The Attitude of Triumph (Part 7)

This particular four-part message that I have given on Hebrews, Chapter 12—life by design, the successful life, the abundant life that Christ has declared over us—and my encouragement has been to instill in you a vision of how to live a productive life.

In Hebrews, Chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, we have said that here the writer of Hebrews calls his readers to a Christian life of integrity and a life that fulfills the purposes of the Gospel. And he gives some lessons on how to attain that successful, spiritual Christian life. But I have told you that there are also some teachings here on how to live a successful life in any area of life.

And what I am going to do is give a quick summary of all the main elements, because I believe these things must be repeated, refreshed, and presented with different details, until the principles we are setting forth are clearly engraved in our minds.

Perhaps the first time you hear these principles you will not understand them completely, but the second and third time they will make an impact on your life and on your sensibilities. And we have said that the writer begins by saying that we too have a great cloud of witnesses around us. This word “too” refers to Chapter 11, where he has just listed a series of heroes of the faith who reached great goals, achieved great spiritual accomplishments, and deserve to be imitated as tutors, as examples, as mentors of what a successful life in the Lord is.

And then he says, “We too, here at Lion of Judah in the twenty-first century, like them, also have a great cloud of witnesses around us.” That is the first element: we have many people around us, as I was saying, watching us. We are a community that is under the scrutiny of everyone around us, and that community out there wants to see in us a successful life, a life of excellence, an enterprising life, a life of integrity.

People want to see Christians with healthy marriages; they want to see Christians living lofty, excellent lives in their finances, disciplined lives; in their moral lives, in their lives as parents, as children. We have to be the best children in the city of Boston; we have to be the best parents, the best spouses, because around us there is a great cloud of people watching us, and we serve as an encouragement and an example to them.

Our church is being called to be an exemplary church, a church that exemplifies the finest values of the Gospel. Since we have around us a great cloud of witnesses watching us, he says, let us lay aside every weight.

There is a very important principle there. We have spoken about laying aside, about taking off everything that is excessive. To live successful lives, we must lay things aside; we must rid ourselves of many impurities. We must get rid of bad habits. We must do away with bad attitudes. We must renew our minds. We must remove things from the past, things that keep us from running.

A runner runs lightly; he does not go around wearing heavy clothing, big boots, heavy garments, because he needs to run lightly, he needs to reach the finish line. We have to consider what areas of my life cause me to run weighed down, what dramas from the past, what attitudes, what ways of thinking, what patterns of behavior, what relationships, what things keep me from running lightly, reaching my goals, living a successful life, living a life of personal growth. And we have to renew ourselves; we have to change; we cannot remain in yesterday; we cannot keep the same way of thinking and behaving. We must lay things aside.

Before building a new house, you often have to tear down the old structure, or you have to remove everything in a structure that is already worn out so that you can put in new things. We must lay things aside. If we want to live successful lives, we must be willing to change our mental patterns, renew our minds, and adopt new habits. “...Let us lay aside every weight.”

And then the writer continues by saying, “...and the sin that so easily besets us.” Life is full of bad examples. The modern world is a great trap; its values are not the values of the Kingdom of God. We are surrounded by bad teaching, bad indoctrination, bad examples, and the world wants to beset us, surround us, attack us, pressure us, and mold us into its own form.

And the writer of Romans says, “...Let us not conform to this world, but let us be transformed through the renewing of our minds.”

If you want to have a successful life, you must lay aside the things of the past and not allow your mind to be formatted—your mind to be formatted—by the values of the world, which will try to do so.

I was telling the brothers and sisters that this does not refer only to the sinful things in life, the obviously sinful things, but also to things that prevent you from being in communion with the Lord, that prevent you from having time to meditate on the things you need to meditate on in order to be a person who is growing.

I was telling the brothers and sisters three or four months ago that if you call my cell phone, it will tell you that my voicemail box is full. And do you know why? It is because I have decided to keep it that way. At one point I was receiving... in a single day, my cell phone’s voicemail box would fill up once or twice, and I lived with guilt; I felt bad because now, with email, the cell phone, the office phone, and my home phone, you cannot live. You have a list of messages and people... and each person thinks that he or she is the only one calling you.

And what happens because of that? You end up living anxiously; you live feeling guilty. You get up in the morning, and before brushing your teeth you have to go to the computer to see who sent you an email, and then you have to answer it, and sometimes... So what happens? What is supposed to serve you turns you into its slave. You have no time to pray, you have no time to seek God, you have no time to reflect on your life, and you are bound. And that is the world people live in today.

So, at some point you have to say, “No, I am not going to let myself be formatted by the values of the world; I am not going to live continually rushing from one thing to another, from one concern to the next.” And you have to say, “STOP,” “HALT.” I am going to determine what kind of life I want to live in the Lord and according to the values of the Kingdom of God.

That is the sin that besets us. Do you understand? It is not only the matter of immorality; sometimes sin is whatever prevents you from reaching a higher level of life. It may even be something good, such as a cell phone or email, electronic mail, but if that prevents you from reaching another level, then it is not good at that moment. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the excellent, and then you have to set those things aside and say, “No, I am not going to live the way the world lives, with that anxiety, that hustle and bustle; instead, I am going to decide what kind of life I am going to live. I need to set aside time to be with the Lord; I need to set aside time for my wife, for my children; I have to rest; I have to read new things; I have to go to church.”

If you let yourself be carried along by the world’s pattern, the world’s pattern is more money, more money, a new level in your career, a new degree; and you finish one thing and immediately go on to the next and the next, and you live life without reflecting, without examining yourself, without examining the values that are influencing you. That is the sin that besets us; it is not only sin in the moral or ethical sense, as I say and emphasize. Sometimes sin is simply a materialistic and circumstantial way of living life. After laying aside every weight and the sin that besets us, here comes: “...Let us run with patience the race that lies before us.”

This matter of running with patience. Brothers and sisters, patience is key to every successful life. If you become tired too quickly, you will never succeed. Let me give you five key elements for success specifically with respect to patience. Write them down there if you want; I will not charge you anything for this.

Number one: be persistent; keep going; stay focused on the goal. Try again and again until you reach your goal. As I was saying, if you want to get out of debt, perhaps it will take you five years to do it, and it will happen little by little; at some point your credit card balance or your account balance will go up a little and then go down a little, and you will be there fighting. If you become disappointed and discouraged at the first attempt, you will not make it. You have to stay with it, persist. Persistence is important.

The Word says, “...Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” There is repetition; you must persist in things. Do not give up too quickly. Persistence.

Second: Long-term vision. Very important. Do not think that you are going to reach the goal overnight. Give yourself time; expand the scope, the scale of your goals. Rome, as they say, was not built in a day.

For me, one of the keys to a successful life is being able to stretch the frame of reference for things. If you want to have a good marriage, it does not happen overnight. You have to persist even if you have a fight with your wife; go back and try again. Little by little, you will attain it.

If you want to get your weight under control and have a healthier weight in your life, you are not going to do it overnight; you have to change your mind. So you have to say, “I am going to take two years,” and little by little, one day, instead of eating two pork chops, you eat one and a half, and you take half away before you are tempted to eat it. Get it out of there. Next time it will be one and a quarter. After that, stop eating so much red meat and begin eating meats such as chicken and fish, and little by little you change your diet, a little at a time. Your mind gradually gets used to it, because if your mind is accustomed to seeing a plate—a mountain of food—every time you sit down at the table, your brain is already used to that. You have to proceed little by little until you win the battle. It is long-term, until your mind and your sensibilities gradually become accustomed to it.

Persistence. Long-term vision.

Third: make small decisions that you will repeat many times a day until you form a habit. Start small in life. People often fail because they are too ambitious and start at a level too high for what they can achieve. So a person decides, “I am going to start running; I am going to start exercising,” and on the first day they run three miles, and afterward you see that they cannot even walk, because their muscles are wrecked, their bones are not accustomed to it, and their entire body hurts for three weeks. And they say, “Oh, no, if that is what running is like, I want nothing to do with it.”

They should have started by walking, going to a little park somewhere, walking for half an hour, and then quickening the pace. Not even starting to run. Three months of walking and quickening the pace a little more. After that, you start jogging a little and then walk some more. And little by little you jog more and walk less, until you can finally run the entire time.

After that, quicken your pace a little, and then increase the distance. Little by little. That may take you two years. But little by little, your muscles, your bones, your tendons, and your mind become accustomed to it, and you do not even realize how the process happened, and it becomes a way of life. Because that is how the brain is: the brain operates little by little, and so does the physical system.

So, small decisions. A small decision that you make every day becomes a habit. A habit practiced over time becomes a character trait. And over time, a character trait becomes a condition of life. Everything little by little. Small decisions.

Fourth: do not let failure discourage you. If you failed once, try again until you succeed. You see, all of this is related to patience. Running with patience the race you have before you.

I was asking the painter who is with us upstairs. In fact, he is self-taught; he never attended an academy; he was never given painting lessons. He learned on his own. And I said to him, “How did you come to paint such beautiful pictures?” And he told me, “You know what? By ruining many paintings.” By ruining many paintings.

And that is how it is: you do not develop a sensitivity to color, painting technique, or textures overnight. It takes a long time, and you have to ruin many paintings; you have to fail many times. But if you remain in the process and do not become discouraged, you keep improving, improving, improving until you reach the goal. Try it. Keep going. Do not think, “Oh, I already failed; I cannot try again.” No, keep going. And failure is part of success.

Paradoxically, brothers and sisters, I say that there are no failures. What there are are failed experiments. That is all. I love to experiment; I am always looking for different options; I explore everything I can. Every person I meet is a possible resource for my life, my ministry, or something in the Kingdom of God, and I see every opportunity as an experiment. In those experiments, something good happens.

Salespeople say that, let’s say, out of a hundred phone calls you make, perhaps ten will work out, but those ten earn you your salary for an entire year. The ninety are failures in a sense, but a batter has to step up to the plate, and if he bats .300, that is a great achievement; .350 is phenomenal. That means that out of three times he steps up to the plate, he fails two—or three out of four.

So it is important for us to understand this, because life does not... every time you try to do something, that does not mean you are going to succeed. Get used to trying a lot, experimenting a lot, and not letting failures defeat you; instead, look at the achievements and let those achievements guide you toward success.

The fourth thing, I believe, is: persistence, long-term vision, small decisions.

Yes, perfecting and improving with every effort. Improve. Do things just a little better every day. Small increments are what take you to the goal. Improve, improve, improve every day. Learn from the things that happen to you in life. Do not simply dwell on your failures; learn from them.

Okay, how can I improve this? How can I overcome this? What can I learn from that other thing? I did it this way; now I can improve it a little. Improve.

That is how the scientific system of experimentation works. How did they arrive at those computers we can hold in the palm of our hand, those laptops that nowadays weigh as little as one pound? You look at the first computer, and it was something the size of this building—immense.

And you know what? Nowadays, a laptop sometimes has more power than one of those machines that took up an entire building 30, 40, or 50 years ago. Why? Because people have learned to improve, improve, improve. One day they change the wires; another day they discover a device they can make into a transistor; another day they discover a synthetic material that helps compress things. Another day they learn to use a microscope to look at things more closely, and every day they keep reducing the size of things to make them more effective and more economical.

Nowadays people talk about nanotechnology; that means that today science is working with machines that cannot be seen by the human eye. Imagine how tiny they are. Because they have reduced them, they have found the capacity... to keep improving, improving, improving every day. That is the key to success in life: improving little by little. All of this is part of patience.

So it has five elements: persistence, long-term vision, small decisions, not allowing yourself to be discouraged by failure, and perfecting and improving little by little.

The writer says, “...let us run with patience the race that lies before us.”

We were talking about how we must view life as a race and define what lies before us.

The Apostle Paul says in Philippians, chapter 3, verses 12 through 14: “...Not that I have already attained it, or that I am perfect, but I press on”—notice there this matter of persisting—“to see if I may lay hold of”—that is, take hold of—“that for which I was also laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”

He says, “...Brothers, I myself do not claim to have already attained it,” and Paul was a man of great experience who had been in the Gospel for a long time, “...but one thing I do”—here is the key, he says—“certainly forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Do you have the race ahead of you clearly defined? In life, you must clearly define a vision and live with your eyes fixed on that vision until you achieve it.

It says, “...fixing our eyes on Jesus.” Last Sunday we talked about fixing our eyes on Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, if we want to have a powerful life, we must base it on Jesus Christ. Christ must be the center of our existence. Christians live a Christ-centered life. Christ is the source of power.

The Lord has said, “...abide in me, and I in you, and you will bear much fruit.”

He says, “...without me you can do nothing.” The person of Jesus has a magical power. When you look at Jesus’ face, when you read his word, when you read about his examples, when you meditate continually on his person, there is something mysterious that I cannot explain to you, but it is like plugging your life into a power outlet that transmits the life of Christ to you.

That is why we must always be looking at Jesus. I am not talking here about a mental or emotional process, or about positive thinking. I am telling you that when you look at Jesus day after day, he then becomes your mentor, he becomes your tutor, and that brings results to whatever you undertake.

Magically, to use that word, the power of Christ begins to be transmitted into your own life, and wonderful things begin to happen.

Look, for example, if you turn to Second Corinthians, chapter 3, verses 17 and 18 say: “...for the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Where Christ is present in a life, where Jesus is the example, the model, the center, there is freedom to undertake great things, to pursue ambitious projects. It says, “...therefore, as a consequence of that power found in Christ Jesus, we all, with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed from glory to glory into the same image, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

What does that mean? When you focus your gaze on Jesus Christ, when Jesus is the center of your life, when you love him above all things, when you seek his glory, seek his honor, put him first in your life, and analyze his messages and his teachings, it is as though you were looking at him, and mysteriously your face and your life gradually take on the same likeness as Jesus Christ. That is why it says, “...we are transformed from glory to glory, as though looking into a mirror, into the same image, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

It is a mysterious spiritual process that takes place, through which your life will also be transformed, and the glory of Christ, the power of Christ, the achievements of Christ, his victory over circumstances, and his enterprising character that allowed nothing to defeat him will become part of your own life and your own character.

“...fixing our eyes on Jesus.” It says here, “...the author and finisher of our faith.”

And let me point out two little things here, and with that I will finish. It says, “...who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame.”

The Lord did two things that led him to success, that led him to complete his race. Number one, it says that he “...endured the cross for the joy set before him.” The cross is the most terrible instrument of agony and torture ever devised in human history, and the writer of Hebrews says that if the Lord had not fixed his gaze on the joy that lay before him, he would not have been able to endure the cross.

And here you have a lesson about success. If you want to succeed, do not dwell so much on the cost, but rather on the outcome and the benefit of what you are going to do. Do not think... I was talking this morning with Pastor Teo Alcántara, who has been an athlete all his life, and he told me that this is true. If a marathon runner dwells on the agony of running 26 miles, he will not do it. But the marathon runner thinks about reaching the finish line, about the satisfaction he will feel when he reaches the finish line, and he thinks about the trophy he may win, about the prize he is going to win, and about the glory he will receive. That is what encourages him to go through the suffering.

In order to make it to the cross, the Lord Jesus thought about the thousands of lives that would be blessed by his sacrifice, and that is why, “for the joy set before him,” because he would be exalted, as Philippians, chapter 2, says, “...the Lord gave him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.” The Lord thought about that.

He saw the angels welcoming him there in heaven. He saw the celebration that would take place in the universe as a result of his sacrifice, and he allowed the sight and the celebration of that in his mind to carry him through the agony and suffering.

Always think positively in life. Do not think about what it will cost you, for example, to earn your degree. No, think instead about the joy, the benefit, and the satisfaction you will feel because of it, and let that encourage you. We Christians suffer from always thinking about the limitations; we always think negatively.

When the Lord told the disciples, “Give the crowd something to eat,” they said, “But how are we going to feed them if we have neither bread nor money? And even if we had money, where would we get enough food for so many people?” They thought about the limitations.

The Lord could see beyond them, and he saw that with just a little he could multiply it and bless the entire crowd. And that is what happened. He told them, “Go, look around. What do you have around you?” They looked, they went in among the people, they searched with a positive outlook, and they found 5 loaves and 2 fish. They brought them to the Lord, and with that the Lord blessed it and fed the entire crowd.

You have to think about the positive. What is in your hand? What do you hold in your hand, in your life? And what can you do with it? Begin with that and believe that God can gradually multiply it until he turns it into something great.

I have discovered that if I allow myself to be guided by the limitations and by how terrible the process is... We have just started an English-language service. I do not know how many of you know about it; we keep announcing it, and I invite you to visit us one Saturday, as a matter of fact, at 6:00 in the evening.

We started an English-language service, and it is difficult. It has changed a very important part of my life, because before, I used Saturday evenings to prepare for Sunday, to spend time in meditation, to rest a little, and to prepare myself for the hustle and bustle of Sunday. But not now. Now I have to be here on Saturdays. And there are brothers and sisters who sacrifice their Saturdays to come and help us, and it is... there is a sacrifice; there is a price to pay.

If before you wanted to go out and have dinner with your wife or something like that, now you cannot... and you finish at 8:00 at night and have to go back home and prepare for Sunday. But you know what? What encourages me, brothers and sisters, is that in my spirit I see an English-speaking community one day being blessed by our efforts. I do it for the joy set before me.

You see, when I come here on Saturday and see 20 or 25 people, I say to him, “Lord, I am not going to let myself become discouraged, because I see this place full of people. One day I am going to celebrate. One day I am going to say, ‘We did it.’” When I see new people—and we are beginning to see new people.

And, brothers and sisters, you do not know what it is like to live life that way. When you dare to undertake things in the name of the Lord, and you know there is a price to pay, that you have to make an effort, and you do not know whether success will come, but you say, “No, I have already seen it before, and I rejoiced, and I am going to see it again,” that is what makes a person undertake new things in life.

Always think about the joy that lies before you. Think about what can happen. Think about the potential of your efforts, and let that encourage you. For me, this building has been a headache: a great deal of work, many completion dates postponed, a great deal of money, a great deal of effort. But I see hundreds of people there, and thousands of people each year receiving counseling, young people getting a better education, immigrants receiving information about their studies, and programs of different kinds taking place there. That joy set before me inspires me to keep moving forward. Do you understand?

Always think about the possibility. Think about the glory. Why did the conquistadors launch out from Spain and from other countries of the world to explore unknown worlds? Why did Columbus launch out from Spain to discover new lands? He did not know what awaited him. He suffered tremendously—many disappointments, many difficulties. By the time he reached the Americas, his crew was already prepared to hang him and return to Europe, until they discovered the New World.

Do you know what encouraged those great men? The desire for glory. Historians have discovered that aspect of Renaissance man: it was the desire to receive glory, to make a name for oneself, to attain fame, and to receive a title of nobility. And that encouraged them to keep moving forward.

We should conceive great dreams and think, “How beautiful it will be when I reach the goal!” Let that encourage you and carry you forward. For the joy set before him, Jesus endured what? The cross.

Every achievement in life has a cross; there is a price to pay. You have to strip things away, you have to get rid of things you love, you have to take a lot of real medicine in your life, and you have to listen to things that will hurt you, things that will displease you.

There is a cross that all of us have to endure. If you want to improve your credit and get out of debt, you have to cut up credit cards, eat at restaurants less often, you have to... trim your grocery shopping a little, eat more economically, and travel a little farther to buy products. If you want to buy a house, you have to save more. If you want to reach a professional goal, you have to go to school after work.

There is a cross to bear. You have to suffer a cross. Everything in life comes at a cost; you have to pay the price. If you want to be a good father, a model husband, you have to... there is a price to pay. You will not be able to go out with your friends every night, or you will have to spend more time with your wife and children. If you want to get A’s in school, on Saturday afternoon, while your friends are out and about, getting ready to go to the nightclub, you will be holed up in your cubicle, reading and preparing for a class or whatever it may be.

There is a cross to pay. Every successful life, brothers and sisters, depends on a disciplined life. Always remember that. Psychiatrists speak of sublimation, which means that a person converts certain types of negative energy into positive energy. The man, for example, who invests all his energy in sexual pleasure is taking his vitality, his life force, and pouring it into an unproductive form.

Now, the constructive man, the man who lives a positive life, takes that sexual energy and converts it, sublimates it, turns it into energy for work, for his family, for his studies, for his personal improvement. That is, he takes low, animal energy and turns it into divine energy, positive energy, energy for achievement.

There is a price to pay, do you understand? There is a cross that must be suffered and a disgrace that must be scorned. What does disgrace mean? Shame. You have to... the Lord Jesus Christ said, “I am not going to attach too much importance to the shame.” Can you imagine a man raised up on a cross in a public square, with people passing by, seeing him half-naked, seeing all his private parts exposed, seeing his body bleed, laughing at him, pointing at him, making him an object of shame? That was our Lord, the Son of God, the most exalted being who has ever existed.

But do you know what? The Lord said, “That is nothing if through it I am going to honor my Father and make possible the salvation of thousands of human beings.” He scorned it; that is what it means. He regarded it as insignificant; he attached no importance to the shame, but instead looked toward success.

There is a certain degree of shame that we have to endure in order to succeed in life. The young person whose friends make fun of him, again, because of his studies.

Surveys have been conducted, and one of the things that causes the most problems for African American and Latino young people when they want to better themselves is that their friends make fun of them. Studies have been done on that, and no young person wants to be seen as a mama’s boy, as a failure, as someone who is not “cool,” as people say. And so, many times they abandon their goals in order to join their friends.

When you want to achieve a goal, people will often try to drag you down because your desire for achievement and success threatens them. When you begin to live successfully, the person who is living a mediocre life will tell you, sometimes without even realizing it, “No, we want you to stay here with us.” And so there is a kind of shame, a kind of disgrace that you must scorn; you have to say, “No, no, no... I am going to live my life on a higher plane.”

The man who says to his friends, “No, I cannot go because I have to take care of my wife and children. I am not going to spend my night drinking. No, I am a family man.” His friends say, “Oh, you are a failure; your wife controls you,” and this and that. Disgrace. Scorn it and keep your eyes on the goal.

What was the result Jesus obtained? He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Jesus achieved his goal. He came into the world with a mission, with a clear vision. He knew what his Father had sent him to do, and when he landed in the world as a baby, he immediately began to create a whole series of circumstances in order to reach his vision.

Do you know when he reached the goal? When, on the cross, he let out a cry that I believe shook the foundations of the universe and said, “It is finished.” The race is finished, brothers and sisters.

“It is finished” means it is completed. He achieved it, and do you know what? At that moment the entire universe changed, and when the Lord rose from the tomb, angels were waiting for him up above, and the Lord was waiting for him with his trophy; therefore God gave him a name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth should bow.

He reached the goal. He achieved success. He lived a successful life, and that is the model we have. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, and let us live—let us run our own races in life. There are many races to run in this life, brothers and sisters, but with Christ we can do it. With him as our model, we can reach the goal.

Do not think about the discipline; do not think about the disgrace; do not think about the cross; do not think about the failures of the past. Press on toward the goal.

Let us stand. Brothers and sisters, God wants a successful church. God wants us to live purposeful lives, lives by design, lives... do not live life by inertia; do not live life simply because you did the same thing yesterday, you are going to do it today, and you are going to do it again tomorrow. Live life by design.

Say, “I am going to control my appetites. I am going to take control of my energies; I am going to set clear goals for myself. I am going to spend my years achieving things; I am not going to spend them simply going around the same circle, like the Hebrews: 40 years in the wilderness, going around the same little piece of land. No, we want to live a life that moves forward.”

I press on toward the mark. I press on toward the goal, forgetting what lies behind; I press forward to take hold of that for which I, too, was taken hold of. As we conclude this particular message, ask the Lord now to place those elements within you.

Father, patience, persistence, excellence, an awareness that we have witnesses around us, the ability to cast off everything that weighs us down. Also, Lord, the willingness to pay the price, to scorn the disgrace, to scorn the cross in order to come and sit in our own places of authority and fulfillment, Lord.

That is my petition this afternoon: that as I project these ideas, these images, upon your people, Lord, we may see your glory manifested, and that each day this church may go from growth to growth, from height to height, Lord, for the glory of your precious name; and to you we will give all the glory and all the honor, Lord.

We bless you for our students who have achieved their goals. They have graduated; they have completed their course of study, Father, and now they have other things ahead of them. And you, Lord, will make sure that he who began the good work completes it, because you are faithful, Lord. Thank you, thank you, Jesus, in your name. Amen and amen. Give the Lord a great round of applause this morning.

Let us sing that chorus that says, “He who began the good work.” Amen.