Young People Need Mentors

In the book of Titus, the Epistle to Titus, the Apostle Paul wrote Titus a letter of instructions on how to carry out his pastoral work, his ministry. And I want to do everything possible, I would say, to conclude the series I began some time ago on the subject of authority. This morning I almost, almost moved on to another subject, but I felt in my spirit that I should formally conclude the subject I began on spiritual authority. What happened is that, as you know, trips and sermons by other people intervened, and we had to suspend this subject for a few weeks, but I feel that we should bring it to a formal close, so to speak, and then move on to another subject as the Lord directs us.

Some of you who have recently begun attending the church or who are visiting today will unfortunately not have the benefit of the body of teaching we have received in recent weeks on this subject, but I am going to do everything possible to give you at least a little context and background so that you may understand how this subject of spiritual authority fits in.

Another thing I can tell you is that this is, let us say, a somewhat more advanced subject in spiritual terms. From time to time, as a pastor, one has to choose subjects that educate the church. Perhaps it is not a subject that lends itself as readily to general consumption, but I believe that we can all get something out of this subject, I assure you, and I believe that everyone will benefit from the teaching contained in this passage.

Chapter 2 of the Epistle to Titus. Now, let me also tell you that the Apostle Paul is writing here in a context that is almost one of correction, you might say, against a spirit, against an attitude that he discerns in the culture in which this pastor, Titus, is carrying out his work. And so he writes to him so that Titus will not be intimidated, but will speak the truth and preach with authority. And as I read, you will see how the matter of authority comes into play here. I am going to try to explain it a little further. The Apostle Paul says in verse 1 of Chapter 2:

“…But as for you”—he is speaking to Titus; remember, he is a pastor who is establishing churches—he says, “But as for you, Titus, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine….”

Let us stop there for a moment. That “but as for you” is referring to the fact that there is a different way of doing things, and Paul wants this pastor to preach in a different way. “But as for you,” meaning—if you look in Second Timothy, Chapter 4, I believe it is verse 3; in fact, even before that. Paul is writing to another pastor named Timothy. Look at verse 1 of Second Timothy, if you will help me, brothers and sisters. It says:

“…I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom…”

Wow, he is presenting this in a very solemn way.

“…Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; convince, rebuke, exhort, with all patience and doctrine….”

He is telling him, “Look, preach the Word. Do not be afraid. Speak clearly. Exhort the people. If you have to rebuke them in your preaching, do it. Do not worry that you may be preaching something that sounds a little harsh to people.” He says:

“…For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, they will gather teachers around themselves according to their own lusts; and they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to fables….”

What is the Apostle Paul saying in this passage, which provides our background? Paul says that a day will come in human history when people will desire to hear the Word. But although they will thirst to hear the Word, they will not want to hear the true Word of God; rather, they will want others to preach what they want to hear instead of the sound doctrine of God. And that is why Paul tells Timothy and Titus, “But you, as pastors, must not allow yourselves to be intimidated by that attitude among the people. You preach the Word. You give people what they need, not what they want to hear.”

There you can already see the subject of authority implied, in the sense that churches—the people of God, brothers and sisters—need pastors who are not afraid to proclaim the truth, who are not afraid to use the authority God has given them. And we also need churches and people who give their pastors the freedom to preach sound doctrine. Amen. Do you understand?

God needs a Christian culture in which people desire to hear the truth—not what they want to hear, not what flatters their minds, but the Word that proceeds from the mouth of God—because that is the only thing that heals our communities. And yet today, in the modern world, I believe that many pastors feel muzzled; they feel prevented from preaching sound doctrine. Today, in countries such as the United States, the church is so weak that many pastors are afraid that when people come to visit their churches and hear true doctrine about morality, human relationships, marriage, and even political issues, if they preach what the Word of God says, the people will leave. They will not want to come to church because we are in a culture, in a society, that is rebellious by nature. Many professional or very self-confident people come to church and say, “Well, if the pastor gets too personal or too intimate, I will not come back to church.” What they want is some teaching that tells them God loves them, that God has good things for them, that God blesses them, that they have worth, and that prosperity and blessing await them. But they do not want deeper, more direct teaching that goes for the jugular and reaches the heart, behavior, morality, human relationships, marriage, and work. We simply want soft-boiled eggs—something superficial.

But do you know what, brothers and sisters? The church of Jesus Christ is called to speak with authority, to speak properly, and that is what heals the life of a church. Many marriages are broken because the church is not declaring how a marriage should be conducted. Many times, the church lives exactly as the world lives because the truth of the Word of God is not being taught from the pulpits. What is needed is an instructed, educated, humble people, subject to spiritual authority, who come to church and say, “Pastors, we are here so that you may give us the counsel of God. Amen. So that you may tell us the Word of God, and if that word is true, legitimate, and sound doctrine, we will receive it as coming from God and not from man.”

And you know that when the people have that attitude, there is blessing—when the people of God come to the house of God with a contrite and humbled heart, with a heart open to whatever God wants. Wow, that is tremendous, because then the Word of God can fall like a seed that falls on good soil and can do its work. Never come to church with a rebellious attitude. Never come to church with the attitude, “Prove to me what you are saying.” No, come to church with an open heart. Come to church like good soil thirsting for water and good seed, and allow the Word of the Lord to instruct you, and submit to your spiritual authorities.

I say this: if your pastors are preaching the Word of the Lord, and if you can judge that it is the Word of God—because that is important. Today, we need to know the Bible; we have to know the Word in order to determine whether those preaching the Word are basing themselves on Scripture. Now, once you confirm that the word coming from that pulpit is biblical, look, even if you do not like it, even if it cuts you in half, even if you think the pastor is taking indirect shots at you, receive it. Amen. Open your heart to it. Let that word become established in your spirit, and you will be blessed and edified.

Churches and communities, brothers and sisters, are healed by that sound doctrine. And we must ask the Lord, “Father, set the pulpits of this nation free, and fill the churches with people who desire to hear the sound Word of God—submissive people, people open to the truth of God.” The Lord Jesus Christ said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Do you know what sets communities free and heals them, brothers and sisters? The truth of God. The Latino community and the African American community have many struggles, many problems with our young people, our men, our marriages, our families, our finances, and the educational system. We have many bondages, and what is going to heal our communities? Do you know what? The Word of God. When our young people learn to listen to the Word of God, that Word will heal their lives, and our marriages will be blessed—when there is a people open, surrendered, and subject to the Word of the Lord.

You know, how are our communities going to be healed and blessed? How are the Latino community, the African American community, and, in a different way, the Anglo community—how are these communities going to be healed and delivered from all the difficulties and dysfunctions that affect them? Well, it is going to begin with a church that feels free to proclaim the wholesome counsel, the whole counsel of the Word of God, and with people who come to church hungry and thirsty for the truth of God, who do not come to church merely to be encouraged, patted on the head, and told that God loves them and that God is with them.

Yes, I think that is part of the preacher’s ministry, but the ministry of the Word also involves wholesome, deep, practical instruction that addresses every area of life: family, morality, work, finances, human relationships, and marriage. All these different areas are also areas into which the Word of God should reach deeply. And when the people of God come to church, they should be open and submissive to the Word of God, and pastors should feel free to speak to our congregations and sometimes, you know, to challenge them. Sometimes we will confront them, sometimes we will exhort them, and sometimes we will make people feel uncomfortable, but that is okay. That is the healing action of the Word of God at work.

You know, there is a prophetic dimension to the proclamation of the Word of God: when you utter the Word of God in the Spirit and from a prophetic stance, that Word enters directly into the spirit of the individual. And I think it even penetrates the community as a whole that listens to that Word, and the Word of God, like a living thing, begins to act upon lives. It begins to cleanse; it begins to sharpen; it begins to confront; it begins to realign and straighten, and to establish itself more deeply in the lives of those who listen. That is an important ministry of the Word of God, and it requires a community that is open to it.

I hope that, more and more each day, there will be young people in our church who are hungry for the Word of God. I speak to you young men and young women right now, and I tell you: I pray that the Lord will create a community of young people who thirst and yearn to hear the Word of God, instead of saying, “Oh, you know, the preacher has started; it is time to go get a drink of water somewhere, or go hang around in some room in the church or something like that,” and forget about it. No, please stay. Listen to the Word, do the best you can, and pay attention to it. You will be blessed by it. You will be edified; your life will be strengthened. Even if you are 7 years old or 10 years old, if you yearn to hear the Word of God, God will illuminate you. I tell you, God will activate your wisdom.

I think many young people do not understand the Word, not because they are incapable of understanding it, but because they are not attentive enough to it. But if you say to yourself, “You know, I am here. I am going to pay attention to the Word. I am going to hold my horses here and discipline myself,” you will discover that your mind and your understanding slowly begin to open, and you begin to understand things you did not understand before. And the Word of God is a living thing that expands your capacity to understand deep, abstract things, you know. And that, in turn, will also bless you in your schoolwork; it will bless you intellectually, it will bless you academically, and you will become a very, very powerful human being as a result. But you have to take the Word of God seriously. And I do pray that someday I will see hungry eyes among our young people and that I will, as I am doing now, be compelled to speak to you in English, because, as I say, I have to give those young people something too. Amen.

Can I hear an amen from those young people? Praise the Lord, we need you. As your pastor, I want you to be attentive. As your pastor, I want you to hunger for the Word of God and to grow in the Word of God, because I tell you, that is a privilege you have that no other generation or other sector of this nation’s young people has: the capacity and ability to sit at the feet of Jesus Christ Himself as He teaches you through His teachers and pastors. So do not underestimate the importance of that privilege.

And since I lost the others who do not speak English, I am going to speak to you again. But I think it is important, brothers and sisters, that you also be tolerant when, from time to time, we speak in English as well, because we have many young people and adults here, and we are wrestling with that. I ask you to pray that the Lord will make it clear to us how we can also minister to our young people. Amen. How we can minister to the many Americans who come among us eager to receive the Word of God as well, and it is important that we make sacrifices for them, because we are here to bless, not merely to be blessed. Can you say amen to that? Glory to God.

So, returning to Titus, the Apostle Paul is telling him, Titus, speak what is in accord with sound doctrine, and then he breaks that down and addresses the elderly. Now, not elders in the sense of deacons or spiritual elders—no, the elderly in chronological terms: adults, older people, people advanced in years. He says:

“...That the older men be sober-minded, dignified, prudent, sound in faith, in love, in patience....”

The Bible has something to say to every generation and to every stage and every condition or activity of life. The Bible has a word and counsel for every dimension of life. So he first addresses the older men and tells them to conduct themselves with dignity, to behave soberly, not to go around as though they were 17-year-old boys, wearing skin-tight jeans and all that, or like women with rouge all over their faces, far too much for their age. No, older women and older men, conduct yourselves with dignity; bless the adults and the young people with your gravitas, with the experience you have accumulated over the years; be models of sobriety.

How beautiful it is to have in the churches those older women and men who have already been seasoned by life, who have been through it all, as we say, who have gone through different experiences in life and bless their congregation with their life of prayer, their seriousness, their commitment to the Lord, and their chaste and experienced conduct, and who bless young people with their counsel and example. I thank God for every person advanced in years, every older man or woman in this church.

God deliver us from a church made up only of young people and adults. No, we love the elderly. Amen. Give a round of applause to those elderly people who are here in the church right now. They bless us with their age.

I believe that one of the problems in this nation and in many Western nations is that they have made idols of young people, as though young people controlled everything. It is a culture that idolizes youth. You hardly ever see elderly people on television, and you know what? Ancient cultures learned to value the elderly because they already understood that an elderly person possesses an authority and a lifetime of experience that must be revered.

And I say to the young people in our church: Young people, learn to greet your elders, respect them, and kiss their hands if necessary.

Young people, respect your elders. Bless the elderly in our churches. Do not pass them by. You know, stop before them and thank them for their age, thank them for their counsel, and seek the company of elders. There is something very beautiful about them. They have such a beautiful anointing.

So the Apostle Paul tells the older men to conduct themselves seriously, to be sober-minded, prudent, sound in faith and in love. As for the older women, likewise, let them be reverent in their bearing; let them walk as women of their age. Conduct yourselves according to your age, and use that old age as a blessing.

Incidentally, to the sisters who are getting older, look, do not complain about getting older. Bless yourself, and enter adulthood and old age, if that is what applies, with joy. Amen, sisters; do not be ashamed of those little gray hairs that are beginning to appear—they are a blessing.

Listen to me: Every age has its beauty; every age has its appeal, its dignity, and its anointing, and we do not have to apologize because perhaps our muscles no longer obey us as well as they did when we were 20. There are other blessings that come: experience, strength, and conviction about life. Who wants to—I do not want to go back to being 20, brothers and sisters, I am telling you the truth. I look at myself at 20, and many times I am ashamed of myself, of the things I said and did at that stage. Glory to God for young people, but entering adulthood and growing old in the Lord is also a great blessing.

And we all have to respect one another: young people respecting the elderly, and the elderly embracing their old age and thanking God for bringing them into that stage of life. And a church that is guided in this way by patterns of authority is the glory of God. Nations need the counsel of the old; societies need the counsel of the old. And I am going to use that word in the most respectful sense possible; there is no need to apologize for calling someone “old.” An old person is a blessing to a community, and I believe our nation would benefit greatly if it had a few more old people in government and elsewhere, because that long-standing experience is needed.

It says, “...the older women are to be reverent, not slanderers, not slaves to wine, teachers of what is good...” And I like what verse 4 says: “...that they teach the young women to love their husbands and their children...” Men, say, “Glory to God.”

Older sisters and older brothers, do you know what? Young people need mentors. We have to invest in our young people, and incidentally, young people have to seek out mentors. I believe there are many older and mature people who would love to bless a young person with a word of counsel, but they feel inhibited because, very often, when we offer young people advice, all the quills, all the knives, all the defenses come out at once: “I do not need you to advise me. I know what I am doing.” And off they go, and they are the ones who lose out.

Now, let us also be willing to bless young people with a word of counsel. Our young people need mentors. How are young women going to learn to be wives, homemakers, and mothers? I am telling you the truth: I ask the Lord to help us as a church every day to teach our youth sound models of marriage, of being fathers or mothers, and of being leaders in their community.

Young people, you need to learn. Soon you will reach the age of 20, 22, 24, or 25. Many of you will get married; you will enter a responsible life in which you have to pay your bills, rent an apartment, and find a job. The weight of life will fall upon you, and do you know what? When those times come, it would have been very good if you had had people who taught you how to be a father, how to be a mother, how to be a wife, how to be a homemaker, how to be the head of a household, and how to be a leader in the home.

And I believe that today’s community has lost something because these patterns of authority have been distorted. It has lost a beautiful, vitally important, millennia-old mechanism for cultures: the ability of the older, preceding generation to pass its experience and wisdom on to the next generation. You know that you do not learn to be a mother by experimenting on your poor children as though they were guinea pigs, do you? You need at least a little teaching and modeling. Unfortunately, many of our young people have not had that modeling because they have lived in homes where the father is absent or where there has been dysfunction in the home. More than ever, we need young people willing to be mentored by adults and by experienced women and men, and older adults willing to mentor the young.

May the Lord break down the generational divisions that the devil has established in our community. And I ask the Lord for a harmonious community: young people, old people, and adults loving one another, respecting one another, recognizing their level of authority, and blessing one another.

The final word found in the Old Testament—and you can look it up later—is a word about the coming of Elijah. Do you remember the prophet Elijah? We do not know whether it will be that—probably it will be a person with the anointing of the prophet Elijah—but there is a very mysterious statement saying that when Elijah comes, he will reconcile parents with their children and children with their parents, so that God will not come and curse the earth.

The devil has established division today between young people and the elderly, between children and parents, and that is not from God; it is from the enemy. And the church must be the first to break that generational curse and unite the generations. In the name of Jesus, I encourage young people to set aside all rebellion against their parents, to love their elders, and to listen to their voices. And likewise, I encourage the elderly not to abdicate their great calling to be mentors and examples. Young women, ask your mothers—or, if you do not communicate well with your mother, ask an older woman or a married woman—to give you advice: “Look, I am going to be a mother one day, and I do not even know how to change a diaper,” or, “I do not know how to discipline a child or run a household.” That is beautiful; that is beautiful. And evidently, it is not only women who will do that.

But brothers and sisters, I believe there are certain patterns in the Bible: Women have certain gifts, men have other gifts, and we are not being taught how to develop those gifts. Let us ask the Lord for a united church and united families in which the generations live in harmony with one another, and that has to be proclaimed from the pulpit. That kind of teaching has to be proclaimed from the pulpits.

Are you still with me, brothers and sisters? I am almost at the end now. It says:

“...that they teach the young women to love their husbands and their children, to be prudent, chaste, careful about their homes, kind, and subject to their husbands, so that the Word of God may not be blasphemed...”

Why does the Apostle Paul add that phrase, “so that the Word of God may not be blasphemed”? Because, brothers and sisters, what happens if the world looks at Christians and examines their homes, examines their marriages, and examines their family life, and sees that Christians are just as dysfunctional and neurotic as the people out there? What are they going to say? “The Word of God is a lie. Why be a Christian? Look at how this supposedly Christian family is always fighting. Look at how their children live just like anyone else in the community. Look at all the messes and all the problems they have. Look at their disorderly finances. Look at their house—completely topsy-turvy, as we say.” Then the world will say, “Hey, if that is what Christianity is, it is worthless. Why should anyone become a Christian?”

So Paul says that the family life of Christians and their relationships of authority should be so different that people have to acknowledge, “Okay, now I understand: The Word of God is true, because those people have a different order in their home.”

We have to ask the Lord, “Father, help us understand the true Word of God and structure our homes accordingly,” brothers and sisters. And I tell you, today we pastors are afraid to tell people, “Look, there is a pattern for men, there is a pattern for women, there is a pattern for being a wife, and there is a pattern for being a husband,” because that clashes with the sensibilities of today’s culture. Yes or no? They accuse us of being chauvinists, feminists, or whatever, and so we are afraid to tell people the truth about how a Christian home should be governed.

So what we have are confused people, young people who do not know which way to go and who are continually going around in circles. They are afraid to get married; they are afraid to establish a home; and if they do establish one, it falls apart in an instant because there is no sound instruction, no preparation, no basic, solid teaching. And that has to change; that has to change.

The church of Jesus Christ has to proclaim the counsel of God so that the world may be convinced. I ask the Lord, “Father, at least in this community You have given us, cause Your shalom to flow, bringing order to the lives of our people. May our homes be places of peace and harmony. May our marriages be places where the man knows how to be the head of the household according to the pattern of Christ Jesus: a servant-leader who loves, instructs, exemplifies the character of Christ, speaks with love, gentleness, and words that build up, and devotes himself completely to his wife and children. May there be a woman who does not resent her husband’s leadership, but respects him and gives him his rightful place, and may God flow through that chain of authority. May the children be subject to their parents, submit to their authority, honor them, and revere them; and may the parents not abuse their authority, but treat their children with respect, as belonging to God, and counsel them with the right spirit—not abusing them, but not being afraid of their paternal or maternal authority either.”

Brothers and sisters, what is going to happen in a family like that? The glory of God will be in it. We do not live the way the world lives, brothers and sisters. We understand what authority is. I believe in the authority of men, I believe in the authority of women, I believe in the authority of the church, I believe in the authority of pastors, I believe in the authority of elders. And I also believe in the value of young people and children. When we know how to navigate every aspect of authority, there is blessing in the community. And the church of Christ needs to be proclaiming that blessing to the community. When that happens, the world will see healed churches.

Look, I believe that as I speak these words today, they will not only bless those who hear and understand them, but that living word is right now X-raying this church, coursing like electricity through you, and even coursing through the community out there; and it is being proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit, and you will see changes and transformations in your lives, because that is the value of the living Word of God; that is the value of sound doctrine when it is proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The church is corrected, the church is set right, the church is healed, the church is anointed through the blessing of the Word of the Lord. That is water that blesses and refreshes the life of a community.

Verse 6 says, “… likewise, exhort the young men to be prudent…”

Wow, young people, there is nothing wrong with being prudent, there is nothing wrong with behaving well, there is nothing wrong with not walking around with your pants falling off your backside or with occasionally dressing nicely and wearing a tie to come to church. Look, surprise yourself one day by dressing nicely and coming to church. It is not that you have to do it all the time, understand me. Wow, but how good it is when young people occasionally imitate adults.

Listen to me, there is nothing wrong with that—with a young person occasionally putting on a suit or learning to behave in a different way. Nowadays, again, it is as though young people have to be a completely separate tribe and have to go through a period of total rebellion before then entering adulthood. I do not believe that. I believe that a young person can be lively, dynamic, creative, dress in colors appropriate for youth and in clothing appropriate for youth, but also occasionally try on the attire of that adulthood that will soon be coming around the corner and learn how to wear those things as well. Because one day they will have to wear them, at work or wherever it may be.

Young people, start trying on your fathers’ and mothers’ clothes now; start seeing yourselves as adults. I believe that many young people do not grow emotionally because they do not envision themselves as adults, because the community, society, is not teaching them how to envision that. And one day adulthood surprises them, catches them off guard, and it is already too late to learn what they need to learn. Young people, be sober-minded; there is nothing wrong with a young person behaving in a certain way.

It says—and now he speaks to the pastor, to Titus himself, and in this way he speaks to every leader of this congregation—it says, “… in all things showing yourself to be an example of good works; in teaching showing integrity, seriousness, sound and irreproachable speech, so that the adversary may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say about you…”

Brothers and sisters, leaders are also required—leaders of integrity, leaders who are living the Word of God, leaders who are making an effort. We cannot speak from the pulpit simply by decree; we have to embody it, and that is what makes ministry so difficult: we have to embody what we are preaching.

The church of Jesus Christ has to live what it preaches. I believe that the church has lost much of its authority because we, the leaders, have failed you, and the Lord calls leaders to take their own dose of integrity as well and say, hey, we have to speak, we have to teach, but we also have to live what we preach.

There is a call, brothers and sisters, for the church as a whole today. Many people accuse the church of always pointing fingers, always pointing out the sins of the people out there, but the truth is that the church also has sins of its own. We have our own faults that we must bring before God and ask the Lord to forgive us for all the ways in which we have failed Him.

That is why the church of Jesus Christ has to try to live according to these standards, and do you know what? When we do that, it says that neither the world nor the adversary will have anything evil to say about us. How wonderful it would be if one day, when people pointed to our lives and examined their innermost parts, they could say, “You know what? We found nothing.” Like Daniel, when they tried to find something of which to accuse him before Nebuchadnezzar, and the only thing they found was that he was a man of prayer who disobeyed the order not to pray to God. May the Lord raise up great integrity in us, an ability to live what we preach, so that our lives reflect what we are preaching.

In verse 9 it says, “… exhort servants to be subject to their masters, to please them in everything, not talking back, not defrauding, but showing themselves faithful in everything, so that in all things they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior…”

I am going to leave it there, at that point. But look at how the Word of God has spoken to the older men, the older women, the young people, the spiritual leaders—from pastors on down—and now it says here, exhort the servants.

Well, when Paul spoke here about servants, he was speaking about the slaves who lived in subjection in the Greco-Roman world. Today we do not have slaves here in the United States, but we do have workers; we have employees. I would say that the closest equivalent in this case—and something that applies very well—is those of us who work: it says that we should be people who do not defraud and who are subject to our masters.

I believe, brothers and sisters, that Christian workers, Christian employees, should be the best employees a factory or a firm has. Amen. We should be the kind of people who, when we leave a job, make the owners or employers cry because the best employee they had has left; people who make every minute of work count and earn their bread in a proper manner; people who are a help, a resource to their superiors; people who are not continually criticizing what the supervisors or employers do; people who are people of peace, peacemakers among those who are at odds in a workplace; people who have a good word of counsel on their lips whenever something happens in the factory or at work; people who do not defraud or deceive, but who give what they are supposed to give and are resources to their institutions.

Brothers and sisters, people like that will be a great blessing to the community. May the Word of the Lord enter our hearts this afternoon, and may we understand this: hey, we are going to live lives subject to the truth of God; we are going to be a church that hungers for the truth of God. May all the generations—young people, older people, women, wives, husbands, all of us—know the place that belongs to us, the role, the response, the conduct expected of us as members of a group to which we belong. That is something that has been lost in the community: group consciousness. The Word of God addresses every group, every generation, in some way, and every group has something to absorb from the Word of the Lord; and when we function in that capacity, brothers and sisters, the glory of God will be manifested in our church.

Let us stand and receive this word. I hope that our brothers and sisters have also been listening to that word, sitting right there and receiving that teaching from the Word of God, because they too—all of us—have something in the Word of the Lord that applies to us.

We should always be people who desire, hunger, and thirst for the Word of God. In your spirit, receive the teaching now; in your spirit, receive the Word of the Lord; in your spirit say, “I want to be instructed by the Word of God. I want to be a person who is subject and submissive to the Word of the Lord. I need to be taught; I need to be disciplined and corrected. I need sound doctrine; the doctrine that heals is sound doctrine. The doctrine that corrects marriages, corrects families, corrects institutions, corrects churches, corrects schools, corrects government.” Oh, may the day come when the Word of God can course through every structure of this nation. That will be the time when we see the glory of God manifested in this nation.

Thank You, Father. Lord, fill us with Your Word today. Make us fruitful through Your truth. I ask You, Lord, to make this church a place that Your Word can penetrate, populated by hearts of flesh, Lord—not hearts of stone, but hearts of flesh open to Your teaching. Father, humble us, break us, mold us, and make us like Christ Jesus.

Father, I thank You for new families, new marriages, young people, people who are now entering Your church for the first time and who are the first in many generations to know the Gospel, and whom You are bringing to this church. I bless them and celebrate their presence among us, Lord. I celebrate single mothers, I celebrate single men, I celebrate the older people who are coming to church, Father; I celebrate young people who are only just beginning to know You, and I ask You to work in each of those sectors, Lord, and to raise up a young generation that is exemplary, a young generation with an appetite for Your Word, Lord; marriages in which the man and the woman function according to Your definition—not the world’s definition, but the definition of the Word of God—and a church, Father, a church that is neither afraid nor ashamed to proclaim Your truth in practical, simple, understandable ways; and a people open to everything that comes from Your mouth, Lord, who return to their homes with new mental notes on which to meditate and reflect as they consider how they will enter the next stage of growth.

Thank You, Father. I have declared Your Word, Lord, and Your Word is living and effective; Your Word is native, it is autonomous, it has life in itself, and I ask that this life move like a transforming wave through this people, changing the course of their lives. Lord, teach us to love Your simple Word, Father, and to proclaim it every day. We commit ourselves, Lord, to being a community obedient to Your Word, which we love, and we thank You for it.

Dismiss us in peace this afternoon, Lord. Dismiss us in peace to our homes, to enjoy the rest of this day of rest, Lord, with our family, our loved ones, our friends, or even alone, if that is what You want, Father; but we will have You, Lord, as our companion. We love You. Thank You for having us here today, in the name of Jesus. And the people of God say, amen. Glory to God, my brothers and sisters. Amen, amen. Greet one another and go in the peace of the Lord. God has good things for this people; this we know. Amen, amen.