a new heart that longs to follow God’s and the power do it, I will ask you, if you are physically able to do so, to quietly kneel… if you can’t kneel, because of a physical issue, then kneel in your heart…
I plan to be the first to kneel, because I know I have this infinite capacity to self-delusion, the infinite potential to self-destruct… and I need a renewed heart… to walk the path of God.
I will read Ezekiel 36: If these express what you want I will then invite you to kneel in prayer as a sign you want God’s Spirit in you.
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Time of prayer…
Benediction…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: http://www.tenth.ca/audio htm)
Big Idea: our choices put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
Recently my wife and I saw Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt…
The main character in the play Peer has a certain charm, certain endearing qualities… but he’s aimless, indecisive and unable to commit…
He allows his lust to overcome him and ends up violating a bride on her wedding day.
Though Peer is poor, he aspires to be rich and ends up pursuing “easy money” by getting involved in the shady businesses of the slave trade (the play is set in the 19th century).
As an older man Peer, meets an angel named Button Moulder…
The angel says, Peer is going to be reduced to a button for eternity--not because he has done any one thing that’s particularly heinous, but because he has failed to become his true self…
Peer has always been living outside himself… and therefore faces the possibility of becoming a button forever.
If we are a “character in a drama” are we making the kind of choices that will shape us into the kind of person enabling us to become our true self or destined to melt down and become some life-less plastic?
To use the metaphor of the book of Proverbs--are we walking the path enabling us to become our true self, the self God created us to be?
We’ve recently begun a series on the book of Proverbs, which is a book that deals with wisdom.
The book of Proverbs describes wisdom as a path one walks…
Wisdom is not just about getting knowledge, but it’s about walking down a path that enables us to have an understanding of the moral/spiritual order created by God and therefore to flourish and experience life.
The book urges us to avoid the path of the wicked, but to pursue the path of wisdom…
And the path of wisdom is aligned to moral and spiritual order of God…
This morning we are going to explore more of what it looks like to walk that path.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Proverbs 4.
Notice the two paths that are contrasted in these passages.
Proverbs 4:
14 Do not set foot on the path of the wicked
or walk in the way of evildoers.
15 Avoid it, do not travel on it;
turn from it and go on your way.
16 For they cannot rest until they do evil;
they are robbed of sleep till they make someone stumble.
17 They eat the bread of wickedness
and drink the wine of violence.
18 The path of the righteous is like the morning sun,
shining ever brighter till the full light of day.
19 But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know what makes them stumble.
Please now turn to Proverbs 10
9 Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,
but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.
In Proverbs 11:3 we read
The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.
The choices we make set us down a path that will make us either people of integrity, that make us whole or they split us.... they either makes us the people God created us to be or they will destroy us.
I remember as an undergraduate student, hearing Richard Chase say--don’t just want your wants, but want what your wants lead to… Don’t just want your wants, want what your wants will lead to. Don’t just want your wants, want what your wants will lead to.
There was a news story about a man who was put in prison for a hit and run. The man had hit a child with his car at night-- he thought no one saw him do it, and so he sped away from the scene of his crime… When a reporter interviewed him and asked him what caused him to flee the scene of the crime (knowing he would be more culpable), the man said when I was a child I went to my dad's drawer when he was away, and I was playing with his prized watch. As I was playing with the watch, I accidentally fumbled it, it fell out of my hands, and it broke the face of the watch and then I put it back in the drawer. When dad got home from work, he noticed the watch… he lined each of us children up and asked each of us if he had broken his watch. When he asked me if I had dropped it, I said no, I didn't play with your watch. I lied. From that time onward, every time I got in sticky situation, I lied. I hid.
Proverbs 4:16 reads, For they (those who walk the path of the wicked) cannot rest until they do evil…
This is the language of addiction (the word addiction was not used in Solomon’s day).
The addiction in the words of respected psychiatrist Gerald May, is something you can’t say no to.
There are points down a path, where we can choose not do something, turn and go in an opposite direction… but then there is a point where we can no longer really say no to something, we become slaves… as Proverbs 4:16, we can’t rest until we do whatever is consistent with our addiction…
Our choices of a path shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
Jim Collins, author of acclaimed business leadership book, Built to Last and Good to Great, wrote about the crisis of business ethics in the wake of the scandals at Enron and Worldcom.
He describes how some business people went wrong:
He writes about how people who, in the presence of an opportunity to behave differently, got drawn into the scam, one step after another.
If you told them 10 years ahead of time, "Hey, let's cook the books and we will all get rich," they would never go along with it.
But that's rarely how most people get drawn into activities that they later regret. When you are at step A, it feels inconceivable to jump all the way to step Z, if step Z involves something that is a total breach of your values. But if you go from step A to step B, then step B to step C, then step C to step D…then someday, you wake up and discover that you are at step Y, and the move to step Z comes about much easier.
In Milton Mayer's essay, "They Thought They Were Free," he explains the process this way: A farmer never notices the corn growing minute by minute. But if he stays in the field long enough, he wakes up one day to discover that it has grown over his head. The people who get involved in scandals weren't necessarily bad at the outset. But through a series of gradual steps, they ended up in bad situations—in over their heads….
Little steps down a path, shape our character and our character determines our destiny…
It’s the little steps that get us going down a particular path…
You’re “committed” to someone, but you're attracted to someone… or your not committed to someone, but you’re attracted to someone who is “committed” to someone, but you choose to flirt… you take a little step, then you think of an excuse to get into contact with that person… little step… before you know you’re heading down a path that is shaping your character and your destiny.
You’ve been slighted by someone, but not so overwhelmed to the point where you have no control over how you feel, and you choose to keep re-playing the offense in your mind, you choose to resent the person… instead of letting it go... you may be heading down a path that will shape your character and your destiny….
Little steps put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
The opposite is true as well… when we choose good--we choose a different pathway all together…
The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, a very good friend of Thomas Merton, in his book The Responsibility of the Artist
"Any person who, in a primary act of freedom deep enough to engage his whole
personality, chooses to do the good for the sake of the good, chooses God,
knowingly or unknowlingly, as his supreme good; he loves God more than himself,
even if he has no conceptual knowledge of God."
Our choices put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
A couple looked at their bank statement and realized that the bank had inadvertently credited them X amount of dollars.
Usually when the bank makes a mistake, it’s in their advantage, but this time they made some kind of error in the advantage of the couple.
So the couple explained how the bank had made an error, but bank said we have no idea how that money got there… The bank said because we don’t know where the money came from we can’t take it back… and the couple prayed about it felt this money wasn’t there’s to keep, so they ended up giving it to a Christian relief organization which is committed to helping the poor.
Small step, but it’s the kind of step that takes us down a path, a path that shapes our character and our character determines our destiny.
I know of a man, who was on a business trip and some men he was with invited him to go see some strippers. The men said, why not? The man said, “I’m married and I love my wife too much to do something like that.”
Small steps take a person down a path.
A step down a path shapes our character and our character determines our destiny.
Some of us here may be saying, what’s the big deal?
If I say to a client “I’m working on that” when I’ve forgotten… or what’s the big deal if I chill out by viewing a little porn from time to time…
And if we are going to live just for 80-90 years, if it’s just this lifetime we’re thinking about, may be it’s not such a big deal…
But God through the Scriptures, tells us that we have think to further ahead, much further ahead…
God calls us to think not in terms of a 10, 20 or 50 year plan, but in terms of eternity.
Our small steps put us on a path that shape our character and our character determines our destiny.
C.S. Lewis in his work the Weight of Glory…says we have never met a mere mortal.
Lewis says,remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship… or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare.
All day long we are in some degree helping ourselves and each other to one or the other of these destinations. ..
In his book the Great Divorce,
Lewis says that hell is a place where you lose your true self… He says, for example, it begins with a grumbling mood, and you are still distinct from it, perhaps even criticizing it. And you yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, and embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no more of you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine."
Sin deforms and shrivels the soul, turns the grumbler into a grumble.
It’s one thing to be a cranky old man at 85, it’s quite another to become a grumble on into eternity.
So, how do we avoid becoming a grumble… into eternity?
Again back to the image of the path.
Proverbs 14:2
2 Whoever fears the LORD walks uprightly,
but those who despise him are devious in their ways.
Recently I was with a Vancouver pastor in JJ Bean and he said, “There’s no ‘fear of God’ in Vancouver!”
I think a lot of people in Vancouver if they heard the term “Fear of the Lord” either would be confused or be turned off.
But as we discussed last Sunday the fear of God, is a kind of reverent awe of God that leads to following God’s design for us that leads to life.
For years, the opening of ABC's The Wide World of Sports had the expression "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat…" They illustrated the agony of defeat part through the painful ending of an attempted ski jump. The skier appeared in good form as he headed down the slope, but then, for no apparent reason, he tumbled head-over-heels off the side of the jump and bounced off the supporting structure.
What viewers didn't know was that he chose to fall. Why? The jump surface had actually become too fast, and midway down the ramp he realized that if he completed the jump, he would land on hard ground, beyond the safe landing zone, which could have lead him to his death. The skier chose instead to tumble off the side of the jump suffered no more than a headache from the tumble.
The fear of the slope, the fear of flying too high, and the fear of the fall led him to change course. Fear led to life. The fear of the Lord likewise will turn us from the snares of death.
Jesus said… Don’t be afraid of the one who can kill the body… fear the one who has the power to throw you in heaven or hell….
What would it look like to fear God? As we discussed last Sunday it would mean having a reverence before God that leads us to submit to his Word, even when God’s word seems counter-intuitive, even when we don’t understand why God says this, or even when we don’t want to follow it…
Many of us begin our relationship with God gradually…. We begin by first checking God out, wondering if it’s going to help us somehow, givig us an advantage somehow, to relate to God… if it does we stay, if it doesn’t we’ll bail out.
Many of us don’t want God to be our God so much we want God to be our administrative assistant.
Many of us want God as our consultant. Someone I know says I pay someone to consult and then I ignore what he says… unless I think it will help me.
According to the research done at the Australian National University there are about 70 sextillion stars in the known universe, that’s 70 with 22 zeros. That means about 10 times as many stars in the known universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts of our planet.
God called each of the 70 sextillion stars into existence in our universe and according to Isaiah, even the ones we don’t know about, by name.
Our journey into a relationship with God will be gradual and tentative, but God is not someone we invite into our life as our administrative assistance or even as our consultant, we invite him as our LORD, MASTER, as who he is, as GOD…
When we do, we submit to his wisdom, even when it seems counter intuitive, when we don’t understand why, or don’t want to follow God’s way, we find that we are on a path that is consistent with our true self, consistent with the grain of our life, one of integrity, one that integrates us and makes us whole, makes us into the people we were created to be, and that leads to life here and on into eternity.
So how do we become that way?
I believe it’s through a new heart that longs to walk in God’s way…. And loves to follow God’s path…
Some years ago, I was in the former Soviet Union, in Kazakhstan at a conference for public school teachers, sponsored by the local government.
I was there to give lectures on how to teach ethics in a post-communist educational system, and I decided since I’m a Christian minister to base my remarks on the Ten Commandments.
During my final lecture… in government initiated conference, I said something like… we’ve been looking at the greatest guide for ethics in the world, but they won’t do you or your students much good, if you only have a head knowledge of the Ten Commandments, but not the will and heart to live them out…
So if you would like the author of the Ten Commandments to come and live in you and give you the desire to live them out, I am now going to invite you to pray to Jesus Christ and if you’d like Christ to come and live in you and forgive your sins and make you into the kind of person who longs to live in a way that reflects the beauty of the God who made us…
As I close this message, I will invite those who want to walk the path of wisdom and integrity… and who want to invite Christ into your hearts for the first time or in prayer of re-commitment… to fill us with His Spirit and give a new heart that longs to follow God’s and the power do it, I will ask you, if you are physically able to do so, to quietly kneel… if you can’t kneel, because of a physical issue, then kneel in your heart…
I plan to be the first to kneel, because I know I have this infinite capacity to self-delusion, the infinite potential to self-destruct… and I need a renewed heart… to walk the path of God.
I will read Ezekiel 36: If these express what you want I will then invite you to kneel in prayer as a sign you want God’s Spirit in you.
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Time of prayer…
Benediction…
(The sermon can be heard on line at: http://www.tenth.ca/audio htm)
posted by Shigematsu at 10:09 AM
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