Sanctify them with truth (sermon-sweet)
read the longest prayer of Jesus that we have in the scripture. This high priestly prayer, essentially the entire chapter 17 of John’s Gospel, is just Jesus’s prayer about the disciples, for the disciples, about us, for us.
And if you think about what’s actually happening here is he’s pulling back the curtain to reveal what’s going on in the heart of God himself. Because this is God talking to God. This is God the Son talking to God the Father.
And we get to listen in on these words, on this conversation that’s happening between members of the Trinity. And so it’s an incredible, amazing passage and there’s so much for us to learn from it. Let me take you back where we started two weeks ago.
We covered, you know, the first five verses two weeks ago. And what we really discovered was Jesus starts with this prayer for glory and this glorification, he’s asking the Father to glorify him so he would glorify the Father.
That’s been echoing since before time began that the members of the Trinity as we learned are essentially a community of love. And they’ve been since before the earth existed, adoring each other, loving each other, glorifying each other, like mutually affirming one another.
Like why would they do that? Because they love each other. Because that’s what you do with someone you love. You speak life into them. And so that’s happening in the Trinity itself. And where the prayer is going is we’re being invited into that kind of community.
We’re being invited into that place of perfect, perfect love. And it’s incredible to imagine what would it be like for us to live in a community like that, to be united with a being like that. That’s exactly where this prayer is going.
And then last week Lloyd covered verses six to thirteen and really did a beautiful job showing us that since we belong to Jesus, Jesus will make sure we get home. Jesus, as Lloyd said, is determined to get us safely home.
He won’t let any one of us fall away. And so we can take our lives on this fact because Jesus, the Son is asking the Father for that. The Father answers the prayers of the Son. And so we can be sure that these prayers of Jesus are going to be entered on our behalf.
So then we get to our text this morning and you just heard Jeff read it. What I think is going on in these verses is I think we’re moving from the what of the prayer to the how of the prayer. In other words, how will the Father answer this prayer of Jesus?
By what means will God the Father grow us up and bring us into the union of the Trinity himself? Does it just sort of magically happen, you know, that we wake up one morning and we’re perfectly whole and we’re perfectly healed and united with God?
Or is this a process that happens over time? If it is a process, which obviously I think it is, what’s the key to the process? And that’s what we’re going to learn this morning is what’s the key. In other words, what’s the key to our transformation of going from people who were alone to people who are home?
In other words, moving from people who are searching for intimacy and searching for love apart from God to people who are experiencing intimacy and love inside of God in union with God. That’s the journey that we’re on.
And we’re going to see what the key is to that journey. The answer I’ll go ahead and tell you what it is. It’s no mystery. If you read it carefully, it’s God’s word. The answer is God’s word. In particular, we’re going to see two things in this text that Jesus is saying, God’s word will do in us and for us.
We’ll put them on the screen.
- The first one is God’s word forms us.
- The second is God’s word transforms us.
Those are the two parts of our message this morning. God’s word forms us. That’s the first three verses.
God’s word transforms us. That’s the second three verses. In other words, the same word that forms us into a people that creates us is the word that will recreate us is the word that will keep renewing us and getting us where we need to get growth wise.
- God’s word not only gives us a new identity. Part one,
- God’s word grows us into that new identity. Part two.
So let’s start with this first idea. God’s word forms us and I’m going to reread verses 14 to 16 and then we’ll dig into them together.
I have given them your word. Now remember when Jesus, when you see I, this is Jesus and when you see you is the father. This is a conversation between the father to the son. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. No. No. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Interesting, that sentence is repeated two times.
Well, we kind of get the key idea from that repetition. The key idea of these first few verses is that through the word given by Jesus, the word of God, we’ve been made into new people. We have a new identity such that the world’s no longer home.
The world’s no longer home. He says it two different times. In fact, let’s go ahead and underline both of those. If you want to follow along with me, if you’ve got a pen or pencil, I encourage you to do that.
They are not of the world, and then again in verse 16, they are not of the world. Now, what does that mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? We’re not from the world, we’re aliens now, we’re not human beings, is that what that actually means?
I think Jesus is not talking so much about our origin. He’s talking about our belonging, our place, our home. We don’t belong there anymore. Something has been so changed in us, we’ve been given such a new identity, we’ve been formed into the kind of people where the world is no longer home for us.
We don’t belong there anymore. And it’s interesting, depending on your view of the world, that either does one of two things in your mind. Either it makes you excited or it kind of makes you sad. Maybe I want to belong to the world.
There’s a lot of good things that this place has going on, it is what you may be thinking. Let’s talk about what we mean by the world. When Jesus talks about the world, he’s not meaning the physical earth, like the creation.
He’s not talking about the rivers and the oceans and the trees and our bodies and the physical creation. He’s talking about something different, he’s talking about something that’s actually spiritual.
And what we know about the world is the deceiver, who’s also called the father of lies, the enemy of God, is for now the prince over the world. And so the world, as Jesus is describing it, is the system of lies, the system of deception that the father of lies has been weaving, has been spinning, that you and I are all trapped in.
We’ll come back to this idea throughout, it’s very important. It’s why Jesus is asking, not that we would be removed yet from the world right here, but that we would be kept from the evil one. That’s another way of saying that we would be kept from deception, that we would remain in truth, because the evil one is the father of lies.
He’s the deceiver, these are all titles of Satan in the scripture. Now, what I want you to see, and guys, this is just a really big idea, is how does the new identity happen? How are we formed into people who no longer belong in this place of lies, who sort of have been freed from deception?
How does that happen? Well, it’s right here in the first phrase. Jesus says, I’ve given them your word, and I think you could almost put a therefore after that. I think that’s the logical connection, it’s a cause -effect relationship.
I’ve given them their word, your word, therefore the world has hated them, because they’re not of the world. The act of Jesus giving them truth is what differentiated them from the world, which is the complex system of lies, all around us.
We just sort of take in, what are the lies of the world? That life is found in stuff, that fullness can be found in human relationships, apart from God, that our purpose for being is to be wealthy or successful or comfortable.
These are all the lies of the world that we’re kind of caught up in. And Jesus is saying, I have given them a truth, a truth from God that has made them aliens to the deception. And what happens, the moment we’re no longer belong to the world, the world turns against us.
You see, this is all that’s happening in these first few phrases here. Here’s another way to think about it. What changed the disciples? Because they’re just normal, worldly people, right? Now they were followers of God as best as they understood from their Hebrew texts.
But what formed them into a people of God? The truth changed them. But not just any truth. God’s word, spoken through Jesus. For the disciples, hearing and believing truth from God through the mouth of Jesus, changed them.
Now, what does it mean that they received or they believed the words of Jesus? It means that they simply believed Jesus’ words were God’s words. They simply believed Jesus came from God and his words were truth.
And that singular idea is what formed them into a new people. According to Jesus, I’ve given them your word. That’s what did it. It was nothing the disciples did. It was what the disciples received. What was it they received?
The word of God coming through the person of Jesus. No. The best illustration of all of this that I can give you, okay, is from one of my favorite movies of all time. This is like my top 10 movies. Some of you are gonna judge me for this, some of you are gonna love me for this, okay?
It’s the matrix. All right, all right, all right. Some of you out there with me, others of you are like, that’s weird, you’re weird. Some of you have never seen this movie. I was shocked to learn I looked up the release date this week and it was 1999.
So it’s 25 years old this year. And by the way, when I speak of my love for the matrix, I am speaking only of movie one, all right? I only watched the other ones one time and they just didn’t have the juice, all right?
They just didn’t have the magic formula like the first one did. I remember walking out of the theater in 1999, like having no idea what to expect. Walking out with like my jaw open and my mind blown, but not because of the special effects.
Like that’s kind of what the movie’s known for, you know? They started the special effect thing, whatever. I can’t not flexible enough to do it. Some of you will know what I’m talking about, I can’t do it.
My mind was blown because of the concept of the idea of the movie. So what’s that about for those of you that aren’t aware? There’s this guy named Neo and he’s a computer hacker, but he just suspects that the world’s not right.
Like there’s something wrong with the world. He keeps getting these clues and finally things start to be revealed to him. You know, he’s on a search for truth and truth starts being revealed and then he comes to a choice.
And this is a very famous iconic scene. He’s offered two pills, a blue pill and a red pill. And the blue pill, if he takes the blue pill, says you’ll wake up in your own bed and you’ll just go back to living your old life and you’ll never be the wiser.
But if you take the red pill, well, go down the rabbit hole. You find out what’s actually happening. You discover the truth, but you can never come back. So of course he takes the red pill because there wouldn’t be a movie if he didn’t.
So he takes the red pill and the next thing that happens to him, think about this, if you know the movie, you’ll remember this scene. He has another birth. Like he essentially is reborn. You know, and the imagery of that scene is exactly what that is all about.
And his eyes are open to see what’s actually true about the world. And it turns out the world that he thought was real was not real. The world that he’d grown up living in was actually a computer simulation called the Matrix that was created by artificial intelligence.
25 years ago, they’re talking about AI, be very afraid. Okay, you chat GTP folks and looking at you Jeremy Smith. Just kidding, be very afraid. Artificial intelligence from the future had created this reality and it was like we’re in a truth that was really kind of like a video game that he’d been living in.
Now, once he knows the truth, then he’s free. You see, Jesus says that you’ll know the truth, the truth will set you free. What happens with Neo is once he understands what true reality is, he becomes a free agent.
And the very next thing that happens is the artificial intelligence is out to get him. It is out to destroy him. Why? Because he no longer belongs to the Matrix. Okay, you see how this is? Jesus is saying I’ve given them truth and that truth has set them free in such a way that they no longer belong to the lies of the world.
They’ve now encountered true reality and because of that, the world’s against him and I’m praying that you’ll protect him from the evil one, from the deceiver, from the father of lies. You get the idea.
Okay, now. By the way, I’m not trying to say the Matrix is a Christian film, okay? Don’t email me about that. Like I’m very aware it’s got all kinds of like Eastern religions and all kinds of things.
They just kind of like put a big stew of stuff together. I get all that, but what I am trying to say is, I think it’s a great illustration of what happens in the lives of people when God’s revelation through Jesus becomes real to them.
I doubt you’ve ever thought about believing the gospel is taking the red pill, but that’s kind of what it’s like. You know, you’re reborn. Well, what are you reborn to? You still have for now the same body that you had before.
You now have eyes to see what’s true and in putting your faith in the revelation of God through Jesus, you take his word for things rather than what it looks like is real and true around you. Here’s how I want you to think about this for just a minute.
When you put your faith in Jesus, you’re saying I am reorienting my life around that revelation. That Jesus is God himself. That the words of Jesus are God’s words. That the life of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus is as real as it gets.
More real than this table. Why? Because a thousand years from now, this table’s gonna be disintegrated into dust and Jesus will still be. Do you see? It’s reorienting your whole thought process about what’s real and what’s not real.
In other words, God’s word does this. God’s word forms us. God’s word creates us. New people, it gives us an identity. It sets us free from the world. It marks us as people who belong to God.
So that’s part one, okay?
God’s word forms us. I’ve given them your word. Therefore, they’re new people. They don’t belong to the world anymore. The world’s against them, but you’re gonna protect them, father, because they’re mine.
Okay, that’s part one. Let’s go now to part two.
God’s word also transforms us.
Do I need to breathe? Like, slow down a little bit. Like, this is me today. I’m like, let’s go. Number two, look at this text with me.
Last three verses, 17, 18, 19. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.
Okay, let’s start with this word here. Not a word we use a whole lot in everyday language, right? It’s actually kind of like a weird word. If I were just to ask you with no context, hey, how’d you like to be sanctified?
Most of you are gonna be like, I don’t think that’s for me. Well, the word sanctify means to be set apart for sacred use, okay? I asked you again, who’d like to be sanctified? Who’d like to be set apart for sacred use?
You must be like, I still don’t want anything to do with that. Let’s break it down a little bit more because I want you to see that you actually do want to be sanctified. And let me explain. Human beings were designed to be set apart for sacred use.
It’s our essence. When God made us, okay, he put his image on us. He put his thumbprint on us. And he said, your purpose in creation is to govern over it. In other words, to represent my rule on the earth as my image bearers, as my representatives.
That’s your purpose, no. Do you want to be fully alive? Live out your true purpose. Live into the fullness that you were designed for. Let me take it a little bit more. When a human being is fully alive, that human is living out their core design.
Just as, when a deer is fully alive and they’re dashing through that meadow, they were designed to do that. When a turtle is fully, I don’t know what turtles were fully designed to do. Protecting themselves from the fox or whatever, I don’t know, they’re fully alive.
There’s the guy in chariot’s of fire. He’s just like, God made me to be fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure. He’s being fully alive. We were created to be set apart for God’s use. So instead of me asking you, how’d you like to be sanctified?
How about if I ask you this? How would you like to become more of your true self? How would you like to taste life the way it was meant to be tasted? How would you like to commune with your creator and achieve your full potential through creativity and freedom and work that fits you like a glove?
That’s all a part of being sanctified, y ‘all. That’s all a part of being set apart for God’s work, God’s design, your true, his full self. That’s what God desires for you. Now, I spend some time there because I want you to have some energy toward this idea.
Let’s now go back to the how question. How will we be set apart to become fully alive and used by God in all kinds of beautiful, wonderful ways? In the truth. So sanctify them in the truth. Again, down here, sanctified in truth.
And notice this little beautiful phrase. Jesus is saying to the Father, your word is truth. So we saw part one, God’s word forms us. It gives us our identity. Part two, God’s word transforms us. It sanctifies us.
It grows us into the human beings that we honestly desire to be in our core, that we were created to be the very thing that creates us. The word of God is the thing that recreates us. The word of God.
Now, how does this work? This is where I wanna spend the rest of the message. How this works. In other words, how is it that God uses truth to change us, to form us, to transform us? How does that process even happen?
I wanna make this practical as practical as I can. Well, first of all, we have to remember we’re not talking about just any truth here. We’re not talking about truth in general. And by the way, I’m a big fan of truth.
You know, like facts versus fiction, you know? Like, I mean, there’s a battle out there in our culture, in our world right now for like, what’s actually true and what’s not. You’ve got all kinds of crazy things going on and all this stuff.
I’m a big fan of truth, but we’re not talking about truth in general here. That sanctifies us, transforms us and forms us. We’re talking about a particular truth. He says your word, your word is the truth that will change you, that will sanctify you, you see?
In other words, God’s word is not just a collection of facts. Like, math is not going to sanctify you. You know, math teachers in the room might argue otherwise to their students, right? But like, geometry is not going to transform you.
It’s not going to change you, but this truth will. What truth? The truth Jesus is speaking, the word of God through the person of the sun. No. All truth is powerful, but not all truth transforms. Why does this particular truth transform?
Because ultimately, God’s word is not just a revelation of facts. As important as facts are. God’s word is the revelation of himself. God’s word, you all, if you think about this, is the way, the means by which he shows up to us.
The primary means. He displays his glory through creation, of course, in other ways. But the primary means by which he reveals himself to us, that he sort of pulls back the veil and says, this is who I am, and this is what’s true in the universe through the word of God.
Another way to think about it is God’s word is personal truth. It’s God’s personal revelation. And then revealing himself to us, he draws us to himself. I remember when I was getting to know my wife, Jody, I knew her through kind of a larger group of people in college, and she stood out to me, okay?
So I wanted to get to know her better. So what did I have to do? I had to talk to her. That was not easy for me, right? I had to go up to this beautiful woman who I wanted to get to know better, and I had to say some words.
I had to take a risk. I had to reveal myself to her. The scripture, in essence, one way to think about the Bible, is God’s initiative toward us, revealing himself toward us to draw us into relationship with him.
Here’s one of the implications of this, and in this, guys, ooh, this is a really important thought, I think. If you are unwilling to receive the relationship with God, if you’re unwilling to sort of engage in relationship with the God who wrote the scripture, then I think you can study the Bible your entire life and not be transformed by it.
Even more alarming, I think you can study the Bible your whole life and never find life in it. Jesus hung around a lot of people in his day that were experts in the Bible. I mean, they would put us to shame here at Fellowship Bible Church.
I mean, these were individuals that had massive chunks of the law of Moses memorized. And boy, they didn’t just know it in their heads. Like, they were living it out, man. They were all the way to like, you know, tithing the herbs from their gardens.
Okay? What did Jesus have to say to them about that? You might have thought when God became flesh, he would have immediately gone to those people and he said, you guys have got it. You have made the scriptures your lives.
And I want to just pat you on the back for that. That’s not what happened. We’re going to put this text on the screen. This is what Jesus said to these men. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.
And it is they that they are witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. What he’s saying here, you all, is, yes, love the scriptures, but you won’t find life in the scriptures apart from me.
So search the scriptures, but not because you think life’s there. Search the scriptures so that it will draw you to me. You see, the scriptures are God’s relational invitation for us to know Him through the person of Jesus Christ.
And so what we believe here at fellowship is this, that the central truth of all the Bible is the movement of God toward us in and through the person of Jesus. The central truth of all of scripture. The movement of God toward us in and through the person of Jesus, the Old Testament pointed to that?
The New Testament bears witness of that? No portion of the scripture, either Old or New Testament, is fully understood until it finds its full meaning in Jesus. That’s what we believe here about the scripture.
And I’d add this, no portion of the scripture is fully applied to us until it leads us to either worship or adore or depend on or follow truth Himself who is Jesus Christ. So I think Lindsay said this earlier, you know, she was asking how many of you have started a scripture reading in like nobody’s hand went up or whatever?
Like my hand didn’t go up either, okay? I haven’t started a new scripture reading plan. And then she was like, come on guys, Bible’s our middle name, you remember that? Okay. Why do we take God’s word so seriously here?
It’s not so we can be better theologians. And I’m a huge fan of theology and theology is important. It’s not so we’d be smarter Christians. It’s not so that we would know more than the Christians in the other church.
It’s because we believe that the scriptures reveal Jesus Christ to us. We believe that there are means of Him communicating with us, of speaking truth to us so that we’ll be transformed. You won’t be transformed by facts.
You’ll be transformed by a person. And Jesus says in John chapter 14, he says, I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. And in John chapter one, we learned that the word of God, which was from the beginning became flesh in the person of Jesus.
All scriptures point us to Jesus Christ. That’s how we think about Him. That’s how we teach Him. That’s how we want to live them out now. Jesus is the central truth of God’s word. Then he’s the one that sanctifies.
Remember the word sanctifies us? Jesus is the one who sanctifies us through the word. We see this explicitly in verse 19. Take a look at this. Our last verse is really kind of we’re going to start laying on the plane here a little bit.
And for their sake, the disciples’ sake, I consecrate myself. That also, that they also may be sanctified in truth. Okay. I actually don’t like what the ESV translation has done here because this word, guess what?
It’s exactly the same word that we were studying earlier. It’s sanctify. And ESP chose a different word because they thought it’d fit the context a little better, but I think they missed the connection.
Sanctify them. I sanctify myself so that they may be sanctified in truth. Jesus is saying, I am the true word, the key to it all. The word that sanctifies, I’m going to set myself apart. Remember what that word means to be set apart for God’s use?
Jesus is saying, Father, I am setting myself apart for your use so that they may be set apart for your use as well. How is Jesus going to set himself apart for God’s use? Through the cross, through the tomb, through his death and through his resurrection.
By becoming the once and for all sacrifice for the sins of men. Jesus set himself apart in a way that had never been done before and will never, ever need to be done again. You see, it was that unique.
It was that distinct. It was that set apart. So the word made flesh is ultimately the one who forms us, the one who transforms us. The one who gives us an identity, the one who sanctifies us, and sets us apart and grows us up.
You see, the word of God is the person of God. The words of God printed on the page that we study weekend and weekend are designed to reveal that person to us and draw us into relationship with them.
And when we come under the authority of God’s word, we are hearing the very words of God giving us life. So, in a few minutes, we’re going to take the Lord’s Supper. And before we do, let me just give you two practical thoughts.
Because I know this is very, this is theological. This is heady in a way. This is, these are big concepts. I want to just bring them right down here if I can do that. What we’ve been doing the last 30 or so minutes is one of my favorite things to do in the world.
And I don’t mean just teaching. I mean, looking at God’s word together with people. Like, hearing God speak to us together and finding Jesus in the Bible. That’s one of my favorite things to do in the world.
But what’s actually happening when we do this, the word of God is changing us. It’s not just something for you to learn and then go obey. It is, but it’s not just that. It’s actually the means by which God in real time is forming you and transforming you.
Words are not passive. Words do things. Words accomplish things. Words are active and the word of God is being re -spoken to us through our scripture today. And so how do we engage it? The question I want to ask us this morning is, are we listening?
Are we listening to God speak to us? Do we believe they’re his words? Now two groups of people in the room, one application for each. If you don’t yet have a relationship with God through faith in Jesus, that I want you to know every time you hear the Bible read or taught or every time you read it yourself, God is speaking to you through it.
And what he’s doing is he’s moving toward you. He’s initiating. He’s inviting you into relationship. And you might ask, well, what do I do in response? How do I say yes to that relationship? It’s by faith.
You take a step of faith, right? Like out into the void because you can’t see him. But you hear and receive. You see, the disciples had to receive the word. You have to receive the words of what? Put your faith, believe the words of Jesus or the words of God.
Now maybe you’re not yet ready to put your faith in Jesus. If you’re not, here’s what I encourage you to do. Just say this little prayer sometimes by God keeps speaking to me. I’m having a hard time here in you right now.
I don’t believe it yet. But would you keep speaking to me? Maybe because I do wanna be different than who I am. Are you willing just to pray that little prayer of faith? What a good step for you this morning.
What a good step for you this morning. Okay, now for all of us who have a relationship with God through Jesus, let’s move toward him as he moves toward us through his word. I’m not trying to be legalistic and be, you know, if you’re not spending 30 minutes in God’s Word every day then you’re not a good Christian.
Those words may never come out of my mouth, except in the context that I just said them, I guess. And may it never be because that legalistic approach is essentially saying, study God’s Word in order to make yourself presentable to God.
But what I want you to know is, life flows through these words. Do you want some of that life? Are you willing to receive the life that God has from you as he forms you and transforms you by his Word?
Are you willing to move toward him as he moves toward you? You’re gonna do that through this book. And I know it’s difficult to understand sometimes and you need help. There’s a lot of help out there.
There’s a lot of tools. There’s a lot of groups. There’s a lot of Bible studies. Get in one! Make this a part of your new year, some way, shape, or form, because you need the life, the words of life.
The God himself who is revealing himself through the Word. Now, let’s take the elements of the Lord’s Supper together and and what I want you to do is just open it up and just hold onto the bread for a minute.
Pull back that first layer. Hold onto the bread. If you’re not yet a follower of Jesus, then this is a part of the service that we would love for you just to observe. You know, I don’t know an easier way to say that, a better way to say it.
It’s not to like, you know, make you distinct from the other people. It’s just that this is something we do that those of us who have faith in Jesus, this is a serious thing. And it’s not serious because you think God’s gonna strike us down if we do it wrong.
It’s serious because this takes us back to the very moment that we believe the real God of the universe offered himself as a sacrifice for human beings. And our faith is in that, so we hold this little piece of bread and to us it’s more than a piece of bread.
Now, we don’t believe it’s the physical body of Jesus, but we do believe it points to the physical body of Jesus. It represents and it symbolizes the physical body of Jesus that was torn apart for us.
If you’re a follower of Jesus this morning, I want to invite you into this moment, and this is a way for you to essentially proclaim to God that you’re still in. You know, you’re still in. You still desire to hear from him.
Maybe you’ve been running away from him. Maybe you’ve been far apart. Maybe you’ve just been distracted and you had all kinds of things going on in your life. But this represents you do still believe you’re in and you desire for him to change you and he’s gonna do that.
He’s gonna do that. He’s gonna use his word to do it. So through faith in Christ, we remember what this points us to and we are grateful. And so we eat the bread. And the cup points us to the shed blood of Jesus, again the sacrifice of Jesus, which is one time for all.
It makes us right with God. Putting our faith in his death makes us right with God. How simple is that? Simple yet profound. Transformative. We believe that truth. Let’s drink the cup. Our Father, would you transcend my deep limitations as a communicator to speak truth to your people that your word would resonate with them this morning.
That your spirit that is in me, that is in them, that breathed out the words 2 ,000 years ago would even this morning re -speak them to us. I pray that that’s exactly what’s been happening in this worship service.
And I pray now Lord that that word would form us and transform us into the people you call us to be. Jesus, we believe you’re the center. We thank you for offering yourself for us. In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen. Let’s stand to our feet because we want to respond with a yes. We want to respond by saying I say yes to all that God has done and that’s what we’re gonna sing in this song. Let’s sing this together.
Through the doubt and the fear of this life I believe Through the fight and the war for my heart there is peace Cause I know all your graces are well and warm run dry I will take up my cross and fade out my line I say yes