Tozer Talks

“The Transforming Power of Love II“

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 22, 1956 Evening Service

There are three sections, passages of Scripture. Psalm 45:7: Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness. Therefore, God, thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And then in Matthew, the 22nd chapter, one of them which was a lawyer asked him a question, saying, tempting him, saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law. Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And then, 2 Corinthians 3:18: But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

This is the second in two talks on the transforming power of love. Before, I said three things, that we are all in process of becoming. That we are moving from what we were to what we will be. And that what we are is not what we were. And what we will be is not what we are. But that we are a fluid, changing, passing; moving toward what we love. That what we love is determining what we will be. And that finally, we will be like and bear the moral image of that which we love most.

And I said that loving wrong objects, deforms and debases and finally destroys the soul. And loving the right objects, particularly loving the right object with a capital “O,” we grow from glory to glory, as in the text, until we look upon His face. Now beginning there, that is the previous sermon.

Now, the question immediately arises. Are we responsible for our love? Are we responsible for the objects of our love? And I reply that always you can be sure of one thing. You are never responsible for anything that you can’t help. And you’re never condemned for anything that you’re not responsible for. Neither are we ever rewarded for anything that we cannot help. God is neither going to condemn me nor reward me if it rains tomorrow. He is not going to reward me nor condemn me because of any act which over which I have no control. And therefore, if I were not responsible for what I love, then God would not condemn me for loving the wrong thing, nor reward me for loving the right thing. Because you see, the love of God is a willed love.

And here now I want to raise the question and answer it. How can we direct our love? If I am to be morally the image of what I love and what I love most is to determine what I will be finally, then I also am responsible for loving the right and hating the wrong. Then how can I, since love is a whimsical thing and an emotion which I may feel or not feel, then how am I responsible before God and can I direct my love? Can we direct our love at all? Now, I think there’s an answer to this, and it’s a very simple answer. It’s here in the Bible. But it is a theoretical dilemma, nevertheless. The problem as the people see it is this. That love is whimsical and out of our control.

You’ll remember when you went to high school, you studied the tempest, or wasn’t it the tempest where Titania and Oberon had the little thing they called love-in-idleness? And when someone was asleep, this fairy came and squirted a little of the love-in-idleness juice upon the eyes of the sleeping one. And when he or she awoke, they fell in love with the first thing they saw. And that was Shakespeare’s way of summing up for us and humorously setting before us the idea that most people have of love. That it is not something that’s under the control of the will, but that it is a whimsical, love-in-idleness thing, which does as it pleases.

Now, that of course is an error, and the problem springs out of the error. And when we bring this into religion, we have a problem which is no problem at all because we’re confusing love with falling in love. The two are millions of miles apart, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.

Now some silly fellow may write himself a chorus and with a sickly smirk on his half-converted face. He may go around and testify that he fell in love with God. He ought to be ashamed to talk like that, because it’s unworthy of him and it’s unworthy of God. And it certainly doesn’t do anybody any good. We don’t love God by falling in love with God as some sickly swain of a moonlight night falling and he falls in love with the girl in the nearest farm.

Loving God is something altogether different from falling in love in the love-in-idleness Titania and Oberon business. Love for God, my brethren, is not the love of feeling but the love of willing. We will to love God and love God because we will to love Him. It is a moral thing. It is not an emotional thing. But somebody says, now wait a minute, isn’t the love of God a feeling?

The love of God becomes a feeling and goes on; it may go on to become a torrential thing. It may go on to sweep a man before it like a mighty tempest. It may go on to carry away everything as, why, a flood. Paul said the love of Christ constraineth me. And the translators have trouble with the word constrained, because they say the word does not mean constrained, exactly. It means to gather up, to take hold of and sweep away. And what Paul was saying was that the love of God was sweeping him before it like a torrent.

Well, you say then, how do you say that if the love of God sweeps a man’s heart before it as a torrent, as a tempest, then how is it you say that it’s a love of willing and not love of feelings? And the answer is, my brethren, that before there can be any love to be swept, before there can be any love for God that can grow into a torrent, there must first be a willing to love God. I must will to do the will of God. If any man is willing to do My will. If any man wills to do My will.

Now, if this love were a torrential thing to start with. If it were the wind that blows; now hears the sound thereof and knowest not which way it’s going to blow. If it were a bird that circled twice and landed on a bush, and you knew not what bush it was going to land on. If your love for God was that unpredictable, whimsical thing, then how could Jesus say that the greatest commandment in the law was it we should love God?

You can’t commend yourself to fall in love in a romantic sense of the word. In the romantic sense of the word, love flies around and lights on the bush. But in the divine sense of the word and in the sense in which we’re using it tonight, there is no such a silly whimsicality. It is that we are in control of our love. And we love what we want to love, and we love what we allow ourselves to love. And we love what we compel ourselves to love, so that when Jesus Christ our Lord said that this is the first and greatest commandment: Thou shalt love God; it was Torrey that said about it, that if the loving of God is the first and greatest commandment, failing to love God is the first and greatest sin. And he’s perfectly right in that. I can’t see where a flaw could be found in that logic. If to love God is the supreme act of a human heart, then not to love God is the supreme degradation of the human heart.

So, I am accountable to love God. I am not accountable to fall in love with God and sing, I’m in love with the lover of my soul. We’re not responsible for that. But I am responsible as a moral creature to face up to the fact that there are some things that I ought to love and some things that I should not love. And then take myself by the scruff of the neck and turn myself around and say, wait a minute here, what are you waiting for anyway, a feather blown in the wind? Or are you a man once made in the image of God? And are you going to assert the sovereign will which God has placed within you and turn your eyes to God and righteousness and love that which is right? Certainly, the latter and not the former is the proper thing for any man. So, the love for God is the love of willing. That man loves God who wills to love God in repentance. Repentance must be there before they can be any proper loving of God.

Nowadays, there’s a great deal of shallow nature mysticism and psychology mysticism where you think right thoughts and all the rest. But everybody that has ever met God in the bush knows one thing. He knows that before he can love God as he ought, before he can even begin to love God, there must be repentance for sin. The sinner can’t love God. The man who loves sin can’t love God. You can’t love opposites. You can’t be going north and south at the same time. You can’t be black and white at once. You cannot be good and bad at the same moment. And so, you cannot love righteousness and love sin at the same time. We cannot love heaven and hell at the same moment. Those are opposites and they cancel each other out.

So, there must be repentance. I am responsible to repent. If I do not love God and know that I do not love God, I am responsible to repent for not loving God. For I am breaking the first and greatest commandment. A man says, now wait a minute, Mr. Tozer. I’m not so bad. I have not broken any of the Ten Commandments that I know of. I do not worship idols. I do not covet anybody’s property. I do not swear, I do not lie. I am reasonable in my keeping of the commandments to worship on the Sabbath day. And I have not broken the commandments. And my answer is, my brother, do you love God? Do you love God with your will and with your heart. And do you love God with all your strength?

Did you notice that our Lord Jesus back here made it to be something over which we had control. He said: Thou shall love the Lord with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. And in another place, He said with all thy strength. We love God with all our minds, that is, with our intellects. We love God with all our hearts, that is, with our feelings finally. And we love God with all our strength. That is, the summed-up ability of our moral nature. And if we do not, then we ought to repent. We ought to start now.

Giving to the church won’t do it. Going to church won’t do it. Going to Sunday school won’t do it. Going to a Sunday school class won’t do it. Reading your Bible won’t do it. There is nothing that will do it except repentance for failing to do it. I go to God and determine that I’m going to correct this thing. Just as if, suppose that I had a dietary habit that was killing me. Suppose that I loved something that was killing me. Suppose that I was in love with whipped cream or cake icing or chocolate candy or something else and wouldn’t eat anything else. And I went to doctor after doctor, and they all said what about your diet? And I said, well, I live on chocolate drops. And they would say to me, well, you’re going to kill yourself with that. Now, that’s only a guess. I don’t know whether you could kill yourself. If you eat enough chocolate, you’d wish you were dead, I’m sure of that.

But suppose now that you had a dietary habit that was killing you. Now, what would you do about it, my brother? You’d determine, you’d say, well, here, I’m not being blown back and forth by every wind, every gust, every Zephyr. I’m going to straighten this out, and you’d get ahold of yourself.

When our red-headed friend, Brother Maxey, went to be examined for his missionary, going out as a missionary. The doctor said to him in words to this effect, you’re as healthy as a horse. Only you’re five pounds overweight. And so Brother Maxey, now easily believed that if he was five pounds overweight, they wouldn’t send him to the field and he’s going to get to the field if it killed him.

So as much as he loved to eat, he went on a diet. And I got a sadistic delight eating in the restaurant with him and ordering a good round meal and seeing him nibble on lettuce. For a North Carolinian that had been brought up on good food, he loves it, and to see him sit there and shake his head and nibble on lettuce while I ate to my heart’s content. He took himself in hand and lost five pounds, believe it or not, and brought himself down. Now that’s only an illustration and no more. It is to say that God has given us reason and he’s given us will.

And he’s given us again, moral perception. And I know whether I love God, because if I’m loving God, I’m keeping the commandments of God. I’m over on God’s side. I’m listening to God. I’m obeying God. And if I don’t love Him, then I repent for not loving Him. I don’t wait around for the breezes of emotion to blow me. I determine that I’m going to repent of this thing and then I’m going to amend my life. If I’m on a diet that’s killing me, then there’s only one way to do and that’s not to pray for the Lord to heal me, but just to get my diet straightened out. A lot of people are praying for the Lord to give them health, but they couldn’t keep it 20 minutes if they got it because they’re living a life that’s destroying that health.

If I wanted to go to St. Paul and the car started south toward Indianapolis, I could pray till I die for God to get me to St. Paul. But I’m traveling away from St. Paul. If I want to get to St. Paul, I’ve got to aim towards St. Paul. And so, whatever I want God to do for me, I’ve got to begin to move in that direction. I’ve got to amend my life and then have a fixed determination that all that old past of loving self and loving things that are unworthy, should all pass away, and that I should love God. And thus, God becomes the object of my affection and the object of my love.

So, we are not subject to chance. And we’re not, I repeat for the second or fourth time, blown about. But we are responsible beings, responsibly loving God. And since the love of God is a will of love, we are then responsible to love Him with all our hearts. And as we love Him more and more, and that which is now a will, a fixed determination, becomes a moral habit within us. Then the band starts to play, and the flowers start to bloom and the fragrances begin to be shed upon the air. And then comes the joys and delights people talked about here tonight in their testimonies. But they didn’t get that joy and delight to start with. They began by seeing they were wrong. And seeing they were headed in the wrong direction. And realizing that if they were going to do right, they were going to have to turn their faces around to God and begin to love God, and will to love him and will to believe in Him and obey Him. And then God found them there. God always finds us where we are and not somewhere else.

Now that verse in Psalm 45 which I have read several times and quoted where it says that thou hast loved righteousness. And what is the other part of the verse–hated wickednes? Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness. And I repeat, that it is morally impossible to love righteousness without hating it’s opposite.

There are those who would make Christians to be soft, saccharin, sticky. I picked up a hymn book this morning. I got up a little early and went downstairs, and I was looking over a hymn book. And this hymn book was a late thing. It isn’t a hymn book. You couldn’t be ethically honest and call it hymn book. It was a religious, romantic songbook. And as I went over page after page after page after page, I revolted from it. A saccharin, sticky, religio-romantic, falling in love, subjective-type of thing that just makes you sick to your stomach.

Now, that kind of thing, dear God in heaven knows, isn’t true Christianity. True Christianity is a fixed determination to love God or die and belief in Jesus Christ which raises us to the level where we can do all that through the new birth.

And then along with that there comes a rigid hatred of everything that’s contrary to God and contrary to the things of God. We don’t hate people. We love the world as God loved the world of humanity in its sin. But we have ability to hate.

The devil would love, the devil would just like the communists. You know, the communists love to get rid of men who fight them. They love to silence any man that’s keen and sharp enough to learn when they’re eating at the foundation. They love to silence the man who is bold enough to call them by their right name. And in the name of liberty and tolerance, they silence us while they go digging at our foundations like the devilish locust out of hell. They’re eating at our foundations and destroying our liberties in the name of the liberty that they’re destroying. And hiding behind the constitution, which they hate like hell, in order that they might be free to destroy that same constitution and substitute another for it.

That’s communism. And the devil is the Inspirer of communism. And just as his dialectic operates politically, it operates spiritually too. And he would love to have all of us Christians, big, soft, spongy hunks of sweet pink whipped cream; no backbone, no fire, no teeth, no anything; just loving and loving and loving and loving.

Well, the Bible says of Jesus Christ: Thou has loved righteousness and hated wickedness. The same Jesus Christ that loved righteousness till He died, hated evil till He died. And the same Jesus Christ that died for sinners hated the sin that had destroyed the sinner and what we are responsible to love.

Now, I want to point out a few things to you. I had another text which I knew, that here in this fundamentalist city of Chicago, that I’d be chased out of town and down an alley somewhere if I quoted it. But I wanted to quote a text from the book called Wisdom Book, from the Wisdom of Solomon. The Wisdom of Solomon, that apocryphal book of the Old Testament that begins like this: Love righteousness, ye rulers of the earth, and then goes on to tell men why we ought to love righteousness. Wonderful, not inspired of God in the sense the other Scriptures are, but certainly, as the old translators said, helpful to Christian living–love righteousness.

First of all, of course, we must love God. And as I said before, the stream in human life runs over the falls, but cannot run back up over the falls. So, there must be a miracle of the grace of God whereby the whole life is lifted to a new plane. That’s what we call the new birth; that we call regeneration. And when that takes place and we’re lifted up onto a new level, then our eyes are turned toward God.

So loving God is first. God is the deep glowing center of our heart’s affections. And I am most happy to be able to preach a religion that is not a religion of determination only. It originates in that. It originates in will. All religion lies in the will. But that it is a religion that is enjoyable.

God has given us enjoyment along with our Christian life. Joy unspeakable and full of glory, Peter said. And Paul said: Rejoice always. Again, I will say, rejoice, showing that even rejoicing was something it’s in the power of the will. The Holy Ghost would never command a man to do something he couldn’t do. The Holy Ghost never said to anybody, feel sick now. You couldn’t do that. You can’t feel sick at will. Something comes, it doesn’t come. And the Holy Ghost never would have said “rejoice” if it had been something that you couldn’t command.

Some of you gloomy saints, fresh courage takes the clouds you so much dread are big with blessing and will break in mercy on your head. That’s reversed, but that’s the truth of it. And you gloomy saints, rejoice, again I will say rejoice. There’s rejoicing in God.

Now, it is our Christian bound and duty to love righteousness and hate evil. For if we love evil and hate righteousness, we are by the law of transmutation being changed into what we love most. The trouble with the world is that they love unrighteousness. And because they love unrighteousness, they are becoming unrighteous. And it’s the law of moral life that we grow more and more what we are. He that is unrighteous, let him be getting more unrighteous still. And he that is holy, let him be getting holier still, is the law of the New Testament. And it is the law of the future life as well. So loving unrighteousness; how many people there are in the world that love unrighteousness. And then there is wisdom. We are duty bound to love moral wisdom. That wisdom that is of God that cometh down from above, that solemn wisdom.

I was thinking of a certain politician, and you wouldn’t be able to squeeze his name out of me on a bet. But I was thinking of a certain politician who would rather be funny than to tell the truth. And then I’m thinking about the old statesmen that one time carried America on their shoulders. The serious-browed, old Heinrich, the man of God that stood there, Webster and Patrick Henry. And these men who stood, great, solid men who are not masters of quip. And Bob Hope could have the stage they didn’t want it. But when they rose to speak, they were solid and sound and real and grave; and their utterances came like an utterance of an Old Testament prophet. They meant what they said and said what they meant and took the consequences. We’ve degenerated now into smart alecks and quip artists. And it’s the same in the kingdom of God. That there is a moral wisdom, my brethren. And I’m sorry that our young people have been fed on radio and television to a point where the average conversation among young people is a conversation of everlasting paring and quipping. Rarely a sensible thing is said, rarely a sensible thing.

But there is a wisdom. And God built it into the human mind and built it into the human heart. And sin is trying to get it out and change the wise man into a fool. And we love foolishness instead of loving wisdom. What a sad, portentous thing it is that the entertainers make more money than the President of the United States. What a sad and portentous thing that the great Jewish doctor Salk who invented or perfected the polio vaccine that may save all our little boys and girls from the curse of polio in another generation or less. What does he get out of it? But the clown and the smart aleck and the fool, he’s paid as though he were an angel in heaven.

A man died in New York last week. He was a funny boy, the son of one of our Alliance preachers. A funny boy he was. And he wrote plays that were done on Broadway. But he died. He’s dead now. Dear God, I wonder. He knew his old godly father and had been brought up in a home where prayer was important. I wonder if he had time to do anything about in the last hours. I wouldn’t give a plug nickel for his chance. A man who could sell out to the stage and theater; a man who could sell out and write comical articles for the national magazines about his father, making fun of religion and God and piety and seriousness and wisdom. I wonder if the last five minutes of his life he got right with God. He’ll go down as one of America’s half dozen, perhaps or dozen great playwrights. The Bible says we’re not to call each other fools. But the Bible has no hesitation in calling a man a fool who lives contrary to the sound moral wisdom that God built into him. The fool is the man who lives as if there was only one world, and this was it. The wise man is the one who lives as if there were two worlds and this one didn’t matter too much.

Then we’re responsible to love people. Responsible to love people, but we’re responsible to hate everything that injures people. We’re responsible to love purity and hate all forms of uncleanness. And how some professed Christians can listen all day long to clowns and comedians. And all evening long clowns and comedians with their double entendre and their double meanings, and their borderline dirt, is more than I know. How I can love the Sermon on the Mount and the dirty tongue comedian. I don’t know.

We are responsible to love purity and hate all forms of uncleanness. We are responsible to love honesty, and every shady dealing we’re responsible to hate. We’re responsible to love peace and hate contention and trouble. Responsible to love pity and to hate cruelty. We’re responsible to love humility and hate pride. If all the children of God loved humility and hated pride; there are certain great religious leaders who would have to go out of business and get a job delivering milk because they run on pride and self-aggrandizement.

But the true Christian loves humility and loves the humble soul and temperance. We are responsible to love temperance and hate gluttony, and hate drunkenness, and hate everything that destroys the temple of the Holy Ghost. So, these are the things that were responsible to love; love righteousness you rulers of the earth. Love temperance you children of the Most High God. Love purity you sons and daughters of the fall. Love honesty you businessman. Love wisdom you student. Love humility in man and woman. Love temperance you who want to be the temple of the Holy Ghost.

Now, these things that I have mentioned are not God. They are not God any more than the rainbow around the throne is God. And if you were to gaze God-ward and be enabled to see if the veil were to be removed and you were to look upon that solemn scene there. You would see God, and dimly seeing, you would see then, brightly see a rainbow around the throne. And that rainbow is not God. But you can’t look at God without seeing the rainbow.

And so, I say these things that I have mentioned and said we are duty bound to love are not God. They are the colors in the rainbow around the throne. And I cannot love them without looking God-ward, and I cannot love God without seeing them.

So, you will become like that which you love. If you love wisdom with all your heart, you will become wise in God. If you love purity, you will become pure. If you love honesty, you will become honest, and it will become a second nature to you. If you love truth, you will hate error and lies. If you love peace, you will become peaceful. If you love pity, you will become kind. If you love humility, you’ll become humble. And if you love temperance, you’ll beget self-control.

But if you love gluttony and drunkenness, you will become a beast and not a man. If you love pride, you’ll grow into the image of the devil who fell from pride. If you will love cruelty, you will grow into the image of the demons that are cruel. And if you love error and lies, you will be after the devil who is the father of lies. And in shady dealing you will become like Judas in all forms of uncleanness. Sodom and Gomorrah became like that which they loved, and God destroyed them.

Somebody said, why should God destroy the Canaanites. And those who dug back into the records show that the Canaanites were so morally impure and so rotten with venereal disease that the only safe thing for the human race was that some of the nations of Canaan should be exterminated, boy and girl, man and woman down to the last one, no cure possible. They had become like that which they loved. They had given themselves over to their model and become like their model, and God said, I can’t even rescue them. They’re irremediable. They’re beyond salvage. So, he sent the Jews to destroy them. He sent fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. And he’ll send fire on the world in that terrible day of whirlwind, when the world has become like the object of its affection.

It isn’t a small matter that you love the wrong thing. It isn’t a small matter, young fellow, that you giggle at a dirty joke. It isn’t a small thing, young lady, that you allow yourself to hear things that your grandmother would have blushed to hear. It isn’t a small thing; you will become like that which you allow yourself to love.

Four of us preachers, Mr. Maxey, Mc Afee and the young people’s preacher and myself got out of a car down here. And here were three women, nine o’clock in the morning, 8:30 in the morning. And here were three women. Not one of them old, not one of them over 33, 4 or 5. And they were all drunk at 8:30 in the morning. I looked at them and I saw that oily, sweaty face and those baggy, funny eyes that stare and don’t see. And they were kidding each other about being drunk. God made them in His image, and He made them to be the daughters of Eve that he took from the rib of Adam. And He entrusted the jewel to them and they sold it out. There comes a time when God can’t do anything. We have become like that which we love.

Now, what do you love most? Just as sure as you live and breathe this hour, what you love most is what you will be finally. Will you this night trust God and make a quick turnabout, a U-turn on the road of life, a U-turn on the road of life. Will you turn and face toward the light this evening? And before your God say, O God, I repent this night before Thy cross for loving wrong things and taking the image of the things I loved. But I want to love right things, and above all, I want to love Thee and become the image of Thee. Our Christ rescues us from the tragedy of evil loves.

Young man, Christ will rescue you. Remember that. The juvenile delinquent, the boy that the police are after. Was he always liked that? No. There was a time when he cried, and his mother kissed him. He wasn’t always like that. He learned to be tough. He learned it. He turned away from good things and he turned to bad things. And he’s fallen in love with bad things. And he’s becoming what he loves.

And Jesus Christ rescues us from bad loves. And, oh, the wonder and the glory of a . . . You know, I don’t think we make enough of it, dear people. I’m one of the quietest fellows. I go around with my mouth shut. And I sit up here and never breathe until it’s time to preach. And I don’t make enough of it. I’m afraid. And because I’m not perfect, I’m not satisfied with myself; always beating myself over the head. I’m six foot four, and I’m beating myself because I’m not six foot five, so to speak. I’m not that tall. But I think we ought to celebrate what God saved us from, we Christians, really. We are not what we’re going to be but thank God we’re not what we used to be. By the grace of God, we’re what we are. And I think we ought to celebrate what we’ve been delivered from, don’t you brother? I think so. The Lord will rescue from evil loves. Jesus Christ came into the world to do that very thing.

Would you put yourself in His hands tonight? Will to do it. But you say, I don’t feel like doing it. I warn you. If you wait for feeling, you’ll wait till you die. Do it because you know you ought to. God has given you a will.

You’re driving down the highway and you see a great truck coming across the white line and your family is in the car. You don’t say to your wife, I don’t feel like turning out. I don’t feel like it. You got a wheel there. And you give that wheel a strong, quick turn to the right and miss him by six inches and say, what a roadhog he was and almost got us. But you didn’t get saved and save your family from that wreck by waiting for the wind to blow your car over or waiting for an impulse within you couldn’t control. You took a hold of the wheel, and you turned it and saved yourself.

So, the wheel of your life is your will. My God, I will to turn away from iniquity. I will to turn to Thee. I Will to believe in Thy son, Jesus, tonight. I will to do it. That’s the wheel of your life. Which way are you going to turn. Some, I’m sorry to say, have turned it head on and crashed and they’re finished. Some have turned it right and they’re all right.

So, now what about you tonight? Jesus Christ is your only hope. If there is any hope in all the wide world, Jesus Christ is it, and He is it. What about it tonight? He will save me. He will save me. He will save you. He will deliver you completely, absolutely. Young men and women, in God’s awful name, remember, you’re becoming, and you will become what you love and admire. Great God, that you might not admire the wrong thing and love the wrong thing; choose the wrong models and follow the wrong guides. Jesus Christ is the model and the guide, the essence and sum of all that your soul needs and wants. Turn to Him tonight won’t you. Turn to Jesus Christ tonight. Take Him as your guide forever starting now.

And you believers, you who have been born again, you who say you have accepted Christ. How have you been living the last week? What have you been admiring? What’s thrilled you? What’s caused you to be happy? What have you gotten your joy out of? What are you modeling after? Who are you following?

Great God in heaven, I pray that it might be the right one. I invite you tonight to the place of prayer, this room in here. I invite you to the place of prayer. We’re going to stand and we’re going to sing. And as we sing, I want every man, every woman, every young person that will to become God’s follower, that wills to become a Christian to come down here. And I want every believer, every Christian, that’s ashamed of what you’ve allowed yourself to become, and you want to make a change tonight or radical change, and that you might become what you should be under God. I want you to come. Stand please.