Say What?

And good morning, Sauldam family. It’s great to see everybody today. Thank you so much for being here. If this is your first time with us, we just want to say thank you so much. Now’s the time where if it’s your first time, we make you stand up. And I’m just kidding. We’re not going to do that this morning. You’re good. No, seriously, we just really appreciate you being here. If you would take a moment and just fill out that connect card on your way out, we’d just love to connect with you later this week and say thank you so much for being here.

And now if this is your first time and you weren’t prepared for this, then that’s on the folks that invited you. But every Sunday morning, we do a time of congregational prayer where you know that at the heart of all this, we want to be a praying church, not just a church that occasionally prays. Prayer is going to be at the heartbeat of everything we do and it’s going to be the fuel and it’s going to be how we do things. So we are coming to that time of congregational prayer.

The prayer prompt that we had already selected coming into the weekend was going to continue to deal with the students summer camp. If you don’t know yet, Carter, myself, and a few others, we’re going to take middle and high school students up to Anderson University. And we’re asking the Lord to give undistracted minds and attentive hearts to all the students. That’s what we had originally planned to pray for.

You may have also seen that yesterday there were some pivotal events in world news of President Donald Trump choosing to for America to step into what’s going on between Israel and Iran. So what we also want to do is pray for that. You know at the at the end of how do I say this? At the heart of it all we as believers we want to see people flourish. The message of the gospel is the fact that we are under an oppressor, Satan and sin, that we cannot throw off of ourselves. And anytime folks in power are also under that oppressor, that means people under their authority don’t get to flourish the way that God intended for us.

So, what we’re praying for this morning is that as the conflict in the Middle East between Iran and Israel continues, as America has stepped into that, we’re praying that the Lord would just guide our leaders, guide the leaders of the world to lift that. Ultimately, there’s a lot of people in Iran that don’t know the name of Jesus Christ, and we want to see them come to know faith in Jesus. There’s a lot of people in America that may know about Jesus, but don’t have faith in Him. And we want to pray for that, too.

So, I trust you to grab that prayer need however you’d like to. If you want, you just pray for the student summer camp or pray for our country. Pray for the Middle East. And I’ll put a bow on it here in a moment. Y’all grab a neighbor, pray for those things, and take it away. Thank you.

Heavenly Father, we are needy people. God, need is not a word that is associated with You. God, You don’t You don’t need things. God, You’re complete in Yourself. You have power to do whatever You want. You are wise. So You don’t You don’t need to know what is best to do. But God, that’s that doesn’t describe us. We need wisdom. We need ability. We need love. God, we come to You this morning as needy people.

Father, we we need You to work in the lives of the middle and high school students that are going to go to camp over the next six days. God, we need You to give them undistracted minds and attentive hearts that they would be good soil to receive Your word that the the seed of Your word would take root in their lives and it would bear fruit in them. We need that God.

We also need You to work in this conflict between Israel and Iran and now America. Father, we need You to do something there. We need You to protect the believers that are probably in hiding in Iran. God, we need You to take care of all the citizens that are oppressed under the regime. Lord, we need You to create peace. We need You, God. We need You right now. We need You to give us undistracted minds and attentive hearts to this word.

Right now, Father, I fully believe that over the last few days, You have met with me to speak to me ultimately so that You would speak to this church. I pray that You would do that this morning. Holy Spirit, You get a hold of this moment and the message that You have given me, I pray that it would take root in us and it would bear fruit in us. It will change us a little bit more. God, we love You. We look to You, and it’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, you may or may not be aware or familiar with the name Randy Schifer. He’s just like many of us—a father, a husband, a friend, a neighbor, all the sorts of things. He had what can only be called a near-death experience in March of 2020. Some of y’all may remember what was going on in the world in March of 2020. He wakes up one day and feels a little off. What he really just thinks is just a bad flu, maybe a really bad cold, something like that. What we now know is, or what you can suspect, is that he would eventually be diagnosed with COVID-19. At that point, that was still extremely new for us. We’re still trying to understand what in the world is it, where did it come from, and all the other associated details with that that might be boggling around in your mind at this current moment.

What happened for Randy, though, was that a near-death experience led to a new sort of life for him. He was described by his family as, prior to getting COVID, short-tempered, cold, and closed off—not exactly a people person. What happened, though, was he landed in the hospital for some time, placed on multiple machines, given so many rounds of medicine, and by God’s grace eventually came through it. He was fully healed. He got out of the hospital. He was one of those early success stories that folks like you and I were holding on to anytime one of our family members or one of us contracted COVID as well. His family says that after he was healed, after he got out of the hospital, his whole life changed. He went from short-tempered to kind and inviting. He went from cold to warm. He went from closed off to engaging and longing for connection.

The story of Randy Schifer is interesting. Not just because he survived COVID, not just because he had a near-death experience and was brought back to life, but because his brush with death changed him and it gave him a new way of living. This morning, I believe that we all need to have a Randy Schifer experience where we embrace a new way of life because we have had a brush with death. The Apostle Paul shared that message with the Ephesian Christians as well. This comes out of Ephesians chapter 4, verses 25 through 32. It’ll be on the screens if it’s not in your laps yet.

“Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. Be angry and don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the devil an opportunity. Let the thief no longer steal. Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need so that it gives grace to those who hear. And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit.”

Let me say that again. Let’s double-click. Don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by Him for the day of redemption. “Let all bitterness, anger, and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice, and be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Jesus Christ.”

In this passage, you see a new life. You see a death of sorts. You see an old way of living. So much of the book of Ephesians is summed up in those verses. This morning, as we are continuing this month-long series walking through the letter to the church in Ephesus, there is one thing I want you to leave here knowing. There’s one message that Paul has for you. It’s that new life in Christ changes everything. New life in Jesus Christ changes everything. As we have near-death experiences, as we see our old selves and that gives way to the new life in Jesus, everything should change. Paul mentions three things in particular.

that ought to change about your life. The first one comes from something this phrase that gets repeated in the passage. Three times Paul says, “One another, one another, one another. We are members of one another. You are forgiving one another. So forth means new life in Christ changes our relationships.

Man, just look at the verbs that Paul uses. Look at the commands that Paul gives. Paul is saying there are certain things you let go of. There are other things you grab hold of. The things we are letting go of, the things we are grabbing hold of can only happen in a relationship. You can’t lie by yourself. You can’t be angry against other people if you’re not with other people. Foul language is heard by other hearers. Bitterness always has a recipient. Anger, wrath, and so forth. New life in Jesus Christ ought to change our relationships.

The sins that Paul condemns are not private, but man, they’re personal. Or as Carter Lacy said it in his sermon a few weeks ago, how we treat others reflects what we feel about God. If we were to take every interaction you had the next week and map it on a line, I think every single thing you do, every word you utter, every thought you have would reflect what you believe about God. In fact, your relationship with God ought to transform your relationships with people. That’s what Paul is saying.

He’s writing to a group of Christians. He’s not writing to folks outside of the church saying that, “Hey, to have Jesus, you got to clean yourself up before you can come in.” He’s writing to a group of people that profess faith in Jesus Christ. They profess their ultimate love and their life in Him. And He’s saying these things to them. He’s saying, “If you love God, the way you treat others changes.” And He gives it for us. The standard of that, the standard of how we treat others is how God has treated us.

Look at verse 32 again. Be kind, compassionate to one another, forgiving one another. Get this, just as God also forgave you in Christ. That’s an incredible standard to treat others the way God has treated me. It almost seems audacious and ambitious and ridiculous that God would expect me to treat people the way He’s treated me. However, it’s right here. God really does have this expectation that we would view others the way He views us. And He frames that in the context of forgiveness.

When I think about radical forgiveness, when I think about treating others the way God treats us, my mind went to something that also happened a few years ago. Actually, this week, 10 years ago, happened downtown at a beautiful white church off of the square. Young gentleman named Dylan Roof goes into a Bible study at Mother Emanuel Church, participates in Bible study. All the participants say he’s a little fidgety, a little odd, but man, they are so warm, so kind to him. And at the end of the Bible study, for reasons that you and I, some we can read about, some will never know this side of eternity, he chooses to open fire on them, and he takes the lives of nine folks present, men, women, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts.

Slowly over the course of the evening, family members are contacted and they are gathering at a hotel close to the church. And there’s this one family member that comes. His name is Chris Singleton. Chris doesn’t know me. I’ve met him once or twice. We over overlapped at Charleston Southern. He played baseball about the time that I was graduating from school. Chris would go on national television the next day and he would utter words that I think chill you to your core. Dylan Roof, I forgive you. The power to be able to forgive the killer of your mother only comes from one place, Jesus Christ.

In that moment, Chris Singleton did for Dylan Roof what you and I are supposed to do every single day. Now, our situations differ wildly from his from Chris’s. I get that, thankfully. But, man, doesn’t it feel sometimes like people take aim at you and they fire? Doesn’t it feel sometimes like people load their words against you? Doesn’t it feel sometimes like people attack you? And what does Paul say we’re supposed to do? Paul says, “God looks at His enemies. He looks at those who do not love Him and He offers them forgiveness.” Man, new life in Jesus Christ ought to change our relationships.

Man, if that wasn’t crazy enough, notice something else in this passage. There’s four people that are mentioned that we need to pay some attention to. In verse 27, someone pops up. His name is the devil. Later in verse 30, you’ve got the Holy Spirit. And down in 32, you’ve got God. We take that as the Father. And you have Jesus Christ. These references to Satan, Holy Spirit, God, and Christ tells us that new life in Jesus Christ changes not just our relationships with people. It also changes our spiritual perspective.

Here, let me put it in much more stark and bleak terms. There is an enemy who is against you and they are not flesh and blood. There is an enemy named Satan, the devil, who is actively working against you and your joy in Jesus Christ. He is actively working against our unity as a church. He is actively working against God’s progress in this world. And he is looking for opportunities to disrupt God’s work, to divide us, and to get us off of what God wants us to do. He has been doing that from the very beginning. He is much more experienced than us. He’s much smarter than us. And his reach goes further than ours.

Paul would describe life in these terms in Ephesians chapter 6. If you got a Bible in your lap, just turn the page to the right and catch me in verse 12. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood. No, it’s against the rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil and spiritual forces in the heavens. For this reason, take up the full armor of God, not the armor of man that rusts and withers and is foolish. Take up the armor of God so that you may be able to resist in the evil day. Hello, today. And having prepared everything to take your stand.

Paul needs you to know there is an enemy lurking in your life. The Bible would describe Satan as a roaring lion prowling around looking for his next victim. And man, we treat life as if Satan is this house cat that we can train. Yeah, occasionally he might nick us with a claw. Occasionally he might pop out under the bed and get you to do one of those things. But Satan is not a house cat that we can train. Satan is a lion looking to tear you apart. And Paul is saying, we give him opportunities. We give him opportunities to tear us apart. We give him those opportunities. Which means we’ve got to recognize every emotion you feel, every word you hear and speak, every action you take can be manipulated by Satan to destroy you and destroy others.

Not only is Satan looking for an opportunity to destroy us, but man, your actions and your words literally impact the heart of God. Verse 30, don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. How you talk to other Christians directly impacts the heart of God. How you talk to other Christians directly impacts the heart of God. Remember, we love to profess the fact that once you make your faith in Jesus Christ known, God lives inside of you in the Holy Spirit. And that is a truth that I love to hold dear because Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the comforter who helps us, the teacher who reminds us, our very present help in our time of need. Those things are awesome. If the Holy Spirit is with me all the time comforting and helping, then He’s also with me all the time listening and watching because the Holy Spirit is present with me for every conversation I have. He heard what I said to my child last week in frustration. He heard what I said to that coworker in a moment of unhealthy desire. He heard what we say to our friends in vengeance. He hears and He feels this morning. Please be honest. How do your words make God feel? Do your words cultivate an eagerness in God to give you more of Himself? Or do your words quench Him and turn off the valve of God’s beautiful, powerful presence in your life?

New life in Jesus Christ impacts your relationships with people. It impacts your relationships with the spiritual realm. And man, new life in Jesus Christ ought to change our practical actions. New life in Christ changes our practical actions. Look, these commands that Paul gives in verses 25 through 32, these are not just theoretical ideas he tells us to understand. Paul’s not teaching quantum physics as if like we need to understand how to get from here to Mars and back. What Paul is talking about is the day-to-day meat and potatoes of life, the nuts and Bolts of relationships. And what Paul is saying is if you profess faith in Jesus Christ, then the way you conduct yourselves with people got to change. See, God does not save us so that we can live in our old lives without fear of punishment. God saves us to rescue us from our old selves, from our sin, to transform us so that we would look like Him. We would be in this world like Him. You see, your original calling as a human being is to take the image of God into this world. Not the image of Sam, not the image of Donna, not the image of Jeremy, but the image of God. Which means when God and Jeremy rub up against each other, God’s supposed to get His way every time. And all the rough edges of my heart are supposed to be sanded down so that I would come more and more into the image of God. If I profess faith in Jesus, then how I conduct myself ought to change to look like Him.

Paul said this last week in verses 17-24 that having a relationship with God ought to bear tangible change in your life. I’ll say it again. The words you say, the thoughts you think, the actions you do should be changing to look more like Jesus Christ. When people look at my life, our prayer should be, “God, let them see You and not me. Please bear Your fruit in me. Make me more like You because people don’t need me. They don’t need You. What people need is God through us.” If we have faith in Jesus Christ, if we have new life in Him, then how we do our lives changes.

Paul offers us five ways to change because new life in Jesus Christ changes everything, especially our practical actions. There are five new life changes. As I am going through this, please have an undistracted mind and an attentive heart and ask, Lord, where am I on this list?

In verse 25, Paul says, replace lying with truth-telling. Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. Jesus said in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth, and the life. He also said in John 8:44 that Satan himself is the father of lies. So when Christians lie, fudge the truth, we are not imitating God. We are imitating the devil. We imitate God when we tell the truth regardless of the discomfort or the consequences it brings. And we do that because we are members of one another. We don’t do that because we are isolated independent people. We do that because we are interrelated. We are interdependent.

Paul in another book of the Bible would compare the body of Jesus Christ to a physical body. Take it. You’re an eye and I’m a hand. When my eye sees that the stove top is hot, I don’t tell my hand that it’s not hot. I don’t tell it that it’s cold. I say, “Hey, hands, that’s hot.” What if I had the ridiculousness of telling my hands that the fire or the stove top is cold and I put the hand on it and the hand gets burned because the eye has lied to the hands. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? When we lie to each other, we are harming each other. When we say, “Hey hands, this is not the way it is.” And the hand touches it and the hand gets hurt. It’s not the hand’s fault. The fault is of the eye for lying. Do not lie to each other because we are members of one another. When we lie to each other, we hurt each other and we hurt ourselves because we are interrelated.

The first change is replace lying with truth-telling. The second one, replace unrighteous anger with righteous anger. 26 and 27 says this, be angry and don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger and don’t give the devil an opportunity. Apparently, there’s a way to be angry and not be in sin. You even looked at the example of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ for sure felt anger. You remember that moment early in His ministry where He goes to the temple and He sees all of the money changers abusing the people wanting to worship. And what He does? He doesn’t forgive and forget. My man Jesus overturned some tables. He displays some anger. And then on another time, He sees the same thing happening. He does the whole table thing again. And He’s also made a whip this time. And He’s driving people out.

Jesus was angry. He was also sinless, which means there is a way to be angry and not to sin, which is also what Paul says here. Apparently, good anger is when you’re angry about sin. But even good anger’s got to be handled quickly. That’s why Paul says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.”

Well, let me put it like this. Anger is kind of like seafood. It starts delicious when it’s fresh. But none of us are eating any grilled salmon if it’s sat out all day, right? Anger is like seafood. You got to deal with it. If you don’t deal with it quickly, it’s going to spoil and it’s going to make somebody sick. Replace unrighteous anger with righteous anger.

The third change, replace stealing with working and giving. Replace stealing with working and giving. Verses 28 and 29 say this, “Let the thief no longer steal. Instead, he is to do honest work with his own hands so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need so that it gives grace to those who hear.”

Here’s the deal. We face choices every single day. Choices to take from people or to give to them. And when we truly meet Jesus and see all that God wants to give us in Jesus, we ought to naturally feel a response to give to others. This passage displays giving in two ways, financial and verbal. The thief, that’s about financial giving. The thief is not supposed to take anything. He’s supposed to work with his hands so that he would have something to contribute.

I just want to say thank you to the folks of Sauldam Baptist Church because y’all have been so generous to give financially. We asked for $15,000 to repair the baptistry and y’all gave over $24,000. Thank you so much. Seriously, let’s give ourselves a [inaudible]. Yeah, financial giving is it is something we do as believers also verbally. Look at 29. There is a way to give and a way to take with your words. We give verbally when we give words that build up, that offer strength, that give grace. That’s what Paul says. We are supposed to use words that give grace to those who hear. Which means before I say things, I’m supposed to ask myself, is this going to take from them or is this going to give to them? We have got to replace stealing with working and giving.

The fourth change that Paul talks about out of verses 29 and 30 is replace corrupt talk with edifying talk. Replace corrupt talk with edifying talk. No foul language I just doubled up on some some verses. Yep. Okay, that’s fine. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by Him for the day of redemption.

Man, related to this talking about stealing and related to righteous and unrighteous anger, Paul tells us to put off corrupt talk and to put on edifying talk. That word corrupt that Paul uses right there in verse 29. Foul. That’s how it was translated to mine. That’s literally the word for rotten, the word for seafood that’s been sitting out all week. It’s the same idea. Don’t let rotten words come out. Don’t use rotten words. Your words are either fresh and they’re edifying. They build. They are good for people. They give strength. They give life. Or they’re just rotten. They’re bad. They take. They make people sick. We are supposed to take all of that rotten, bad, makes people sick stuff and replace it with lifegiving, fresh, and good words.

Finally, new life in Jesus Christ demands this final change out of verses 31 and 32. Replace bitterness and rage with kindness and forgiveness. Let all bitterness, not some, not most, let all bitterness, anger, and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with not some, not most, be removed from you along with all malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Jesus Christ.

Man, it’s the second time that anger comes up in this passage. Maybe Paul just knows that no matter how Christlike we become, there will always be temptations toward bad anger. Simply put, according to Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, writing a letter to this church in Ephesus that we are reading this morning in Ravenel. Simply put, there is no place in the life of a Christian for bitterness, wrath, shouting, slander, or malice. That means holding grudges, taking vengeance, silencing others through force, intentionally talking poorly about people, and unrestricted anger are not Christlike. And if it’s not Christlike, that would mean it’s demonic. Let’s bring another level of severity to this. Your words are either from God or from the pit of hell. Where do you want your words to come from?

If you are a believer in Jesus, your bitterness and rage should slowly but surely give way to kindness and forgiveness. Our lives are supposed to be like Chris Singleton, who is able to look the killer of his mom in the eyes and say, “I forgive you. I don’t hold this grudge against you. I’m not going to leverage vengeance on you. My malice and my anger toward you are real, but they are giving away to God’s kindness and grace for you.”

Now, Chris, I’ve read it in an article this week. He does not think that Dylan Roof ought to walk free. He does not think that they ought to be buddy buddy for the rest of their lives. He’s not ready to sit down and do a 60 Minutes about how they’re kind and they’ve put it all behind them. Now, he’s got some wisdom about it. He understands that their relationship while he has forgiven Dylan, they do not have to be reconciled. They don’t have to be best friends forever. But what God calls us to do is to forgive others the way God has forgiven us.

Do do you know that God has made a way to forgive you? Man, if God has forgiven you, how could you not forgive others? Here’s the deal. You and I may have our little skirmishes. We may have our little tiffs. We may have our disagreements. My offense against you, your offense against me, is nothing compared to what we do against God. Because at the end of the day, you and I are both just people. We’re both unholy. We’re both just people. I’m not saying that what we do to each other, it shouldn’t be taken seriously. But what I am saying is that the Bible says that all have fallen short of the glory of God. We have all caused and created and performed an offense against the holy God that we can never overcome in ourselves.

If you hurt somebody’s feelings, it is your job to go to them proactively and say, “Hey, I am sorry.” We can’t do that with God. Because the offense we’ve created against God is so vast that we can’t overcome it. We can’t cross that gap. We can’t cross that chasm. The good news for us is that God has crossed it for us. When we were dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of our hearts, when we were dead, God made us alive with Jesus Christ. He forgives us of all of our sins.

The way of the gospel is this, that you and I are infinite debtors against God. We have all crossed the line. We’ve all broken the laws of God. We’ve all broken His rules and attacked His heart. We’ve all fallen short of the standard that God has for us. And instead of just leveraging all of the punishment and the force and the wrath on us that we deserve, what God instead chooses to do is pour grace and kindness and forgiveness on us. He scoops us up like a good grandpa catching us and doesn’t scold us. And we love that. We’ve been praying for that for years, guys. They’re not scolding her right now. He scooped her up and said, “I love you.”

And when we go against God’s way, what God can do, what God deserves to do is just scold us. But what He does for us instead is He scoops us up and says, “I love you. I’ve made a way for you and I to be right. Won’t you just take it in Jesus Christ?” Man, have you accepted that this morning? Have you embraced the forgiveness of God?

On the cross, God erased the debt against Him that we all owe. On the cross, God took care of the wrath that we deserved. And on the cross, God disarmed Satan. He disarmed the power of sin. So now you can walk in life and freedom and joy and wholeness. When you meet Jesus, He changes you into the person that God wanted you to be the whole time.

If you have not met yet, if you have not yet met Jesus, I would love to talk with you after the service and we can just pray about this and we just have an introductory conversation between You and the Lord. You may know a lot about Him. You may have heard a lot of sermons from this book. You may have been in churches like this or others for a long time. Or this might be your first time with faith. What I’m supposed to tell you is that there is an infinitely loving and holy God who would love to scoop you up in His arms and say, “I forgive you.”

So I ask for those who do know Jesus Christ, which of those five new life changes is God laying on your heart today? I assume if you’re like me, then one of those five hurt a little bit more than the rest. It offended you a little more deeply than the others did. Your step this morning is just to confess that to the Lord. First John 1:9 says that when we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us. It is not in the discipline to make yourself good that God grants you the growth you need. It is in the forgiveness that God offers which only comes through you confessing it to Him.

You see, looking to Jesus and reflecting on what God has done to save and rescue us, that’s what transforms us. Paul puts it in these words as I’m starting to close it down in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, 17 and 18. The Lord is the Spirit. Hello. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. So we all with unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord. And we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. This is from the Lord who is the Spirit.

If you want to change this morning, if you want to grow kinder, if you want to learn how to speak the truth, if you want to grow in your love and forgiveness, if you want to feel righteous anger and be done with unrighteous anger, if you want to become a giver and not a taker, if you want your talk to be good and edifying and not rotten and bad, look to Jesus. He is the fuel for your transformation. He is what will help you become the you you are supposed to be, not us.

So, let’s close the service this way. Please bow your heads and close your eyes. I’m just going to give you a moment. We’re all going to be quiet up here. And I want you to ask the Lord, “God, how do you want me to change?” If when you pray that prayer, something from this morning came to your mind, that is the voice of the Holy Spirit. So your step now is to say, “God, help me.”

If you’ve never given your life to Jesus Christ, I would invite you to pray. You just thank God for what He’s done in sending Jesus, and you would ask for forgiveness for your sin, and you too would pray, “God, help me.”

Lord, I trust that You have been speaking. I trust that You’ve been working. I know that Your word always accomplishes the purpose You have for it. God, do inside of us what You want to do. Amen.