Matthew 5:48 spells out Jesus' intention of his raising the standard of the Beatitudes in order to have us aim at the "teleios ", the final result of our sanctification. It is that we arrive at the perfection of the Father. This is God's aim in having you become a Christian in the first place. And what we were learning in the morning service as well as tonight in the 5'00 o'clock Service. Particularly Jesus is lifting our eyesight to aim at the standard for God to be happy with you to be in his Kingdom!" Paul's personal journey on this purpose is a good example for us in Romans, chapters 6 through to 8.

Automatically Generated Transcript

The name Kieran came about because I think Kieran Perkins was swimming
and winning all sorts of things at that time
and so that is where the name Kieran came from
I had a friend in my high school days he was
a couple years older than me but he was playing
state football in South Australia and was quite a hero
and he was in our church and our church
I decided to send a group of young people on a mission thing,
and this was going to be the very first mission thing I'd been on,
I was included in it, and the other fellow
was going to be the main speaker and they arranged for people to be in
someone's home to plan the meeting. The place was at my own school, the
boarders used to have a Sunday service and
we were the invited people to speak. And so I went along to the meeting. Never been in
such a thing before. A bit frightened about getting drawn up in front of my own school
for a Christian meeting. I sorta knew what the cost would be for might doing that.
And so at the planning meeting I moved a few counters so I could sit in a corner and not be
noticed and sure enough their older young fellows who dominated the meeting and planned
it all out.
And they didn't notice that they didn't give me anything to do.
So we went along to the school and the chaplain, who happened to be the father of my friend
in the class.
He is also the coach of the cricket team of which I was the captain.
What did I call him anyway the person who was the chaplain of the school.
Thank you. So the person who was the chaplain who was organising it looked down the list
of participants and he said, Oh, you haven't got Jimmy in anywhere here. That's what I
was called. So he wrote me and he can give his testimony. So going along to the school
I'd just be there in the group at the back. Instead I was there to give my testimony.
He was the first thing I did in Christian outreach and it was very formative and it's
important, I think, when people take those steps to reach out and especially when you're
encouraged by an older friend who is very famous and is doing very well in his witness
as a footballer. That was how I got going following him. He had a daughter at that stage
and it's interesting where names come from like Kieran Perkins for example but this fella
had a daughter. And he was a bit of an expert in teaching from the Old Testament. He knew
I knew all the Old Testament material
and I used to go around the church teaching this
anyway he knew a lot of the Hebrew words
and he called his daughter Tammy
I looked up some of the words in the Old Testament for perfect
and there is a couple of names
one is Tam or Taman
going to ask him the next time I see him. Did you call her Tammy because the word means
perfect. I'm expecting he did, his daughter. Another name in the Old Testament which is
used and translated is perfect in our Vibles. When you get these translations they always
have a slight nuance. It's not the same as an English word, it's the word Shalom. One
form of it is Shalom. The idea of Shalom meaning perfect means all the circumstances are in
place. When it comes to the New Testament though, the word that we were looking at this
morning in the morning service in the Beatitudes as to the purpose of Jesus and his upping all
the ante and giving a more stricter requisite for people's lives if they're going to make it
into the kingdom of God. He said in the final verse we're on this morning, he said that God
to be perfect. You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. And we went into
this morning, the meaning of that word now in the Greek those other ones are quoted too from the
Old Testament were Hebrew but in the Greek which the New Testament is written on, there
is an Old Testament Hebrew version but that was Hebrew as quoting but in the Greek New Testament
so, for the word perfect it was there in this verse,
your heavenly father is perfect and he wants us to be perfect,
is the word fileios,
and as we explained this morning,
that will fileios means developed,
it means having come to be a completion of the process,
it means,
I use to use for example,
if you were building a ship and the last thing you had to do
was to put all the ropes and all the fittings on the sails
and then you say the ship had been equipped
it had been made perfect
but by perfect you meant
the finished product had been arrived at
not that the ship was static, then would do nothing
the idea of the word didn't have the idea that you sat there perfectly
oh! but it is that, what the purpose for you is
has been arrived at
That is what was meant by this verse that you have to be arriving at the purpose of
God having you become a Christian.
And what we were learning there in the morning service is, I want to continue tonight.
Particularly as it was relevant because when Jesus spoke about raising the standard of
the requisite for God to be happy with you to be in his Kingdom,
The idea of him having having perfection was not that he would be harsh on anybody who
just dropped the point, or that he would be someone giving you a test and you had to get
100% to be included.
And I've always been glad that that chaplain let me come along.
Well he didn't make me come along, that was the Church that did it.
But I had not always been very perfect in that school.
he was my coach in the cricket team, and that was a good connection, but he was also my
French teacher. One day he came to class early and caught me copying my mother's signature
on my diary. And there were little things that I got into trouble for. So he jolly well
knew that I wasn't perfect. And in the class, in the school there's a lot of what boys do
to each other you know and you had to learn to and not be knocked over by the
bigger ones or whatever. One day that chaplain came in another
time to the classroom early and I was down at the lockers getting something
out and he came and tapped me on my shoulder and I had been out sailing
with his family and their yacht and so we saw and he was the chairman of the
college in which my dad was the principal, so it was family connections and his
son was my friend in the church, and you tapped me on the shoulder but because I
was always on the lookout for other boys coming to scrag you I wheeled around
with a fist at face height so sob the fellow who was coming up and gonna
scrag me that's what I just assumed and got the chaplain in the chest, so I wasn't
exactly a very pet student, if you get the picture.
And yet, when I turned up with the boys from the church and he saw that they'd
left me off and he wrote my name in, to have a part and I think that God is like
that, a Chaplain. That's actually true now because he's passed away and the
perfection that we're talking about has happened for him, when you at last get to
glory all of us making you perfect. That your sanctification is meant to
have progress in God makes up at the end. So then at the end you will be in heaven
perfect. That means having arrived at the state of being that's fitting to be in
His kingdom and glory. All right so it's interesting that the new
Testament word has that idea of God going to work on you and make you
perfect. And that's the reason why Jesus could up the standard so high
and talk about perfection. Because he's someone who has in mind what he's going
to do to make you there. And a lot of us misunderstand that and we think that we
better hide our failures or we think that we get depressed and don't think
we're going to be much of a Christian, I think such understandings come over almost
everybody who comes to Christ, at first you may think you have really done God a favour
by getting converted and He's going to do well with your wonderful skills and your nice
personality but that's all just you not understanding who you are at the present when you first
come because there's an awful lot of sanctification that He's going to need to do in you and
He's talking about you therefore must be perfect.
it's talking about the purpose of the standards that Jesus have are not ones to catch you
out and have you kicked out of the deal, but they are ones in which he's taking on the
responsibility to get you there.
It's an altogether different picture.
In the morning I was quoting the verse that says work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling and how it's misunderstood.
Many people think it's saying that we've got to work hard to be good Christians.
In fact what its doing is that there's a salvation that's come to you where Jesus has started
to work on you, and you are allowed to let it work its way out.
And the fear and trembling is to make sure you're cooperating with the process, not
because you're going to do such a good job that you're going to get a perfect score.
Can you hear how that's such a different picture?
And it's the reason why Jesus knew that there's a lot of sanctification needed for all of
when we first come to Christ. Now the Apostle Paul was no different. In Romans 6 and
this 19-23 the Apostle Paul was talking about the lack of success that he was having as
someone who became a Christian, remember that in his non-Christian days he was a very motivated
and he thought successful Jewish person who studied under Gamaliel and was one of the
The leading young fry coming up to the scene, bound to get a seat in his anhedron, and he
was someone that was so much on the side of the Jewish ethic that he had been attaining
it.
And then when he became a Christian, because he discovered that he couldn't actually keep
all the laws he was so wanting to champion, that one of them in particular caught him
out about covetousness. And he knew how much of a sinner he was.
And here we're reading in him speaking I believe it is his testimony after getting converted.
Now you'll find that among the theologians some will say that this is Paul reminiscing
as to what he was like as an unconverted Jew but then he becomees a Christian and is altogether
different. And I'm trying to tell you this work doesn't
way I'm speaking in human terms because of the natural imitation's, but just as
you once presented your members of slaves to impurity that was in non
Christian days, and the lawlessness leading to moral lawlessness, he's
speaking in general terms of what humanity does overall. So now present
your members the parts of your personhood, parts of your bodies, the
the parts of your entire who you are, as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.
Now, notice here, that we become slaves to righteousness right at the start. That's when
you get the forgiveness of sins, when you get accredited from the God's perspective
as being righteous. It's not a righteousness that you earned or a righteousness that is
your score in doing good things. It's a righteousness that comes from God, one of the verses of
Paul 1.9. And we're going to look at it now, he talks about the gospel as revealing the
righteousness of God coming down from heaven. It's talking about Jesus coming and being
righteous. He is talking about when we come to Christ, that he gives us the gift of righteousness,
We get in the door by being made righteous with Jesus' righteousness and credit to us
when we scarcely deserve it.
Just reminds me of that chaplain, the idea that he wrote me into the program, I actually
had the biggest moment to speak in the end because he included me when he knew of all
my little faults.
And there's an acceptance that is normal to Christianity, we do the same when people come
to know the Lord? We don't point out all their faults. There's always one of our biggest
problems in the old Baptist churches, the original Baptist churches, they used to be
so tight on the rules that if someone came in from outside, they mon to correct them
and if they see them wearing the wrong clothes, they make sure some member gets alongside
them and whispers in their ears, shouldn't you be wearing a longer dress or shouldn't
you be doing this? And in my church in Sydney the elders saw that as their job and they
would come and follow me from the pulpit after a message and beat the door and as people
went out they would have little moments of sort of encouraging them to live the righteous
life.
Well maybe they didn't all do it quite that way. But that's how I saw it anyway but that's
That's not the picture of what the gospel describes of people becoming Christians.
Paul is speaking here and he says you were slaves to sin, and you were free with regard
to righteousness, what fruit were you getting at the time from these things of which you
are now ashamed?
So that's talking about the person who was just converted thinking of what they were
before they were converted
Because the end of those things is death
Now note the difference. The end. That's like the teleos of those... that lifestyle is death
But now that you have been set free from sin
and have become slaves of god
the fruit you get leads to sanctification
now sanctification is the active part of salvation
That comes after you've been justified you've gotten in the door of God
But then he begins to work on you. And sometimes he has to arrange
Circumstances where you get into trouble or I did with that chaplain
about my and tiring never mind and
But there's things that happen that help you realize you've got to grow
And sometimes there are severe
Circumstances, God puts you through where you find it's difficult and you cry out to him
But in the crying out to him
He's changing your heart and he's getting you there bit by bit
That's the process of sanctification
Now if you've ever had a doubt, listen to me
Whether you really are a Christian, whether you've really been converted
Ask yourself this idea
Can I spot how I'm getting sanctified?
Have I spotted things that God might be doing to punish me
That when we are real sons or daughters, he sometimes has to give us discipline
Discipline is a proof that you are a real child of God
He's going to let you just slop your way through and not get any treatment
He's going to see that circumstances turn up
Sometimes that's very hard for you
those circumstances are in his hands a part of the discipline to prosecute your
sanctification and if he doesn't do that what will be the result for the wages
of sin is death if he just left you in your sins it brings death one type of
death or another there's a deathness in Christians who don't let the
sanctification process work out because they eventually lose their glow
They eventually lose their peace.
They eventually lose the wantingness to be at church, and it's really interesting where
people have become backsliders because often they all talk to each other about how they
used to go to church and don't really feel the draw anymore.
I have had people in our church amongst the young people of the previous group who said
to me, when you first came and you spoke I could hear God speaking to me but it doesn't
happen anymore.
I think they meant it as a bit of a kick for me, you know, you're not doing so well.
I happen to know that God is in the business of working in us all
and He doesn't need me to be perfect on my sermons to hit the right spot every time
it's what He does.
And now actually giving me a testimony, they weren't hearing from God.
That's one of the signs when you ignore the discipline he brings on you, you're on a
process of that process of death.
The wages of sin is death.
How big a contrast it is, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And that's the free gift we get immediately as far as his spirit is coming into our lives
and we get converted.
But then we also are heading towards the full reception of that free gift in glory when
we get to be with Christ in heaven.
And we will know the joy of what it is to have eternal life and all of us development.
And that sanctification is a process that you're not perfect in the meantime which
you'll get perfect by His work.
Which is why the verse I quoted before, work out your salvation with fear and trembling
is calling you to participate in helping that process continue.
Well, let's go to Hebrews 12, 14 to 16.
The Book of Hebrews is a fantastic book because it's addressed to Christians having in view
that Christ has died on the cross and that the covenant of the old covenant has been
superseded with the New Covenant. Strive for peace with everyone and for holiness, without
which no one will see the Lord. The passage is talking about you won't get to glory at all
if you don't let him sanctify you. You'll suffer some, I don't know, you'll lose a lot of your
rewards and you'll get into, you won't be happy with your status in glory when other people have
been giving great praises. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. Now this is a
very interesting clause. See that no one fails to obtain the grace of God and what that means is you
can fail in obtaining the grace of God and particularly the grace of God that has to do
with sanctification. And that's failing to obtain the grace of God can happen because of different
things that come in. One of them immediately mentioned that no root of bitterness springs up
causes trouble and by many become defiled." And I don't know whether I've
told my little story about someone that's a long time ago now in another
state where there was a beautiful young girl who had a boyfriend and her life
was working that she was expecting that they'd get married, and she was someone
who was a very admired person in the youth group of that particular church.
And but then the boyfriend was discovered that he was being a bit of a rogue a rat
and he she was his good girlfriend but he also had a bad girlfriend with whom he used to sleep
and she was trying hard to to be a Christian and trying hard to do all the things that God
of require. And when that happened she got angry at him. And root of bitterness, this
verse says, springs up and causes trouble. It caused her to lose her spirituality. To
lose the beauty of the light that she previously was and dropped out of things. I don't know
where she is now, and by many become defiled No this is talking about not
having the holiness that is going to cost you not getting to see the Lord
and she became defiled, that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like
Esau, and there is a example of the two brothers Esau and Jacob
Jacob. Esau was meant to be the one who would get the inheritance and the inheritance was
a spiritual more but he didn't care for it and he was happy when Jacob his younger brother
wanted it to put a price and say I'd like one of those soups you can make or stews you
can make when you go and catch a lamb and make it up for me and if you do that I'll
give you the birthright?" And he didn't think it was anything worth bothering with. You
know, I watch people come into the church and come to know Christ. Some of them, as
possible, didn't even get converted in the first place, but in many cases I think they
did, but then it becomes too difficult to resist the pressure of the world, too many
Club meetings which friends take them to, too many times when they feel guilty and they
drop out, and then as time passes they get to the stage of becoming you know blase'
about Church.
In fact some of the young people of this Church used to have
times and they got together and they'd all have big jokes on the rest of us.
That's where they went.
And because of what happened in those groups, I want to tell you that what this verse is
talking about is what we saw.
No-one who is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau and the unholyness wasn't just
the trip-ups they might have had.
Those things happened to us all and God can still forgive you and take you on.
But the unholyness was the fact that like Esau, they despised the birthright that was
by having been converted, the fact that they despise the you know that God had
been working in their lives, you know when God works in your life, and you know
that His hand is on you, and he's working in you. That's a treasured thing.
I didn't, wasn't very successful at school at all, in many respects. I won't go
into the details because of the facts that you know I wasn't very good at
keeping all the rules. But that chaplain, he saw opportunity in me for something to be done by
Christ. You will know a little later moments. He shifted his family after retiring to Canberra
and I had an opportunity and due to the Graham team involvement, I had to have a crusade in his
home church in Canberra. And what a joy it was for him to see his ex-crickets come along
and now be an evangelist and we had a connection that was brought up because that God takes
you on and He's the One that causes you to grow. And so this is what it's saying. Let's
go to Romans in Chapter 7 because the problem that the Apostle Paul was having in Chapter
six with his sins is answered in chapter seven.
I was once alive from the law.
I was looking now about pre Christian conversion, at the early times,
before a Hebrew boy was young.
He didn't get the Law applied to him very much yet he got trained up
the same as they did when they hit a certain age.
he wasn't very old I don't know whether it was 12 or 14 but they had the Law put on them
at that time and once he got trained in all of the laws what he discovered was the very
commandments that promised to prove to be good to him it proved to be death to him because
the more he knew what he should be doing and we all find that I used to find that if someone
put a sign on the grass keep off the grass where did I want to walk you know there's
something in us that wants to not do what we told. And would the law operated like that
were both, for sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment, just the very facts
of those commandments, taught to him. The commandment is holy and righteous and good,
but something in our hearts rebels against the commandment. That which is good then brings
death to me by no means it was nothing wrong with sin but it produced death in me through
what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin."
And the law of Moses still has that task that if you read the Old Testament and see the
gods requisites, they can show you, you're not necessarily doing as well as you thought.
And the old covenant was actually put in place by God being able to do that to Israel
So they'd have no doubts about the fact that they were sinners
And there was no way that they get God's acceptance on the basis of their performance
And I don't understand my own actions says Paul now this he's saying in Romans 7
is after later and when he's become a Christian is my belief
I know there's people who translate this is him looking back to his non Christian days
for I do not understand my own actions. For I don't do what I want to do."
The very fact that he wants now to do the right thing
shows me that something has changed in him, that he's gotten in the door with God.
But I do the very thing that I hate.
And that's what many a Christian convert discovers.
Now, if I do what I do not want,
I'm actually agreeing with the law that it's good.
So, now, it's no longer I who is doing the thing wrong, but sin that dwells in me...
And that description of a young Christian's experience is what many people in churches
discover.
Although they go along and agree with where they should be, they have alerting guilt inside
them that they don't really deserve to be taken as a real every-right-disi Christian.
when you go and ask them to do something,
they just back out,
and you wonder why they're backing out.
This might have been a good opportunity.
But it's because they don't think
they really should be doing those
because they haven't been acting very well.
So I find it to be a new principle,
the word law here can mean principle,
a new principle that when I want to do right
evil lies close at hand
for I delight in the law of God.
Now, that wasn't Paul before he got converted,
It was Him trying to keep the law to make himself successful, in any Jewish sense.
But the delight in the law of God is what came by being a Christian in my inner being.
But I see in my Members' — my personality, makeup and aspects — another law or principle,
waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells
in my Members.
Well the condition we have when we first get converted is one, although we are forgiven,
the sanctification process not yet having gotten very far,
we actually are a bit of a two sided person, with good ideas coming and bad sins coming,
we are a person, a wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death.
Now the image that he is drawing is from a process, a habit that they had in the ancient
days — it's a shocking one — of prisoners that they didn't ever really mean to come
out alive.
But they would strip off their clothes or at least their shirts and they'd tie them
back to back with a dead corpse.
And the dead corpse would be roped into them.
And the dead corpse has got rotten flesh.
And when you put rotten flesh alongside the good flesh, well, the rotteness goes through.
also the rotten flesh has worms, and if you've got this body of death that's strapped to
your back, those worms go eating into you.
What do they do at night time in the darkness as the worms are eating you and you're all
tied up and you can't do anything about it?
Paul is describing his experience as a Christian who needs for the sanctification process to
happen, and he hasn't found the secret.
He thought that the whole business of being a Christian would be like it was when he became
A very arrogant and person accepting Jewish leadership.
He thought the harder I worked, the better I am.
He thought of himself as a hero who was succeeding in Judaism.
But when he tried to use that same way to be a hero in Christianity, it wasn't working.
Everybody finds that.
And so he cries out, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of
death?
Then because he knows he's found the answer but he forcefully wrote
the book of Romans.
Thanks be to god though.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Salvation is always about what Jesus gives you.
Your salvation is not what you do.
You may be called on to cooperate and to work out your salvation with fear and trembling
as the other verse says, but it's not salvation that you're doing.
It's salvation that he does it and one of the biggest steps to your
being on the way to getting that sanctification and aspect of salvation working for you is
when you come to be desperate about whether you can do it on your own.
Many a story of a Christian person, missionaries and other people have discovered that while
they strove hard to be good Christians, they kept failing, but when they at last admitted
that failure was the best that could be expected of them.
And they cried out to Jesus and when you cry out to Jesus to help with the sanctification
because you realise that you can't make it work.
When you say, I can't Lord!
Please help me!
Help me!
Help me!
Help me!
When you get desperate with Christ and you call on him, that is when he turns up.
And that is the way of sanctification is crying out to him.
Why is it that it's only he who can do it?
Because salvation in all of its aspects, you're being forgiven in the first place, you're
being sanctified in the second place and you're being changed, finally to be totally like
Christ in the third place is all by grace.
It's God's doing, not ours.
He's the One, by His grace we're sanctified, and by His stepping in to the whole process
and the coming in the middle of history and going to the Cross and dying for our sins,
Jesus is the one who delivers the salvation, and He is the one that applies this along
the way.
And when you discover that you can't make it work, and you get desperate and call out
to him you've actually discovered the secret of the Christian life."
And he worked out at the end, there, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our lord.
I know in my mind I could want to do all the right things, but with the flesh, meaning
the part of humanity that's not yet changed, I serve the law of sin.
Do you know that the Bible teaches that your flesh and, by flesh, they're using it now
as a metaphor, they're not talking about what's under the skin?
That's not cancer, by the way, that's just a bit of blood because they're my medicines,
but what is our body, our flesh, is a metaphor when it's referring to flesh, as us with
all that we can in our humanity do.
And if you try and do the work of God, the will of God, by what you are in your humanity,
if you lean upon your naty personality or your special gifts that you have or you may
be someone who is able to do this or that It's going to be your failing.
Where I to my own strength rely, that would be all my failing.
We're not the right man, on my side, the man of God's own choosing.
Christianity is built around the grace of God and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ,
grace getting you forgiven in the first place, grace getting you over your sinful flesh in
the second place.
And this is what I was about to tell you, you never get rid of the pull of the flesh
until at the end.
When at last the third aspect of salvation happens, then you'll find that you'll be
delivered from all the pull of the flesh.
Why pull it of the flesh, it means that it's a sinful part of our humanity that hasn't
ever been saved.
But if you fall back into living according to the book of Galatians, then you're going
to be in for heaps of problems, because the works of the flesh are a big long list of
baddies!
And the fruit of the spirit is a lovely list of good ones.
But you can't do what you want to do – as if you're the one you can choose.
which says the book of Galatians,
because they're contrary to one-another,
and the flesh will always be against the Spirit to the very end
and the Spirit against the flesh in you?"
And by giving over to the Spirit –
so the Apostle Paul had to see himself as crucified to the flesh,
that picture of Jesus dying –
Jesus there was nothing wrong with His flesh,
or nothing sinful with Him,
except that he had to die for our sins to be put on him.
But in our case, our humanity is always going to be a source for the flesh.
And you'll find, coming out of yourself, all sort of cruel things.
Laziness, in my case, used to be, as a kid at school.
And it used to be, you know, a rebellion, like, if there was a rule, I'd break it.
Where did it come from?
I had the best of training from my parents.
certainly wasn't because of them, and I've been to Sunday school and all the other things
that would help you, but the flesh can spring up all the bad list.
There's no release of those two aspects of Galatians listings, the flesh against the
spirit of release from that other than you saying with the apostle Paul.
And in Galatians 2.20 he does, he says, I am crucified with Christ.
I have to die to what I am in the flesh in order that the Spirit may win.
And that is how you have the working out of your salvation with fear and trepaking.
Let's have a word of Prayer
all that Jewish pride about how he kept the laws perfectly.
And the truth was when he really looked into those laws
they convicted him of these failures.
He's a person that went around murdering chrstians,
I don't think he can get
much worse than that.
And he was someone that
needed you to show him that
salvation was totally from you
by your grace.
And you forgave him
despite his background of persecuting the church,
you made him an apostle and used him.
In fact, he was designated the Apostle for the Gentiles
and enabled through his ministry
to bring many non-Jewish people
to come into the covenant that God gave to the Jews,
the new covenant.
They are part of the Church.
We give you praise
for the Apostle Paul and what you made of him.
O Lord, would you take us please?
dont pretend that there is anything of us in our humanity that would make us special
to the project.
Except Father you are precedent that you have grace, grace not only to forgive but grace
to also take us
through the growth of sanctification and grace eventually into glory.
And how are we going to be filled with joy when we are revealed to the rest of history
and the rest of the creation as trophies of Christ's grace.
How we're gonna be so thrilled and happy to be counted on His side
and we thank you for the opportunity in this life
to grow in grace.
Why, that's why the Bible uses the term growing grace.
Thank you for giving us, Lord, the opportunity
to grow in grace and to see you
effect that sanctification in us.
Please continue, Lord, we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.