The only way for you to know
Jesus Christ is for God to reveal Him to you. I can't sit down and say, I'm
going to teach you how to get yourself saved today. Now, I
know in some churches they have the repeat after me prayer, you
know. You repeat the prayer, you pair
it to prayer, and then the preacher says, hallelujah, you just got
saved. No, that's not the way it is.
First of all, God reveals to you that you are a sinner. You're
so crazy, you don't even know you're a sinner. You're not as bad as other people.
You're better than a whole lot of people. You're just out of
your head. But then when God takes the shades
off your eyes and reveals, turns you inside out and say, now look
at yourself. This is the way I see it. Now
look at yourself. It's not a pretty sight. Not
a pretty sight. And that's when you began to
cry out, God be merciful, God be propitiatory, God be my mercy
seat, God be my redemption, my savior. And you trust him and
him alone. It's by revelation. Think about
this, what you were five years ago, where you were, you were
just out there crazy as a June bug, doing what you wanted to
do and as miserable as you could be. Looking for love in all the
wrong places. And then God let you run and
run and run and run until finally you run out of steam. And ended
up, you think about it. Ended up here. God watched over
you because he loved you and separated you from your mother's
womb. You are no accident. I've had people say to me, you
know, my mom and dad told me I was an accident. No, you're
not an accident. You're on purpose. Mom and dad
might've thought you were an accident, but the truth is your
name was written in the Lamb's book of life from the foundation
of the world. And God watched over you in time as you went
through all your crazy stuff out there. Should have been dead
sleeping in my grave a long time ago, except God. except God,
who separated me from my mother's womb, loved me with an everlasting
love. You're here tonight because God
loves you. There was a time in your life when somebody would
say, you're a Christian, aren't you? No, I don't go to church,
don't want to go to church. But now, something changed. You were changed by the changer,
God himself. and came to know Jesus Christ.
I often hear people say this. You know, my family's not converted. They just won't exercise their
free will the way I did. And I immediately think, you
self-righteous Pharisee. The only reason a person comes
to Christ is because God changes your willer. You remember when
you would rather shoot up than be in the house of God? What
happened to you? Well, your will changed, at least
to a great degree. And those of you who experienced
somewhat of relapse, and you go like this, I hate it. You
know why you hate it now? Because God changed your willer.
God will ruin your high. God will ruin it. He'll run it. As you recall, God changed your
will. And now, now you're glad when
they say, let us go up to the house of the Lord. You sing like
you're happy.