Reckoning that Counts
Mike Doyle · Jan 30, 2005
Reckoning That Counts, No. 05
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262319496728

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

OK, before we get going on today's stuff, I thought that what I'd like to do is just for maybe five minutes, do a little bit of a review of last week, because there's a couple of things in the chapter that I think are really important to us. You remember last week when we were talking about Miles mentioned what what was foundational. Do you remember talking about the foundational truths and there were four of them? Anybody remember what they were? And the reason I'm bringing this up is because it's on page 16 of your book.

He says there are four things that are foundational and he prefaces the paragraphs by saying there can be no growth unto maturity without an established foundation. Keep in mind, not only for your own spiritual growth, but for your ministering to others, that these four things are foundational. They are not growth truths. The reason that it's so important that we have a handle on these is not only for our own understanding, but when the Lord brings somebody in your life to minister to, when you kind of sit with them and figure out quote-unquote where they are, this will give you a handle as to determine where you might want to start with them.

The first foundational truth is born anew in Christ. Obviously, that would be the first one, right? But now watch these other three because it's interesting. The second one is accepted in Christ. The fact that a believer is totally accepted in Christ before God. No impediments. The third one is eternally secure in Christ, which is another way of saying the security of salvation. And the fourth one is positioned in Christ. And there's verses that are attached on page 16 and 17, verses established with that.

Now listen to this sentence that he says, it is futile to seek to grow by means of these truths. They are foundational, but it is imperative that we grow upon this imperishable foundation. The reason I bring this up is that if you haven't noticed yet, In the seven, eight months we've been studying some of Myles' writings, he's very precise in terms of building the foundation and then step by step moving on from there. He's dealing with principles and he deals with them in a sequential manner.

I've been so guilty of the Lord bringing somebody to me and right away I want to lay identification truths on them. when I haven't checked to see if their foundation is secure. So that's why I'm bringing it up. It's really important, not only for your own understanding, but when you minister to others, that as you sit with them initially, to talk to them about these four things and see where they are, to see if they're settled down on these four issues, and then you can go on to the growth truths. And the growth truths, obviously, are the identification truths. That's where they start.

Now, the one other thing I want to mention is at the end of the chapter, on page 18, he talks about the pillars of knowledge having to do with position upon which the Christian life is to be secured and mature. And I wanted to review those quickly. The first one is, it's knowledge of our birth, acceptance, security, and the Lord Jesus is the first pillar.

The second pillar, is the knowledge of His cross as our cross, is the central pillar. The cross of Calvary is not only the central fact of the universe, but it's also of the life of the believer. As we see our identification with Christ and His death unto sin, we know His cross to be our cross. Your positional separation from your sin nature, from the world, from the flesh, from the devil, is specifically centered in your co-crucifixion with Christ.

See that? The third pillar is the other side of the cross. The knowledge that we are alive and complete in our risen Lord places us securely upon the third pillar. You see what he's saying. Those are the three pillars. There's a foundation, which is really pillar number one. But the three pillars of your spiritual growth are based on these three things. As we go through the rest of the book, you're going to see that that's what he bases all of his teaching upon.

So I would say that you couldn't spend too much time there in those things. Any questions? I found that, I'm counseling with a guy on Wednesday nights, I found that I spent the whole time this last Wednesday going over those foundational things with him. I've been meeting with this guy for six months and I thought to myself, I better make sure here.

And it was interesting, I think it was beneficial to me and to him. Today we're working on Chapter 5. It's called Service and Reckoning. It's a rather interesting chapter for those of us who read it. Good. We were kidding before. I came down here and she's busily reading. So the first eight questions are true or false. The first one is the barrenness of life produces busyness. True or false? I spelled it wrong, didn't I? I did. Yeah, I'm sorry. I can't even cut and paste without making a mistake. Thank you. Oh, I must have been thinking about something else. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, actually, I was.

What do you think about that? Barrenness of life produces busyness. Understand what he's saying? If your life is spiritually barren, you're going to get busy to try to make something happen. No? That's assuming that you're well-intentioned, right? So busyness does not necessarily produce a barren life. It's the other way around. Right? You comfortable with that? I mean, I have to say that this chapter was kind of intimidating. If you're a worker bee. Or if you're, like he says, if you're a pew parasite, you're probably okay. But if you're a worker bee, this really intimidated you.

You know, I think even the world sees this, right? Have you ever seen the bumper sticker that says, Jesus is coming, you better look busy? Yeah. Well, actually, I shared this very chapter with my Bible study. And one of the gals said, when your life is empty, you try to fill it with anything. It doesn't matter. Just anything so that it's not empty. Yeah, that's exactly right.

It's such an anomaly in the human psyche. Carol and I have been realtors for a long time. One of the things you discover is people will sell their small home and buy a big one, right? And they would think, oh, gee, I don't have enough furniture and stuff for this house. Well, in six months they do. You know, they'll fill that sucker up to the walls. It's the same thing with your life, you know?

If service is the emphasis of the believer's life, he is probably motivated by the old nature. What do you think? The paragraph that he says the majority of active members in sound churches today are primarily doers Their chief concern is to work for the Lord But service Being the emphasis of their life. They are for the most part motivated by self. What do you think about that?

And why would that be so? I think about Jesus saying, if you love me, keep my commandments. And another parable he gave about which of you being the ruler, you come in and then you feed your servants. You expect your servants to come feed you first before they eat. And then the servant says, I am an unprofitable servant.

I've only done what's required of me. There's a lot of emphasis on doing. Oh, absolutely. not to be critical of other bodies of believers, but if there's no understanding within the confines of a church about the identification truths, they're stuck with themselves, are they not? They only got them to think about it. It's never dawned on them that self may be the problem. So automatically, one is going to get busy and try to produce for the Lord.

And then, what a great opportunity for Flash or Satan or whatever to start that little comparison wheel. That's right. That's exactly right. And you know, there are certain temperaments, there are certain people that are doers, and there are others that aren't. And every group has some doers, you know?

My son gets this ant farm for Christmas, right? We are real happy to have it, by the way. And so then we had to send away and get the ants. The ants came in an envelope last week. Put them in this little thing, and the stuff all is this blue gel, right? Well, I'm watching these guys, and they're amazing.

There are some that sort of take it easy, Six or seven of them in there that are the workers, and they're doing everything. What's interesting is that the self can imitate the life of Christ. Do you agree with that? What's the problem with imitation though? That's right, it isn't Him. It's your imitation. It isn't His life. And so, the interesting thing about this is that it's not all bad if you're a worker bee.

Because the Lord will take you under his wing and pretty soon run you out of gas. And you will begin to discover that whatever you've been doing isn't fulfilling. Or, put it another way, all these people you've been ministering to, one day it dawns on you, they don't care. You know, as long as you're performing, they're smiling, but nothing spiritually is happening. And so that's a kind of a devastating revelation when that happens. But it's alright because you learn the difference between yourself and Christ Himself. And I think we have to learn that. That's a process that everybody has to go through and that you learn that the results of self-effort is what? What? Is what? Failure. Death.

Is there anything from self that God would accept? Even if you put holy water on it? But you know, in sin, the Lord allows us to fail himself, and it's not the whole thing is a failure, because he has something even better. So it's like we sort of think it's like that, but yet he's working for good in all of it, because he's teaching us, you know, to go over there.

That's right. When we're studying James on Tuesday, in the first chapter we talk about being tempted to sin. And there's two words, parásmas and dakimás. Parásmas, I think I have these right, parásmas is a temptation to sin that if you took the bait and sinned, you would fail. You would be condemned. Dakimás is the same temptation, but God intervenes and uses that to approve you. That's what you're talking about.

So when Romans 8.28 says that God works all things together for good to those who are called according to his purpose and to those who love him, he can and will, because you're one of his sons, take what appears to be even worker-be-ism and work it to approve you. Now you may be doing this, but he's in the middle working. So no matter what the environment is, even in a chapter like this, there's no condemnation. God uses all of this to approve you, which is really cool.

That doesn't give me an excuse to do it. When growth in Christ is given first place, service will suffer. False? Cool. If you read those paragraphs, he talks about the The worker bees especially, when you speak to them about spiritual growth being before service, they think you're crazy. They think you're nuts because there's too much to be done.

Why would you take the time out to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus first and then worry about the service later? Can't you see the need? So that brings up the question, do you go because the need's there? Why do you go into any service? Because the need's there and it's apparent to you that, oh man, there's a huge need here, and I can help.

Is that why you do it? How many think that's it? Come on you chickens, get your hands in the air. How many think that isn't it, and if it isn't, what is it? You go because you've been called, not because the need is great. Most missionary groups, that travel around and go to churches, that's the focus of their program. Don't you see the need?

And you need to go and fix it. Or what is known as the Great Commission. They use the Great Commission not understanding that the King James uses the word as an imperative, like it's called, you go, but that isn't what it means at all. It means in the going. Wherever you're going, whatever you're doing. So it doesn't have to be a thousand miles away, it can be two feet away.

Prefaced by spiritual growth. Not that God won't grow you in the ministry, he will, but the preparation time is invaluable. I was taught that you do this service and through that you learn the doctrine about God. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Yeah, it's so subtle.

It's the Martha Mary syndrome. Which one had the better place? Martha or Mary? Mary did. She's lazy. What is she doing sitting at the feet of the Lord Jesus? She needs to be in there doing the dishes. You know? Frying up the burgers. What is the deal here? You know? Do you see the point? And the Lord Jesus says to her, you have the better place. There's no substitute for learning of Him. The learning of Him comes first. Right? Okay. Those who are badgered into a decision will be more likely to come to get rather than to give. True or false? It's true. So what's the problem with that? Not motivated. Our responsibility in service is not to force decisions. Right?

So, it's to allow the Holy Spirit to beget healthy souls through the Word and through the testimony of our lives. What is the testimony of the life? What is it? It's Christ in you. When the Lord has you prepared, you will be what you teach. You understand what I mean by that? What will come out of your mouth will be what you are. And so therefore, that's why the time for the preparation is. He says we are first to be witnesses, then sole winners. See that?

I used to kid, you know, we've been praying for Sharm Sherman. Sharm used to be the general manager of the Athletes in Action when he first came to our group. He and I used to have some spirited debates about what their ministry was. You know, Athletes in Action is a part of Campus Crusade, and they used to travel around in the fall of the year and play Division I basketball teams, and then seized the opportunity to witness for Christ either after the game or halftime or however they did it. And I asked them one day, I said, well, let's say you have somebody on a college campus someplace, you know, believe in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, what do you do?

Because you're gone to the next town next day. He said, well, we try to follow up. Well, the thing about it is, is that if you are what you say, and you are in the position where God would bring somebody to his son just because you're standing there, because you've been prepared, you will not let that soul go somewhere. Even if you're traveling, you'll be checking in all the time.

Because, I mean, watch how the Apostle Paul did it. You know, he would be in a town, he would stay there, he would teach them the whole gospel, and then what did he do? He wrote them letters. He checked on them all the time, because he was their father. And so you don't, Do these evangelistic crusades and then just leave the souls to flounder, or make these decisions.

Interesting quote that Myles puts in here, he said, When the Lord Jesus is reigning and manifest in us, others will be hungry for Him. And then he quotes that, Sir, we would see Jesus. Isn't that a great statement out of John 12? So when the Holy Spirit has convicted them of their need for the Savior, they'll freely exercise repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It won't be tough. It won't be tough. So what do you do? If you're convicted about your badgering, now what are you going to do? That's the right answer. He says that you'll not be badgering people into a decision to get saved before they even know they're lost. God's will for the believer is expressed in the word being, which will in turn result in effective doing. What do you think about that? True or false? Explain that. What does that mean?

Why is being first and doing second? If you're in any kind of a ministry One of the pitfalls of the ministry is to gauge its success on how well they're doing. Do you understand what I mean by that? In other words, if I'm a teacher and I'm teaching this class, one of the biggest mistakes I can make is to base the success of my teaching on how you guys are all coming along. Why is that a problem? Or why shouldn't I do that? I'm sorry? The emphasis is on the individual. Right. And is it inappropriate for me to be aware of whether you're coming along or not? I think it is, to some degree. But the success or failure isn't based on my skill.

The success or failure is based on the Holy Spirit implementing the Word of God in you. And the focus is always on the Lord Jesus, not on the work. So, if you find yourself disappointed, it's because you're trusting yourself. Because you can't get disappointed in what God's doing. So, I don't want to say there's a balance here. There's absolutely an awareness as someone is coming along and absorbing the information and focusing in on the Lord Jesus and there's an awareness if they're not.

But you can't go to what Miles calls a pew parasite and jack them up a little bit. Give them a little shot, you know. And those little shots that I call them, what those are are just a little bit of law to get them moving. Right? The problem with that is it kills the whole deal. Law condemns, it doesn't motivate.

So you learn to keep your hands off and your faith on, and you learn to stay focused on the Lord Jesus as what he's doing. You get to be excited because you're involved in the mix. It's really neat that way. Because then the success or failure doesn't rest on your shoulders, it rests on the work of the Holy Spirit. And you'll learn over time to have a confidence in the work of the Spirit that He's going to do what He said He's going to do.

How successful would I be at conforming one soul to the image of Christ? Zippo! I can't do that. And that's what God's stated purpose is, right? So it's a job that only the Holy Spirit can do. It's cool that we're all interdependent on each other, though, and God uses us for the purpose in everybody else's life. I think that's the way he does it. But we all are pointing to Christ.

So being his first and doing his second, you'll find that in most... Well, I'll give you an example. How many of you read the Purpose Driven Church or Life? What? Rick Warren would be disappointed. Is that about being or doing? Any of it. Is any of it about being? What's about doing?

I started in the first chapter, and once he started, he laid a little grace on you in the first chapter, right? But once you get to the end of the first and go into the second, it's like, okay, line up, here we go. This is what you're going to do and what you need to do. I stopped reading it then. I read the chapter headings and put it away. He's not unique. Go into any Christian bookstore and 95% of what's on those shelves is all about doing. Very little of it is about being.

Right? In the subtle form, one form or another. What was the prayer of Jabez about? It was about doing. Wasn't it? You had to do, the whole point of the prayer of Jabez was if you could figure out how to use the spiritual mouse, you could get God to react. That's what the prayer of Jabez is about. That's the whole thing. Expand my territory. Really? I thought the Lord Jesus won it all at the cross. So what am I praying for?

What was the one before that? About every two years there's a new one. Every two years there's a new one and it's all doing. I remember when I was first a Christian, a guy hands me a book and it says, now that you've become a Christian, here's what you do. And I was like, well, here's what Christians do, and this is what you need to do. And I read it, and I didn't know. I thought, okay, looks cool to me. Then I went to a church and nobody was doing the things that this guy said that we ought to be doing. Strange. God's ultimate purpose in saving us is that he might win others to himself.

True or false? How many think it's true? How many think it's false? So what is the ultimate purpose? What does God say His purpose is? What does He say His ultimate purpose is? What's that? To glorify Him. To glorify Him. And how does He do it? He conforms us to the image of Christ. He conforms us to the image of Christ. That's exactly right. I have a question on that.

We know God does do those things. But the question here is God's ultimate purpose. This is what is God's motivation kind of a thing. What's the Bible part that tells us God speaking, this is my motivation. Anybody know what the verse is? Romans 8, 28 and 29. God works all things together for good to those who love Him, to those who are called according to what? His purpose. Those He foreknew, He foreordained to be what?

To be conformed to the image of His Son, so that Christ may be the firstborn. God works all things in a believer's life to that purpose, to conform him to the image of his son. So you read that and you say, okay, I understand that. I see that the direction in which I'm going in my life, as God takes me along, is to conform me to the image of his son, and not only that, he's going to use everything for that goal, right? How does he do it? I'm looking around for the everything, the all things. How does he do it? How does the actual confirmation conformity take place? Self-denial. You walk by faith. Anybody else? Abide. That's good.

It's 2 Corinthians 3.18. It's really kind of a subtle verse. Here's how it goes. Beholding with unveiled face, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord. What's the mirror? Right here. This is the mirror. Beholding with unveiled face the reflective image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then what does it say?

I am transformed or transfigured from one state of glory to another state of glory into His very image, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. So, although circumstances and suffering and things may get you prepared, the conformity process itself takes place by you beholding the glory of the Lord in the Word. That's how it happens. That's why intimacy with Him and fellowship with Christ is so critical in a believer's life. That's why you read your Bible, to behold His glory. And the Holy Spirit takes that beholding and transforms you, conforms you to the very image of Christ. So what's happening?

He's carrying out the purpose that he stated in Romans 8.28 and showing you in 2 Corinthians 3.18 how he's going to do it. Seems pretty simple to me. So when you study your Bible tonight, or tomorrow, or whenever you do it, what you're in there to do is behold the glory of the Lord. You're not in there to learn a bunch of biblical facts that you can regurgitate from your memory.

You're there to fellowship and have intimacy with Christ, and that intimacy is what conforms you. And the result is that God is glorified. Right? You can't glorify Him in and of yourself. It has to be Christ in you that does it. You see that? Because it's God's glory. Isn't you imitating it? It's His glory being manifested through you and to you. Pretty cool, huh? I mean, I like the program. In there, there's no law. It's all grace.

Is that okay? The altruistic church member is appalled at the thought of placing growth ahead of outreach. Right? Or not? Sure. He's appalled at the thought of placing growth because he thinks we ought to be doing something. I think there's also an idea that I understand salvation and that's enough to go and care and get on it. Yeah, that's a good point. I think that's a great point. And the reason I say that is because if you read what Miles talked about in terms of if your focus is salvation, and that's the whole purpose of why God saves you, then you're at the end at the very beginning. for four years, you know, and the huge emphasis on, you know, we got to, you know, help this missionary and go do this and go downtown and do all this stuff.

And I remember thinking, what are we sharing with people exactly? You know, what is it that we think that we're sharing? Because I was already starting to see some stuff that was like, I'm not not quite on the same page with you here. And then I'm seeing that little bit of just salvation knowledge, just that basic thing, that that was the thing we were supposed to go share. And what it looked to me was like we were sending a lot of immature people to go share something really shallow, which was a luncheon, pray this prayer that's on this card.

I remember in the first three or four months when I was saved, Ended up in a church in Aurora, kind of a Presbyterian church. And one of the Sunday school classes was how to be a good witness. And this guy spent five or six weeks teaching me how to sell Christ. And I went up to him after one of the classes and I said, well, I am a salesman. I learned all those techniques a long time ago. I use them all the time.

It doesn't seem right to me that we would use these techniques write out your testimony, right? Get it in a good form, then memorize it, so that when you have the opportunity to talk to somebody, you're ready. See? I said, there's got to be more to it than that. And not only that, it's too worldly. And unlike you, you know, I open my mouth and upset half the people in the room, you know, Courtney.

We're similar that way. Within the world that we live in, just our simple little world of our children, we teach them so subtly, do your homework, you'll get a good grade. Everything that we teach them follows that pattern, that there will be some sort of reward for hard work. Then, you know, God comes in with grace and says, you know what, I'm working a whole different way. And it takes a long time for us to figure out that he means a whole different way. Yeah, he does. You know, it's not just being saved and then transferring this world into this world.

Everything's going to be different. What's the thing you look for, I think, to make that transformation in your children's lives? I think it's failure. That's the opening. When they don't do well, you know, the problem is that, you know, most of the kids around here, they all excel in everything because they don't have all of these outside influences that they think are important, you know, that they do do their homework, they do study, they do, you know, we got them in 450 activities, I'm surprised, you know. Well, and it seems to me that it's almost the area that, you know, it's like the school work saying, I think they got that, you know, you know, they got that. They kind of learn to rely on themselves, but it's almost the failure personally.

Yes. That that's when, you know, those are really teachable moments. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's exactly right, because that's the time You can talk to them about the fact that, one, God's grace... You can't work your way out of this. No. When one of your buddies blows you off, you're done. And you can't say, I'll suck it up and go on. You can talk to them about it from a grace standpoint.

The other thing you can talk to them about is homework and athletics and all that kind of thing. Christ's grace is sufficient. And the sufficiency for whatever you do comes from Him, to manifest His glory. It does change the attitude of why they do things. more efficient that way than they were, you know. You get a reward if you get a 3.5 average or whatever the dance is, you know. Or if you perform in music or athletics or whatever you're in, you know, I will buy you or reward you or We'll give you an attaboy.

Her daughter skates competitively. However that works, I don't know that much about competitive ice skating. But she does that and there's some stuff that she's stumbling on in that. And this friend called me up and said, you know, she's just got to learn to trust that she can do it. And then the more I thought about that, no, that's not it.

It's trusting the Lord with the outcome. However it goes. That's right. That's right. Yeah, because there's too many stories. of great athletes that the athlete belonged to the Lord, and the outcome wasn't what they expected, but the athlete would testify later that that was the best thing for him in his life. You find that, I think, with quote-unquote men and women that are Christian athletes, that they're like that.

David Daniels works with Colorado Christian University, and as he's learned grace, And he's a very, very competitive guy. You probably already know that. But a six-foot-light guy to make the Canadian Olympic team and play like he does, for him to learn grace is an interesting thing.

And I watched God teach him grace more through his failures than his successes. But he now knows it, so now he's dealing with college athletes who come to him and say, oh, you know, I've got this and that in my life, and he's able to say, oh, that's okay. Let me explain to you what God is doing. You know, he can start. And he learned that through his failures, not his successes.

That's right. That's right. Boy, we hate to hear that, but that's really right. That's really right. And if God is working all things together for good, You know, so something awful from your perspective or the self's perspective happens, I guess it isn't one of those all things. Or, you know, somebody comes to you and says, boy, I've got this particular sin in my life and I just, you know, how can God keep forgiving me? And I always say, well, that's right, he did. That was the one he didn't die for. He gave you six chances, and after that, you're on your own.

Well, it depends on the world's perspective, what's all around us. When our kids look at, you know, when they have a scuffle with each other and we say, okay, you know, say to each other, they go, diarrhea, we want them to mean it, you know, we want them to say it in a way that they mean it. So it makes perfect sense to think that You know, if we're basing it on what we've learned all growing up, we better feel real sorry about it. Yeah, that's right. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, when I first went down to Parker and I met you guys, one of the really great days was I asked the ladies down there, I said, does the fact that you really feel sorry about your sins affect the way God feels about you? And I would dare say half of them thought that, yeah. And it was all based on the word repentance, that repentance must in some way have high emotion attached to it. If you're really sorry, then God will be more sympathetic towards you than the person sitting next to you who isn't sorry. Right? Wrong. They confuse repentance with conversion. Repentance just means to have a change of mind. Conversion means to have a change of direction. I'm going this way and I'm going to go that way. Repentance just means I change my mind about it. When Luke says in Acts, repent towards God and believe in Christ, the repentance is said to the Jewish nation that they needed to change their mind about who Jesus was.

He wasn't a carpenter from Galilee. You need to change your mind about this man. Not about your sinfulness. It's about who he is. That's who you need to change your mind about. Let's in the last few minutes go through the verses in matching. This was really tough if you looked at it. I really tried to confuse you here. But I want you to notice the principle here. Now watch what happens. The first one, I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.

Obviously, it's Galatians 4.19. But you see Paul's viewpoint? The issue is not that they become worker bees or pew parasites, it's until Christ is formed in them and he travails, he has birth pains again until that happens. We all are changed into the same image from glory to glory. We've talked about that one.

11. This Jesus hath God raised up, wherefore we are all witnesses. What's he mean by we are witnesses? What are we witnesses of?

Why raised up? Why raised up? That's the issue. You know, the Lord Jesus said, if I'd be raised up, I'll draw all men unto myself. Why raised up? What does the resurrection prove? What's that? Well, now it proves that God was satisfied with the work of Christ. See that? The resurrection is the proof that the work of Christ on the cross satisfied a holy God.

Now, thanks be unto God who always causes us to triumph in Christ and makes manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. Now, what's the savor of his knowledge? by us in every place. This has to do with others. If we're going to manifest the savor of His knowledge by us in every place, what's going on here?

This is, as you walk about, live your life is the manifestation of Christ through you. See that? Maybe ask it this way. How plausible in your mind is it that this is what God's plan is? That He would literally transform you or conform you to the image of His Son so that when persons met you and talked to you, they would be meeting Him. You think that's what God was up to? I think that's exactly what he's up to.

So that doesn't happen in 15 minutes, or through some spurious experience, or four years at a seminary. Or it's not a feeling. If you ever read that little book, The New Life, there's a little, a little teeny, tiny paragraph in there that was talking about, I think the same thing they were talking about, and it was talking about this valley in Romania where they grew all these flowers, and that if you went into that valley and viewed these flowers, for the rest of the day, people would know where you had been because they could just smell that fragrance on you. Isn't that something?

And that spending time with the Lord, you know, as we go about our daily life, that Where we've been, He's there. We know that. We know it's Him. Have you ever experienced that with anybody in your life, where you either were with them, and it was almost like, before they met with me, they had been with the Lord?

Have you ever met anybody like that? I have. It's a really neat thing. Because they're no different. There's just something different about them. The last thing that I really liked in the very last paragraph of this chapter was, people have every right to witness something of him before they're deciding about him. I really like that. One of these days, we're going to get through a whole chapter. Next week, we're going to talk about the reckoning of Romans 6, which is the beginning of identification. So we'll be launching this week. Let's close.

Our dear Father, how we thank you. How we thank you that you are so gracious to us that you teach us the principles whereby we can grow in the grace and knowledge of your Son, the Lord Jesus, and that we can rest in Him and just allow Him and your Spirit to do what you've said you're going to do. Thank you, Father. We pray in your Son's name. Amen.