Come to think of it No.8 Kicking a bad habit

Our reading this evening is taken from the Paul's epistle to the Romans, chapter 8, beginning at verse 9, verse 8 actually. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.

And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you.

Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the sinful nature to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship, and by him we cry, Abba, Daddy, Father.

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God, and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to this present time.

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he has already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. Hallelujah. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. Jesus, we thank you for your word, the inspired, infallible word of the Father. We thank you, Holy Spirit, that this word has been written for our benefit, for our growth.

Glorify your name in us this evening as we hear the word preached in Jesus' precious name. Amen. I want to deal with one of the most important topics that I think I've ever tried to approach here on a Sunday night at the Tab.

So I'm asking for your concentration, especially on the part of my younger friends, not that this exclusively embraces them, but it is a subject that certainly has them very much in mind. How do you kick a bad habit? How do you kick a bad habit? You know, one of the most wonderful verses of the Bible, which you've no need to turn to at the moment, though if you do take any notes then I'll try and give you some biblical references for you to look through later on, maybe this week. One of the most wonderful verses is in the eighth chapter of John's Gospel, and towards the middle where our Lord Jesus says of himself, If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

John 8, 36. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I don't know whether you've ever thought that the goal of the ministry of the Lord Jesus was to make people feel at liberty.

You see, when he went to his own church, synagogue in Nazareth, where he was brought up as a lad, he made his first public appearance as a preacher by turning to the Old Testament, to the prophecy of Isaiah, and he quoted a passage which is recalled in Luke chapter 4, Behold, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel. And then he went on to say that the role of the Messiah was to set at liberty the captive. Now, he wasn't just talking about people who were locked up in some jail.

Maybe he had that in mind as a secondary concept, but primarily he was talking about people who were slaves, even though they were free men. You see, you can be enslaved here in Worthing, even though you've never been to Ford prison, or you've never been to Lewis prison, or you'll never go to prison in the whole of your life, yet you can be very, very much an enslaved individual. Now, Jesus doesn't like people to be enslaved.

You say, in what sense didn't he want folk to be in bondage? Well, you think of our Lord when he's picking disciples. He comes across a man who's a materialist. He likes money.

He's a civil servant and he's making quite a lot on the side. His name is Matthew, and Jesus says, come and follow me. And then he goes to Matthew's colleague, who sort of runs in more senses than one, the branch office at Jericho, and he says to Zacchaeus, come and follow me.

But before Matthew and Zacchaeus can really follow the Lord Jesus, they have to be freed from the bondage of being acquisitive, of just living their lives for making money. On another occasion, a woman comes into the presence of Jesus. Actually, she didn't have much choice about it.

She was thrust in front of the presence of the Lord, and she was an adulterer. She was a street woman, a prostitute. And Jesus freed her.

He freed her from the problems that had beset her in the type of life that she'd been living to that point. Now, the freedom that Jesus brought to ordinary folk who he met when he was on earth physically, he wants to bring to you and to me. You know, Negro spirituals were born out of slavery.

You got your old slave in one of the southern states of the US dreaming of a time when he wouldn't work for anyone else apart from himself. And that gave birth to the freedom song, we shall all be free, we shall all be free someday. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe we shall all be free someday.

It was an honorable concept. Slavery is a damnable thing. But don't you see, my friend, that it is possible for a man to be a Christian and yet not fully to have benefited from all the freedoms that the Lord Jesus wants us to have in our lives.

I used an illustration some while ago at the tab. I've been here so long that I have to rerun some of my illustrations. Scotland, of all places, there is in the Bank of Scotland under the name of the British government millions of pounds that haven't been claimed from premium bond holders.

You see, they came up. Their number came up. And they haven't actually gone to the Bank of Scotland to get what really belongs to them.

Can you imagine it? Scotland? They could be rich, but they're not. Apologies to everyone north of the border. I think they're the most generous people in the UK.

Diplomacy, one of my stronger points. Now, inasmuch as these people have not realized their potential, they live at the level without the benefit that could be theirs, right? Now, it's possible to be a Christian, to know the Lord Jesus as your own personal Savior, and yet not live at the level of the benefits that really belong to you. You see, sanctification, that's the process of being made like the Lord Jesus, doesn't, in most people at any rate, happen just like that.

John, in that impromptu interview, that really was quite unscripted. He referred to a slack period that he went into, some five years or so after confessing the Lord Jesus as Savior. Alas, that can happen to many people.

One of the hymn writers, he reproduces John's sentiments in a verse that he composed, Where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord? You see, he hadn't cashed in on all the benefits. Indeed, some that he had cashed in on, he'd let sort of fall through his fingers. You don't become a saint overnight.

And it is possible that there are some people here in the tab, indeed, I'm not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but this is my prediction, there are some people here in the tab, who would love, though they are Christians, to be free from certain aspects of their lives. That bind them, that enslave them. The apostle Paul, when he was writing to the church at Corinth, makes reference in the sixth chapter of his first letter to what his own approach to life is.

Verse 12, Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Sometimes people say that Paul and Peter didn't get along theologically.

Quite frankly, that is a load of nonsense. Here is Peter, and he's saying exactly the same thing. In the second epistle that he writes, when he says, tucked away in the 19th verse, right at the end of the second chapter, Now, I want to ask you, is there anything in your life, older friends, younger friends, men, women, is there anything in your life that you can't control? You see, that's basically the definition of a habit.

I'll give you a full-blown definition. A pattern of activity which, through repetition, becomes automatic. A pattern of activity which, through repetition, becomes automatic.

I can't help it. I am no longer in control. Remember a young fellow once telling me that, when I was trying to help him in some area of his life.

He said, I can't help it. Now, I'm not accusing him of dishonesty. I'm just illustrating the point that a habit is something, a bad habit, is something that controls you.

It's like driving along in the car, and then you opt for someone else taking over the steering wheel. So, in the steering wheel of your life, you no longer are able to cope with this particular addiction or obsession, whatever it is. There are many types of habits, many types of addictions.

Do you remember the other Sunday, I was trying to take the subject, and I really have endeavored to preach honestly, to subjects that one would not volunteer normally to address in a pulpit, simply because, well, some things are very intimate, and it's not easy to tackle some of these problems that people have, but questions that are put my way, if I answer them privately, it seems that there must come a time in life when, as a preacher, I try to handle them and answer them publicly. And I try to deal with the question of self-love. And some of you might immediately, though none of you were cruel enough at least to put it into words, have thought, well, that's not really a fit subject, because you're not supposed to love yourself, and I proved to you biblically that you are.

Not in the sense of being selfish, but esteeming yourself, because God esteems you, because God counts you valuable, because one of the great problems in Christian discipleship, as far as my experience takes me, in knowing people, is this whole area of the lack of self-esteem. I hate myself. Do you ever feel that way? You take a look in the mirror, and joking aside, what you see in terms of your psychology, in terms of your personality sometimes, it turns you off.

And one of the things that is inimical to, that is part of, a lack of self-esteem, is this inability to kick bad habits. I'm disgusted with myself, you see. I just can't get the victory over this area in my life.

You know, and I go down to that tabernacle, and I listen to people talk, and I hear some beautiful singing, and sometimes a young woman, or a group of fellows will come, and they will sing, and I look into what seems to be their transparent lives, and you know, far from that place helping me, it makes me worse. Sometimes I don't really want to come anymore, because all it does is, it makes me so terribly introverted, and I feel that there's no way I can become what I really want to be in life, because of these things that I can't kick, these things that I can't get rid of. I'm a very poor Christian.

I feel like the Gadarene demoniac. You know, he was a man who, although he was free, because he couldn't be fettered with chains, he was so powerful at the physical level, he really was the most bound man, and when Jesus came, Jesus set him free, and put him in his right mind, and gave him his self-respect and his dignity, but you feel that you are like he was before Jesus moved into his life, and you ask yourself, why? Why can't I get free like that man got free? It's not that I deny the gospel. I'm not dealing with this, you see.

I'm making the general assumption, which is probably too general in such a large congregation as this, that you're committed to Christ. I'm dealing with the problem of people who are committed, yet still do not know the freedoms that they ought to know. They've never cashed in on the full potential of the blessings of Jesus.

It's not always easy, is it? Some of you women folk, as well as some of you men, will agree to this. It's not always easy to curb an acquisitive spirit. You know, I don't earn enough.

The way that I earn my money, and the way that I handle my money, I don't really get any satisfaction. Now and again, I get a leg up, but the more I get a leg up, the greater my budget increases, and I'm really in a state because I can't cope with acquisitiveness. Now, you don't need to be a millionaire to have this sort of problem.

In fact, you may think that a millionaire doesn't have this problem. Actually, he probably does. What about alcohol? Or nicotine? Now, none of you misunderstand me at this point.

As I list some of these addictions, I list them with a tender heart. And I'm not suggesting that any one is more serious than the other. I am just giving you examples of problems in this area.

Oh, yes, I know that the Holy Spirit, that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And, yes, I've heard of people, as I recall, one man in this tabernacle pulpit coming to the microphone. The day I trusted Jesus Christ as Savior, I took my box, my packet of fags, I chucked them in the channel, and I've never smoked since.

And that makes me feel terrible because I've tried throwing so many packets of cigarettes away. But there's always been the craving. Or it's the same as far as alcohol is concerned.

I know that, basically, I'm injuring my own body. But I find it so difficult to get rid of this addiction. Or maybe it affects you in this area.

Let's really get down to some brass tacks. The whole area of pornography. Now, my heart goes out to those who are addicted.

This is something, perhaps, that hits fellows more than girls. I don't know. It's one of the demons of the 20th century inasmuch as the stuff is much more available now.

And what used to be called pornographic years ago no longer is. There have been this relaxing of standards and so on and so forth. And you've almost got to walk around.

I was going to say blinkered. You need to have your eyes closed if you're going to miss it completely. And here you are as a young man with all your red corpuscles racing around your body.

You're 17, you're 16, you're 14. It doesn't really matter how young or for that matter how old you are. Somehow or other, you catch on to this and it may cause you an addiction.

It starts very slowly, just like a spider's web. And then, after a period, it gets the toughness and the tension of a cable on your life and it's so hard to break it. The devil comes along, you see, and he takes those very desires which are natural to you and he endeavors to fix them onto an obsession or even a perversion and it's very difficult to break it.

Very difficult to break it. Is this your problem? Maybe it's in the area of food. There are two opposite addictions in this.

People who will eat too much, people who won't eat sufficiently. Both expressions of the addiction show in effect a hatred of the body, a low self-esteem. Now, I've just listed a few.

I'm going to come back to one or two of these in a moment or so, so that you'll see why I've illustrated them. But the problem is, you see, for people who find themselves in this sort of category or another example that you could furnish, the consequence is that, as a result, you may dislike yourself intensely. You see, the alcoholic, generally speaking, hates the alcohol to which he is addicted.

The man who is addicted to pornography, he hates the pornography. It's an incredible thing. The thing that has a hold on him, the thing that has a hold on her, is hated, and yet, somehow, it has such a magnetism that it pulls them back.

And as a result, this lack of self-esteem comes into our experience. Now, I want to say this. If anything that I've touched on at the moment affects you, I want to tell you that despite your addiction, God loves you.

Despite your addiction, God loves you. The Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, I'm reading Philip's translation of the 9th chapter, 7th chapter, verses 7-11, says, Yet the proof of God's amazing love is this, that it was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us. We may hold our heads high in the light of God's love.

We may hold our heads high in the light of God's love. Whatever your addiction may be, assuming that you have confessed the Lord Jesus as your Savior, there is a forgiveness that God will offer you time and time again that will allow you to lift your head high. I'll come back to that in a moment.

Let me try and teach you two things. One about the Lord Jesus and the other about the Holy Spirit. First of all, the Lord Jesus.

Let's go to Hebrews and chapter 4. Hebrews and chapter 4. Here is one of the most exciting verses speaking about the nature of the Savior in the whole of this epistle. The 15th verse. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin.

Phillips puts it, We have no superhuman high priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible. The word weakness there is a Greek word, asthenos. It really means a want of strength, an infirmity, a crippling.

It's hardly ever in the New Testament used in the physical sense. It's basically used in the mental sense, in the moral sense. We have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our moral weaknesses.

That's what it's saying. Now there is all the difference in the world between sympathizing and turning a blind eye to. The Bible will never tell you that the Lord Jesus turns a blind eye to your addiction.

Neither does it say that because of your addiction He despises you. Because of your addiction He is so disgusted with you He will refuse to have you in His company anymore. No.

We have a high priest who is not a superhuman high priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible. We have no superhuman high priest to whom our weaknesses are unintelligible. He understands and He is concerned about those things which cripple us.

The second thing. The Holy Spirit. Let's go to Romans chapter 8 and let me teach you something about the Holy Spirit.

But before I do that let me tell you of a man who came to see me some years ago. Very cultured man. He was a gentleman to his fingernails.

Classical scholar. Musician. He said, can I have an appointment to see you? I had him round at my home.

I hadn't got an idea what he wanted to see me about. He was trembling as he was talking and then he got to the main point. He said, I have a great problem, Pastor Sargent.

I said, what is it? Well, he said, I've never committed the sin but I am attracted to small boys and I don't know how to cope. Technically he was saying he was a pedophiliac. A potential one.

Tell me, how would you have handled that? It's no longer me, it's you in my lounge. How would the Lord Jesus have handled that? You see, if I'm right in saying that he empathizes with our weaknesses, then he will be able to speak to this man without a look of disgust on his face. I caught my breath and I held my expression and I listened to this man tell me about his life.

You see, I don't believe, though it's not my brief to speak in this area this evening, that a man or a woman is born homosexual. I think that homosexuality comes about by a deliberate choice at some stage in one's life. You may disagree, but I would bring evidence to bear to buttress my opinion.

But having said all that, as an evangelical born-again Christian, I have every right to sympathize with and ever to help someone who has this sort of problem. Never to condone it, but to try to show that within the content of the gospel of Christ, within the grace of God, there is not only the power of forgiveness, but there is the power of restoration. And I took this fellow back to the earlier years of his life and I tried, by God's grace, to show him how the recreative power of Christ could step in and alter the chemistry and the psychology of his body.

And that I wasn't disgusted with him. Neither was the Lord Jesus disgusted with him. But in one sense, I admired the man.

Remember, he's not a practitioner, but he's afraid that one day this lion will be let loose in his personality. I admired him because he came to try and find help, a way out. That's not dishonorable.

Some of us would not be as addicted as we are if what is done in the closet we brought out into the open. I don't mean public confession in a meeting such as this, but to find someone with whom you walk in the light, in the Christian gospel, to be able to share with you, share with them something of the nature of your problem so they can come to your aid and pray with you. Our Lord Jesus, he has an understanding of human infirmities at the mental and the moral level.

Now, so also has the Holy Spirit. Look at Romans 8 in this 26th verse, one where John got in his hallelujah. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

Now, we might well say hallelujah after that particular statement because, you see, we've all got certain weaknesses. They may not be as serious. If you judge the list that I gave you as being particularly serious, they may not be in that category, but there are areas in our lives where we are weak, mentally, morally, physically, spiritually weak.

Now, what is the ministry of the Holy Spirit? He never passes by. The Holy Spirit is not like the priest in the story of the Good Samaritan. This fellow who's been exploited, you remember, on the Jericho Road is in such a state that the priest will have nothing to do with him.

God is not like that priest. Jesus Christ is not like that priest. The Holy Spirit is not like that priest.

There's a marvelous way in which the Greeks can enjoy the New Testament in a fashion that we can't because we have a paucity in the English language in being able to express ourselves. That word help, the Holy Spirit helps us. It means to take hold on and to come to the other side.

To take hold on and to come to the other side. I illustrate it. As far as I know, I checked it in my lexicon an hour or so ago, and I think I've got it right.

I did it rather quickly. Martha and Mary, you remember these two sisters? They had a little bit of a domestic quarrel. Martha was given to looking after things in the kitchen.

Mary should have been helping her. And Martha comes to the Lord Jesus and says, it's not really fair. She ought to be helping me.

She ought to be coming from the other side, from the lounge into the kitchen where the action is and giving me aid in the duties that I am performing, trying to feed you and your disciples. Now that's a connotation, you see. This is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

He not only draws into our world, but he comes, so to speak, onto our side to bring help, to bring aid. You see, here is this poor potential paedophiliac. Here is this man who's into homosexuality.

Here are these people who can't help self-abusing themselves. And God, in his grace, does not look down in disgust. He does not condone, but he does not pass by.

If you like, he makes himself available. He comes as a loving Heavenly Father who wants to restore dignities to humankind, dignities that were originally lost in the fall of Adam and passed on by consequence to every son, to every daughter of Adam. You see, it's a goal of Jesus to free men and women from what binds them.

Thus my illustration at the beginning of the address of the old negro picking cotton for his white overlord in the southern states. We shall all be free someday. Now, isn't that what you want? My friend, I've been on the Christian journey for 35 maybe more years.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't a Christian. But I tell you, as a preacher, there are still areas in my life where I want to be utterly and completely free. I want to be like the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's not pious. I'm not trying to impress you. I'm telling you the truth.

I want to be like Him. I want the freedoms that Jesus had. When the sun sets, you're free.

You're free indeed. I don't just want that as a theological expression of my belief. I want it as a practical statement of my life.

And don't you see, this is the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is the reason why the person of the Holy Spirit is so important. He will draw alongside you and help to release you from those things which bind you.

But there is a measure of cooperation. Mary is called by Martha to come onto the other side. When did you last ask the Holy Spirit to come onto your side in the area of your weakness so He might strengthen and buttress you? I'm nearly through.

Do you know how to kick these habits? Biological process of what I've just been saying. Here are several steps. I think that first of all you need to feed more on the Word of God.

It's a shame that John went cold on the Word of God. It wasn't the Word's fault. It was John's fault.

He said that. I'm not passing judgment. This is God's Word for you, for me to speak to our hearts.

Feed on His Word. Secondly, eliminate the possibilities of temptation. The Bible puts it more bluntly.

Romans 13, 14. Make no provision for the flesh. Do you have areas of problems in your own personal sexual life? Young men, young women.

I don't say that to astonish you. If you said no, I wouldn't believe you. Because we're all human.

We've all had or have areas here where we are very vulnerable. Because the devil will take one of the greatest gifts that God has granted and bring it down to the level of the sewage. He'll do that.

So, you don't make provision. Now, let's try and sort of update that. I mean, that's a statement made 2,000 years ago.

Well, before we update it, let's go back to let's jump 1,500 years in front of that. Let's take Joseph. You see, here he is in front of Potiphar's wife.

Time and time again she exposes herself to him to make it possible for him to have an affair with her on the side. Joseph will flee away. It's time to flee.

It's time to switch off the television. It's time to chuck the wretched thing out of the window. If you can't beat it, then get rid of it.

Make no provision. Daniel was preserved in the lion's den because he didn't volunteer to go in. He was chucked in.

God will preserve you in the 20th century from all areas of temptation in this category that hit you when you're not responsible but when you willingly put you in an area where you're exposed to things that you know are wrong, you're on your own. You're on your own. Make no provision for the flesh.

Believe this. Believe that God loves you and has a purpose for your life. I think that's so important.

You see, I've been dealing with younger friends but this hits older people too, doesn't it? There you've been for decade after decade and there are things in your past which really have never been resolved and as a result of that you're so low in self-esteem, you're subterranean. I've dealt with 70-year-old people before now so I know what I'm talking about who've had hang-ups for decades. God loves you and He has a plan for your life.

When God offers you forgiveness, receive it. Receive it. A.W. Tozer talks about the perpetual penance of regret.

That's a powerful expression. I know folks who are engaged in this. The perpetual penance of regret.

That I did wrong years ago. Alright, so what? You did wrong. You brought it to the cross of Christ.

Is not the blood of Jesus able to cover the sin that you have committed? Why then the penance of perpetual regret? Why not an acceptance of what the Lord God has done for you in Christ Jesus? Here's another helpful thought. Imagine yourself what you ideally want to be and pray towards the achieving of that goal. I know what I want to be.

I'm sure you do. You see, it's not a difficult exercise, is it? None of us have been made sensitive to some degree by the gospel of Christ. We know what we want to be.

Let's envision that more and let's pray to the realization of that. And ask that God in His Holy Spirit will narrow the gap between what we are and what we can become. And what about friends who've constantly all their lives been trying to kick an addiction and they haven't made it? You've gone through all this sort of thing.

Maybe not this exact procedure, but this isn't necessarily the best one. These are ad hoc comments that I'm making from the pulpit. I'm almost thinking as I'm going at the moment.

What about you? Do you remember when I came back from Nepal the beginning of the year, I told you that on the early slopes of Everest there's a plaque that's erected in the memory of a climber who died as a result of trying to take that part of the Himalayas, trying to conquer that part of the Himalayas. And the plaque reads like this. He died climbing.

He died climbing. It may be the case, God forgive, forbid. It may be the case that you never, this side of eternity, kick that particular addiction.

But at least to die climbing, to die with repeated attempts on it, surely that cannot be dishonorable in the sight of an almighty, gracious Father who reveals Himself through Son and Holy Spirit in the ways that we found in Hebrews and in Romans. Jesus said that He'd come to give us life, a life abundant. I do believe, despite what I've just said to encourage some friends in a certain category, I do believe that there is no addiction represented in this tabernacle that can't, by the grace of God, be cured.

Firstly, through the application of the blood of Jesus, bringing forgiveness to you. And secondly, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who will empower your life and enable you to live more cleanly than you have, more close to the Lord Jesus than you have to this moment of time. But this I do tell you, this of which I speak will never come if you passively respond to my word.

God has not made you a robot, a puppet on a string. It is working together with Him to achieve the object that you want that will ultimately bring you to the desired result. But do you mean business? Do you really mean business? Let's bow our heads in prayer.

One of the most senior people aboard the Lagos, rather the Doulos, was a drug addict. He kicked his drug addiction as a result of finding Christ as Savior. One of the men I esteem most in India, working above Calcutta, came aboard the Lagos as a drug addict some years ago.

He heard the gospel of Christ. His addiction went. And I could go on and on giving you examples of people who lost their addictions.

What happened out in India can happen here. I've known it many times in the Tab. When folks have been remade by the power of God's Spirit within their lives, it can happen right now to you, to me.

There's not one person in the Tab who doesn't have some measure of weakness. Perhaps not an addiction classified as I have this evening, but you have a weakness. You know what it is.

Now let's just come to this great God and let's ask Him to deal with our weaknesses. The prayer is closed. Maybe if you just want to reach out to the Lord, then do so in any way that you're comfortable with.

Let's just ask God to come upon us in His power and in His glory to cleanse us as a congregation, to make us one with Him, disciplined, able to handle our money, our relationships, able to handle the television, our reading matter, able to handle our hobbies, able to get rid of bad habits. Loving God, just a few weeks ago, a week or so ago, we prayed for people who were sick in a mass prayer like this, and one lady's ulcer, you healed. We praise you for that.

But Lord, right now we're asking. We're asking for the healing of minds, relationships, emotions. We're asking for the strengthening of our wills.

We're asking for that ability to be honorable in our walk with you. We thank you that you accept us, accept us through the cross of Christ, accept us through the blood that was shed. We thank you that you're not disgusted.

You love us despite our frailties. The good shepherd, you keep watch over the sheep, even those that have got a little bit out of an ear or walk with a limp, not quite as good as the others. We thank you for this, Father, but we're not sponging on your grace.

We ask you to forgive us our many indiscretions, and right now, by the power of your Spirit, just come upon us and strengthen us in areas where we're weak, from the youngest here to the oldest. Amen. Good night.

God bless you.