God is Easy to Live with

This message is one of the Times Square Pulpit series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing to World Challenge P.O. Box 260, Lindale, Texas 75771 or calling 214-963-8626.

None of these messages are copyrighted and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to your friends. And you may be seated. And take your Bibles and open to John.

I wasn't trying to take your job, Sister Gwen, there. I just—I wasn't coming over here to try to take your job, leading that course. Just leave your Bibles open to the 15th chapter of John and we'll get to it in just a moment.

I was traveling one day with a minister friend of mine some time ago. We were going—don't recall where we were going, but we had a couple hours, I remember, to spend in the car. And he revealed something to me that was very sad to hear.

He related to me how he had—was just discovering that after serving the Lord for over 40 years, including over 20 years in the ministry, both as a pastor and as a missionary, he discovered something, and this is what he said. He said, I've discovered that I have had a false concept of God and it has resulted in my motive, in wrong motives, in serving the Lord. So much so that this wrong motive even took me to the mission field.

And the brother—this brother shared this heart-wrenching discovery, and it was a process that the Lord had taken him through, but the night before, he was studying out of the parable of the talents. And in the 25th chapter, don't turn there, but Matthew 25, 24, this is the verse that God particularly spoke to him about his— the wrong concept that he had of God. In Matthew 25, 24, it says, Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast scattered no seed.

And I was hearing this preacher, also a preacher's son, admit that his concept of God was that of a hard man. Now, in this case, he had not hid his talent, but he went out to serve the Lord. He even went overseas, thinking that he had to do this to please and appease God, who had laid this heavy burden of ministry on him.

Not only ministry, but just heavy burden of service. In fact, I take it back, he had hidden his talent, for he was not using the gifts that God had given him. He was trying, striving within himself to please God.

But he never, in his mind, felt that he was able to do so. There was no joy in his life, he admitted it. He said he was driven by duty and by service, but not by joy and not by victory in his life.

I think of another young man, whom I counseled, not in this church, called, felt called to the ministry, so he thought, went on to Bible college. And he thought that he was to do certain things and go certain places in the ministry out of a sense of obligation to God. And service and ministry to him was an obligation to perform, not a joyous passion.

In fact, his thinking was this, that if God gives you something to do, it's a grievous burden and you can't enjoy it. If you enjoy it, it must not be from God. And sadly, I have discovered that many Christians are motivated by the same distorted concept of God.

To them, he is a hard man, hard to please and hard to satisfy. Now, with the Holy Spirit as my helper, I want to address myself to this issue. And as I was studying this message, I did not know what to title it.

Pastor Bob knows this, Pastor David knows that sometimes the Lord gives us the content of a message and then we have to pray the Lord to give us a proper title for it. Other times, the message will come just in a phrase or just in a title, and then the Lord begins to speak what the content of it should be, building around that title. But in this case, I knew in my spirit the things that the Lord had been revealing to me and saying to me, but I struggled, I didn't know what to entitle it.

And during that time, I was meditating, I was in my office, and suddenly I felt led to go get a book off my shelf. And I got it, and I opened it up, and my eyes fell on these words, God is easy to live with. And I said, that's what I'm trying to say.

That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you, Lord. Therefore, the title of my message tonight is not original, but the message itself is prompted by the Holy Spirit.

Because I have found in 35 years of service for the Lord, and even longer than that, in my personal walk with the Lord, I have found that God is easy to live with. Now, God is easy to live with if you understand and have a right concept of who He is. From the very beginning, Satan has tried to destroy man's loving relationship to a loving God and turned it into a religious system of worship and works.

For example, there were certain sects, such as the Pharisees, that had a religion with outward forms of godliness. They even managed to maintain a fairly high level of external morality. But it was just that, it was only outward, and they never really knew God.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter 7. Flip back to Mark chapter 7, and I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. Mark chapter 7, I'm reading in the New American Standard. It says, And the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together around Him when they had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of His disciples were eating their bread with impure hands, that is, unwashed.

For the Pharisees and all Jews do not eat unless they carefully wash their hands. Now let me just pause in the middle of that verse to say that if these guys came to my house, I'd be glad they washed their hands. It's a decent thing to do.

It's what civilized people do. They wash their hands before they eat. But you see, the Pharisees did not wash their hands for sanitary reasons.

They were washing it in order to be religious, in order to be spiritual, in order to be holy. It says, They carefully washed their hands, thus observing the traditions of the elders which means the rules handed down by their ancestors. Verse 4, And when they came from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they cleanse themselves.

Cleanse themselves. Now again, if you come from the marketplace, it's a good idea to wash your hands. But they were not trying to cleanse dirt off their hands.

Oh, it was much deeper than that. They were trying to cleanse something in their soul. They were trying to have a right standing before God.

Verse 4 continues, it says, And there are many other things which they received, many other things which they received, or required in their, meaning they required in their religion, in order to observe or to be righteous and holy, in order to be what they thought they were supposed to be in their religion, such as washing of pots and pitchers and copper pots. Now can you imagine, get the picture of these Jews scrubbing their pots and pans, thinking and hoping and believing that a clean set of pots and pans pleases God and gives them a right standing before God. My goodness, if you believe that, you know, your hands, you'd have dishwater hands, that's for sure.

You see, they had no living, loving, personal relationship with God. They had a relationship with pots and pans. Can you imagine? Now to a Pharisee and to many religious people today, even some Christians I know, to serve God is a bondage in which there is not a loving intimacy with God.

It's like, oh no, here comes another message on pots and pans. You see, the God of the Pharisee was not a God easy to live with. His religion was a daily grind.

It was grim and hard and loveless. And you cannot expect anything other than a Pharisaical type of religion. If your notion of God is based on some false notion of piety and works or even holiness, or traditions of men, not on a personal walk in relationship of intimacy, of knowing and loving Him.

You see, the concept of God, our concept of God will determine the quality of our religion. And Christianity down through the ages has often been like the Pharisees. It's been a tradition for some.

It's a tradition to observe. It's a few rules to keep. It's some pots and pans to wash.

Or it's a Sunday mass to endure. Or if you're Protestant, it's 11 to 12 o'clock service that's still too long for some people. But yet for others, they are much more religious and they dutifully follow all the requirements of Christianity even more than the average Christian.

And yet they still do not have, they have no more joy in their life than the fellow who goes to mass on Easter and Christmas. Colossians 2.8 says, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. You see, my minister friend admitted that he had a wrong concept of God and thus a wrong motive in serving Him.

He believed like the man who hid his talent that the Lord was a hard man and there's another translation. It translates that phrase hard man as a tight-fisted man. And some people have that concept of God.

He's a tight-fisted man. And my minister friend, you see, was taken captive by a false concept of the Christian life. And the tragedy of this brother is that instinctively, you see, we try to be like God.

And if he is conceived only to be stern and hard and exacting, so we ourselves will be the same. And for my friend, God was not easy to live with. And admittedly, he said, I'm not easy to live with as a result of it.

Let me take this a step further. God is easy to live with if you know Him. According to Proverbs 18, 24, as a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Look at John chapter 15. John chapter 15. There is something Jesus taught here that when my eyes were opened to it, it became one of those impact revelations in my life.

And it made me realize that God is easy to live with. Beginning at verse 15, excuse me, verse 13. John 15, 13.

He laid down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. Now here's the impact verse.

And I don't know if it will impact you like me. I pray the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to it. But here was the impact verse in my life.

No longer do I call you slaves. For the slave does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends.

For all things that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you. Now three times Jesus in these three verses uses the word friends. Once he infers it indirectly relating to his disciples.

The other two directly. He says, you are my friends. And again he says, I have called you friends.

Now to me, this is a precious term, friends. And to be called a friend of Jesus, especially in the context in which he used it, was a marvelous thing. It is a marvelous thing.

And it's much deeper than our idea of a friend. Abraham was called a friend of God. That was the first time that God used it.

And here again he uses the term. Now the circumstances and context in which Jesus called his disciples friends was this. Jesus and his disciples were about to embark on some very dark days.

Behind them were wonderful but brief days of teaching and travel with their master. Listening to him and watching him. At times during those days Jesus called these men disciples.

And other times he said disciples must be like a slave or a servant. Matthew 10, 24. He said a disciple is not above his teacher nor a slave above his master.

But in John 15, Jesus has gathered his disciples into a room and he lays out some teaching that is very disturbing to them. For example, in John 13, 33 he says, Little children, I am with you just a little while longer. You shall seek me.

As I said to the Jews, I now say to you also, where I'm going you cannot come. And they were wondering, what is this? What is this? And Jesus, you see, is preparing them for the future. For the immediate future.

And the dark, mysterious, tragic hours of the cross. And then he's preparing them for the future beyond that. When there would be new light that would shine upon them.

And new power would come to them. And they would have that. In other words, Jesus tells his disciples that they are about to move into a new and deeper relationship with him.

Now Jesus called his followers disciples and that they were. He called them slaves and that is how they were to act. They would also later be called apostles.

But, above and beyond that, he calls them friends. And this was one of the most precious things that he could have called them. And in calling them friends, Jesus is uttering words that indicate that they have moved into a deeper relationship with him.

They were to know him in a way that they never knew him before. He says, I no longer call you a slave. He called them disciples at the beginning.

He taught and required obedience as that of a servant or a slave. And they never resented being called a slave. And there was a later moment, as I said, when they would move into this realm of being apostles.

But now, but right now and forever after, they were going to be his friends. And this is not to say that they were already friends in one sense. It is not to say that they ceased being disciples or slaves.

Let me tell you a little bit about what the meaning of being a slave is. A slave was the property of his master, unable to own anything or possess any rights of his own, or do anything of his own choosing or initiative. A slave was only and always at the beckon of his master.

All of his time, all of his effort, all of his energy had to be at the disposal of the one who possessed him. All his choosing had to be in accordance with the choosing of the one who owned him. The law of a slave's life is unquestioning submission and blind obedience.

And this, in fact, described the relationship the disciples had with Jesus. He taught that. It also describes the relationship that every one of us ought to have with Jesus.

It's interesting that Paul often referred to himself as a servant or a slave of Jesus Christ. And so the twelve disciples were still his slaves when Jesus addressed them here in John 15. And yet, he distinctly marked a change in relationship when he said, No longer do I call you slaves.

Now, please listen to me. You do not really know Jesus unless and until you are not only his slave, but understand him as your friend and know that he calls you his friend. Yes, we are bond slaves.

We're his property and his possession. We're unable to possess or to have our own will and way. But this is not all that we are.

You see, the slave renders unquestioning submission and blind obedience. But that is not the last word on Christian discipleship. And you see, a lot of people do not know how to move from a slave mentality to a friendship mentality.

And Jesus was moving his disciples into a new position with him. You see, I see so many Christians, too many that are slaving and striving. They're sincere Christians who never have a revelation of Jesus as he was portraying it and as he was opening it to his disciples here in John 15.

And especially when he says, I have called you friends. Now, when Jesus did this, as I said, he is not setting aside the fact that they are to be as a slave or a servant. But we are introduced into a new realm of thought that does not negate the essential values of being a slave.

But rather, Jesus adds a new and beautiful dimension of what it means to serve him. He calls us friends. Now, just what is a friend? Well, one thing, a friend is a confidant.

It's someone you feel at ease with. It's someone who's easy to live with. It's someone that is forever seeking my interest and I am seeking his.

I like the way Proverbs put it. It says, Jesus is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Now, traditionally, a brother is to stick with you.

But Jesus says, I go beyond that. I'm more than a brother to you. You tell a friend, you tell a friend what you will tell no one else.

A friend will tell you what he'll tell no one else. That's the kind of relationship I have with Jesus. Proverbs 17, 17, it says, a friend loves at all times.

I like this one, Luke 11, 5. It says, suppose you shall have a friend and shall go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. And it goes on to tell how this friend does respond. I want to tell you, that's another mark of a friend.

A mark, a friend is there at midnight for you. He's there at midnight for you with three loaves. I was driving in the car the other day with my youngest daughter.

And we were talking about one of my friends. And she said, you know something, dad? She said, all of your friends are also my friends. Why is that? And before I could answer, she looked back at me and she said, I guess that's because you're my friend.

What I want to tell you, that touched me. And all of my children have said the same thing at one time or another. You see, Jesus, however, is greater than that.

He wants to be your best friend. He calls us to be his friend. And when Jesus tells his men that he does not call them slaves anymore, but friends, it was a teaching that would have a great, great impact on them.

Because, you see, they understood something of the meaning of a slave. And as I said, they did not resent that. In fact, the slave, doulos, the slave or the servant of God was no title of shame.

It was a title of the highest honor and respect. Moses was a slave of God. In Deuteronomy 34, 5, it says, So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the wilderness, the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.

Moses is called the servant of the Lord, a slave. Joshua, also at the end of his life, is respectively called the servant of the Lord. Psalms 89, 20, it says, I have found David, David, my servant, my slave.

With my holy oil have I anointed him. And you see, the greatest men of the past would have been honored to be called the slave of God. But Jesus says, I have something greater than even that for you.

You are no longer just slaves, you're my friend. And you see, Jesus offers us an intimacy, a fellowship, a closeness to him that no slave ever had with his master. Now, Jesus may have had something else in mind in calling his disciples friends.

There was a custom in the courts of the ancient, in ancient times. There was a custom in the courts of the Roman emperors and of the eastern kings. At those courts, there were a very select group of men who were called the friends of the king or the friends of the emperor.

And at all times, they had access to the king over and above everybody else. In fact, they had a right to come right into his bedchamber the first thing in the morning. He would talk to them, the king or emperor would call them and he would talk to them before he talked to his generals, before he talked to his statesmen, before he talked to any of his other rulers.

The friends of the king were those who had the closest and most intimate connection with him. And do you know something? I am a friend of the king of kings and the Lord of lords. You and I do not have to gaze longingly at him from some position, at some distance.

We don't have to be like the crowds in the line as some potentate or king or president comes by in a bulletproof limousine. Jesus gives us intimacy within. He says, you can come into my room, hallelujah.

No longer a distant stranger, but a close friend. Now, as I said, we either have a slave mentality and spirituality or a friendship mentality or spirituality. I want you to consider the service, our service to the Lord as we contrast it between a slave and a friend.

Consider the contrast of service to the Lord if we see ourselves only as slaves and not as friends. For example, a slave has a legal relationship to his master. A friend has a loving relationship to his master.

You see, the master treats his slave and the slave treats him according to a legal contract. The slave works by a set of rules and the master treats him accordingly. And the slave must live and work by the letter of the law or the contract.

And you see, there are some Christians who only know Jesus by the letter of the law. They seek to please their master. Some try to do it with the minimum requirements.

In fact, we pastors, pastors often get questions from people about this and that. And what it is, is that they're trying to put it down in a set of rules and basically the minimum number is possible. Or others obey all the rules of being a Christian, but they are motivated purely out of fear, not by loving devotion.

And this is what I call going by the book slaves. This is a Christian who is conscientious. In fact, they read the legal contract.

They know the Bible. They try to follow it, read it faithfully. And they do their best to please the master.

But sadly, they never think they're doing enough. And they never feel that they can please their master. But you see, a friend serves not only by the book, but by the heart.

The service of a friend is based on love, on affection, on inspiration. And a friend in the end will go far beyond the legal requirements of the contract to please a friend. When you have a slave mentality and spirituality, you find it hard to live and please your master.

But a friend is easy to live with, and God is easy to live with. Hallelujah! It doesn't mean that you're living as you ought to in a marriage. It doesn't mean there's love there.

In fact, you may be hostile, you may be enemies. And you can have a legal relationship, a legal contract with the Word, and yet not have a loving relationship with Jesus. Another contrast between the slave and the friend is this.

One is watched, and the other is trusted. You see, the master has to keep his eye on the slave that seeks to please the master only when the master is looking. Colossians 3.22, Paul spoke of servants who only obeyed their master.

They only did what was right if and when the master was looking. Paul called an eye service as man pleasers. Now, some of you parents may have children like that.

As soon as your back is turned, as soon as your eyes are turned, your children are in all kinds of trouble. And some of God's children are just that way. They've got to be watched all the time.

They can't be trusted. Do you know the reason some Christians, listen to me carefully. I believe the Lord really gave me this for some of you.

The reason some Christians end up in a church that is cultish, or where the leader treats everybody as a slave, is because some Christians want such a leader who will keep an eye on them because they would rather please men than God because of the weakness of their flesh. And like a slave, they can only keep up the work that is to be done if it's kept up by coercion, by intimidation, or by some master standing over them with a stern eye, or worse, with a whip. And they come in every time, whip me, whip me.

Jesus said, I no longer call you slaves, I call you friends. You see, that's not the, what I just described is not the case with a friend. A friend serves with a different motivation.

His service is spontaneous. It's never grudgingly. And it always goes beyond the letter of the law.

This is the way Jesus treated his disciples. He trusts their love, knowing that if they love him, they will keep his commandments. John 15, 14, You are my friends if you do what I command you.

Remember the spontaneity of Mary when Lazarus had died, and Jesus came on the scene late, and Martha went and said, and when she had said this, she went and called Mary, her sister, saying secretly, the teacher is here, he is calling for you. Now, Martha waited for Jesus to get there. Mary didn't.

She jumped up and it says, and when she heard it, she arose quickly and was coming to him. Oh, that's what a friend is. That's what a friend does.

Now, a third contrast between a slave and a friend. One is distant and the other is close. You see, the master keeps his servant at a distance.

He stands on his authority. He gives out his orders. He insists they be dutifully carried out.

But the slave sees very little of his master, only when he gives out orders. One lives in one house and another lives out in the back house, or in an apartment somewhere. They hardly ever see each other.

They live in different worlds. But not so with a friend. A friend is near to the heart.

An old philosopher defined friendship as the existence of two souls in one body. And that's how near the disciples were to Jesus. It's how he treated them.

He said, the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard of the Father. I've made known unto you. And by the way, a friend also knows when not to dump on you or tell you too much.

John 16, 12 says, I have many more things to say to you, but you can't bear them now. A friend tells you exactly what you need to know. Even if it hurts, Proverbs 27, 6, faithful are the wounds of a friend.

Ah, but he only wounds to heal. A friend will tell you the truth. He holds back no secrets.

Shall I hide from Abraham the thing which I do, says God. Why? Because he was a friend of God. Now one more contrast between a slave and a friend.

One is coerced and the other is free. The slave is not free to do his work. And he would not serve his master if he could help it.

He is placed in circumstances that force him to do his work. Now I see, sometimes I see people come to church and you would think somebody arm wrestled them to get them to the house of God. But above that, I see an attitude in some Christians.

To look at them, you would think Christ is a cruel taskmaster, a hard man. And the Christian life for them is a burden to carry. It's a duty to perform.

It's a law to keep. And God appears to be to them tight-fisted. And you've got to do everything.

He's watching you. He's watching you. And you've got to do everything that you possibly can to try to maybe get him to just open his hands a little bit and give you a few alms.

But you see the service of a friend on the other hand is free, it's spontaneous, it's joyous. He cannot help do what he does. And this is how Christ's true disciples live.

The love of Christ constrains them because they have this right concept of God. John 15, 14, If you love me, you will keep my commandments, not by coercion, not from a distance, not just because it's the legal thing to do. Not because you're watched like a hawk.

But you'll keep his commandments as a loving, trusting, close, and free friend who spontaneously says, Yes, Lord, I love you. That's the kind of love that Ruth had for Naomi. She didn't have to go.

She didn't have to leave her country. Naomi said to Ruth, Stay, stay. But this is what she said.

Nevertheless, Ruth replied, Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go. And where you stay, I will stay.

Your people will be my people and your God my God. Hallelujah. Now allow me, if I will, to give you a personal illustration that probably sums up this entire message.

My wife and I have been married for 26 years. I recall that day standing before the preacher in a little white church, Methodist church in Vermont. I was a very poor preacher and a pastor of a nearby church.

My wife had to buy my wedding suit. It was not a condition of marriage. It was just the reality of my financial situation.

I was the last of my family to be married. So I'd been a teenager, and I'd been a young man during four courtships and four marriages of my two brothers and my two sisters. Every time my brothers and sisters had spats with their fiancé, or even after they were married, if they had spats or they sparred with each other, my dad would say, Son, now learn a lesson from this.

And so I went into marriage knowing, for one thing, cooking lasts longer than kissing, as they say. And I knew some other things, fearing some of my dad's warnings about marriage. There are two things that I can tell you that I had problems with earlier in our marriage.

One was taking out the garbage, and second was going shopping. And let me explain them, because one sounds like I'm lazy, and the other sounds like no big deal. Well, taking out the garbage.

Now, my wife's probably back there saying he still doesn't take out the garbage. But let me explain it. We were living in Brooklyn, working at Teen Challenge, and I was in an apartment there.

Later on, we moved out to Long Island and had a home there. But in both cases, it was the same. You know, there are certain days when the garbage pickup comes.

And it was my duty to take out the garbage. I'd get home late at night, busy working in the center and, you know, doing hand-to-hand combat with the devil. And getting in late many a night, my wife would already be in bed.

I'd come in, I'd be tired, and I couldn't sleep. I'd have to read or whatever. It'd take me an hour or so to unwind.

And so I'd get my pajamas on, my slippers on, and I'd be relaxed. And lo and behold, how many times my wife would say, Honey, did you take out the garbage? And so there I am. And I would say, Honey, why didn't you remind me? She said, You ought to know, Mondays and Thursdays, it's garbage time.

And I said, Honey, I'm too busy taking garbage out of people's lives. Why can't I remember that? And to this day, I forget to take out the garbage. But I do it a lot more joyfully.

My wife will verify that. The other thing is going shopping. When we were first married, my wife couldn't drive.

And so I would, again, have a full day, and then my wife would say, I want to go shopping. I wanted to stay home. I wanted to relax.

But I'd have to take my wife shopping. And then, of course, the other reason I hated to go, because I didn't have any money. And that was the other hard thing about going shopping.

But, you know, when I stood, skinny little fellow that I was, I wasn't little, I was the same height, but skinny as I was, standing before that preacher, you know, I wasn't standing there thinking as he was going over the vows. I wasn't saying to myself, now how in the world am I ever going to take out the garbage? How am I ever going to be able to take my wife shopping? How am I ever going to do all these things that my dad told me about? You see, I didn't worry about those things, because the young lady next to me had won my heart. She had won my love.

She had won my devotion. And she also trusted that the Jesus in me, and if Jesus was in me, as the scripture says, if you love me, you will fulfill the wedding vows. And yes, you'll take out the garbage, and yes, you'll go shopping, and yes, you'll do a lot of other things that I thought I could never do.

And listen, if the marriage altar can produce loving devotion and service, how much more ought the altar of covenant between my Lord and I and you and your God, how much more ought it to produce in you a life that goes beyond, that doesn't need every day to be told what to do, and just does it because you're in love with Jesus, hallelujah. Because you're his friend, and he's your friend, and he sticks closer than a brother, and he never fails you. If you really know and love Jesus, if he's your best friend, no legal document, the no legal document alone, will motivate you to take out the garbage in your life.

You'll just want to do it. Every time you come to church, you'll examine yourself to see if there's anything that needs to be taken out. And if you really know and love Jesus, if he's your friend, you won't even mind going shopping.

In a spiritual sense, Isaiah says, Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come buy wine and milk. And yes, you'll have a hunger for God.

You'll want to buy everything there is from God, hallelujah. And when you're in love with Jesus, you'll want to buy into everything he teaches. His commandments, his will, his way will not be grievous to you.

It'll be blessed, it'll be joyous. And you realize what Jesus said. Jesus meant when he said, My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I tell you, God is easy to live with, hallelujah. He's easy to live with. When you know him, as he wants to reveal himself to you.

Oh, may God bring you, may he bring you from a slave mentality. Not laying aside the meaning of all that, but move on into this other relationship. And you'll not have a burden that's weighing you down, thinking this life is so hard.

You'll not be striving. Oh, but it will be a joy to serve the Lord. You'll find that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, hallelujah.

Will you stand with me? Will you stand? Yesterday, I really wanted to die. I can't take this anymore, Jesus. Please give me a heart that says, It don't matter, only you do, Jesus.