Putting the House in Order

Let us now speak about the word of the Lord. Let us go to the Gospel according to Saint Mark, Mark chapter 11. Today I am—have you seen those rock climbers? When someone climbs rocks without any kind of ropes or safety gear, it is called free solo climbing—that is, taking a risk. Today I come with no scaffolding other than the Word this morning. I have no notes or anything, so I am going to take a risk here, because it is true that the Lord has laid something on my heart. It is more like a testimony that I want to share with you this morning, something the Lord is doing in my life, which I believe He is also doing in the Lion of Judah Congregation and is calling His whole Church throughout the earth to do: to adopt this posture of integrity. Mark chapter 11, verses 12 through 14. The account continues later, but we will leave it there.

Mark 11:12–14 says—this passage has always intrigued me, you know: what was going through the Lord’s mind when this event took place? It says that the next day—and the Lord is passing through Jerusalem on His way to the cross. He is already entering the final stage of His ministry. He is very conscious that crucifixion awaits Him in the coming days. He will be crucified by His own countrymen; He will be crucified by the religious authorities, who, by compelling and forcing the hand of the Roman civil authorities, will have Him crucified. That is part of God’s plan, but He knows that these religious hypocrites who lead His people, His nation Israel, are also involved. And I believe that was on His mind when He set this event in motion here: the approaching crucifixion, His entry into Israel, the seat of religious authority, and His crucifixion at the hands of those religious leaders who govern His nation.

It says: “The next day, when they had left Bethany, He was hungry. And seeing from afar a fig tree that had leaves, He went to see whether perhaps He might find something on it. But when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. Then Jesus said to the fig tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And His disciples heard it.” Bless the Lord for His word. Now, if you look later in the account, in verse 20, the fig tree did in fact wither from the roots. It was not immediately evident to the disciples, but when they returned later, they saw that the curse the Lord had pronounced over that plant had manifested itself in the plant’s roots drying out completely, which also caused the entire plant to wither. So let me back up a little, because what we see here is the Lord seeking to satisfy a physical hunger that He has, but I believe there is more here.

What prompted me to choose this passage—there are many passages I could have used—was something I shared with the deacons at our last deacons’ meeting this past Tuesday. They asked me to share with them for a while about—I was speaking, as I felt led, about our congregation, about our church—but periodically they ask me to share with them something of the vision that God has spoken and is speaking to our church. During the week, as I meditated on their request, it came to mind that for the past few months I have been involved in a construction process in my own home, together with my whole family. My wife can tell you that it has been an arduous task. Brother Patricio Montenegro has been one of those helping us during this time with his time and his skill as a builder. We have been going through a very exhausting, arduous, but very beautiful and edifying—to use an appropriate redundancy—process for our family and our home.

If you examine my ministry, my life, I have been building for the past 15 years. I have not stopped; I have not stopped. We bought this sanctuary in 1994—at the end of ’93, and we began in ’94. Finally, after hollowing out this entire space here, we rebuilt all four floors completely and moved into it. We had barely finished that work when we were already buying the building next door, and we began the arduous work and process of tearing down and rebuilding. We had barely finished that when we were already beginning the new sanctuary; and before we had even finished it, we had already spent seven years working on the building’s design, obtaining all the permits, going through an arduous neighborhood process, fighting giants, motivating the church, and beginning to build during the most terrible financial period in this nation’s history. When it seemed as though the world was going to come crashing down amid that whole financial debacle of 2008, that was when we had to come here and ask the congregation to arm itself with vision so that it would keep its building pledges.

In other words, we have been building. Years ago, when we were at the church in Cambridge, I preached a series of 12 or 14 sermons on Nehemiah. I did not know that the Lord was drawing me into a building process, and I remember that preaching was very formative in my life and in the life of the congregation. It was not created with any intention or suspicion that God also had a construction process in store: taking broken-down, decrepit buildings that nevertheless had fairly solid foundations and great potential in the heart of the city, tearing them down, demolishing them, and rebuilding them. And I have always felt that God has had us engaged in a kind of prophetic action: coming into the city, tearing down things that are already decrepit, and rebuilding and turning them into beautiful places where the people of God can worship, serve, learn, and prepare themselves.

And that is why the Word says that we are called to be rebuilders of ruins, builders of ruins. And I have felt that one of the prophetic callings of this ministry is to try to build up things that are ruined and fallen: our communities, for example, our youth, the Latino family, this area of the city, a distinctly urban area like this one. God has now also called us to build an English-language ministry in order to have another entryway into the African American and Anglo community, because God has called us to be builders of ruins—not merely physical ruins; physical ruins are the least of it. It is spiritual ruins that God wants to rebuild. God wants to raise up those fallen walls. When Nehemiah wanted to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, the walls did indeed play an important role in providing physical protection, but they also had symbolic value. They symbolized the strength of their nation, and both its glory and the shame they felt because their wall had been torn down. That caused Nehemiah to fall down weeping, because he saw his people in disgrace and wanted to rebuild those walls.

I believe we are involved in a prophetic process. Throughout these years, God has led us to build these things in anticipation, and also in parallel with a spiritual reconstruction in which we are being called to participate. Do you understand? I always see God speaking to my life, my ministry, and this congregation in prophetic terms. I do not necessarily see God in every little thing that happens, although He is involved; but there are little things about which He says to me, “Pay attention, because this is for you, and this is something I am calling you to participate in.” And this construction of this house—our house—I am going to say “my” for the sake of brevity. Supply the rest yourselves; do not think I am sexist. I do not have time to be politically correct. You understand what I mean, don’t you? So please make the necessary corrections.

This work in our home has been a work through which I believe God has led us. Now let me tell you one more thing to set up the whole rationale for this meditation. This is nothing new. Throughout the Bible, God takes His prophets and makes their own lived experience part of the messages He is giving. We are living messengers. How many of you believe that? We have our lives to exemplify and declare spiritual truths, spiritual principles, which those with eyes to see can see, those with ears to hear can hear, and those with a heart and understanding to interpret them can interpret. He took Ezekiel—you remember the prophet Ezekiel, one of the strangest and most symbolic books of Scripture—and poor Ezekiel was taken by God as a living messenger of many of the things that were on God’s own heart concerning the nation of Israel. You remember this instance. Nowadays there is a lot of talk about Ezekiel bread. How many of you have eaten Ezekiel bread? Brother, do not be ashamed. You have to be a young adult, right? Our older daughter, Sonia, is an Ezekiel-bread fanatic. Nowadays they have made a great deal of money from this bread because it is biblical—supposedly—even though they omit one of the most important ingredients in Ezekiel bread.

For example, God made the prophet Ezekiel participate in many prophetic actions. Later, look there in chapters 4 and 5 of Ezekiel. But look at one of them. It says: “And you, Ezekiel, take for yourself wheat, barley, lentils, millet, and oats; put them in a vessel and make bread for yourself from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side—390 days—you shall eat it.” God made Ezekiel sleep on only one side—uncomfortable. “The food you eat shall be weighed out at 20 shekels a day; from time to time you shall eat it. And you shall drink water by measure, one-sixth of a hin—a measure—and from time to time you shall drink it. And you shall eat barley cakes baked under the ashes, and you shall bake them in their sight over a fire of human excrement.” And at that moment Ezekiel said, “What?” Everything was going fine until God said, “You are going to cook it over a fire of human excrement.” And Jehovah said: “Thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread”—because human excrement was going to serve as fuel—“among the nations to which I will drive them.” “And I said, ‘Ah, Jehovah! Behold, my soul has not been defiled; from my youth until now I have never eaten anything that died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has unclean meat ever entered my mouth.’ And the Lord said, ‘Behold, I permit you to use cow dung instead of human excrement.’” Oh, thank You, Lord. Thank You. That settles the whole problem.

But you see here, if you take notice, you see that God made him live through that whole experience in a prophetic sense, as an action He had for those times. And I believe that God often speaks to us. The problem is that we are dull and are not paying attention when God speaks to us symbolically throughout life. I have benefited throughout my life when God has sort of stopped me and said, “Hmm, pay attention to that fleeting thing that is happening, because I have something for you in it.” Why does God speak that way? I believe that, because of the conditions of this world, sin, and so many other things, God goes to great lengths to speak to human beings in indirect ways. I believe there are times when God speaks to us through a clear, audible word, and sometimes through a vision or a revelation; but God often uses the everyday elements of life. So have eyes to see and ears to hear, because life will often be speaking to you; God will be speaking to you through things. Ask Him to enable you to remain alert to the things He is telling you and the ways He is instructing you—not necessarily through an angel or an audible voice from heaven, but by using the elements of life, because that is the way He has chosen for a time to speak to humanity.

So God has been speaking to me. A long time ago, I felt in my spirit that God told me, “Fix your house. Put your house in order—physically; we are speaking physically. Fix everything you can. Put it in order. Beautify it.” He is not speaking to me about luxuries, extraordinary things, or anything flashy. No. “Put your house in order so that it will be a house of order, a well-presented house, one that is lovely, that beautifies the neighborhood, that people respect. One hundred deer of God live in that house, and a servant of God lives there, and that house has to represent Me well.” I have felt that in my spirit—above all, an urgency to fix my house. And God has always provided generous people over the years: Brother Alberto Naranjo, Mario Ulloa, and, during this period, Patricio Montenegro. They have been very generous people who have helped us in many ways, and I pay them with morir soñando, rice and beans, and other things. And they have offered their help so generously that it has often made me feel very humbled, and glory to God for that.

I believe they do it because they feel that they are participating too; they do not realize it, in a spiritual process, amen, glory to God. It would take a long time to explain, but this is the point, brothers and sisters. I have already spent years putting our house in order. My poor wife trembles every time I tell her, “No, this is only going to take a couple of weeks,” and I can already see her getting neurotic, because she knows she is getting into something much more complicated than I am making it sound. But the fact is that, especially during this time, something has happened, and I am going to tell you why so that you will understand. I believe God is calling His people—listen carefully to this. He is calling me, the senior pastor of this church, and He is calling you, and He is calling His people, the Church of Jesus Christ, to prepare His house, and specifically to prepare you. Because we have made a great many improvements to our house. God has allowed us to enlarge it, beautify some spaces, and do many things of that sort—new floors, many very beautiful things—but the basement of the house was a disaster.

When we bought the house, the basement floor was crumbling. There was only an extremely thin layer of cement left, and it had already cracked and broken in several places. You could see the dirt in some spots. When it rained, water would often seep in at certain places—not flooding it in what we might call a deluge-like fashion, but it was always happening. And also, I will be honest with you, it did not smell entirely pleasant to me. The basement was like a cell, the dungeon where one lived. It was more of a storage place. It was not as though there were dragons or dinosaurs walking around the area, but it was not a place of which we—or I—felt proud. And I felt a contradiction between everything on the first floor and what lay beneath it, where all the systems of the house were: the heating systems, the water systems, the electrical boxes, the floor, the foundation, the water pipes. They were not—and I did not know until I broke through the floor—I did not realize that there was a water leak beneath the ground, and I want to tell you, it was not the best kind of water.

And all of this happened when we began digging into the foundations, and the backbone that supported the house had deteriorated somewhat over time. It is a hundred-year-old house, just in case there are those who think I live in a palace. Someone once said somewhere, “Hey, your pastor must have a lot of money,” and this and that. That person does not know what he is talking about. But the point is this: that backbone of the house had been deteriorating over the years, and the weight of the house had caused it to bow a little. So we began with something very modest. Brother Patricio was willing to help us break up the floor, but you know how these things happen, right? You see the possibilities and you get started. We dug five inches of dirt out of the floor, thereby compromising the foundation of the house. We had to build a new concrete foundation with reinforcing bars. The fact is that, for the last five and a half months, the lower part of our house, the basement, has been completely transformed. The foundation, which had also been seriously compromised by seeping water and other things, has been reinforced. In terms of its foundation, I would say that house is now ten times more solid than it was when they built it—arduous work. The entire decrepit, ruined floor has been replaced with a solid floor, and tons and tons of dirt have been removed from there. While we were at it, we took out the water heaters. I am telling you the intimate details of my house here; by the end of this sermon, you are going to know my house better than I do. We installed new heaters. We put in the heating system, and while we were at it, we took a chimney that had probably been there since the house was built, and a crazy Brazilian climbed onto the roof, all the way to the top of the house, and began demolishing the chimney and working his way down as the bricks fell to the bottom, into the basement, until we had completely demolished the chimney.

We also replaced the electrical system, we are replacing the plumbing, and that compromised beam was completely replaced with a solid steel beam. And there are still things left to do. That basement, which was a place of horror, is, thank God, becoming a respectable, solid place that reflects the solidity I believe is fitting for a house where people of God live. Now, throughout all these weeks, even as I hear the hammering and the weariness from all this work overwhelms us, I have sensed God, and I have made this process—I have not even shared this with Brother Patricio—I have made this entire process one of spiritual meditation. I have turned this project—you know that in the Buddhist and Hindu religions there are what are called mandalas. They are drawings that are made, and sometimes those who make these drawings with sand and all of that spend years on them and turn them into an object of meditation.

There are objects and there are acts that, as you carry them out, allow you to enter into the depths of your spirit while you bring them to completion. They are ways of identifying spiritual truths. That is what the great religions do, and even Christianity, with the whole matter of cathedrals. Many cathedrals were built precisely to be objects that would remind you of spiritual truths. You are inside a cathedral in Spain, in Italy, in France, in England, and those cathedrals were built by people who understood the power of symbols. And when you enter a cathedral, you see only the ceiling pointing toward infinity; it reminds you of heaven. You see the stained-glass windows, the sculptures. We, with our superficial modern buildings, do not understand these things very well, but those medieval structures understood the power of a symbol, the power of objects. And throughout these weeks I have used this construction to remind myself that, in our lives, we cannot depend on what is visible for our relationship with God.

I could not allow our house—I could not simply settle for what was visible: the floors above, what people see. Down below was the most important part of the house: the foundation, the systems that supply it, the wires, the backbone that supports the home. The basement of a house is the source of its life. The heat comes from there; the water comes from there; the hot water that allows us to bathe comes from there. The life of the house is sustained by the foundation. The driving force of a house is what lies beneath, what cannot be seen. We sometimes devote a great deal of time to the cosmetic part, but what happens when we go downstairs? What condition is the foundation in? What condition is the electrical system in? And I feel that, throughout this entire process, God has been speaking to me.

And what I have felt is an urgency to prepare this house, to prepare my house as a symbolic act showing that the Lord’s house must be prepared, that the church must be prepared. And the most important thing is that God has also been speaking to me about my life: that I must devote a great deal of time and energy to preparing my character and my heart. Not long ago I spoke about the importance of the heart. God has been speaking to me about cleansing myself completely, sanctifying myself, searching deeply within myself for all those areas that are not pleasing to the Lord, and deeply examining, in the light of the Word and of the Holy Spirit, my heart, my character, the way I treat others, the way I speak, my intimate life, my mental life—all those things. And God has been telling me, “Fix all of it. Put all of it in order. Work on the foundation, on the most intimate parts of yourself, and make sure that what people do not see, do not hear, and cannot perceive because it is an intimate part of your being is as commendable and as pleasing to Me as what you preach when people listen on a Sunday morning.” Let there be harmony; let there be integrity. Nowadays, I am not even as interested in speaking about holiness as I am in speaking about integrity, because unfortunately we evangelicals are experts at spiritualizing things. We speak about holiness and think, as a missionary sister of mine used to say, that we are speaking only about what happens below the waist. Holiness is total; it is everything.

Holiness is the heart, the mind, the emotions. I see a great lack of integrity among the people of God today. I see many people—including in our own church, allow me to be very frank—who talk a great deal, say a great deal, and are very fiery. We speak in more tongues than any dyed-in-the-wool Pentecostal, but our lives are a disaster, our behavior is a disaster, our character—we lack integrity. We lack the ability, when the Lord comes hungry, to have Him find fruit in our lives; what He finds instead is leaves. Do you understand at this moment why I chose that passage? Because God wants men and women of integrity. God wants men and women who do not merely confine themselves to a spirituality here, when they are singing, reading a portion of the Bible in public, or doing all the things we like to do in the service. No. God wants the intimate space of your home, the intimate space of that vault that is your mind and your private thoughts, also to constitute a place of worship, a temple that exalts the name of the Lord.

And as never before in this season of my life, it has become clear to me that God is not interested in people with a great show of spirituality, people who do a great deal of talking and jumping, a lot of bodily display, a lot of things. What interests God is men and women who live lives of integrity, so that when He looks in the basement of their inner house, He finds things clean. And that is what we are dealing with in our lives each day. That is what keeps me from sleeping peacefully, because I know that many things in the inner basement need to be repaired and prepared. Because here in this passage we see the Lord approaching His crucifixion, and He is conscious of this nation with which God has dealt so much. The Bible often compares Israel to a fig tree, one that often bears sour fruit instead of sweet fruit. So the fig tree is a tremendously symbolic tree in spiritual terms. The Bible has compared Israel to it, and not necessarily in positive terms.

So when the Lord approaches this fig tree—that is why I say that the world is filled with symbols and things through which God is speaking to us—when the Lord approaches this fig tree, it had many leaves. The Lord reached into that fig tree, whose leaves promised fruit. Now, there is something interesting here: it says that it was not the season for figs. It says that—I believe what the Lord did was not so much because this fig tree was failing to do what it was supposed to do. The poor tree—what fault was it of hers? It was not the season for bearing figs. Why did the Lord have to curse it? No. But I believe that at that moment the Lord said, “Who knows? Perhaps there is something there.” Yet at that same moment, it was as though His hunger, the lack of fruit, the abundance of leaves, the connection with Israel, and His imminent crucifixion all came together, and the Lord understood: “This fig tree represents what My nation is. There are many leaves, but there is no fruit on it.”

There is nothing to satisfy My thirst, My hunger for blessing. Israel had a very luxuriant spirituality. It had the temple, it had all the rites of Judaism, it had all the laws and stipulations concerning observance and worship. It had a tremendous religious apparatus, but that fig tree bore no fruit. There was no understanding of the things of God. On the contrary, there was hostility toward God, whom Jesus embodied and represented. So at that moment, it was as though Jesus was acting more in a symbolic, prophetic way, and that is why He said, “May fruit never be born from you again.” He was operating on a symbolic, spiritual level, and He was cursing that failed spirituality. Because what happens when we content ourselves only with the external apparatus of religion—the rooms and what visitors see—and do not concern ourselves with what lies beneath? We will never bear fruit there. God says that to the one who has, more will be given, but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. At this time, God is calling Lion of Judah Church and all the faithful members of this congregation—listen to me carefully—to put our house in order.

This is what I told the deacons God has been speaking to me about during this time: God is already weary of a vain, superficial spirituality. The famished people of this nation and of so many other nations—we make a great pretense of spirituality; we even believe ourselves better than other nations. But when God comes looking in this time, He finds a decrepit church. God is coming to inspect its foundations and put the house in order. A great visitation from God is coming upon the earth, and the Church of Jesus Christ must be prepared and must prepare the way. I have been preparing the renovation of our house precisely because I feel God is telling me, “I am coming to visit you. I am coming to visit this house, and I am coming to visit My church. I need this place to represent Me well, just as I need you to represent Me well. The foundation must be as solid as the cosmetic part.” God wants the exterior and the form to be in harmony. That is going to take more work from you, you see? Because it is much easier simply to work on the external, on the outside. But the most difficult thing is for the man, the woman, the church, to work deep within and prepare the way for the Lord.

I am going to finish, but do remember that when Christ comes to visit, the way must always be prepared first; the house must be prepared. In Isaiah chapter 40, God says to the people of Israel: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and all the glory of the LORD and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” God is speaking to us; a visitation of His Spirit is coming, and we had better lose the baby fat quickly. I was telling the deacons this past week that one of the things that distinguishes this congregation—I say that we have so many imperfections, we have so much to fix, and we are no better than any other congregation in this city. Sometimes people ask me, “Pastor, what is your vision?” I have told you so many times; we have even displayed it out there more prominently. But one of the things God has always said is that, no matter how long it takes us, I do not want to manufacture anything—not even a revival. I do not want to manufacture a superficial spirituality at Lion of Judah. I do not want to manufacture miracles that cannot withstand the scrutiny of the most convinced atheist. Nowadays, many of us are merely talking to ourselves, and what we tell ourselves can withstand only our own scrutiny. But when people on the outside look at us through that hostile, fluorescent lens of reason, our supposed miracles and our supposed spiritual superiority cannot withstand objective examination; instead, they collapse. We talk among ourselves, understand one another, and laugh at our own jokes.

But our life is not able to withstand outside scrutiny. And that is why I have said that I do not care whether anyone thinks I am anointed or not anointed. What matters to me is living with integrity before God. I do not have to push anyone so that they fall down. I do not have to prove my prayer life to anyone. I do not have to tell anyone whether I am some spiritual superman; God and I know that. And I want a church that lives with integrity, and if it takes God ten more years, or whatever it may be, that is His business, because He has promised. I want to be like Elijah, who poured water on the altar so that it would be evident that when fire fell from heaven, it was not because he was performing some kind of charismatic magic to set the altar ablaze artificially. That is what many of us are doing nowadays: creating congregations and artificially manipulating people, creating artificial and false language to produce fruit that does not come from God. It is magic, and it is human manipulation, but it is not the truth; it is not the integrity of God. I have said to Him, “Lord, I want this church to be a combination of the outside and the inside, the visible and the invisible. I want the Sunday service and the church’s private life, in its most intimate moments, to reflect the values of Your kingdom.”

And I do not care that Lion of Judah is a Pentecostal church—no. What matters to me is that the truth of God be manifested. If God wants to manifest miracles, He does so and He will do so. My house must be built on the rock, not on the sand. Many houses are built on the sand, and as long as everything is calm, everything is fine. But when the test comes, because they are built on the sand—on human forms, human habits, and human and religious conventions—they come crashing down, because they are not built on the rock. Building on the rock always takes much more time; it is always more difficult. People will always be telling you, “You are crazy. Why are you taking so long to build?” No, I want to keep building until Christ comes. As a church, we want a spirituality that can withstand the test, and that is why you and I have to work. There is much digging to do, much digging. This building has reminded me very much of one thing: foundations take a long time, and if the foundation is solid, and if the measurements are square and sound, then everything else can rise solidly; and that is how it must be.

This is the time when God is speaking to humanity, speaking to the church, and saying to it, “Do not come to Me with leaves. I am not interested in leaves. I want integrity. I want your married life to reflect the values of My kingdom. I want your mental life, your thought life, and the fantasies you harbor to glorify Me. I want the things you watch on television to glorify Me. I want your conversation to honor Me and please Me. I want the feelings you harbor in your spirit to be consonant with the values of My kingdom. I want the jokes you tell to reflect the principles of My Word. And when you are driving around, if you have to stop and preach to the person in front of you or the one behind you, you should be able to do so with complete freedom, because you have behaved as you ought.” That is what God is seeking at this time: a people who truly bear fruit, a people whose basement is as beautiful and orderly as the other rooms in their house. May the Lord bless us, and may that be what we feel today, brothers and sisters.

Let us serve the Lord in the depths and in what is external and superficial. Let us stand, and now, in the name of Jesus, receive this call from God upon your life, and cry out, and weep before God, and groan. Do not be comfortable or at ease until your life reflects what you confess with your mouth. I am going to say to Him, “Lord, I am going to begin. I will not be content; I will not sleep peacefully until my life is ordered according to what You say.” Ask the Lord to have mercy on your pastor. When I preach these messages, I am filled with fear because I say, “Father, if I fall from here, I am going to crack my head open.” Please pray that the Lord will keep me and protect me, because at this time in my life I ardently desire to walk with integrity before God. And God wants the same for you. God wants the same for this congregation. God wants the same for His church throughout the earth at this time. His visitation is at the door; His coming is near. But before that, there is a time that God wants to have with His church in the world, and He needs a people with purified lips and hearts set ablaze by the fire of His Spirit, who can proclaim what He has for this creation at this time.

So ask the Lord to cleanse the foundations of your life. Say to Him, “Lord, clean the basement of my life. Repair the foundation, Lord; repair the pillar that supports my house. Father, repair the electrical systems, so that Your Spirit may have good, clean channels through which to flow; repair the pipes, Lord, through which the water comes that warms and enables people to eat and to quench their thirst throughout the rest of the house. May its foundation and its origins be sound, and may everything visible and invisible speak of the God of consistency, the God of integrity, the God of holiness.” And so, Father, that is what I ask in the name of Jesus through this sermon, which is an impassioned prayer before You. May every word, Lord, that has been uttered be part of that prayer, Lord, of this cry before You. We want to prepare the house so that You may dwell in it comfortably. We want our inward, personal, physical, ecclesiastical, universal house to be a fitting dwelling place for Your holiness, Lord. Begin with us. Cleanse us and wash us, Lord; cleanse us and wash us. Thank You, Lord. We worship You and bless You.

Send us away from here with the expectation that You are going to work in us. Do not stop working in us. Do not take Your eyes off us. Do not grow weary. Sometimes we almost exhaust Your patience, but do not grow weary of working on us. Please do not leave us; do not leave us. We love You, and we love Your dwelling place, Lord. Glory to Your name, glory to Your name. Thank You, Lord Jesus.