The Will of God

The ways that people try to find the will of God, some people think of it as kind of a cosmic Easter egg hunt, and the will of God is the golden egg that's hidden somewhere, and we've just got to find it. Oh, is it over here? Oh, is it over there? Oh, man, maybe if I'll pray six minutes rather than five, I can find the will of God, and so forth. And so, then they hear, oh no, somebody found it, they didn't have a chance. And others think that the will of God is—do any of you ladies, when you were young, play a game called Mother, May I? That is an evil game. If you do everything they tell you to do, you lose. But you have to, before each move, say Mother, May I? And some people see God's will for us as kind of a Mother, May I thing, where—let's say my daughter, Gloria, back when we had a two-story house and she had a bedroom upstairs, suppose she woke up and yelled down to me at the breakfast table, Dad, can I get up? Yes, Gloria. Dad, can I put on some clothes now? Yes, Gloria. Dad, can I come down the stairs now? Yes, Gloria. Dad, can I come to the table? Yes, Gloria. Dad, can I have some eggs in my plate? Yes, Gloria. Can I cut it? Yes. Can I pick it up and put it in my mouth? Yes. Can I chew it? Yes. Can I swallow it? Yes. I would leave home. And some people think that that's the way it is with God. I just forgot to consult him that last 30 seconds or so, you know, as if God's saying, you didn't say, Father, may I? There are all kinds of ways—and some people—have you ever heard using a fleece? How many of you have heard using a fleece to—okay, a few of you have. Well, you know the story of the fleece. It's really a sad story because Gideon knew God had called him. That wasn't a question. In fact, he had even pretty much messed up his life. He'd cut down some of the sacred trees and so forth. And then he decides, you know, I'd better find out if this is what God wants. And so he puts out a fleece. Now this is really ridiculous. But people then think that's the way to find the will of God. It really isn't. He puts out a fleece that's a ram's skin on the ground. He said, now, God, here's what I want to have happen. Tonight, I'm going to put this out here, and I want the ground to be dry, and I want it to be wet tomorrow morning, okay? And I can hear God saying, piece of cake. So the next morning, he walked out, crackle, crackle, and picked up that thing and got about 40 gallons squeezed out of it, and he said, that's pretty good. But let's do a double line, as they call it in the scientific circles. I'm going to put it back out here, and tomorrow morning, I want it to be dry and the ground wet. So the next morning, he swam out to it, and sure enough, it was dry. He said, now I know that I'm supposed to do this. Well, God had already made it pretty plain, and he'd already cooked his goose, as we say, and then he wants to find out. You know, I kind of fell for that. I remember when I was in college, I forgot which year it was, but I was planning to be a brain surgeon, be thankful. And I had grown up, you know, in a very wonderful Christian home, and had lived for God ever since I remembered. And when I got off to college, I was just overwhelmed by the immense misery of the students and their sadness, and it got to me, and it drove me to prayer. And I'll never forget, during that time, God said, Gail, if you want to be a doctor, I'll bless you. I like doctors, but you can't change your world that way. You'll always be operating on unconscious people, which, by the way, I find I still do. He said, if you want to change your world, you're going to have to preach, and I said, okay. But now, Lord, I can't preach without a car. Now I don't know where it says that in the Bible. I'll know you, folks, I did this, I can't believe it, and God taught me a lesson. I'll know you want me to preach if you supply me with a car. One week later to the day, here it came. You could hear it for several blocks. My father was driving it, now, I don't want to lengthen the story, but he had been injured in an airplane accident, and his left side was paralyzed, but he had taught himself how to drive again, and he brought it up to me, and he said, son, a week ago, I had the strongest feeling you needed a car. He said, now, there's a used car lot down the street from me, and I have a friend there that told me this was a good car. So here it is, and he reached into his pocket and handed me the documents, and I opened it up, and I said, payment book? Yeah, son, you'll have to pay for it. I think I remember God going, oh, oh, oh. I would never have bought that car. It wasn't a car, it was a reclicon for a place to happen. You'd be driving along at night, all the lights go out, and you had to be careful, your feet would go through the floorboard, you know, that kind of car. I'd have to push it in the morning to get it started, park it on hills to make it a little easier, you know. I remember one cold morning, I'm pushing this thing, and I distinctly heard God say, you're going to do this to me anymore, Gale? No, no. So really, Fleece, we've taken that, which was a thing of doubt, and turned it into a whole theology in some places. I don't think you have to worry about that at all. At any rate, some people literally, I hear this, they find the will of God as far as they're concerned by putting out a fleece. Not a good practice. There's a great and highly humorous book, and I've forgotten the name of it, The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, age 37 and three quarters. It's British humor, but it's hilarious. He just sort of shows the usages we have of that, because when he became a Christian and he just sunk himself into the church, and he saw some of the foibles of the way we do. One day when they came to him, they said, we're going to be coming downtown to London tomorrow. Would you go help us? We're going to be ministering to the poor down there on the streets. He said, well, I'm going to put out a fleece to see if God wants me to help you tomorrow. Here was his fleece as he described it. If tomorrow morning at 3.45 AM a midget shows up dressed like an admiral, then I'll know God wants me to come. He pretty much had the way we do things. Not the way you guys do things, I'm just telling you some of my own history so I can get some idea. Some ways that people actually think they can find the will of God that way. Well sometimes though, people do think that it is something that we are longing to somehow find in our lives. I don't think you have to really hunt it that badly. I want to show you exactly what I mean. So I take you to Romans chapter 12. We were in 13 this morning. We're just backing up one chapter. Beginning of the chapter, I beseech you, in other words he's saying I beg you, therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Now that word service is the same word they use for worship. Maybe that's why we call it a worship service, I don't know. But at any rate, he says this is your reasonable worship. Now you've heard the old joke about the problem with a living sacrifice is it keeps crawling off the altar. This isn't, I don't think, putting ourselves on an altar in that sense of the word. Here's my interpretation of this. I think God is saying settle who you belong to. In other words, don't think, well, you know, I'm giving it a try. It's like a person who said, well, I tried swimming once. That meant he put his toe in the water and I didn't like it. That's not, it's kind of, I read something the other day and I thought this is neat. It's kind of like someone looking at a map of Colorado and after that saying that he had visited the Rockies. You know, well, that doesn't make much sense. But at any rate, just settle who you belong to. Here I am, God. I am yours. I am your problem. I never want to be anybody else's. I've settled this. I think the highest compliment I ever received in my life came in my freshman year in college. I had gotten involved with some jail ministry in Jackson, Mississippi, in Hines County Jail that was arranged by and led by the Salvation Army Major, although he was using other truck driver friends of mine to do all of the speaking. And I became very good friends with that Salvation Army Major and we'd go out and play golf together. And he said one day to me, now, I was maybe 17 years old when this started, 18, the earliest. He said, I want you to preach a youth revival for me. I said, Major, I don't, I'm not a preacher. I'm studying to be a doctor. He said, no, I'm serious. I want you to preach a youth revival. I said, I don't think you heard me. I said, I don't even have one sermon, much less a week's worth. And he said something to me that I'll never forget. It was the highest compliment I've ever received. He said, I don't care much what you say. I would just like for my young people to see another young man who is thoroughly saved, you know. He said, you have settled who you belong to. And I thought, wow, man, I'll preach your revival. I'll figure out something to say. A whole bunch of kids got saved that week, you know, it was really a great time. But I thought, this is really what Paul is saying. Just settle who you belong to. If you never are sure that you have turned yourself over to God, you're going to have a lot of trouble figuring things out. If you're still just sticking your toe in the water and thinking you've been swimming, you still are going to have a lot of trouble. You will always be afraid of the water, see. But just settle it. God, I am yours. That fight is over. It's over. I belong to you. And so Paul goes on after this, and he says, And do not be conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Okay, conformed to the world. Let me make it real simple. We live in a very self-centered world. The problems of this world is our dedication to ourselves, you know. The ultimate self-sickness is fully self-absorbed or fully selfish. You really think only in terms of yourself and never really think about others. It's actually a mental illness. I did an internship, it was that, in a mental institution once, in a pastoral training thing, and it was fascinating to see the methods that they used and the problems that they had. It was almost like a completely self-centered person they couldn't even deal with. There was just nothing there, you know. All he was was totally absorbed with himself, but it was very definitely a mental illness. But it was an incurable kind of mental illness. How do you get someone to not think about themselves? And as I mentioned to you this morning, when we are thinking about ourselves, we're never happy because our self is never satisfied. So being conformed to this world, I think of that kind of the way the devil is. You know, I don't like to study the devil. I'm just not really interested in that dude. I leave him alone. I know of people who would send their kids off to school in the morning and say, Now Satan, we command you to leave our child alone. I don't want you to hurt my child. I know that's what you have in mind for our child, but I command you to leave our child. And the kid goes to school, man. I don't want my children to be afraid. I want them to know who is walking with them, not who they need to be afraid of and so forth. So, Satan is totally self-centered. Selfishness and those all self-thoughts kind of thoughts are not of God, you see. And the more we think about ourselves, the more miserable we become. Don't ever forget that so that you can kind of learn from that and think, Man, I'm getting miserable the more I think about myself and how they're treating me. I need to switch over to something else. I sometimes say to guys who are really going to be, you know, have to live in highly temptation areas and work in high temptation things, to keep kind of a list of quick, other-centered things you can do to get out of that, you know, because the more you think about yourself, the worse things get. And so the quicker we can begin to think about others and how can I bless, then the quicker we get out of the situation. So he says, don't be conformed to this world. Now there are some descriptions of Satan. I don't like to study him, but there are some descriptions of Satan that are very telling, you know, in Scripture. He says, I will ascend on top, I will rise above the clouds, I will be like the most high, I will sit on the mount, the temple mount, you know, I, I, I. That's the devil's work in me, you know, whenever it's, oh, well, how are they treating me? So don't be conformed to this world. Now how can you know what world conformity is? Just like that. When it takes you into the self side and the selfish side, you know you've crossed over that line and you are conforming to the things of this world. But be ye transformed, it says, oh, by the renewing of your mind. Ah, now here I love to, to deal with, because in Philippians it also says, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Or let the same attitudes be in you that were in Christ, the same way of thinking. And in there, it latches on to some of the things that I teach about Jesus where he said, look, I didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give my life a ransom for many. His life was an others centered life. That's as simple as I know to put it. That's why I've, I've, I've, we've given away well over a hundred thousand copies of that bumper sticker, which you've seen around that just simply says others. I noticed they had some on a table this morning. And people are constantly asking me, well, what's that mean? And here's what I say. Well, you know, Jesus was the one truly others centered person. When I say that, you can just cut the tension with a knife. And then I release it by saying, and I'm the poster boy for the opposite. I think about myself most of the time, you know, and they say, yeah, me too. And then we can talk some things over. You see, it really is a wonderful opening gambit, so to speak. So what he's saying here is let your mind be transformed so that you're thinking of others and you're thinking of the service that I was talking to you about. All right, here, here is two things. You settle who you belong to. You turn your body over to God. I belong to you. I'm not, I'm not testing the waters anymore. And let your mind, and don't be conformed to the things of the world. In other words, don't let the world suck you into, well, what are they doing for you? You know, get your mind on yourself. And think about how people are treating you, you know, and it would be a whole lot better. But yeah, you know, I stubbed my toe the other day. Okay, well, wrap it and get it well, but then go on. Don't be conformed to this world. Just, Lord, help me to give up this self-thought so much. Well, I know you've got to think about eating breakfast, but you don't really have to because it's a whole habit. You just go ahead and do it. But that's not what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about. This whole process of self-thought is so defeating. And don't be conformed to that, but be transformed. Now, that doesn't mean that you can actually do it yourself. Be transformed. It has to happen to you by the renewing of your mind. Okay. You renew your mind by wanting to have the mind of Christ. And you think, okay, how did Jesus think? Well, he always thought about you. He was always thinking about others. Where the Pharisees who were, oh boy, they were, I don't want to get into this too much, but they were all wealthy and they, I'll tell you this. They were formed in that 400-year period between the Old and the New Testament when nobody heard from God. They formed themselves and they were sort of the back-to-the-Bible bunch then. They were back to the law. We've got to start keeping the law, you know. And they started attempting that and they grew. They became popular. They were the conservatives, so to speak, and they became popular and they formed a political party. But that's as far as I plan to go with that. And when it came to Jesus' day, they were the rulers. They had taken over. And they were the ones that crucified Jesus, which is interesting. But you had to be wealthy to be a member of the Pharisees because they believed that if you were poor, you were cursed of God. You can't be a Pharisee if you're cursed of God. And you know who Jesus' crowd was? The Bible tells us. I've got to do my throat to get special to say this. The Amheretz heard him gladly. Now who is the Amheretz? If you were, and you can subscribe to it by email, by a newspaper in Israel that's called Heretz still. And they were the common people of the land who heard Jesus gladly. If you put the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, and the Zealots all together, they would number not more than 7% of the people. The 93% were the poor people of the land, the Amheretz. That was Jesus' crowd. There was just something about him. They knew he loved them because he would walk among them and heal them and take care of them and take note of them. And I'm convinced, I don't think he was a boring speaker to be honest with you. I don't think it was, all right now, we're serious business here, so I want your attention and I don't want anybody to move and get them children quiet. The children were there. They were comfortable around Jesus. I like that. That's one thing I love is I practice with children. I just love to make them comfortable. I do. When I get around them, and you know, I am kind of boring, but I do know that when children don't usually get the eyes of an adult, and I found that out when I was in Zimbabwe one year, and a guy had visited me and he had a little four-year-old son with him. And as they left, he said, I like that man. He said, what do you mean? He said, they knew there was something wrong here. He said, why do you like him? He says, I like his face. Then he knew there was really something wrong. But he kept pressing until he found out that I would look at him. I would give him my eyes when I was talking to him and when he was talking to me. And I had never thought about that before, but I realized, yeah, we adults don't tend to give children our eyes. You know, we just speak to them and so forth. Our middle daughter, Angela, when she was real small and tried to teach, maybe we'd be doing something else, and started talking to us. And they'd say, oh, well, listen to me. I'd say, you go ahead. I'm listening. You know, she was not satisfied with that. She would crawl up into our lap, crawl up and grab our face and make us look at her, and she'd whisper in our nose, you know. But I think Jesus was so other-centered that he knew that need of a child and he would give him his attention. And another thing I like to do, I will sometimes come up on, I'll tell you when it happened in the Dallas airport, which is, when they built it, they thought they were way ahead of everything. But you only have to walk a couple of miles between gates. And, you know, I'd see people pushing a child coming toward me at a distance, and he was not a happy child. And I would catch his face and I would play with my eyebrows, you know. I've learned to do that. I had a teacher that told me, stand in front of a mirror and make your face belong to you because you're going to be using it. And she knew. She took my southern accent away from me, but I can walk back into it if I have to. But I would catch that child's face and I'd start talking to him with my eyebrows, you know. And he'd quieten down and they didn't know why. They'd just be pushing along and he would, when I went by, he'd try to crawl out and follow me, you know. But I like to give a child attention because they are precious, man. And Jesus loved the children, and you heard me sing about that this morning, and you sang it with me. Thank you. And so, where was I going with this? Others, yeah. That's it. Others. That's the key, folks. The more you think about yourself, the more miserable you're going to be. And the more you begin to think about others and praying for others, and that's the highest form of prayer, is when you are praying for someone else, you know. Because it matters then to you more that God's going to answer that prayer, and you'll pay more attention to them and you'll care for them. It's just, it's like I'm revealing the world's greatest secret to you here. So don't be conformed to the world, which is self-centered. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In other words, have the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in you that was in Christ, which was an other-centered, unselfish life and mind. Okay, is this clear so far? When I'm saying, don't be conformed to the world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds, or in essence conformed to Jesus and his mind. Now, I have a little trick I'm playing on you. It says, next, that you may, huh? No. That you may find? No. That you may discover? No. That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God? Oh, you prove it. You don't hunt it. You don't find it. You prove it. How do you prove it? Well, give yourself to God and, you know, renew your mind. Get the mind of Christ in you. Abandon the thoughts of self and so forth, the way the world thinks. And here's, you ready for this? When that happens, you can't miss God's will. You can't miss it. You will prove it. What you do will prove God's will. Really? Well, what if something happens that's really tough and I wasn't asking for it? Well, I remember a story from Paul's life when he was headed for Asia and the Holy Spirit stopped him and he hung around for a while, I guess, and then in this dream, vision, something, the Holy Spirit said, come over to Macedonia. He saw someone, a Macedonian, said, come over to Macedonia and help us. Oh, man. Okay. So he gets to Macedonia. They nearly killed him in Macedonia. They mistreated him like crazy. And maybe, you know, on the way there, probably one of his shipwrecks and he's on this island warming his hands. A snake jumps out and bites him. Now, if I were owner of a ship back then, I'd put up a sign that says, if your name is Paul or Saul, not this ship. You ain't going with this one. Because it seemed like every ship he got on went down. And you suppose each time he thought, I missed the will of God again. No, that wasn't the question. He knew that we're going to get this done somehow and I am in God's will. I am proving his will. So you can breathe a deep sigh of relief if you decide, well, I look at it this way. If you want to do God's will, you can't miss it. If you don't want to do his will, you probably will. But if you want to do his will, God isn't up there saying, well, I don't know if you want to do it bad enough. You know, I'm pretty careful about who I let have my will. No, if you understood just how crazy God is about you and how much he wants you to just glory in living with him and enjoy the life that you have in him and how precious you are to him, it just changes everything about it. There are some people that think that to be filled with the Holy Spirit is a prize that he gives you. But let me tell you, some people think that, you know, they have to speak in tongues or something of that sort, which I'm not opposed to, but I'm a participant as far as that's concerned. But the fact of the matter is, when people say, well, no, you've got to do this or that first, you are misreading the very attitudes of God. But if there's anything God wants, it's for you to have him in you. If there's anything he's interested in, it's to fill you with himself. This is what he wants. And so if you want him to fill you, well, in Matthew, Jesus says, if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who deserve him? No. To those who are worthy of him? No, Lord help us. To those who ask him. That's it. Yeah. You see, God's not going to and not wanting to withhold any of his goodness from you. It is a delight to him that you just want to be filled with him and his Spirit. So don't ever think, oh, man, I've got to do something to have God like me. No, he's crazy about you already. But believe him now. Believe him. All you have to do is ask. Oh, you want me to fill you? Oh, wonderful. I've been waiting for this because I'm not going to force myself on you. And you want my will? Well, I tell you what. Just change your mind now. Give yourself to me. You know what I mean? Settle it. And then have a new mind by studying how Jesus is and seeing that, oh, that's what it's about. And then you will prove what is my good, acceptable, perfect. That's one will, not three wills. Good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. You know, you can relax and enjoy the kingdom of God. As a friend of mine says, repent and relax. It's the kingdom of God. Now, one more thing. There is a special prayer. You know, the apostles, one or two of them at least, said to Jesus after he had been in a period of prayer himself, they said, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. Now, that was kind of manipulative on their part. You know, John taught his disciples to pray. What are you doing for us? That's kind of like a rooster finding an ostrich egg, you know, about yea big, and rolling it back to the hen house and saying, now, girls, I'm not complaining. I just want you to see what they're doing in other places. Oh, my. So they said, teach us to pray, and he did. He taught them what we call the Lord's Prayer. And listen to what it says in here. Our Father who art in heaven, oh, we honor, we hallow your name. We hold it up and worship you. And we heard about it this morning, and we did it too. Thy kingdom come. In other words, we want what is your kingdom to please come. It's in your hands, and we're asking for it. Thy will be done, oh, in earth as it is in heaven. Now, a lot of people think that when we pray the Lord's Prayer, that God sort of takes it under consideration. You know, okay, well, I got a lot of things going. I'll put this down, and when we get to it, maybe we can fulfill your desire. No. When Jesus said to pray this, he meant this is powerful stuff. And if you pray for his will to be done, it's going to be. And you can relax and watch what happens. Now, you may not necessarily understand it always, but you will look back especially and say, wow, God, thank you for doing that. You had this figured out in ways I never could have. So when you pray, I want your will to be done here as it is done in heaven, which is what makes heaven heaven, you're going to find yourself living in heaven, because you will see that God will do what he says he will do. A little story that's quite personal. My father was a wonderful man of God. I grew up in a very wonderful Christian home, frankly, and I'm thankful for that. And my dad was a successful pastor. He had started a church on the coast of Mississippi, and it had grown like crazy. They even built, within two or three years, this big brick church, paid for as they went along. And then when I was six years old, he was struck down in an airplane accident that left him with his left side paralyzed. I already mentioned him tonight. And his brain damaged, obviously. Many years later, I had to become his valet. Mom now had to make a living for the family, and I had to take care of Dad because he had seizures from time to time. So at an early age, I had to sort of sink myself into somebody else's life and be his valet, sometimes help him dress and eat and things of that nature, and just go with him everywhere he went, except for when I was in school, because I just simply had to. Somebody had to, and I was the only one who could. Many years later, I bring you many years later, and my son Clyde, I would never name my son Gale, Gale Irwin Jr. No, it just doesn't fly. But when my son Clyde, who's named, by the way, after one of those truck drivers that I used to go for jail services with, when he reached 15 years of age, I said, son, you're old enough now, you've got to get a job. It's summertime. He said, oh, Dad, I want to go surfing with my friends. No, you've got to get a job. Oh, Dad. And then I started playing the game that every 15-year-old loves to hear. When I was your age, and I was telling him about all of this that I had to go through, you know, because of my dad, and he said, isn't that wonderful, Dad? I said, what do you mean? God knew that he wanted you to write a book called The Jesus Style about Jesus and his servant nature, and he gave you a laboratory so you would know what to say while you were a kid. Oh, yeah, isn't that wonderful? And sometimes you look back on things that you think might have been difficult, but they really weren't. I mean, you were able to do it. And it had an eternal purpose to it that you wouldn't have known otherwise. I also found out, because they asked me to write the history of a certain state, a denominational history of it, and I accepted the job of doing it. I wasn't in that state at that time, and in the course of my gathering my information together, I came to the realization that I couldn't write this book. I had to be intellectually honest and spiritually honest, and I couldn't do that and bless the kingdom because it didn't have a good history. But one of the things I found out was that when my father was injured in his airplane accident, he was three months away from being chosen as the top man in that denomination in that state. And I found out in my research that the atmosphere, the backbiting, the bad things that went on in that top position, in that situation was so bad that every person who had occupied that place had lost his children to the kingdom. And I thought, oh, Father, I would never have asked that to happen to my dad, but you knew what would have happened to me, and you knew that I would have more opportunities in the kingdom than he would ever have been able to at that point. And so, you know, God still used even his sickness because at age six I'm just learning to read, and I would go in by his bedside and read to him, and he would correct some of my pronunciations. But he decided that if he could no longer preach from the pulpit, he would get the word of God into the heart of his son. So, we entered a Bible memorization program at the tender age of six. Now, I like this method, so many scriptures, so much money, but that's when I made my first three dollars. But anyway, I look back on that and I say, wow, God, I would never have myself done this, but oh, how you have prospered because of it. Oh, how your kingdom has in ways it couldn't have otherwise. And we lived, we survived, we trusted God, and we often had to pray our meals in, literally, and to our shock they would appear. I mean, groceries would come and we didn't know where they came from, which I thought, you know, if it hadn't happened to my father, I would not have experienced this miracle that I was. There's just one thing after another that caused me to say, I thank you, let us prove what your will is. And when you pray, thy will be done here on earth as it is in heaven, then rest with what's going to happen. Because he doesn't say, well, I'll think about it. No, he's going to answer your prayer and then rejoice. It'll be good, I promise you. Now, I'll close with this. Oftentimes people will ask me to write down what my favorite scripture is. Now, that's a tough thing. That's like asking, what's your favorite food? I got a lot of favorite foods. That's a problem, a real problem. And I had to give up some favorites to lose the 60 pounds that I have lost, actually, a little over that. I'm just a shadow of the man I used to be. Now, what was I saying when I started off on that? Oh, yeah. Sometimes people will want me to write down my favorite scripture. And that's a hard thing to do, because I just enjoy it. You know, every time I read the Bible, I'm thinking, maybe this is my favorite. Maybe this is my favorite scripture. But I will usually write down Philippians 3, 14, I think it is, which says, For it is God who is at work in you. Now, hear that. It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Isn't that great? You're His problem. And He accepts the challenge. It is God who is at work in you. Well, if He's at work in you, it means there's work to do in you. But He's the one that's doing it. It is God who's at work in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Now, that ought to put a smile in your heart, you know. And as you head home and somebody cuts in front of you, you can say, oh, thank you. Because if you hadn't cut in front of me, I'd have probably had an accident right down the road. Think of it that way. And even thank the people that irritate you. Like long-winded preachers. Well, thank you for spending this part of the evening with me. It's been a delight. I believe that there will be gentlemen placed down here as I close who would be glad to pray with any of you who would like to have prayer with them. And believe together that His will will be done here just like it is in heaven. That's what makes heaven heaven. And things will go God's way for you. So we believe in prayer here. It's an important, it's a powerful thing. It's a necessary thing. I love what one great minister who's well-known from England said. And I thought, well, now that's the way I do it here. He says, I never pray more than five minutes. And I never go more than five minutes without praying. And I thought, well, that's true. If you see me walking by myself somewhere, look closely. My lips will probably be moving because if I'm by myself walking somewhere, I'm going to be praying. Are we going to have a song? Oh, I thought maybe you were leaving or something. Get in your guitar and go home. Well, I turn it over to you now and lead us in worship and anyone that wants to pray. I don't know, do I dismiss the people anyway now or do we just wait and he dismisses them? You do it. I turn that job over to you. Bless you.