Gods Grace AM

00:01 All right. If you want to turn in your copies of the Scriptures this morning, would you turn to the book of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2? And I'd like to share with you what is the foundation of our relationship with God, and that being grace. 00:19 God's grace, and to understand God's grace, to relate to God's grace is a very humbling experience, very humbling for us to realize today that there's nothing that we have done, nothing that we can do, 00:34 nothing that we could do that would give us enough merit to be made right with God. There's nothing that we can do to earn our salvation. There's nothing that we can do to get good, to get good enough for God. But salvation is a gift of God's grace. It is a work of God's grace in our hearts. 00:56 Grace is found throughout all the New Testament. Grace that is greater than our sin. Grace that saves us. Grace that calls us. Grace that equips us. Grace that comforts us. Grace that counsels us. Grace that strengthens us. Grace for our situation, whatever it may be. 01:16 There are many various attempts to understand grace. Some people like to make the word grace like an acrostic. 01:26 I've got to get my clicker down here. G-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's expense. 01:34 And they like to kind of understand it like that, that Christ, though He were poor, yet He though He were rich, yet He became poor, that we through His poverty might be made rich. And so God's riches are available to us at Christ's expense. 01:53 And it certainly is God's riches to us at Christ's expense. Grace is mercy is God's withholding from us judgment that we do deserve. And grace is God giving to us favor and welcome and riches and an inheritance that we don't deserve. 02:14 So if you stand in a courtroom and the judge issues a verdict or the jury issues a verdict of guilty, but the judge does not give you the full sentence or even acquits you or doesn't give you a sentence at all, 02:36 that would be an act of mercy. But grace is if the judge would invite you home for dinner and to live with Him in His house and make you His son. That's an act of grace. So grace is different than mercy in that grace is God giving to us what we don't deserve. 02:55 Mercy is God withholding from us that which we do deserve. And it is unmerited. Some people like to use the term unmerited favor when describing God's grace. That means we don't merit it. It's not because we're good, we're rich, we're beautiful, 03:14 we're talented, we're intellectual, we're smart, or any of those things that God has favor on us. It is unmerited. He reaches down to the gutter and reaches down to the lowest of the low and picks them up, withholds the judgment that they deserve, and gives them a place in His family. 03:34 That's mercy and grace. And it is favor. The word grace includes the idea of favor, joy, pleasure, sweetness, charm, and loveliness. It is the Greek word charis, which is the Greek form of the concept in the Old Testament. 03:56 When Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, he found pleasure. He found joy. He found acceptance and favor in the eyes of the Lord. Jesus, it says of Him, that grace was the grace of God was upon Him. And it also says in Colossians chapter 4, verse 6, that our speech should be always with grace, 04:18 seasoned with salt that we may know how to answer every man. And so when we think about our speech, it should be charming. It should be lovely. It should be sweet. It should give joy. It should include favor and communicating blessing. It is an undeserved kindness. 2 Timothy 1:9 says, 04:38 "Not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." So the grace of God was revealed to us in Christ and gives to us the blessings of Christ, 04:59 the blessings of salvation, and divine influence regardless of our natural, human, depraved condition. Now, some people want to stop and think that grace kind of has to do with our salvation, and then from there on, we're kind of on our own. 05:18 But that is not the idea of grace because the book of James says that He gives more grace. And so the grace that God gave to save us, well, that kind of happened to me back when I was about nine years old. And that grace was good. It was good. It was needed. I didn't deserve it. 05:37 I was not a good boy. I didn't do a lot of wild and crazy things, but I was not good. And God reached down and by His own grace rescued me from a life of sin. That happened many years ago. But He gives more grace. I need more grace. I need more than just the grace that saved me. 05:56 I need the grace to keep me. I need the grace to sustain me. I need grace to create in me God's purposes. And so some have described the term grace as being divine enablement. And I like that. I think that gets closer to capture the whole dimension, 06:17 a multifaceted dimension of grace, divine enablement. Or as Strong's Concordance says, something to this effect, that grace is the divine influence upon the heart. 06:30 Grace is the divine, that's God, the divine influence on the heart and as reflected in one's life or as evidenced in one's life. And it is enabling. It is God moving. It is God creating. 06:50 It is God giving. 06:52 It is God just overshadowing and bestowing that which we need, not only to be saved, but to live, to overcome temptation, to have a calling on our lives, to serve God, to be comforted and strengthened and encouraged in our situations in life. 07:13 You find that grace is a multi-dimensional manifold, the Bible says in 1 Peter 3:10. It talks about being stewards of the manifold grace of God, the multifaceted, the diverse, multi-dimensional grace of God. And so we want to look at that this morning. 07:33 It does come to us in many forms. Grace turns our hearts to Christ. Grace keeps our hearts in Christ. It keeps us saved. Grace gives victory over sin and over the world. Grace strengthens us when we're weary. 07:51 Grace equips us for service and for serving God acceptably. Grace increases our faith and knowledge and affection for God and the things of God. And grace kindles the exercise of Christian character and of Christian virtue and godly virtues in our lives. 08:13 Now, I'd like to take this morning and kind of divide up the multi-dimensional, variegated, various aspects, 08:23 multifaceted aspects of the grace of God and kind of lump them into four categories this morning to help us kind of get a hold of this thing of God moving on the heart and that being evident in our lives as we live for God. 08:40 The first form of grace is what I call grace for salvation, God's work in salvation. 08:50 One of the very early verses we learn on this subject is listed there on the board, Ephesians 2:8-9, "For by grace you have been saved through faith." That is God moved. God influenced the heart. 09:09 God came upon the heart with some sort of divine quickening energy to save us. And we responded to that through faith. And that none of yourselves, it is the gift of God, none of works lest anyone should boast. 09:28 Then He goes on to say, "But we are His workmanship created in Christ unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." So we're saved not by works, but by grace through trusting Christ. 09:45 And then we're saved to a life of service and good works. But this morning, we're focusing on God's part in our salvation, God's part in our salvation. And so if you're a believer this morning, a believer in Christ, a disciple of Christ, a Christian, then it is true of you that at some point, 10:06 in some time, in some way, God influenced your heart with some divine influence and some divine enablement. He showed you that you're a sinner. He showed you that Christ is the Savior. 10:25 He showed you that you can't live on your own. He showed you you need God. He showed you some basic truths about Himself and about us and about our insufficiencies. And He pointed us to the cross of Christ. 10:41 He pointed us to the person of Christ in such a way that we understood and recognized that salvation is found in no other name, no other person, no other truth than Christ. And we responded to that and saying yes to God. 11:01 And we were saved. And how much of that is God? How much of that is man? Well, that's a question for theologians to kind of wrestle with. Some people say, "Well, God does it all." And some people say, "Well, man has a part in doing this." And well, somewhere in between God doing it and man receiving it, 11:22 there's a transaction that's made. But it has to be that God initiated this salvation. He moved on the heart, on your heart, to receive Him, to trust Him. 11:39 And that came through hearing the word of God and faith in what you heard and believed. But the bottom line is with no grace, there can't be any faith. And so grace is God doing it, God doing it, God working in someone's heart and life. 11:59 Now, if you define grace like that, grace is all the way through the Bible. Grace is found in the Old Testament. Now, we sometimes separate law and grace, law and grace. And there is a distinction. There is a separation. But grace of God, the grace of God was even in the Old Testament. Of course, whenever God works in somebody's life, it is an act of grace. 12:21 It could be that God would just pass us by and not work in our lives, and we'd be sunk. But if you're a believer this morning, it is because of God's divine influence on your heart that you responded to, you trusted in Christ, 12:42 you asked the Lord into your life, you received Him into your life, and you gave Him your sin, yourself, your future, your past, and all that goes along with that. 12:54 So the Scripture says in Titus 2:11, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." Titus 3:7, "That being justified by His grace," there you have it, justified by His grace, "we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life." Romans 3:24, 13:15 "Being justified freely by His grace, 13:21 we are saved. We have redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Even so then, at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace." And we already referred to Ephesians 2:8-9. Now, we understand this more and more as we grow in Christ. 13:42 We understand it more and more that we cannot do this in our own strength. We cannot live for Christ in our own strength. We cannot save ourselves in our own strength. It must be a work of God, of God's goodness and God's grace. Dr. 14:02 John Newton many years ago said this, "When I get to heaven, I shall see three wonders there. The first wonder will be to see many people there I did not expect to see. The second wonder will be to not see and to miss many people whom I did expect to see. 14:22 And the third and greatest wonder of all would be to find myself there in heaven." And you talk about a wicked man, a wicked man, a wretched man, John Newton, saved from the guttermost to the uttermost by God's grace, 14:41 God doing the work of calling that wretch out of the bottom pit of life and the bottom pit of a ship where he's in chains himself. Dr. Harry Ironside was a pastor. I think he was a pastor at Moody Church years ago. His father lay dying. 15:00 And as dying people sometimes get an in and out of reality, and they have visions, and they have dreams, and he was stuck on a particular passage of Scripture, and he couldn't remember the rest of it. And he started talking about this great sheet and wild beasts. 15:19 And he was thinking about and seeing this sheet that Peter saw in a vision. And he kept thinking about this, this wild beast and this great sheet. And then he couldn't get any further. And so somebody whispered to him, "Brother Ironside, it says creeping things, the wild beasts and creeping things." He says, "Oh, praise God, that's what I was. 15:40 That's how I got in, just a wild creeping thing. But God saved me by His grace." So if you're a Christian this morning, the only reason you are one is because of God's grace. Now, we also have more grace that is available. 16:00 And that is grace for our, I call it our station, grace for life's station, what God has placed you, where He has placed you, where He has called you, what He has purposed in you to do with you and through you. 16:19 Now, I want to read from this passage of Scripture I forgot to get into our text here this morning in 2 Thessalonians 2:13, "But we are bound to give thanks to you always for you, to God always for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, 16:35 because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 16:50 Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions or the teachings which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle." In other words, hang on to the apostolic teachings from the apostles and the word of God. "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God the Father, 17:12 God our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work." I think that phrase "by grace" there has to do with the whole section, 17:31 the whole writing here, the whole paragraph. We have everlasting consolation by grace. We have good hope by grace. We have comfort by grace. We're established in every good word and work by grace. And if you go back to 13 and apply that, we're saved and sanctified by grace. 17:51 And we're called by the gospel for the glory of God. So the second thing here we have is that we find our station in life by God's grace. And so if you are a believer today, something else is true of you. That is, not only has God saved you, 18:12 but God has created you now for something. I call it finding our station in life. In fact, the apostle Paul said, "By the grace of God, I am what I am." Now, turn over to Ephesians 3, and we'll see this very clearly. 18:32 Because Paul was saved by grace on the Damascus road. Boy, if there was a guy that didn't deserve it, it was the apostle Paul or Paul Saul, the unbeliever, the unbeliever Saul who became the apostle Paul. He didn't deserve it. 18:46 I mean, he was persecuting the very Christ and church that called him and that saved him. And he didn't deserve it. He called himself the chief of sinners because he fought against the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. 19:04 But God moved on Paul Saul's heart and saved him. But not only did He save him, He called him. He called him. He gave him a calling in life, a place of service, and made him what he was, what he became. 19:20 So in Ephesians 3:2, "If indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, which is given to me for you," wait a minute, I thought salvation, I thought grace was for me. No, He says, "This grace, this dispensation of grace is God's grace to me for you, 19:43 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery, as I have briefly written already, by which when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it now has been revealed by the Spirit to the holy apostles and prophets." Okay, 20:03 now we go on, "that in Christ, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs of the same body and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which I became a minister according to the gift of grace." So His grace was not just to save him, but was to make him a minister of the gospel, 20:25 of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power. "To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach among the Gentiles." So part of the gift of God's grace to Paul, Saul, 20:45 was this calling to make him an apostle and a minister of the gospel to the Gentiles so that they would know the unsearchable riches of Christ. You say, "Well, Brother Todd, I know I'm saved, and I know that God has a place for me, but I'm not a minister of the gospel. I don't think this is just for ministers of the gospel. 21:06 This is for everybody who has a station and a place in life to serve." Paul's experience here was a bit unique, but it represents our own, making Paul a chosen vessel. 1 Corinthians 15:10, "By the grace of God, I am what I am." You realize you're a chosen vessel this morning. 21:25 You are also a chosen vessel. Maybe not to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, but you're chosen to proclaim, to live for Christ, to function in the gifts that God has given to you. And He has placed each one of us in a very, very specific time, specific place, with specific gifts, 21:45 with specific opportunities, with specific life call. That is unique, a unique combination. And that's God's grace working in our lives. 21:55 Galatians 1:15-16, "Grace made him an apostle, but it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him among the heathen." Paul was called an apostle to the Gentiles because of the grace of God that is given to me, of the grace that is given to me of God, 22:16 that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles of Jesus, of the Gentiles, well, it goes on. Galatians 2:9, "And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas, 22:35 the right hands of fellowship, that we should go to the heathen and they to the circumcision." So they recognized the apostle Paul and Barnabas and their call that God had put on their lives. God has put a call on your life. It is a call of grace. We do not choose from God. 22:55 We do not choose what gifts He gives us. We do not choose what call He puts on our lives. We do not choose where we're born, where we serve. I don't even believe we choose where we serve. I believe that when our lives are directed by God, that He chooses where we serve. He puts it together. 23:15 He energizes it. He divinely moves upon the heart to place us in the place of His will and His calling. Maybe a little bit hard for us to get a hold of. Paul also said that, "According to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise master builder, 23:38 I laid the foundation, and another builded thereon." So sometimes that call, we become aware of it early in life. Sometimes that call is a call to the ministry. Sometimes it's a call to teach. Sometimes it's a call to a a a a broader ministry, a a a parachurch ministry, a specialized service. 23:59 Some people are called to prison ministries. Some people are called to to a to a service type of ministries. Some people are called to to to worship ministries. Some people are called to to to to share Christ in the workplace. Some people are called to be teaching ministries. And wherever it is that God has called you is a call of grace. 24:20 It's not just you figuring out where you want to serve. It's God revealing to you where He wants you to serve. And that is a gift of grace that God has given to every one of His children, not just to the people up front. 24:38 The third thing that we would categorize, and that is that God's grace is also at work to equip us for service. Now, the difference between station and service is station has to do more with who I am and what I am. 24:58 And service is now how and where I serve. The station is where I serve, what I am. Service is how I serve. And so we now have a choice to make as to how we serve. And God's grace is involved in that. So if you're a Christian this morning, 25:19 at such a time and in such a way and in such a place that you didn't deserve, God moved in your heart to save you, to sanctify you, to call you. And now He wants to equip you, equip you by His grace. He has given to each one of us a special endowment. 25:39 It's called spiritual gifts to supernaturally accomplish the job that corresponds with the position from which we are called to serve based on our salvation. So we're saved. We're called. We're equipped, saved, called, equipped. 25:59 And that's what we're talking about now is this grace for service, God moving on the heart of those who yield their lives to Him to equip them, to energize them, to empower them to serve Him. Acts 14:26 says, 26:20 "They had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled." 2 Corinthians 9:8, "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you." No, you haven't. I thought maybe this grace was just for the apostles. 26:33 No, He said, "God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work." He wants you to work. He wants you to serve. 26:49 He wants you to to to to become equipped and and and put your shoulder to the plow, as it were, and work with Him and allow Him to work through you. Now, it's interesting to me that the Greek word for grace is the word charis. 27:10 And the Greek word for gifts is the word charisma, charisma, charisma. In other words, the gifts that God gives to us are gifts of grace that God enables the human heart, 27:31 the human mind, the human potential to equip them to serve in a supernatural way under the authority and then the power and the direction and leading of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the work that He ordained for you when He saved you. It's a gift of grace. 27:49 And so if you look at the three major places in the New Testament where the gifts of the Spirit are mentioned, 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4, in the context of those three passages is these are gifts of grace. 28:06 Romans 12 says, "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us." So your gift is a result of God's grace, energized, empowered by God's grace. Your gift energized, empowered by God's grace. My gift, a little bit different, called and energized, empowered by God's grace. 28:26 All of us, these gifts are not something we just decide to do. These are things that God equips us to do, enables us to do, sovereignly calls us to do according to the measure of the gift of Christ. 28:40 Ephesians 4:7, "But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." Grace again. Hebrews 12:28 says, "Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." If we're going to serve God, 29:01 we're going to need grace. And I tell you what, without the grace of God empowering you and anointing you and enabling you, ministry just gets downright tiresome and burdensome. It does. 29:20 But when you're functioning in the gift of God's anointing and God's grace and God's empowerment, when you are weak, He is strong. This became very meaningful to me when I heard a speaker many years ago at Moody Bible Institute's Pastors Week. 29:41 We used to go up there on Labor Day Memorial Day weekend, numbers of us. And I remember hearing a speaker say, as he introduced the subject, he said, "Whatever you do, stop working for God." And I just about fell off my chair. I said, "What? What are you talking about? 30:01 Stop working for God." I thought we were supposed to work for God. That's the point of everything. But he went on to unpack his subject and showed to us from Scripture that we need not to work for God, but we need God to work through us. And there's a vast difference. 30:20 There's a vast difference if you're working for God or if you're allowing God to work through you. Vast difference. It all has to do with motivation. It has to do with energy. It has to do with empowerment. It has to do with, am I doing this in my own strength or am I allowing God's grace and strength to move through me? 30:40 And I have seen that work in amazing ways, amazing ways through our life ministry where when we thought we could not, God enabled and we could. I could give you many examples of that. 31:00 When we thought we could not rise to the task that was being required of us, when we asked God to do the work through us, grace kicks in. 31:14 And our next message that I preach in a couple of weeks will be on grace and how it operates and how it functions and how we access grace. How do we access grace? For our purposes here this morning, this is just a preliminary lesson. Then finally, 31:33 our fourth category is that God's grace is available to help us with all the situations of life. Or I call it God's grace for strength, God's grace for strength. You know that God has grace for strength this morning. 31:52 Back to our text, everlasting consolation, good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, establish you in every good work and word and work, save you, sanctify you, call you, keep you. It's all by grace. 32:11 It's all by grace. Why don't you turn over to 2 Corinthians just a few pages back, 2 Corinthians 12, very familiar passage of Scripture, but have you ever really unpacked it and taken the goods from it in your own heart? 2 Corinthians 12, 32:32 Paul says, "He is in need of God's grace." Remember grace, we need more grace. And so verse 9, the Apostle Paul says, "And he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you.'" What do you mean he said to me? Well, if you go back and you read through the verses preceding that, 32:52 you find out that there was a problem that Paul had. It was a problem that was given to him by God to allow Satan to have access to a particular area of his weakness. We don't understand how that works unless you've experienced it. 33:09 God allowing Satan doing and working and us here needing to know, how do I handle this situation? And so Paul began to pray. He said three times, three times, verse 8, "Concerning this thing, 33:29 I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me." I don't think those were three just quick prayers. Now let me down to sleep. I pray, Lord, my soul to keep if I should die before I wake. I pray, Lord, my soul to take and by the way, Lord, take away this thorn in the flesh. No, I think this was three groaning, pleading times with God. 33:48 May have even been three seasons of prayer where he said, "God, please, please, please, I beg you to take away this thorn." If you've ever had the thorn in your flesh, you know what we're talking about, 34:06 a weakness that God allows to remain to keep you dependent on grace. And so Paul says that God said to him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." In your weakness, you get strength. 34:28 He didn't say you get my strength and my grace when you're strong. He said, "You get my grace and my strength when you are weak." And so Paul just says, "Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, 34:47 in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong." He says, "If it takes weakness for me to be strong in the Lord, then by all means make me weak." Wow. God's strength kicks in. 35:08 His grace is available when we need it. 2 Timothy, Paul told Timothy, "Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." Don't be strong in yourself. Don't be strong in your calling. Don't be strong in your in your intellect. Be strong in the grace. 35:29 Hebrews 4:16, "Let us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace that we may have under the throne of grace, that we may have mercy and find grace to help in time of need." There is special grace, God movement on the heart in those times of sorrow, 35:50 weakness, 35:50 and weakness and despair. 1 Peter 5:10, "But the God of all grace, who have called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a little while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, 36:09 and settle you." And this is what I've learned about God's grace, is that when you need it, it's there just with the right strain, with the right color, with the right dimension, with the right adaptation to our needs. You see, 36:28 the manifold grace of God is not a one-size-fits-all grace. It is a diverse, multifaceted, multidimensional gift of grace that is customized and tailor-made for the need of the hour. There's grace for consolation. 36:48 We see that in our text. There's grace for comfort. There's grace for encouragement. There's grace for healing. There's grace for conviction. There's grace for victory. There's even grace in times of persecution and grace for dying. 37:09 I don't know if I've told you all this or not, but when my dad died about a year, a little over a year ago now, I watched him die and he had struggled to live for most of his life. And so when he was dying, he was still struggling. The body was still struggling to live. And that's the way it is with people when they die. 37:29 Some people just die and they just stop breathing. Other people, it's kind of a struggle as the body shuts down. 37:36 And as the brain, the hospice nurse told us, she said, "Now one thing you may not know is that the brain has to download all this stuff to die." Well, I guess they figured that out by doing brain waves. And I don't know how they do that, but they watch the brain while it's dying, I guess. And she went on to say, 37:57 "It's hard work to die." I thought, "Man, that's not very comforting." And I'll be honest with you, there was a time when I was watching my dad die and afterwards when the enemy used that a bit to give me some fear, the fear of death. 38:18 God, what's going on in my dad? As his brain shuts down, his body shuts down, I mean, does he hear you? Does he not hear you? Is he able to—he's not able to respond. But I mean, we don't know what's going on in there. And God, that's kind of scary to me anyway. You know, 38:37 to have even have thoughts that you're not able to express, to have a desire. Some people can't talk. They can't reason. I mean, they still think. I think, "Lord, that's frightening. I don't think I could do that." Well, you may not have a choice, 38:57 but do it. But the thing that came back to me, I was reading one day in Psalm 23, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." Walk through the valley of the shadow of death. 39:17 Walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Lord, that's what I think was happening. And my dad was walking through the valley of the shadow of death. "I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." And what I've discovered about grace is when you need it, it's there. When you don't need it, it isn't. 39:41 What you need it for gets tailor-made, customized for that need. And when that need is no longer there, God's grace changes dimensions. So that's why there can be dying grace. 39:55 And even in the—when we look at the persecuted church, we say, "How in the world do you ever face something like persecution?" They will tell you time after time after time that when that persecution comes, there's a grace and there's a divine movement on the human heart that is customized, tailor-made for that hour, that experience, 40:15 that event to take you through whatever it is that you're needing to go through. How do you get it? Can you lose it? That will be our subject for another time. Bow your heads, please. 40:33 And I don't know where you're at today exactly in your heart of hearts. Some of you are needing grace for salvation. You've never really trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior. But God is at work in your heart and he's pointing you to Jesus. 40:53 Let him do that work in you and respond by faith. Others of you are wrestling with your call in life. What does God call me to do? Why has he set me here where I am in this place at this time? 41:08 And how can I receive that call and rejoice in it and walk in it? And others are serving. You're serving. You're at peace with God. You're at peace with where you are. 41:26 And you just need greater grace to serve well. And then there's some more that need grace for strength in your situation. You need God to move on your heart, in your life. 41:47 Something you're going through right now is very difficult, frustrating, debilitating, hard. You don't know how you're going to get through it. I encourage you this morning to ask God for grace. "Lord Jesus, I receive your grace. I need your grace. 42:08 I trust you for grace. I need more grace, more grace. And Lord, I believe that you give more grace. And you give grace to the humble because you resist the proud." So Lord, 42:28 I humble myself today and I ask for more grace for what I'm going through, that I might make it through to the other side as a winner, successful, not having bowed the knee to anyone else but Christ, not having bowed the knee in defeat to the enemy, 42:51 but in reverence to the Lord Jesus. And Lord, we pray that for each one this morning that comes to you by faith with a need. In Jesus' name. Amen.