One Trillion Species

In the most extensive study of its kind, the National Academy of Sciences sought to discover how many living species inhabit our earth. They sought for living species on land and sea, on all continents except Antarctica. They included not only species we see with the naked eye but also the tiniest living microorganisms. 

After a long and detailed study, they estimated that this earth is home to more than one trillion species of life forms. Just one gram of soil may contain up to a billion organisms representing as many as 10,000 different species.

This mindboggling number tells us something of the creative mind and imagination of God. It displays the power of the Spirit of God, who Genesis 1:2 tells us, was involved in the creation of the world. This same Holy Spirit dwells within each of us who has given our life to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit can do far more than we expect—if we let Him.

Why is this important? In John 15, Jesus warns His disciples they will face stiff opposition. They will be hated and persecuted. Alone, they will not have power to accomplish the task He has given them.

But they will not be alone. They will have the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit will enable them to abide in Him as branches abide in the vine. The Holy Spirit will enable them to love one another. The Holy Spirit will empower them to face opposition by those who hate Christ.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we should always be the best witnesses possible. We must prepare ourselves for the task. But our preparation alone will not convince others of the truth of our message. That witness must also come from the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who created the world from nothing, 

This principle applies not just to evangelists and pastors but to all believers. We are all priests of Jesus Christ, mediating Christ to the world in our homes, vocations and schools. We can do nothing the way God intended apart from the Holy Spirit. Alone, we cannot withstand opposition, nor can we love one another as we should.

There is much unforgiveness and lack of boldness among Christians, a strong temptation to compromise the truth of God. Too many Christians and churches fail to pray. Much activity takes place in the churches, but that is not always the work of Holy Spirit power. The miserable state of society today reflects this lack of Holy Spirit power among people who call themselves Christians.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon has said, “The best man that mere morality ever produced is still ‘without form and void’ if the Spirit of God has not come upon him.”

God’s plans for us and for the world always exceed our own. Becoming convinced of that changes how and why we pray, helping us to match the mind of God’s so He realizes His perfect plans in and through us.

God is glorified, not by doing everything Himself, but by doing it in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit. As we approach Christmas and a New Year, let us come to know the Holy Spirit better. This is why Jesus came to us.

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A Fierce Love

The love of Jesus is beyond our comprehension. We get a glimpse of this in the foot washing episode of John 13.

In a few hours, Jesus will face a mock trial. He will be flayed without mercy by sadistic soldiers. He will face mobs of people who cry for His death though He has likely healed many of them. He will die by crucifixion, a death so obscene that no respectable person mentioned it. Our tame pictures of the crucifixion do not convey what Jesus endured. Varnished church crosses numb us to what He actually experienced. 

All of this loomed over Him and was on His mind. Yet just a few hours before His impending death, He thinks of His disciples and their comfort in one of the most humbling and trifling of details—their feet. He, their Master, even takes the role of a lowly servant and washes each disciple’s feet, including those of Judas Iscariot who will soon betray Him, and Peter who will deny Him with curses. Soon, the others will flee and abandon him, leaving Him completely alone to His executioners. 

He knows all of this will soon take place, yet He performs this humble task anyway. 

All the gospels portray Jesus’ disciples as dull learners who, over the past three years, forget what He says almost as soon as they hear it. Yet He says to these twelve pitiful men, “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God.” His love for them never wavers in spite of their habitual stupidity.

The love of Jesus is stronger than death. It is a fierce love that stops at nothing, is discouraged by nothing. His love accepts the full reality of sin but completely overrules and overcomes it by good. It crushes every lesser thing in its path. 

Charles Spurgeon once said: “Earthworms are miserable company for angels . . .yet love made our great Master endure the society of His ignorant and carnal followers.” His great love is conditioned by nothing.

In contrast, our own weak and sentimental love is conditioned by a thousand different things. We are always getting offended by something or someone. We allow trivial things to divide us. Political correctness is a symptom of how unloving we have become as a society and within the church itself.

We are told that only about 4% of today’s young people maintain contact with the church. The church remains unattractive to most because they see church people as unloving. They fear coming to church to hear more rebuke than encouragement. They are aware of their sins and feel guilt over them. They hunger for redemption and release, but they do not hear it.

Once more, the church needs to experience the fierce love of Jesus that stops at nothing and will not let us go. This is the greatest weapon by which we fight the works of the devil. This is how we defeat fear and hopelessness. This is how we stop medicating ourselves with materialism and worldliness. The fierce love of Christ restores relationship and ends mere religion and legalism.

When we recover the fierce love of Jesus, we will have the one thing for which the rest of the world hungers. May that day come sooner rather than later!

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How a Fragrance Can Impact Eternity

Mary had her faith tried hard but vindicated beyond expectation. Lazarus was not just healed from his illness but raised from the dead. Jesus possessed a greatness she never anticipated. What she saw left her eternally changed and grateful.

She could never repay Jesus, but she wanted to show her gratitude in a unique way. She chose a rare perfume which cost a year’s wages, poured it over His feet and wiped His feet with her hair. This act signified her subjection to Jesus at her deepest level. It was a public act of thanksgiving for a work of Jesus like no other.

Mary now understood in a deeper way who Jesus was: her long-promised Messiah. Her submission to Jesus was not one of subservience, but of release and freedom. By trusting Jesus beyond her comfort zone, she prepared herself (and us) for an even deeper revelation of Him in a few days.

A little later, the Gentile followers of God said, “We would see Jesus.” Long excluded from the temple, these true followers knew Jesus was their only hope of gaining access to the Father. Soon, they would rejoice in thanksgiving as the veil of the temple would be torn in two from top to bottom, giving them access to God along with the Covenant People.

Jesus’ next act would not just resurrect Lazarus. He would destroy the work of the devil. Since the days of Adam, the world lay in the bondage of corruption and death. Now, Jesus would free the whole world from Satan’s stranglehold. He would release the captives, proclaim sight to the blind, set free the oppressed. He would pour out His Holy Spirit. He would establish His ekklesia and bring the kingdom of God on earth, through ordinary men, women, children.

The world has never been the same since Mary’s thankful heart helped pave the way with her jar of rare fragrance. From that day, the rare fragrance of the gospel has spread from Mary’s house to the entire Roman world and beyond.

Mary’s act of gratitude and submission and the Gentiles’ seeking after Jesus contrast sharply with the reactions of just about everyone else who should have known better. Judas Iscariot, Jesus’ own disciple, witnessed Lazarus’ resurrection, but he condemned Mary for wasting her money. The chief priests refused to recognize Jesus’ divine authority and saw Him as a threat.

The following Sunday, Jerusalem crowds waved palm branches to welcome Him as king, but they saw Jesus’ miracle only through their own limited political expectations and hatred of their Roman oppressors. In a few days, their “hosannas” became, “Crucify Him!”

Soon, their hard hearts and blindness to Jesus’ authority and Messiahship, and their lack of thanksgiving to Him would bring needless tragedy. Judas Iscariot would betray Jesus and commit suicide rather than repent. In 70 AD, the Romans would destroy the temple and its corrupt system. Starvation and bloodshed would destroy the people of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation, many of them turning on each other.

This grim lesson from history is clear: only a spirit of thankful generosity towards God leads to further revelation, freedom and fellowship with Him, extending to more and more people who catch our spirit. Let us call upon Him to give us the thankful and generous spirit of Mary.

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Perspective Through Troubling Days

Let the story of Lazarus challenge and encourage your faith during troubling days.

Lazarus, a close friend of Jesus, got sick and died. We read about this in John 11. Knowing Jesus well did not exempt Lazarus or his two sisters, Mary and Martha, from life’s griefs and sorrows. Nor does it exempt any of us.

As soon as Lazarus’ illness became life threatening, Mary and Martha sent for Jesus, expecting Him to immediately show up and heal His good friend. But one, two, three days had passed since he was laid in a tomb, and Jesus, the Great Physician, remained absent.

Only on the fourth day, did Jesus appear. Both Mary and Martha became distraught and said to Him, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When we read the narrative further, we discover that Jesus had bigger things in mind than another healing. “I am the resurrection and the life,” He said. “He who believes in me will live, even if he dies.” Then he did what they did not expect—He raised Lazarus from the dead.

Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus from death prepared the way for His own resurrection, just days away, and the total defeat and humiliation of Satan, ending the power of death by which Satan kept us all in bondage.

None of this was on Mary’s and Martha’s minds. All they saw was what happened to their brother. They did not see the big picture. They counted themselves as good friends of Jesus (and they were), but they did not know Him as well as they thought they did. Jesus was moving them to trust Him in ways they never trusted Him before.

Jesus wanted Mary and Martha (and us) to trust Him for greater things beyond their (and our) present experience. Their faith (and ours) increases only when faith is enlarged through various trials. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha stepped into unknown territory. Would they still trust Jesus when they reached the end of their comfort zones? Or was their faith (and ours) only a “fair weather” faith? Mary and Martha let their trial prepare them for God’s bigger purpose.

At this writing, we continue to live in troubling days. For many of us, it is a time when we are all well outside our comfort zones. Things seem to be getting worse, not better. For some of us, evil and death seem to have the upper hand. Many of us wonder—why is God taking so long to do something?

God always seems to take longer than we prefer, but He always works from a standpoint of love, relationship and faith. It is better to know that Jesus has power over death, not just that He can heal the living. He is getting us ready now for that greater thing.

Jesus is the same today as He was 2,000 years ago when He allowed Lazarus to lie for four days putrefying in a tomb. We may have ideas of what He should do now and become impatient when He doesn’t meet our timetables. But He always has more in mind than we do.

He who brought life to Lazarus will bring life to lost and dying men, women and children from every corner of India and the world. He will deliver them out of every form of spiritual and physical bondage and death.

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What Does Abundant Life Look Like?

In John 9, Jesus heals a beggar blind from birth, enabling him to live a full life, not just live on the edge of life. The religious leaders of the day opposed this healing for silly and irrelevant reasons. In John 10, Jesus responded to the religious leaders with the parable of the Good Shepherd (Himself), contrasting Himself with the false shepherds of that day.

Unlike the false shepherds, Jesus says, “I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

What would Jesus say about today’s prominent religious leaders and Christians? Do we live the abundant life, reflecting our Master? Truth is, to the world, the church often appears weak and irrelevant. Too many churches do not preach the Word. They dilute the gospel and its mission. Its people are rampant in unbelief. Its young people look elsewhere for answers the church does not provide.

Christian marriages fail as often or more than those in the world. Where are the signs and wonders? How many churches go for years without a single conversion or baptism?

Recently, I heard of a church that was closed down and sold to Buddhists. Weak preaching and teaching and lack of faith in God’s power gave the people no motivation to keep coming. The few who were left sold the building to the highest bidder. False shepherds.

We have more Bible reference books than ever, better-trained pastors—but more ignorance. Most people still cannot give a reason for the hope in them. They don’t know how to pray with power. Again, false shepherds.

As a church, we have allowed the world’s agenda to govern our lives and attitudes. Few Christians develop a Christian worldview, applying Bible standards to situations in the natural world. Is it any wonder the humanists and secularists have taken over? It is because of our weakness, not their strength. False shepherds, just as in Jesus’ day.

What does the abundant life look like? Think of Brother Lawrence, a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery, a man of limited schooling, born in poverty, suffering from wounds of war and imprisonment, awkward and rough in appearance. He had none of the things most of us count as needful for life. Yet he exhibited a profound wisdom found in few men. He found such joy in practicing the presence of God, he became the envy of all who met and knew him.

The collection of his letters and conversation, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” has become a classic portrait of the abundant life Jesus intended for all of us.

What does this mean for us today? To really believe and practice God’s presence means His presence will be strong in our meetings. We will no longer need gimmicks to attract people. People will hunger for God’s Word and ways. Preachers will preach with Holy Spirit anointing. The church will manifest the presence of God in signs and wonders.

Salvations will come by the millions from every class and age group. The love of God in our midst will overcome oppression, racism, immorality, hatred, anger, fear. Social transformation will take place. The gospel will burst out of the churches into the surrounding communities and into other nations of the world. Laws will change, becoming more righteous and just.

Amen! Let that day come, Lord Jesus!

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Which Camp Are You In?

The Gospel of John’s account in chapter 9 of Jesus’ healing of the blind man at the temple gate that we examined last month brings us to another side of the matter.

John shows us that the blind man’s healing did not suddenly end all his problems. When Jesus healed him, not everyone rejoiced and praised God for this good thing.

The religious Pharisees became very upset. Although the man had sat at the temple gate for years, they apparently paid no attention to him. They did not take compassion on him. They did nothing to help the man to better his condition. They just left him at the gate to beg and barely survive. They just assumed the man was a sinner who deserved his fate. Jesus’ compassionate act put them in an embarrassing position.

These religious Pharisees were those to whom others traditionally looked for religious advice and counsel. But Jesus demonstrated godly authority, power and compassion they did not possess. He demonstrated that they were really charlatans. With this healing, they must humble themselves and submit to Jesus or resort to reckless means to discredit Jesus. They unwisely chose the latter course.

Jesus’ healing violated their protocols about how and when these things should happen. Also, since they were unable to heal the blind man themselves, they feared that people would look to Jesus rather than to themselves as their authority. None of this met the man’s real needs.

They regarded themselves as a religious elite. To them, Jesus threatened the social order, namely, their own power. Behind their anger lay fear and jealousy because this man, Jesus, from a small town demonstrated God’s power and authority they lacked.

These religious phonies also reacted by attacking the healed man’s character and throwing him out of the temple as an example to others who dared to challenge them. They wanted to intimidate others who might question them. They refused to consider the possibility that Jesus’ power to heal demonstrated His authentic authority from God. Their power over the people meant more to them than a diligent search for truth.

The work of Jesus always winds up dividing people into two camps—those who accept His transforming power and those who rely only upon themselves, even when they use religious terms.

Does not this story of the blind man reflect what has happened to many of you who read this? Like the blind man, you have submitted yourselves to Him, but there are people in your lives who do not rejoice with you in your new-found freedom. They see you as a threat.

Jesus did not leave the man alone in his predicament with the religious leaders. He came to him and encouraged him. The man submitted to Jesus, and Jesus met the man’s need in the face of fierce opposition. He will do the same with each of us who puts our ultimate trust in Him.

We believers in Jesus Christ must ask ourselves: Are we more like Jesus or the Pharisees in our attitudes toward those who suffer for no fault of their own?

Let us who know the power and authority of Jesus Christ in our lives help to make His saving power manifest in all of India and throughout the world.

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What does a good God do with evil?

John 9 is a passage that probably applies to most if not all of us. The story really begins at the end of the 8th chapter when Jesus leaves the temple in Jerusalem. On His way out, He and His disciples meet a blind beggar who sits at the temple gate.

The man has suffered blindness since birth. The context suggests he was a fixture at the gate for years, seen by everyone as they entered and left the temple. He was a familiar sight to the disciples who asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”

It was the wrong question, and Jesus corrected them. His response is usually mis-translated in our English versions. Without going into all the technicalities of Greek grammar, His response should be translated something like this: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but let the works of God be made manifest in him.”

Jesus’ response should become a comfort to all of us. Not all of life’s misfortunes result from personal or family sin. This includes events such as the loss of friends or loved ones, congenital illness, accidents, death of a child, or a host of events that prevent us from developing gifts or fulfilling good and reasonable dreams.

The disciples reacted to the blind man like Job’s “friends” reacted to his calamities. Jesus reminds His disciples (and us) that God does not cause evil. He does not bring sorrows, calamities and limitations in our lives, even for His glory. These misfortunes come from the devil, whose work He has come to destroy. In other words, the only one at fault is Satan.

This should be good news to all of us who suffer for seemingly irrational purposes. We may even wonder what sin we have committed for God to punish us like this.

Jesus demonstrates to the disciples (and to all of us) that God desires to bring good out of the evil in our lives. Having secured the blind man’s permission, He heals the blind man, enabling him to see for the first time in his life. No longer does he have to sit and beg at the temple gate. Now, he has the opportunity to live a fulfilling life rather than live on the edge of life.

What a lesson to us! Jesus wants to make the works of God manifest in us. He especially wants to heal those areas of misfortune in our lives that come to us through no fault of our own. When we give Him permission to heal, no longer are we bound to our past or to family or environmental circumstances we cannot control.

God does not cause evil, but He can use evil to humble and prepare us for His greater works in us. When we give Him permission, He will change our circumstances in ways possible only with Him. He will make a way where there is no way.

Someone has said, “The Crucified God is not in control of evil, sickness and suffering because He is too busy destroying them and bringing good out of them.”

All of this is part of the Good News that we should make part of our own lives and share with those who have yet to hear of Him.

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The Source of Light

Lloyd Ogilvie, pastor and one-time Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, originally came from Scotland. One evening, he was walking outside without a flashlight. It grew dark. He tripped on a rock and fell down. He put his hand forward to push himself up and felt—nothing.

Sensing danger, he stayed where he was until the dawn revealed himself at the edge of a ravine. One more step, and he would have fallen to his death. Light can make the difference between life and death.

“Thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” wrote the Psalmist. Maybe he had an experience like Lloyd Ogilvie’s, and it taught him deeper truths. Jesus Christ is the Word, we read in John 1. In John 8, Jesus also says, “I am the Light of the World.”

In what ways is Jesus the Light? He tells us in chapter 8:
• He comes from the Father (God).
• He speaks with the authority of the Father (God).
• He is going to the Father (God).
• He does nothing on His own, but everything comes from the Father (God).

Everything Jesus is and does He owes to God the Father, the One who knows us before creation, who knows each hair on our heads, who makes a way where there is no way, who keeps all His promises, who overcomes evil in our lives with good.

To me, this sounds like light in a dark world. What other person can rightfully dare to make such claims? What other person can claim a healing ministry like that of Jesus? What other person has overcome death like Jesus? What other person has transformed lives like Jesus? What other person answers prayers like Jesus?

Who else has promised to destroy the works of the devil? So many people in India can claim deliverance from the satanic possession and oppression, from addictions and strongholds when they put their trust in Jesus Christ. He intends to deliver the whole world from this darkness.

As the Light of the World, Jesus is not just a local deity. He is not a western god, or an eastern god, but God of the world. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. He is for every time and place.

But Jesus does not just want us to know Him as the Light of the World, but to experience Him as the Light in our own lives. That means we must follow Him, not as an idea or teaching, but as a Person. He wants us to relate to Him as His original disciples related to Him—as friends.

Jesus revealed to His disciples things about themselves they did not especially want to hear. He did this, not to tear them down but to help them fulfill their human natures. He enabled them to become more human, not less. He enabled them to do great and mighty things that resonate in our own day. He wants to do the same in and through you and me.

Jesus came not as a light but as the Light—the Light comes from the very one who made us and for whom we were made.

As we remember His sacrificial death and resurrection this month, let us bear His Light into a darkened world waiting for the Light.

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How to Perceive Jesus

Many people say they believe in Jesus, but they are not true believers. What we believe about Jesus makes all the difference.

In John 7, Jesus’ own brothers “believed” in Jesus, but they believed He was a magician and a secular Messiah. They saw Him as a celebrity who needed to put Himself out before the world.

This chapter takes places near the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, just before He goes to Jerusalem. These brothers, His own flesh and blood, grew up with Him from infancy. For nearly three years, they saw his miracles and heard Him teach. They regarded themselves as on His side.

But something did not penetrate their thinking. They still did not understand that He came to seek and save the lost, to destroy the works of the devil, to reconcile fallen men, women and children to God.

If Jesus’ own flesh and blood did not really know Him, what does that say about us in our own day? Many in our own generation have gross misconceptions of Jesus. To some, He is a moral wisdom philosopher and example. Others see Him as a revolutionary. Still others view Him as a fulfiller of wishes, a mystic, a political figure. Very popular today is the misconception of Him as the name-it-and-claim-it proponent of the prosperity gospel.

Most people see Jesus as a real person, but disagree strongly about who He was or is. Some say He was a sinner like everyone else. Even many so-called “evangelicals” in our age of tolerance find it hard to accept Jesus as the only Way.

It is clear that John, the writer of this gospel, identifies Jesus Christ with His passion. Two-thirds of John’s gospel is taken up with the final week of His life, with His death and resurrection. He came into this world to give His life—to become the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Any other identity we give to Jesus is wrong.

Correct belief in Jesus’ identity is critical to our salvation. Jesus Himself said, “Except you believe that I am He [that is, God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). By God, Jesus clearly meant He is One with the all-righteous Father, maker of heaven and earth. This is a far cry from the ideas of many people, including many who go to church every Sunday.

We cannot pervert the truth of His nature and discount His exclusive and stated mission without paying an eternal price.

Do we believe in Jesus as He really is, or do we impose our own assumptions and presuppositions on Him? It is easier than we think to let the relativistic standards of the world influence our perception of the One we call Savior and Lord. Satan works overtime to distort the understanding of God’s children.

How we perceive Jesus influences the way we pray, or mis-pray or don’t pray at all. How we perceive Jesus influences the degree we share His passion for the lost and the importance of His Great Commission.

Let us resolve to better know Him so we may better share Him with millions who hunger and thirst for the righteousness only He can give.

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They Never Really Knew Him

Selfish and materialistic, that’s what they were.

Jesus fed a crowd of 5,000 men, plus women and children, with five loaves and two fishes. After this miracle, they wanted to seize Him by force and make Him king. They said, “This is the Prophet who is to come into the world!”

Jesus came to another conclusion: “Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” In other words, they viewed Jesus as a fellow with magical powers who would fulfill their material needs and desires, someone like Aladdin.

They based Jesus’ value to them on what they could get out of Him. They had no idea of who He really was. What they expected from Him was wrong.

Are we any different? Do we value Jesus for who He is, or for how He meets our expectations? Do we interest ourselves in His view of things or do we want Him to fulfill our agendas? We should not answer this question too quickly.

At this writing, the US presidential election is not yet settled. Christians seem as divided over this matter as they were over slavery during the Civil War. A lot of hateful words and accusations go forth from Christians on both sides as they did long ago.

During that traumatic time, Abraham Lincoln said, “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; each invokes His aid against the other…the prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”

Whoever wins in the end, whoever loses, lies in God’s will, and may take place for reasons that have nothing to do with why we voted as we did. We may believe we know God’s will in these things but may discover in eternity we knew nothing of what was going on. Jesus’ twelve disciples walked with Him for three years. They thought they knew Him, but in the end, after Jesus died and He did not meet their expectations, they discovered they never really knew Him.

All their expectations had to die. During that agonizing time, they hid out in the room where they ate their last meal together before the Jewish religious establishment seized Him and the Romans crucified Him.

Only after His resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit did it finally make sense to them. Only then did they truly come to know Him. First, they had to admit they were wrong. Only then could they emerge from behind locked doors and take their message to the world.

I am always amazed that a great evangelist like Billy Graham felt the need to confess his sins daily before the Lord. He credits his remarkable team for many times saving him from himself. If that was true about a great man like Billy Graham, what does that say about the rest of us?

These humbling experiences helped to make Billy Graham the outstanding evangelist he became.

Let us take these uncertain times to come to know Him more truly than we ever knew Him before. Let us humble ourselves and set aside all unworthy expectations. The more we know Him, the more clearly we will proclaim His Good News, not just our limited version of it.

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