Now, if you'll open your Bibles
again to the book of Hosea, I want you to, while I'm speaking
this morning, to keep your Bible open and prepare to read some
Scripture with me. Hosea, the first chapter. Now, if you would know, if you
want to know, what God is doing in this day, Then find out from
the scriptures what God has done in days gone by. He said, I am
the Lord, I change not. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
today, and forever. And known under God are all his
works from the beginning. God declares the end from the
beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done,
saying, my counsel shall stand. I will do all my good pleasure.
God never learns anything. He knows all things. God never
forgets anything. God Almighty is all wise. So
if you would know what God's doing today in 1979, then take
your Bible and find out what He did B.C., before Christ came
to the earth. Find out what He did in the Old
Testament, because He's still doing the same thing. And if
you would know, if you would learn how God is pleased to work,
how God works in this day, then take the Bible and find out how
God worked in that day. Somebody said in every text,
whether you take that text from Amos or Hosea or Genesis or Exodus
or Psalms, in every text there's a road that leads to Christ.
And our business as ministers of the gospel and as a people
of God is to find that road and get on it as quickly as we can. They say all roads lead to Rome.
No, all roads lead to Calvary in the Scripture. Find that road
and get on it. So if you would learn how God
is pleased to work in this day, find out how He has always worked.
He's still working the same way, for the same goal, for the same
objective, for the same purpose. He hasn't changed in His purpose. Now if you would learn, if you
would learn how God reveals Himself, And to whom? And to whom? Then you find out how God revealed
himself in the Scriptures. And to whom he revealed himself
in the Scriptures? And then you'll find out how
God reveals himself today. And to whom? Our God moves in
a mysterious way, his wonders, his purpose to perform. He plants his footsteps on the
sea and rides upon the storm. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage
take. The clouds you so much dread
are filled with mercy, and they will break with blessings on
your head. Deep in unfathomable minds of
never failing skill, God treasures up his bright designs, and he
works his sovereign will. His purposes will ripen fast,
unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower. How does God work? Like He's
always worked. To whom does God reveal Himself?
Exactly in the same manner and to the same folks He's always
revealed Himself unto. Now look at Hosea. You can find
the key to this book. There's no problem here. If you
want to know it, if you want the key, it's in Hosea 3, verse
1. Here's the key to understanding
this story. Then said the Lord to me, Hosea,
go again, go yet, and love a woman, the same woman, who is loved
by her lover, and who is an adulteress. An adulteress. Now watch this. According, according, even as
the Lord loved the children of Israel, though they turned to
other gods. This is what I'm showing you,
God said. I'm showing you mercy, sovereign mercy. I'm showing
you grace, amazing grace. I'm showing you my love for sinners,
my love for you. All right, let's take the story
now and go back to chapter 1, and I have five points I want
you to look at this morning. First of all, the choosing of
the bride. The choosing of the bride. In
Hosea 1, verse 1, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea,
and the Lord said, Hosea, Go and take unto thee a wife of
prostitutes, in a land of prostitutes, among a people of prostitutes
and whoredom. For the land hath committed great
whoredom, departing from the living God." Now, this is a strange
command. Here's a man who knows God. Here's a man who loves God. Here's
a man who's a prophet of God. He's a man who's walking with
God in righteousness and holiness. And the Lord God comes to him
and says to him, My son, Hosea, go down to a land of pagans. Go down to a land of rebels. Go down to a land of people who
live in a cesspool of iniquity and great evil and great sin. And from among those people of
great evil and great sin, open, open guilt, you pick you a bride,
and love her, and marry her, and bring up children by her.
That's strange command. And yet, that's exactly what
the Lord did for you, John, and for you, Bob, and for me. Our
Lord chose us from the fallen sons of Adam. That's right. Turn to Ephesians chapter 1.
Now keep Hosea open there, or mark it in your Bible, and turn
to the book of Ephesians. God is showing us his love for
us, his love for the real Israel, for spiritual Israel. He says
in chapter 2 of Ephesians, he says, You hath he quickened who
were dead, dead. did in trespasses and sins, wherein
in times past you walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also
we all, every one of us, had our behavior, our citizenship,
our conversation in times past in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And we were, every
one of us, by nature, by birth, by choice, by practice, children
of wrath, even as others. But God, we didn't choose Him. He chose us. We didn't love Him. He loved us. That little girl
down there in that evil, filthy, guilty, terrible land, she wasn't
seeking Hosea. She didn't come to Israel hunting
Hosea. He came to the land of prostitutes
to find her. He set his affections upon her.
He set his love upon her. He came there among those people
to find his bride. And it says here in verse 4,
but God, not but I changed my mind, but I came to myself, but
I realized what condition I was in, but I was better than my
neighbors, but I was smarter than somebody else. No, it's
but God. It's all but God, not but you at all, but God, who
is rich in mercy for his great love, his sovereign love. His undeserved love, His unmerited
love, His unsought love, wherewith He loved us. He loved us. We didn't love Him. We hated
Him. We despised Him, and we despised His way of life. We
despised His way. We despised His will. We wanted
our will. We hated God. All men by nature
hate God. The natural mind is enmity against
God. But God chose us. He set his
love upon us. He said, Jeremiah, before I formed
thee in the belly, I knew thee. I set thee apart. God hath, beloved,
from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the spirit and belief of the truth. Tis not that I did choose
thee. For, Lord, that could not be. This heart of mine would still
refuse thee, but thou hast chosen me. T'was sovereign mercy that
called me and taught my sinful mind. The world only enthralled
me, to glory I was so blind. I didn't love him because I didn't
know him. I didn't love him because I didn't understand him. I understood
my way, my nature, my will. And here comes this holy man
of God. And don't you know those folks
looked upon him as some kind of odd creature. But here he
comes down in that land of degradation and depravity and wretchedness.
It's a land of whoredoms, God says. It's a people of whoredoms.
And he comes down there and some little girl, he sets his affections
upon her and his love upon her and makes her an object of his
mercy and says, You are mine. You are mine. And that's what
God did. In John chapter 6, our Lord Jesus
talks about those people. He talks about those people in
John 6, 37. He says, All that my Father giveth me, the Father
gave the Son a bride. All that my Father giveth me
shall come to me. They'll be mine. They'll be mine. And him that cometh to me, I'll
in no wise cast out. I came down from heaven not to
do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. What is
his will? This is the will of him that sent me. that of all
which he hath given me, I'll lose nothing." That's my bride. But that's where he found the
bride, that's the choosing of the bride, that's where she came
from, that's where she was selected, that's where she was picked out
from a land of terrible evil. All right, let's see the rebellion
of the bride, the fall of the bride, chapter 2. And here's
Hosea speaking, now he has some children now, This dear little
girl has given him children, and he says to the two of them,
he says, plead with your mother, she's not my wife, neither am
I her husband. Let her put away her whoredoms
out of her sight, her adulteries from between her breasts." Now
watch this. You say, where are you going from there, Pritchard?
Okay, listen. Evidently, when Hosea went down
into the land of these evil people, this was a way of life. This
was a way of life. This was a direction they all
walked. This was a type of life that they all lived, just looseness
and perversion and depravity. This was a direction the whole
people went. He picked him out of Brian. Evidently,
she was not a prostitute when he chose her. She was just a
little girl, possibly 13, 14, or 15. And when he chose her,
it was before the expression of her own evil nature. He chose
her, and He took her home and married her, and she gave children. But after a time, she went right
into this life in which she was raised, in which she was taught
this way of her people, this way of her whole nation, this
way of life of her whole race. She went right into it. And that's
the way it is when God chose us to be His own. When God chose
me, when did God choose me? When did God send his affections
upon me? When did God make me the bride
of Christ? Before I ever gave expression
to my rebellion. Before I was born. That's when
God chose me. You see what I'm saying? You
see that he chose me before I was born. He chose me before I came
into this world. He chose me before I had a natural
being. I had a being and his purpose
in God's mind because Even a promise of God or a purpose of God is
a fulfillment of God. What God purposes is already
done. In fact, I'm already glorified. Romans 8 says that. Whom he foreknew,
he predestinated. Whom he predestinated, he called.
Whom he called, he justified. Whom he justified, he glorified.
Pass 10. I'm already seated with Christ
in the heavens. In the purpose and mind of God,
this whole warfare is over. The devil is cast out. The prince
of this world is judged. His power is defeated. His head
is crushed. His government is put under.
He's just waiting for God to carry it out when his time comes. It's done. But when God chose
me, I didn't have a human body. I wasn't here on this earth.
That was back before the world began. And this one, Hosea, chose
this bride. She was just a little girl. But
the sin was there. The nature was there. The images were there. This way
she had been reared was already there. And it's just a matter
of time. And that's what happened. Not
much time passed. Turn to Psalm 51. This is what David is saying
here in Psalm 51. Listen to it. In Psalm 51, verse
5, David said, I was shapen in iniquity. In sin my mother conceived
me. Some poor, misguided, misled
religious people look upon sex as sin. It's not sin. There's
no sin involved there in a relationship between a man and his wife. It
was ordained of God before the fall. David is not saying my
mother committed sin when she conceived me. He's saying that
the seed that came from my father that was planted in the womb
of my mother was a sinful seed. You can't get fresh water from
a saltwater fountain. You can't get good from an evil
person. And when Adam begat his first
son, that son was begotten in sin with an evil nature. That's
what he's teaching here, an evil nature. It's not that my mother
sinned when she conceived me. That's beautiful. God ordained
it. That's the bringing forth of
life. That was ordained before the fall. But if Eve had given
birth to a son before she fell, she would have given birth not
in sin to a son, she would have given birth to a holy son, to
a righteous son. He would have been pure like
she was and like the Father was. But David is saying, from the
time I had life in my mother's womb, it was a sinful nature,
a sinful seed. And as it developed and as it
was shaped in the womb, and turn to Psalm 58, as it was brought
forth, Psalm 58, 3, the wicked are estranged from the womb.
They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies, when
the child was born. I don't want to upset you, I
don't want to make you mad, but that precious little baby of
yours, You won't have to teach that baby to lie. He already
knows how to lie. And he'll lie just as soon as
he gets able to say a word, he'll start lying. Just as soon as
he's able to look, he'll look with anger. Just as soon as he's
able to clench his fist, he'll hit somebody. That's right. Just as soon as he's able to
form the words, and to carry out the deed, he'll sin, because
his heart's evil. And that's what I'm saying right
here. Sin is in our nature. There's none good, no, not one.
The root of evil. All we like sheep have gone astray.
From the sole of our feet to the top of our heads, there's
no goodness in us. Which is easiest for you to do,
to hate or to love? Come on now, be honest. Which
is easiest for you to do, to be holy or be sinful? Which is
more pleasure for you to do, read the Bible or watch a good
ballgame on TV? Which comes easiest? Which comes
easiest, to pray or to listen to a good story from somebody?
We don't love good, we love evil. We don't love light, we love
darkness. That's our nature. That's our nature. And that's
this woman. He went down there and picked out that girl in a
land of whoredoms, and that's what she's going to be. And our
God came down here and picked out a people before we were ever
born, before we were ever made, before our great-great-granddaddy
Adam was ever made and put in the garden. But this is what
they're going to be! They're going to be sinners! And that's what you are. The
creature has failed under every condition. God created some angels
in heaven, and they fell. God created a man, put him on
a perfect earth, and he fell. God Almighty delivered a man
from a flood in which he destroyed the whole world, and there he
is lying in his tent, dog drunk. God Almighty delivered a man
from Sodom and burned the whole city and only let him out. Watch
him up there in the cave. God Almighty gave a kingdom of
power and glory to a man named David. Saul has killed his thousands,
but David his ten thousands. He had the love and the adoration
and the praise of every human being in that kingdom. But he
fell. God gave a man more wisdom than
any man who ever walked on this earth by the name of Solomon.
And he'd acted like a plain fool. God Almighty chose a man to be
an apostle and let him walk with Jesus Christ for three and a
half years. And at the end of that three
and a half years, he sold him. In the early church, God had
people. He gave his spirit. People spoke
in other tongues and languages the glorious gospel of Christ.
There was fellowship and joy. And Ananias and Sapphira had
to lie about the whole thing and God killed them. There's
no place of safety from sin. You know why? You carry it around
with you. Now, you can believe that if
you want to, but it's so. It's so. You're not going to
find sin. You bring it with you when you
come. That's right, Dick. You bring it with you. You didn't
look for a perfect church. You'd ruin it because you'd bring
in sin. That's right. If God let you
in heaven today without changing you, you'd ruin heaven. You'd
dig up those streets of gold and start peddling it. You'd
undersell somebody next door. We got a greedy, grasping, guilty
nature. It's the nature! It's the nature. And that's what
this dear little girl, he loved her and he married her and he
chose her and he made her his own, but it wasn't long till
she fulfilled her nature. All right, look at chapter 2,
verse 5. But he didn't forget her. She
forgot him, but he didn't forget her. We forgot God, but he didn't
forget us. He loved her. Chapter 2, verse
5. Your mother played the harlot.
She hath that conceived them, hath done shamefully. She said,
I'll go after my lovers that give me my bread, and water,
and wool, and flax, and oil, and drink. Here she had her an
apartment, you know. And she was wowed. She was fulfilling,
giving vent to her nature. And every morning she'd get up
and there'd be a bottle of milk and a dozen eggs and some bread
and wine and a nice thing. And she'd come to open the door
and there'd be those fine gifts and on the table there. And she
said, my lovers are good to me. But those weren't the fellows
that were leaving those things. You know who was leaving those
things? Hosea, Mike. Look at verse 8. She didn't know
I gave her the corn and the wine and the oil. She didn't know
I multiplied her silver and her gold which they prepared for
Baal. I'm the one that left those gifts, Hosea said. Her lover
didn't give her anything but sorrow. She didn't know it. There's pleasure in sin for a
season. Is not this the story of every child of God? Look at
Saul of Tarsus. God chose him. God made him his
own. And oh, he's cursing God and
hating Christ and going about to kill every believer and everybody's
in that way. And all during that time, God's
protecting him and God's providing for him. And yet he's breathing
out threatenings and sorrow against the Most High God, and that same
God is taking care of him. And you and I, through our lives,
we breathe God's air, we've eaten God's food, we've worn God's
clothes, we've lived on God's earth, we've walked on God's
socks, And we drunk God's water while we praised ourselves. I'm
a self-made man, you know. And while we praised others as
luck would have it, you know. This man helped me and that man
helped me and another man helped you. They're just second causes.
God put you where you are. God gave his angels charge over
you. Are they not, Paul said, ministering
spirits sent to minister to those who shall be the heirs of salvation?
He took the beggar off the dunghill and put him on the throne. The
beggar is not there by himself. And has God Almighty ordered
the life of Joseph from the pit to the throne? And used even
second, third, and fourth causes. He used even heathen. He used
Egyptians. He used his brothers. He used
his people. He used his daddy. God Almighty
hath made all things for himself, even the wicked for the day of
evil. That's right. He's the first cause of all things.
I was in Carcahente, Spain one time preaching, and had a pretty
good crowd there. It was in a little old back street,
and they couldn't have a sign or anything or advertise a meeting,
but there was a pretty good crowd there that night, and I preached
the gospel. And it was a fellow, Martha, playing the organ. He
could play that organ. And after the service, I asked
Brother Estrada, David Estrada, I said, that man know the Lord? He said, yeah, he knows Christ.
He's saved. He knows the Lord. I said, how'd
he come to knowledge of the gospel? Well, he said, you know, that
fellow was the organist down at the Catholic Church. He was
the Catholic Church organist. And Catholicism in Spain. Ain't
like Catholicism here. It's powerful and full of superstition,
idolatry, and all the old medieval Catholicism. And he was in the
Catholic Church practicing one afternoon, and the priest came
in the door. He's playing the organ, practicing,
and the priest came in the door, and the priest had a whole bunch
of books in his arms, a whole stack up. And the organist looked
up and said, well, you got there, Father. He said, I've been picking
up Bibles that these Protestant preachers have left in the homes
of the people. I've been taking away from them.
You can't imagine that, can you? But that's what goes on. Been
taking them away from them. The organist said, well, Father,
I've never seen a Protestant Bible. He said, let me see one
of those. He just took the top one off
the stack and threw it to the man. Oh, the grace of God. He threw that man life. Even
that man who hates the gospel, who hates Christ, who's an idol-worshipper,
he's used of God to take the gospel to that organist. He threw
in that Bible, and that fellow took that Bible home and read
it and read it, and God saved him. God saved him. Who was the instrument God used?
He used a man who never would have been an instrument of God's
grace if he could have gotten out of it. God will use whom
he pleases. And that's the way God took care
of you and me, even in our days of rebellion, even in our days
of sin, God provided for us. And here this woman, Gomer, Hosea
was taking care of her. He loved her. She didn't love
him, not a bit, but he loved her. And he provided for her.
She was his. All this time. But she didn't
love him. And she praised her lovers. She said, they've taken
care of me. And Hosea said, no. No, they didn't. I did. But now
here comes the fourth point. The bride brought low. This is
sad, but this is necessary. Look at chapter 2, verse 9. Therefore
I will return, take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine
in the season thereof. And I'll recover my wool and
my flax given to cover her nakedness. And now will I discover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers. And none shall deliver her out
of my hand. I'll cause her mirth to cease. I'll destroy her joy. I'll destroy
her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths, her solemn feasts.
I'll destroy her vines and her fig trees. where she has said,
these are my rewards that my lovers have given me, I'll take
them away. This is sad, but it's judgment
before grace, and it has to come. God Almighty has to strip us
before he closes us. This is necessary. If you miss
Holy Spirit conviction, you'll miss faith, you'll miss Christ.
God has to strip before He clothes. He has to humble before He exalts. There has to be a death before
a resurrection. Gomer is brought low, but Gomer
is deserted. Gomer finds out nobody loves
her. There's no joy. She's brought
to see the deadness of her soul and the emptiness of her life. And God has to do this to us.
How sweet it is when God begins to strip the sinner. Here's old
Proud Saul, everything going his way. He's on top of the world.
He's a Pharisee of Pharisees, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He's a scholar.
He's a graduate of Gamaliel School. He's looked up to by all men.
A few days later, he's blind and dirty and groping, and somebody
is leading the proud man by his hand. He can't even see. He can't
even walk where he wants to walk. He can't feed himself. He can't
take care of himself. God brought him low for three
days. He shut him up in blindness and darkness. You ever been there? Here's Gomer, what's beautiful.
Now naked. Once admired and now rejected. Once honored and praised and
now they're mocking and making fun of her. She's nothing. She's
no good. once happy and now filled with
sadness and sorrow, near to suicide. Take away her joy. How sweet
it is when God begins to strip the sinner. How sweet it is when
God begins to reveal the foolishness of sin, the emptiness of sin,
the burden of Satan's service. God has to strip us and humble
us and break us before he can turn our eyes to Christ our help. Have you ever been there? Barnard
walked up to a young lady one time in a ten-cent store, and
he said, Honey, are you a Christian? She said, Yes, sir. He said,
How long have you been a Christian? She said, I've always been a
Christian. He said, That's too long. That's too long. Have you ever been lost? If you've
never been lost, you've never been found. Who will love him
the most? The one to whom he forgave the
most. Don't despair because you finally
see yourself as you are. You've got to come to that place
before you can see him as he is. Don't despair because God
has stripped you, because he intends to clothe you, but he's
not going to patch up that rag of yours. You see what I'm saying? Don't despair because God has
emptied you. God will never fill you as long
as you're half full. It'd be diluted mess. It'd be
grace and works that way. You wouldn't want that, would
you? You wouldn't want that. God's not going to pour anything
in that vessel that's even got a little bit in the bottom. He's
going to clean it out. He's going to... I don't know
how long it'll take Him. It may take Him, in your case,
one day. It may take Him ten years. But He's going to empty
you. And then He'll fill you. Don't despair because God's brought
you to the place of mourning. Blessed are they that mourn,
they shall be comforted. God always brings men down before
he lifts them up. All right, notice the next thing. The bride bought in return. Chapter 3, verse 1. He said to
me, Go yet, love a woman. Love her still. Love her still. The fallen woman, same one. Go
love her! O love of God, how rich, how
pure, how measureless, how strong it shall forevermore endure,
my rebellion, my fall, my guilt, my ungratefulness, my down sittings
and my uprising, the saint's and angel's song. Go yet and
love her still. the one beloved of her paramour,
the one beloved of her lover. There she was. I picture it in
my mind. Hosea, someone told him, Gomer
is being sold down there on the block. They got her down there
as a common slave. bondwoman, and they've stripped
her in front of all those people, and she's standing up there with
her hands tied behind her back, and they're going to sell her.
The people, they don't love her anymore. They don't need her. So he went down there, and he
begins to bid. That's right, he said, look at
verse 2, so I bought her! I bought her! I bought my wife. I thought she's yours. She is,
but I had to pay for her. Had to buy her. You still love
that woman? Yes, sir. After the way she's
lived? Yes, sir. After the treatment
she's given you? Yes, sir. After the shame she
brought you? Yes, sir. That's my love. What
great love, wherewith the Lord hath loved us. We don't understand
that, do we? I wish we did. I wish we did. I wish we did. We love them that
love us. Christ said that. He said heathen
do that. We give to them from whom we hope to receive something
in return. God loved us in that while we
were yet sinners in our greatest state of rebellion. And having
loved his own, he loved them to the end, even the cross. And Hosea said, so I bought her.
And Christ bought us. He bought us from the law. He
bought us from the justice of God. You see, the justice of
God had a claim on me. He had me on the auction block.
The justice of God. See, I'd sinned. I'd broken the
law, and the law owned me. I'd violated God's justice, and
justice had a hold on me. And Christ came, and with an
effectual deliverance, He bought me. He gave His life. He gave
His blood. And then he said to me, he said,
you're mine now, verse 3, thou shalt abide for me eternally. Of course, Hosea said many days,
because he's going to die and she was too, but I'm not going
to die and my Lord's not going to die, as I live, ye live. I
have a living eternal Savior and I have eternal life. And
you shall not play the harlot, you shall not be for anyone else,
no other God, no other idol. You're mine. Your heart's mine.
Your soul's mine. Your body's mine. Your being's
mine. You're bought with a price. And I'm yours. Isn't that beautiful? And I'm yours. I said to her,
I bought you. I chose you. I loved you. I bought you. And I called you. And don't you know he put a beautiful,
he didn't leave her naked going down the street. He put his robe
on her. His robe. His robe. Covered her nakedness. His beauty. His riches. You and I don't have
anything. We're nothing. We don't have
anything. We're a reflection of his glory.
His beauty. His righteousness. We're the
rebel. Hail sovereign love that first
began the plan to rescue fallen man. Hail matchless free eternal
grace that gave my soul a hiding place. Against the God that rules
the sky, I fought with hand uplifted high, despised his rich unbounding
grace. I was too proud to seek a hiding
place. Wrapped in thick Egyptian night,
fond of darkness, hating light, madly I ran sin's awful race. I was so secure without a hiding
place. But thus the eternal covenant
ran. Almighty love, arrest that man! I felt the arrows of disgrace,
and I discovered I had no hiding place. in this indignant justice
stood in view, so to Sinai's fiery mountain I flew, but justice
cried with frowning face, sinner, this mountain's no hiding place.
Ere long a heavenly voice I heard, and mercy's angels then appeared.
She led me on with gentle pace to Jesus Christ, my hiding place. on him almighty vengeance fell
that would have sunk a world to hell. He bore it for my sinful
race and he became my hiding place. Should storms of thundering
vengeance roll and shake this world from pole to pole, no flaming
bolt shall daunt my face. Jesus Christ is my hiding place. and a few more rolling suns at
most will land me safe on Canaan's coast where I shall sing the
songs of grace and I'm going to see my hiding place." He's
been it all along, all along. It's been Christ. Never me, never
anything I've ever done, never anything I shall ever do. As
Mike sang a while ago, past, present, and future. My sins
are covered by His grace. That's the gospel. That's the
gospel. We're as helpless as Gomer. Don't
come telling me what I must do. Gomer, you ought to go move in
with Hosea. No. Now, Gomer doesn't have the
desire to move in with Hosea. Gomer likes where she is. God
has to change her desire. God has to do something for her.
That's why we need to pray. That'll make you pray. You see,
Christians ought to pray. They see their helplessness,
they'll pray. They see God's grace, they'll pray. They see
their inability, they'll pray. If they ever get in trouble,
they'll pray. And ain't no use praying otherwise. It's not a
form. It's not a ceremony. It's a cry
with groanings which cannot be uttered. Our Father in mercy
and grace, deal with us, the chief of sinners, Leave us not
in our darkness. Oh Lord, whatever it takes to
strip us, to break us, to humble us, to bring us low, we pray
that you would accomplish that work. Bring us to Christ who
loved us, eternally loved us. With an unchangeable love he
loved us. And he died to redeem us and
bought us and we're not our own, we belong to him. We're his and
he's ours. Make this a real understandable
message to the hearts of the people. May our thoughts be conformed
to the Word. Deliver us from trying to make
this Word conform to our thoughts. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.