I appreciate your pastor. I never
knew Brother Henry either, but I knew Brother Tommy very well.
Dear, dear friend, I have often said he was one of the kindest,
most patient men I have ever met in my life and a good preacher.
And now I know this fellow. I love him too. So I have loved
your last two pastors, and I am sure I would have loved Brother
Henry Love God. Love God's preachers. I just
love God's preachers. Bless the heart he calls them
and puts them in some long valleys, strips them, hides his face from
them, puts them in temptations, lets hell assault them, and then
holds them up while he preaches. They preach his Gospels all the
time. Darlin', I'm glad to know the Lord's preachers. Glad to
know the Lord's preachers. It's good to be here. I hope
the Lord is pleased Help us a few minutes and Brother Don as he
comes. I want you to look in Luke's Gospel chapter 17. Luke's Gospel chapter 17 and
I want to begin reading in verse 1. Read down through verse 10. Luke's Gospel chapter 17 and
verse 1. Then said he unto his disciples, It is impossible,
but that offenses will come. People lay in stumbling blocks
willfully or ignorantly. But warn to him through whom
they come. It were better for him that a
millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea.
than that he should offend one of these little ones. Matthew
18 says the little ones are those who believe in him. Take heed
to yourselves, if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke
him. And if he repent, forgive him.
And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven
times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou
shalt forgive him. And the apostles said unto the
Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If you had
faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say unto this sycamine
tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in
the sea, and it would obey you. But which of you having a servant
plowing or feeding cattle will say unto him by and by, when
he is come in from the field, go and sit down to meet. And
will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sit,
and gird thyself, and serve me, until I have eaten and drunketh,
and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Does he thank that
servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think
not, I trod not. So likewise ye, when ye shall
have done all those things which are commanded say we are unprofitable
servants. We have done that which is our
duty to do. I want to consider this request
that these apostles had of the Lord Jesus. Here in verse 5,
the Lord increased our faith. The Lord's got a way of answering
our request. He doesn't say, I will. He doesn't
always do it immediately. He's got a way of answering our
request in a way that we learn to appreciate the request. There
was a fellow that came to him one time and said, Are there
many that be saved? Are there few people going to
be saved? The Lord could have told him the exact number. He
knows his sheep, doesn't he? But he didn't give him an answer
to say how many. He gave him an answer that caused
that man, no doubt, to search his own soul. He looked at him
and said, Don't you worry about how many. Don't even be so concerned
about who. But you be concerned about your
own salvage. You strive to enter into the
straight game yourself. He does the same way with these
men. Lord, increase our faith. And He did. No doubt He did.
But He did it in such a way that made them even examine their
request and why they ask it. I want us to look at just four
things tonight. First of all, I want us to look
at the request itself. It seems to imply, at least,
that they knew something about faith. And secondly, I want to
look at the reason why they even ask that their faith should be
increased, to start with. Then I want to look at the Lord's
response to their request. And then, fourthly, I want us
to see, as I try to set forth this, the very nature of faith,
just the very nature of faith itself. This request, Lord, increase
our faith. Well, these disciples, these
apostles were so ignorant about so much. I want you to look,
hold this chapter 17 and look in chapter 18 and look here in
verses 31. Chapter 18, and look how ignorant
these men were about even the work of the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, about the cross. Then he took unto him the twelve,
and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things
that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall
be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto
the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully treated, and spit
on. and they shall scourge him and put him to death, and the
third day he shall rise again. And they understood none of these
things, and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they
the things which were spoken." Now, if they were on this side
of the cross, we would be very suspicious, to say the least. They knew nothing about what
he was going to do, his redeeming, atoning death. He told them one
day, he said, a little while and I'm going away and you won't
see me. And then a little while you're going to see me because
I'm going to my father. And they said, what in the world is he
talking about? We just don't know what he's talking about.
They were ignorant about so much that the Lord later on definitely
taught them. But you know something? If we
don't learn anything else from that, I think we can learn this,
after all, it's not how much you know, it's who you know.
I think it's been that way from the very beginning. Don't you?
They knew the Lord Jesus Christ. Whom do men say that I am? Peter
said, You're the Son of the living God. flesh and blood, Peter has
not revealed this to you, but my Father which is in heaven. Now you and I would dare not
give credit to anybody that said they were saved, that knew no
more than these apostles knew. But they knew Him, didn't they?
They knew Him. But I'll tell you something else
they knew, and this was about faith. They knew they had faith. Lord increase our faith. They knew they had faith. Now, I can't put my finger on
the time that they came to believe. I don't know. But you know something? They did. I used to think I could
put my finger on the exact time I came to believe. And I realized
I couldn't. But I believe it. But these apostles
never doubted their faith in Christ. They said this, Lord,
increase our faith. They were never destitute of
it. And the Lord never said they were destitute of it. Sometimes
He rebuked them for not exercising their faith. Sometimes He said,
O ye of little faith, but He never said you don't have any
faith at all. They never were destitute of
it. He gave them faith. Are there times you realize that,
boy, I don't know if I have faith or not? Do you ever wonder that
about yourself? I don't know. Do I believe the
Lord or not? They knew it. They knew. That's
what they knew, first of all, about their faith. They had it. And the second thing about their
faith is this. They put great value upon faith. They said, Lord, increase our
faith. Well, their knowledge was weak.
Their faith was weak. But one thing they knew, faith
is a precious thing. I'd love to have more of it.
Would you? You ever see anybody, any believer that you had confidence
in said, I've got enough faith? You know why people, you know
why those who have faith want more of it? Because they know
it's precious. Faith is the most precious thing
you and I possess. It's called the most holy faith. The trial of it is precious.
The object of it is precious. It's a gift of God. And if you've
got it, it ain't going to be long, you're going to see. That's
precious. You're going to start talking to people and they're
talking about everything and you're going to realize, man,
you don't believe. You don't believe. and they don't believe,
and they don't believe, and you're going to find faith is a precious
thing. It's a unique thing, and there's
very little of it in this world. Lord, increase my faith. You may doubt sometime that you
have it, but let me ask you a question. Would you trade yours for anybody
else's? That's a telltale sign right
there. No, mine is weak. Oh, Lord, increase it and give
me more, but I ain't trading mine for nobody. The Lord gave
me this faith, and it's precious. I wouldn't trade it for nobody.
I've got all kinds of confidence in you, dear brother. I wouldn't
trade the faith the Lord gave me for any of you, and you wouldn't
me either, would you? It's precious. Lord, increase
our faith. They recognize this about faith. They realize it was a grace.
Lord, You increase our faith. They called it their faith. They
said it's ours. Increase our faith. But they
realized it was a grace and gift of God and it was capable of
being increased. But it was only capable of being
increased by Him that gave it. He gave it. He sustains it. And He's the only one that can
He that gave it. By grace are you saved through
faith and that not of yourself? It is the gift of God. Believing is a gift of God. And I think that is why sometimes,
boy, just like he removes his hand from his people and they
cannot believe, they look at a promise and they cannot get
a hold of it. They see his providence working all around them and they
just can't believe. Have you ever been there? Has he ever
put you there? And he makes us to know, you can't sustain the
faith that I give you. And you can't increase it either. Except he does. It's a grace. It's absolutely a grace. We weren't born with it. We can't
muster it up. We can't sustain it. And we can't
increase it. He's the author and finisher
of faith. Lord, You increase our faith. Boy, that should encourage us
because His heart is so full of grace and He's able to He
is able to. We can go to Him just like they
went to Him. Okay. Lord, increase our faith. That is the first point. The
second point is this, the reason. Why did they even ask this to
begin with? Well, our Lord was addressing
a very solemn subject, a very solemn subject. He tells us this
in chapter 17 in verses 1 through verse 3. mainly here in verse
3, take heed to yourself. If your brother trespass against
thee, rebuke him, and if he repent, forgive him. He was addressing
this subject of someone offending you and you forgiving him upon
his repentance. But he's got a strange way of
saying this. This is strange language, the
way our Master speaks. Notice he says, you take heed
to yourself if your brother sinned against you. Now isn't that strange? He should have said, you take
heed that you don't sin against your brother. But he doesn't
say that at all. He said, if somebody sinned against
you, you better take heed to yourself. Me? Lord, they've done the sinning.
Yes, and it could get you in all kinds of trouble. There is
one route. that you can take if somebody
has sinned against you. You must do what I tell
you to do. You must escape the snare that
is laid for you if somebody sins against you. You are going to
be in trouble. What did he tell us to do? Well,
in Matthew chapter 18, which I think probably is the parallel
passage, it teaches the same thing, he tells us, Thur, if
your brother sinned against you, You go to Him. You go right and confront Him.
You tell Him what He's done. And then if He repents, forgive
Him and you have gained your brother. Now that's the simple
rule that you and I are to follow if somebody has sinned against
Him. Here's the first problem you and I face. You and I are
very timid, most of us, not all of us, but most of us are very
timid. If somebody does something to
us that has offended us, that has hurt us, one of the last
things sometimes we want to do is go talk to them about it.
We're afraid to, aren't we? We don't know how to confront
them. So what do we do? The danger that we face is this. We want to hide it within our
own hearts. And there he just keeps gnawing at us and gnawing
at us. And we get where we can't read.
We get where we can't pray. We get where we can't serve the
Lord and worship. We take this risk of our conscience
being defiled with bitterness. Have you ever been there? Haven't
we all been there? And when your heart gets full
of bitterness, we can't worship the Lord. Bitterness defiles
the conscience, doesn't it? And the Lord says, here's your
only course of action. Escape this snare. Go to the
one who sinned against you and tell him his fault. When he repents,
you forgive him freely and graciously forgive him. We get timid. We get afraid. And when we don't obey our Lord's
Word to escape this snare, what we usually do is confide in somebody
else. We go to someone we love in the
congregation. We go to a dear brother, a dear
sister, and we say, I just need to talk to you. Here's what this
person has done to me. And you've got to keep this quiet
now. Don't tell anybody about this. This is what they've done
to me and this hurt me and I can't get over it and I won't unload
on you. Well, he goes and he slips up
and he says, You know what that fellow did to you? Then before
you know it, it's all over the church. And what a mess it is. And it's because somebody didn't
listen to the Lord Jesus. You keep it between you and him
and go tell him what he's did to you. And when he repents,
then forgive him. Take heed to yourself. Take heed
to yourself. If somebody has sinned against
you, take heed to yourself. You know, one of the lessons
I learned from myself as I was studying this, I thought to myself,
Bruce, you better quit being so sensitive. You're going to
get yourself in trouble. If you're going to be offended,
against every cross look that somebody gives you. Every little
gesture that you perceive is against you, and you are going
to wear your feelings on your sleeves, then you are going to
run into some trouble. You are going to stay in trouble
all your life long. You are going to be always either
carrying this bitterness, or you are going to be always going
to somebody and say, Hey, you did me wrong. We should not be so sensitive.
You know what the Bible says? Great peace have they that love
thy law and nothing shall offend them. And love will cover a multitude
of sins. There are times when I get my
feelings hurt and I stew over it and come to find out the person
that caused me the trouble didn't even mean to cause me that trouble.
A fellow came to me one time and he said, these two ladies
have talked about you and this is what they said. And boy, I
was just a young believer and I got so offended and hurt and
I couldn't pray and I got an awful mess in my heart and I
got bitter against those ladies. And then one morning in prayer
I said, Lord, I forgive them. I forgive them. And boy, the
burden just left and come to find out they hadn't even said
that. We need to handle this the way
the Master says. But here is what we're going
to wind up saying. Lord, increase my faith. Increase
my faith. I can't even go. I can't even
talk to the people. Increase my faith. Give me grace
to believe what you're telling me. Increase my faith. Another problem, and I think
he hints at it here, our Lord said, if he repented, forgive
him. If he repented. If he repented. He didn't really say when. I'll
comment on that in just a minute. But why wouldn't somebody repent
if you confronted them? And you said, you've hurt me.
And here's what you've done. Why wouldn't somebody repent?
I guess there's plenty of reasons. Stubbornness? I don't know all
the reasons, but he said, if he repents, then forgive him. Boy, Peter had a problem with
this. He had a problem with this. He said, Lord, how many times
should I forgive? Times seven? The Lord said in
Matthew 18, seven times seventy. Four hundred and ninety times.
Here he said seven times seventy in one day. I doubt if that's
ever going to happen. But the Lord said if you go to
Him and He sinned against you seven times in a day and He turns
and repents, you forgive Him. Graciously, lovingly forgive
Him. No matter what the nature of
the sin is, no matter how many times He sinned against you,
you forgive Him freely. Oh Lord, increase my praise. Now if somebody has a position
of trust, there's a difference in forgiving somebody and trusting
them in an office that they've betrayed. You forgive somebody when they've
sinned, but if they've betrayed their trust, trust is earned,
isn't it? Paul talked about the deacons.
You prove a man. If you've set Him aside to be
a deacon, make sure you know Him. You've proved Him. Don't
lay your hands suddenly on any minister of the Gospel. Get to
know men. You're putting them in places
of trust. And you know something? If they abuse that trust, they
may lose that position. There's a difference in forgiving
a man, forgiving him freely, and then not trusting him in
the position that The Lord is not dealing here with the offices,
but He is dealing with forgiveness. Don't try to discern if He is
genuine. Don't wait a few weeks and watch
Him and say, I have forgiven, but I will never forget. If He turns and says, Oh, forgive
me, I repent, forgive me, You know, forgiveness is one
of the sweetest things. It's one of the sweetest things.
I mean, it'll restore broken friendships. It'll mend the broken
fellowship. It brings back the sweetness. True
repentance and true forgiveness is the most sweetest thing. I
memorized Brother Donnie Bell's preaching. There's quite a few of us staying
there, so I told them I was going to get up early the next morning
and stay on the couch. I stayed on the couch, so I was going
to get up early the next morning, go out and sit on the back porch and
drink my coffee and go over some notes. I set my clock real early. I think it was like 4.30 or something.
And I woke up like at 4, so I just fixed me a cup of coffee and
went on on the back porch. And my alarm clock went off.
inside the house and I didn't hear it outside. And Donnie come
and jerked the door open, stuck his head out, told me his countenance
wasn't towards me like it formerly had been. And he said, Bruce,
get in here and turn this alarm clock off. And everybody that
got up just took turns. Why did you not shut your alarm
clock off? And Mary Bell was there and Lynn
and I I was still out on the back porch and they came out
and they got all of me. Finally, I took them by the hand
and got down on one knee and I said, ladies, forgive me. Just forgive me. And they just
laughed and hugged my neck. Forgiveness is sweet, isn't it? If your brother trespasses against
you, go tell him. Go tell him everything. When
he repents, What does faith have to do with
all of this? What goes before and what comes
after shows us something about the nature of faith. Lord, increase
our faith. What does faith even have to
do with forgiveness? What does it have to do with
me forgiving you if you sin against me? It's the nature of faith that
shows me how much I'll It is a nature of faith that
shows me how much I have sinned. See what I am saying? The more we believe the Lord,
you take somebody with great faith, they have great contempt
for themselves. You see somebody with great faith,
they look down upon themselves. They do not have a high opinion
of themselves. They have no trouble forgiving their brother who has
sinned against them because they know that no one has ever sinned
against them like they have sinned against their God. How have we sinned against our
God? I can't remember the first sin
I ever committed and I can't remember the last sin I ever
committed. I've spent my days sinning against God. I have sinned
against God. I have sinned against the Son
of God. I have sinned against the Spirit of God, the Law of
God, the Gospel of God. I have sinned against the Light.
I have sinned against the Church. I have spent my life sinning
against God. And since he for the sake of
Jesus Christ, the Lord has forgiven me all those mountain of sins,
how could I hold anything against a dear brother or sister who
has turned to me and says, I repent, forgive me? Faith lets us see that, doesn't
it? It lets us pry into this darkness
and misery of our own hearts. says, you're the worst man I
know. Everybody's better than you. Oh Lord, increase our faith. I bet you that publican that
stood in the temple, beating on his chest, saying, God be
perpetuous to me, a sinner. God be merciful. I bet you he
never had any problem forgiving everybody that ever sinned against
him. If we've obtained mercy, we're
merciful, aren't we? If God has saved us by His grace,
it makes us gracious. That's what faith sees. The eye of faith sees something
else. It sees the enormous price that was paid to atone to secure
our forgiveness. It don't cost me anything to
forgive you. It cost Jesus Christ everything He was and everything
He had to secure our forgiveness. He bore our sins in His own body
on the tree. He suffered for our sins. He
died for our sins according to the will of God. And faith enters
into this. Faith grasps ahold of this and
says, Look what it cost to secure my forgiveness. All Jesus was, He gave His manhood,
His deity, His time, His talents, everything He had, He gave Himself,
Lord our Savior, to secure our forgiveness. And
oh, when faith enters into this, it cannot, it cannot hold anything
against any one of us. You know something, I think too,
it's the nature of faith. I really believe this. I've experienced
that and I bet you have too. That if it ever comes to your
knowledge that you have sinned against a dear brother or sister,
you can't wait to get there and humble yourself and beg their
forgiveness, can you? You can't. And I doubt if there has ever
been a situation where somebody has come to you and said, Brother, please forgive me. And you held
it against them. I think it is just the nature
of faith that you want to forgive and you will forgive. Look at the Lord's respond in
verse 6 quickly. This tells us something about
the nature of faith. I love the way He answers there
responding, increase our faith. If you had faith as a grain of
mustard seed, they tell us that's one of the smallest seeds there
is, you might say to this sycamine tree, be thou plucked up of the
root and be thou planted in the seed and it shall obey thee. Now, you and I need I don't need to even say this,
but we know this is not literally speaking. You don't, there's
no, another place he said if you say that this mountain be
removed again. There's no mountains flying through
the air. There's no trees in your way of progressing and forgiving
other people. This is speaking spiritually,
isn't it? Faith is a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. And it
will move mountains. It will move great obstacles
in your way. It is not just because your faith
is so strong. It is because the object of your
faith is so strong. I tell you, faith, a little bit
of it, will overcome the world. Faith is a grain of mustard seed
that will overcome the world and all its obstacles. It will
overcome a hard heart. He'll overcome bitterness in
your heart. Who is He that overcometh the
world? But He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God. What the Lord is teaching these
disciples here is this. It's not the amount of faith
you have. That's not what it is at all. Little faith can accomplish
great things. when it looks to the Almighty
God. It is a little faith. Little faith can make you do
things that are unnatural. Little faith will walk you on
the water. Peter had little faith. The Lord
said, Oh, you have little faith. But little faith got him out
of that boat and walked on the water. That is what little faith
will do. And the Lord was teaching His
disciples, it's not the amount of faith that you need, it's
faith in exercise. I used to, I didn't like that.
I heard people talk about that and I thought, man, that's Armenian.
Man, that's a good statement. Faith in exercise. If you've
got a little faith, live upon it, exercise it. What do you
mean? Look to the object of it. Peter got out and walked on the
water and never sank until he pulled his eyes off of the object
of faith. As long as he was looking to
the Lord Jesus Christ and His power, he walked on the water. It was only when he took his
eyes off of his object that he began to sink. Little faith. Little faith. Look into a strong Lord. and
do great things. You know what we want? We want
great faith that will make the way so easy that we don't have
any problem. I want enough faith that I can
get out of my bed in the morning, go to work, and whatever trouble
I face, it don't faze me at all. Whatever happens to me, I run
into no difficulty. That's not the nature of faith. The nature of faith is to get
you through awful trials. Faith is what you have to live
upon when the Red Sea is in front of you and Pharaoh's army is
behind you and mountains are on each side of you. Faith is
what you exercise when God hides His face from you and you have
to say with Job, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. How much faith did Job have?
during the midst of losing all of his kids and all of his cattle.
He may not have had much, but he lived upon the exercise of
what he had. And that's the thing, brothers
and sisters. Believe His Word. Don't worry about having little
faith. Put your little faith in His Word, in His promise,
in His offices at the right hand of God. Live upon Him and His
grace and His love and His power. Don't worry so much about having
little faith. See what I'm saying? It's not
the nature of faith to give you so much of it that you have it
easy in this life. That's not the nature of faith.
You've got just enough to get by. Just enough to keep on looking
to Him. Just enough to keep following
Him. Just enough and none to spare to overcome this wicked
world of devils and family trials and trials at work. You've got
just enough to live by. I live by faith of the Son of
God. How much faith? It don't matter
if you're living by faith in Him. And what follows that verse? I can do all things through Christ
who strengthens me. And so can you. Bruce, you just
don't know how little my faith is about what I've got. But I've
been on the way now for 45 years. And I'm still on the way. I'm
still running the race. And I'll die in the faith. It's not so much It is looking
to the object, living by faith upon Him. In verses 7-10, here is something
else about the nature of faith and it has to do with their serving
Him. He is still talking here in verses
7-10 about the nature of faith, about them serving Him. Two servants. He had an unwilling servant.
He told us about him here in these first few verses, 7, 8.
He's an unwilling servant. Then he's got a willing servant. That's who these two servants
are. Why did he mention this? Well, they said increase our
faith. You know when faith shows itself, the nature of faith,
in the way you serve the Master. That's how I can tell if you've
got faith and you're living off of faith, the way you serve Him.
And these poor apostles at this time were having difficulty in
serving the Lord Jesus Christ with true motives. And I can
understand that and you can too. The Lord had told them that they
were going to sit upon these thrones and they took that literally. They begin to think, man, what
poor fishermen. And everybody hates us. We're
ignorant and unlearned. We don't have any silver and
any gold. And we're going to sit with this king of Israel.
I'm going to sit on his right hand. And John, you're going
to sit on his left hand. And boy, when we walk into a
room, people's going to bow down. And when they come in before
us, they're going to bow down. They're going to recognize us. In the context of this, in Matthew
Chapter 18, they were fussing over who was going to be the
greatest. And you know what? The Lord Jesus
taught them there in Matthew Chapter 18. He said, Fellas,
that's not the nature of my kingdom. Not the nature of my kingdom
to get proud and rule over And he took this little kid and got
his apostles around him and took this little kid and set him right
down in the middle of them. And he says, except you be converted
and become as this little child, you can't even enter into my
kingdom. The man that is converting becomes
humble like this little child. He is the greatest. In other
words, if you are going to serve me, you are going to serve me
out of humility, you are going to serve me out of tears, not
out of pride and out of arrogance and out of some vain show. You
are going to have to serve me in faith. Well, when we serve Him in faith,
you see the nature of faith, because you know the way faith
serves Him in humility and love. Faith works by love. Here's this
first fellow the Lord Jesus told us about in verse 7 and verse 8. He has this unwilling servant.
He's been out in the field working, and he comes home. He comes to
the master's house. And the master says to him, You
go make ready and serve me first. Then when I'm finished eating,
you can serve yourself. And boy, he don't like that.
He don't like that. And he does it. He does it. He makes ready his dinner and
stands behind his master and his jaws are locked. Boy's heart
aches. You never treated me right. I'm worth more than what you
pay me. Look at the blisters on my hands. My back is sore.
I've been out plowing your fields and harvesting your grain, taking
care of your cattle. You've never thanked me. All
I do is serve you. I've reached the point I don't
even like your cattle. I don't like your fields and I don't
like you. What's the matter with that fellow?
One thing, he knows nothing about serving by faith. He don't know anything about
the nature of faith. He's serving because he's afraid of the whip.
He's serving because he wants to be rewarded. When the fear
of the whip is gone, he's gone. If he finds out he's not going
to get any reward immediately, he gets mad. You know there's
people that serve the Lord that way, they think. You've got in the morning, about
ten o'clock, the Catholic churches, if they're true Catholics, they'll
have all kinds of people in their mass confessing their drunken
rage like they got in tonight. and they're afraid not to. They're
afraid they're going to hell if they don't. Next Friday night
they're drunk again, but they'll go to Mass. And I don't know if there's anybody
worse than fundamental Baptist in our day, the only reason they're
serving is from some great reward the Lord's going to give them. And if somebody tells them your
reward is going to be what the other children get, that's awful! How could this be? I'm not doing
anything then. The Lord increased our faith. If
you're serving the Master tonight, you're serving Him by faith.
You're serving Him by faith. There's only one way to serve
Him. Then here you've got this other fellow. He comes in from
the field and the Lord doesn't thank him. He doesn't have to. He's just overwhelmed with gratitude
that He can work the Master's fields. Boy, you think about
yourself. Boy, I'm worthy of Him. Why He'd
even bring me into His Kingdom? Why He would even let me serve
Him? Why He'd give me grace to serve Him? I'm overwhelmed with
amazement knowing myself an unprofitable, useless servant What are you
even doing here? Every once in a while he lets
me see his face. Every once in a while he lets
me take his sandals off and wash his shoes, wash his feet. He
lets me serve his people, me of all people. What do you think
about your master? Oh, I love my master. He's the
best master, better than the slave master I used to have. I love him. He's the sovereign.
I bless Him for letting me serve Him. That's a willing servant. He's a man who lives by faith.
Lord, increase our faith. Lord, increase my faith. God bless you.