Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Almighty God, you are the light of life.
[00:00:08] We only see that which is most beautiful, that which is most precious, that which is most honorable, through your light.
[00:00:23] And so I pray this morning that your spirit would enlighten the eyes of our understanding and we could see in a fresh way how wonderful Jesus Christ really is.
[00:00:39] And as we see him as altogether wonderful, we would have a deeper desire to grow into conformity to his image.
[00:00:55] I ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
[00:01:00] We're studying the book of Colossians.
[00:01:04] It was written by Paul in the 60s, the early 60s, or about 30 years after Christ's resurrection.
[00:01:17] He was probably in prison in Rome when he wrote this letter.
[00:01:26] Paul tells us that he had never seen the Colossians, Christians face to face, that they were unknown to him.
[00:01:38] And yet he writes them one of the most profound letters that he wrote anyone.
[00:01:46] And in this letter, it was his.
[00:01:50] It was his method to make a dense theological statement at the beginning.
[00:02:00] And then the rest of the book, he applies what that means.
[00:02:05] And this morning, we're going to look at that dense theological statement.
[00:02:10] In fact, many scholars believe it was a poem that was meant to be memorized so that people could remind themselves of who Christ is.
[00:02:27] So I'm going to read it to you.
[00:02:31] He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
[00:02:40] For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.
[00:02:53] All things were created through him and for Him.
[00:02:58] Now here's the second part of the poem.
[00:03:01] He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
[00:03:10] The third stanza, he is the head of the body, the church.
[00:03:16] The fourth stanza, he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
[00:03:27] For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
[00:03:45] So each stanza begins with the phrase, he is.
[00:03:50] He is the image of the invisible God. He is before all things. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead.
[00:04:03] Ah.
[00:04:05] From these verses, Church theologians in the 4th century wrote the key confessions of faith that became core to Christianity, like the Nicene Creed. The people who wrote the Nicene Creed depended heavily upon this paragraph.
[00:04:31] And now we're going to try to work through this in the kind of way that it's easy for us to remind ourselves why Christ is so wonderful.
[00:04:43] Let's begin Christ is wonderful because he is the image of God.
[00:04:53] If you look carefully, it's really clear that the essence of God can't be seen because seeing is an event in the material world. And God is a spirit.
[00:05:18] God is not matter like us.
[00:05:23] He's not atoms and molecules.
[00:05:27] He is a spirit. And because he is a spirit, we can't see him with our visible eyes.
[00:05:36] But God does something to remedy that.
[00:05:41] He makes himself visible in Jesus Christ.
[00:05:47] Jesus Christ makes the invisible God visible to humanity.
[00:05:54] When you look at the Bible and you see Jesus in the Gospels, you see God in a human form acting like God, doing what only God can do.
[00:06:11] He is the.
[00:06:14] He is the image.
[00:06:16] I'm sure you've all heard the word icon.
[00:06:21] It's actually the word that we translate, image.
[00:06:25] Some of you grew up in churches where they were decorated with classic icons.
[00:06:32] Like if you have, if you grew up in the Greek Orthodox Church, the icons are the same all over the world.
[00:06:39] And you can look at a picture and say, that is Jesus Pantocrator or that is John the Apostle.
[00:06:48] So icons were meant to represent something that was.
[00:06:55] Represent people that were no longer visible.
[00:06:58] All right?
[00:06:59] Jesus Christ is the icon of God. He is the image of God.
[00:07:07] And as the image of God, he's the prototype of, of all creation. The word says firstborn, but that's because we didn't have a more technical language then.
[00:07:23] Jesus is not literally the firstborn of all creation because he's.
[00:07:30] He is the. He is the second person of the Trinity. And he was born physically thousands of years after Abraham. Okay, so what is the scripture trying to say?
[00:07:47] He is the prototype of creation.
[00:07:51] The prototype is what the, what every copy of it is supposed to look like.
[00:08:00] Jesus Christ is the blueprint for what all humanity is supposed to look like.
[00:08:10] Do you remember that? When God created mankind, he created us in his image.
[00:08:16] We were supposed to be the image bearers of God, but we messed things up and we became the image bearer of sin.
[00:08:28] We bear the image of sin, but we can still keep looking to Christ and saying, this is what it's supposed to look like. This is what it's supposed to look like.
[00:08:41] How did Jesus Christ treat his friends? This is what it's supposed to look like. How did Jesus treat his enemies? This is what it's supposed to look like.
[00:08:50] How did Jesus help people? This is what it's supposed to look like.
[00:08:54] Jesus Christ is wonderful because in Him, God tells us what humanity is supposed to look like.
[00:09:05] And Paul says again and again in his letters that we are supposed to grow to be more and more like Jesus Christ.
[00:09:14] He is the prototype for our life.
[00:09:20] Now I would like to ask you, how often do you live in the wonder of the model that Jesus Christ sets?
[00:09:33] When you look at your life, how often do you find yourself saying, the more I am like Christ, the more wonderful my life is.
[00:09:48] And the less I am like Christ, the more messed up my life is.
[00:09:54] You see, Jesus Christ is not just our Redeemer, he is also our example.
[00:10:03] And the more I see him as my example, the greater sense of wonder I have.
[00:10:11] Just try to do what Jesus did and, and see how many times you mess up and then you'll say, he really is wonderful.
[00:10:19] Church the second thing, Christ is wonderful because he is the Creator.
[00:10:28] He's not just the prototype of all creation.
[00:10:32] He is the Creator. He created everything in heaven and on the earth, whether it's visible or invisible, whether it's thrones or lordships, authorities or rulers, all through him and unto him was created. And he is before all, and all things are held together in Him.
[00:11:00] First of all, Christ created everything in the spiritual realm.
[00:11:06] As Christians, we believe that there are two dimensions. There is the dimension of spirituality and then there is the dimension of materiality.
[00:11:19] We live in the material world.
[00:11:23] But if you will permit yourself, as I've tried to teach you several times, your soul is able to sense the reality of the spiritual world.
[00:11:35] Some of you know what it's like when you're sensing the reality of the spiritual world.
[00:11:42] All right, There is another creation. It is the creation of the spirit.
[00:11:48] The Bible calls it heaven. The Bible calls it the presence of God. It is the place where angelic beings live in the reality of God. It is the place that the souls of the people you love have slipped off into, waiting for the final resurrection. Church There is a as sure as there is a material world, there is a spiritual world. And Jesus Christ is the creator of that spiritual world.
[00:12:21] Christ is the creator of the material world.
[00:12:25] Now, now, I know we live in a secular age, and I know that everyone in this room and everyone online, you've been bombarded with this message that the world doesn't need a creator, that it's capable of producing itself by random chance over millions of years.
[00:12:51] I'm asking you to have an open mind about God as the Creator Church.
[00:13:02] I'd like to just give one brief example.
[00:13:09] If you found a three volume set of Shakespeare's plays and no one had ever seen them before, and you found them in a cave somewhere, would the first thing that came to your mind, say, isn't it remarkable what nature and random chance can do?
[00:13:37] No one would look at three volumes of Shakespeare and say, wow, look what nature did.
[00:13:47] And yet we look at the DNA code that directs everything in our lives and we say, wow, look at the code nature wrote.
[00:14:06] Now, I can't write code on computer, but I know it's such a thing.
[00:14:13] Nobody ever turned on their computer and it ran and followed the code that somebody had written and say, isn't it incredible what this computer produced?
[00:14:29] Church.
[00:14:31] All right, please listen to this.
[00:14:35] Do I believe in adaptation? Yes, there is examples of adaptation everywhere.
[00:14:42] But do I believe that life just randomly happened out of pure luck?
[00:14:50] No.
[00:14:53] I mean, things have gotten so desperate. People would rather believe that life rode on an asteroid through deep space in a vacuum, bombarded by radiation that millions of miles and crashed into the Earth and started life here. They would rather believe something that is intensely nonfiction than they would believe that there is an intelligent being who has a good purpose and loves humanity and has created a world in which it's possible for us to live. Well, can you hear this, Church?
[00:15:37] I know the materialists bombard you. I know they make you feel like an idiot if you don't agree with them. But. But Church, let your own brain think a little bit.
[00:15:50] Trust your own. Trust your own observation, trust your own life experience.
[00:15:57] I tell you, when somebody intelligent isn't taking care of things, things fall apart.
[00:16:05] Your house never fixes its own leaks.
[00:16:09] You're never going to say, maybe my roof will adapt itself and I won't have to have a roofer come over.
[00:16:18] Nature.
[00:16:20] Nature has already given us some clear examples that things don't get better by themselves.
[00:16:29] And so Paul said to his world, when you want to think about how wonderful God is, think about him as an artistic genius that created this beautiful world that you live in.
[00:16:44] Now I'm willing to talk all day long about how he created. I'm not going to argue with you about the mechanisms creation. But I'm saying there's somebody who is very intelligent and they did an incredible thoughtful job in creating a place like this.
[00:17:03] And for the record, they've been looking for an Earth for the last 40 years of my life. And they have found ectoplanets, but they have not found an Earth.
[00:17:18] There is something unique, there is something divine. There is the breath of the Creator on all of this.
[00:17:29] And it's easier for me to believe in the Creator than it is for me to believe that just everything just randomly.
[00:17:39] Earth won the lottery every Time it played.
[00:17:47] Christ created all the power structures that exist.
[00:17:51] That's this list of power structures.
[00:17:55] Thrones and rulers, thrones and lordships, rulers and authorities.
[00:18:02] All these power structures are not what man evolved.
[00:18:07] They are an idea that God shared with man.
[00:18:12] Paul says in Romans 13 that all authority is from God.
[00:18:18] All right, there are authority structures in the spiritual world.
[00:18:23] We know of beings like, called archangels.
[00:18:29] There are authorities in the physical world. But ultimately all authority comes from God.
[00:18:37] Now, some of you who get yourself all upset about politics, God raises them up and God puts them down.
[00:18:46] Nobody gets elected. That, that is outside of God's good plan.
[00:18:52] I know if you hate the president, you have a hard time believing that.
[00:18:57] And if you love the president, it's easy for you to believe that. But the truth is God raises them up and God puts them down.
[00:19:05] Because he is the source of all authority.
[00:19:12] All creation exists for a purpose.
[00:19:16] We. This all exists for a reason.
[00:19:19] A materialist cannot tell you why this all exists. They simply say we. It was random chance.
[00:19:30] They say searching for meaning in a meaningless universe in is a futile act.
[00:19:37] That's foolishness.
[00:19:39] There is a meaning to all of this. There is a purpose for all of this. And the meaning and the purpose for all of this points straight to Jesus Christ, our creator.
[00:19:50] He's wonderful not just because he created all of this, but he invested it with meaning. It's. It's moving in a purposeful way. There is. There is an awesome culmination to all of this.
[00:20:06] And in that culmination, Jesus Christ will be most evident.
[00:20:13] Ah, Herman Bavink is a great Dutch theologian.
[00:20:18] I want to read a quote to you.
[00:20:21] This world is good because it answers to the purpose of God. Set for is neither the best nor the worst.
[00:20:34] But it is good because God called it so.
[00:20:38] It is good because it is serviceable not to the individual human being, but to the revelation of God's perfections.
[00:20:48] Now let me explain this a little bit.
[00:20:54] The world is good in spite of bad things happening here.
[00:21:04] People have told me a hundred times, if God is good, why do bad things happen?
[00:21:10] All right, I've preached whole sermons on it. I'm just gonna make a comment. All right?
[00:21:15] God is good and bad things happen. But because we broke his world and we continue to break it every single day.
[00:21:26] Every time I sin, I break something good. Church.
[00:21:33] And because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we've broken ourselves and we've broken the people around us.
[00:21:42] And broken people cause brokenness.
[00:21:48] Do you see this Sick people infect other people with their sickness.
[00:21:57] Ah, I can give you the flu, but I can't give you health. Why is that?
[00:22:04] I can give you a cold, but I can't give you health.
[00:22:09] The system is broken.
[00:22:12] And because it's broken, unpleasant things happen.
[00:22:16] But it doesn't mean that the world isn't good. We live in a good world and it has the potential to be enjoyed by every one of us.
[00:22:26] Second of all people, philosophers ask, could God have created a better world or could God have created a worse world? You. Yeah, he could have.
[00:22:40] He created this world with a purpose. And if he had a different purpose, he could have created a different world.
[00:22:49] The world is not an end in itself. It is a tool toward God's good purpose.
[00:22:58] And if his purpose had been different, the tool would have been different.
[00:23:05] Finally, creation is good because it's serviceable.
[00:23:12] It serves the purpose for which God created it.
[00:23:17] Why is Jesus Christ wonderful? Because he is the Creator.
[00:23:22] He created a world that serves the purpose that he created it for.
[00:23:28] Every day the world serves the purpose that God created it. For in the very beginning, he not only created everything, he sustains all of creation.
[00:23:43] I believe that if God didn't sustain the world, it would not last one day.
[00:23:52] If God let his grip go on the world and it would not survive one day.
[00:24:01] The balance is so intricate, the margins are so small.
[00:24:08] It requires.
[00:24:10] It requires a divine engineer to sustain it day after day after day.
[00:24:20] Do you ever contemplate the wonder of the Creator now? Many of you have had the experience of being out in nature.
[00:24:31] I was once on a motorcycle road trip and I pulled off on one of those mountain pull offs, you know, where you can see for from here to the Soviet Union.
[00:24:45] And I was standing. I was standing on this pull off and I was looking.
[00:24:51] I was looking on the east side of the.
[00:24:56] Of the Blue Ridge Mountains and I could just see forever. And I was in awe of creation.
[00:25:05] I had one of those moments where you just went, this is, this is remarkable.
[00:25:11] Have you ever had a moment where you looked beyond the creation and you look to the Creator and said, if creation is this wonderful, how wonderful must the Creator be?
[00:25:27] Church Ah.
[00:25:31] Shay and I like to sit by Lake Erie and watch the water.
[00:25:35] And sometimes I get that. I get that incredible feeling of what an absolutely remarkable place this is.
[00:25:43] Ah, but there's one step beyond that.
[00:25:47] If the place is remarkable, how much more remarkable does the Creator and the sustainer of the place have to be?
[00:25:57] Christ is wonderful because he is the head of the church.
[00:26:01] Christ just didn't create the spiritual world. He didn't just create the material world. He created the church.
[00:26:10] What do we mean by the church?
[00:26:14] The word is ecclesia, and it comes from Greek politics and it means the gathering of the citizens.
[00:26:26] When the Greeks had a gathering of the citizens, it was called an ecclesia.
[00:26:33] Ah.
[00:26:34] And only the citizens were invited into the ecclesia. If you were a slave, you couldn't go to the ecclesia and vote only the citizens. All right.
[00:26:46] The church are the citizens of the kingdom of God.
[00:26:53] You see, Christ is running a kingdom.
[00:26:58] He's running a kingdom as surely as there is a United States of America. He's running a kingdom. Assuredly as there are citizens in this kingdom United States, there are citizens in his kingdom.
[00:27:11] He's running a kingdom that has a leadership as surely as we have a president, senators and congressmen. He's running a kingdom that has policies as certain as America has policies. And that kingdom that he is running is the Church.
[00:27:33] He is the creator of the Church.
[00:27:36] If you are a genuine Christian, you are in the assembly, you are in the ecclesia. You are in the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
[00:27:47] You are a citizen of the. Of the kingdom that Jesus Christ himself rules.
[00:28:01] What a wonder. What a wonder to have as the leader of our kingdom, Jesus Christ himself.
[00:28:11] What can we do so that people who come here can experience the wonder of Christ, the great head of the Church?
[00:28:25] What can we do to make Jesus Christ more wonderful, more tangible, more acceptable to the people that God brings here for us to influence in the name of Jesus Christ?
[00:28:41] What can you do to help your family and friends experience the wonder of Jesus Christ, the head of the Church?
[00:28:53] When was the last time you said anything to somebody about how wonderful Jesus Christ is?
[00:29:01] When was the last time you were so impressed with Christ yourself that you couldn't help but talk to him about. Talk about him to somebody?
[00:29:12] You see, Church, Christ is altogether wonderful.
[00:29:18] But if we're not careful, life leads us astray and we lose our sense of wonder about who he is.
[00:29:28] Christ is wonderful because he's the prototype of the resurrection. He's not just the prototype of what life should be on this earth. He is the prototype of what life is going to be in the Resurrection.
[00:29:44] Someday history will arrive at its conclusion.
[00:29:49] Someday history will come to an end.
[00:29:52] There is a great. There is a great metaphor for it in the book of Revelation that a great angel stands with his one foot on the water and one foot on the land, and he shouts in a great voice, time shall be no more.
[00:30:07] There will be an end to history.
[00:30:12] And when history ends, Jesus Christ himself will reappear.
[00:30:17] And the dead in Christ will rise first. And we who are alive and remain will be caught up into the sky, and we will live with him forever. There is a resurrection life for all those who believe in Jesus Christ, and He is the prototype of that resurrection life.
[00:30:39] Here we are poor images of his prototype. There we will be perfect images.
[00:30:48] We will be like him because we will see him as he is in the resurrection. The prototype of Jesus will rub off on every single one of us, and we will be like Him.
[00:31:02] He is wonderful not just because he is the prototype of this life, but because he is the prototype of the life to come.
[00:31:12] It also says that he is the first, but actually I did some research on this and we should probably translate it.
[00:31:23] First principle.
[00:31:26] He who is the first principle, the prototype of the dad.
[00:31:34] Ah.
[00:31:35] As there are principles that govern this life, there are principles that govern the life to come.
[00:31:41] And Jesus Christ himself is the first principle of the resurrection life.
[00:31:50] He is wonderful because he has this figured out. He has established principles. There is a prototype, and he will conform us all to that and. And will live in perfect wonder and amazement eternally in the presence of the most wonderful Christ.
[00:32:13] Do you have faith in Christ to live the resurrection life?
[00:32:21] What do you expect to happen to you when you take your last breath?
[00:32:27] What is your anticipation?
[00:32:29] If you are a believer in Christ, your anticipation ought to be that when you exhale here, you inhale there, and whatever you let go of here, you have infinitely better there.
[00:32:48] There is a life of the age. There is an eternal life, and it is infinitely better than anything that you've ever imagined or anything that you'll ever have here.
[00:33:02] Do you have faith in the Christ who offers you that life?
[00:33:09] He's wonderful because he's preeminent.
[00:33:13] Christ was first in all things from the beginning.
[00:33:17] He is first in all things today.
[00:33:21] He will be first in all things in the future.
[00:33:25] Jesus said, I am the alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The first and last Christ is wonderful because he is preeminent. He was preeminent from the first day. He is preeminent now, and he will be preeminent the last day.
[00:33:45] What are some synonyms for preeminent?
[00:33:49] Christ is the most important in everything in your life. There is nothing more important than Christ.
[00:33:57] Christ is preeminent because he's most skillful.
[00:34:01] All the skill you need to navigate life and death.
[00:34:05] Christ as the preeminent one has he is preeminent because he's most superior. There is no one greater than our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:34:16] No one, anywhere.
[00:34:18] And he is preeminent because he is the most dignified.
[00:34:23] There is a dignity in Jesus Christ that is just stunning.
[00:34:29] There is a dignity in Jesus Christ that overwhelms people.
[00:34:34] When you read the Bible, when people saw Christ after the resurrection, they often fell down. They that that's all they could do. They were overwhelmed by his dignity.
[00:34:47] Could I ask you, is Christ preeminent to you?
[00:34:52] If you had to say honestly, does Christ come first in your life?
[00:34:58] Or have you relegated him to inferior places?
[00:35:06] Is Christ first?
[00:35:10] In what way is his? Is he first?
[00:35:14] Is he first in your. In your affections? Is He. Is he first in your choices?
[00:35:21] Is he first in.
[00:35:23] In your values?
[00:35:25] See, from the very beginning, Christianity taught that Christ is preeminent.
[00:35:33] He is preeminent in his nature.
[00:35:37] But we accept that preeminence or we don't.
[00:35:43] And if we're not careful, life teaches us a different set of values. And the preeminence of Christ slips.
[00:35:52] And he becomes less than this, and he becomes less than that.
[00:35:57] We choose this rather than Christ, and the preeminent things in our life become the inferior things of this world.
[00:36:10] Christ is wonderful because all the fullness of God dwells in him.
[00:36:16] Look at verse 19.
[00:36:19] Because in him God thought well.
[00:36:24] For all the fullness to dwell, God dwells in Christ.
[00:36:32] That is the core of Christian theology.
[00:36:37] Jesus Christ is more than a good man. He's more than a good teacher. He's more than a miracle worker. He's more than a great philosopher.
[00:36:46] He is God in the flesh.
[00:36:50] I want to remind you he's not a demagogue.
[00:36:54] The Greeks envisioned people like Hercules that had a Zeus for his dad and another lady for his mom. So he was a mixture of divine and human. Jesus Christ is not a mixture of divine and human. He's not a demagogue. He is completely divine and he's completely human. And these two natures stand with each other in one person. They don't mix.
[00:37:25] The human doesn't become divine and the divine doesn't become human. It's called in theology the hypostatic union.
[00:37:35] The second Person of the Trinity lives in perfect union with the man Jesus.
[00:37:42] And it's true, even after the resurrection, he didn't abandon his body. After the resurrection, he said to his apostles, look at my hands. You see the nail scars? Look at my side.
[00:37:57] They were unbelieving. He said, all right, let's have dinner together.
[00:38:02] And he sat down and ate dinner with them. In the resurrection, Jesus Christ remained the God man. In heaven, you will see him as the God man.
[00:38:16] Ah, John 14:8. Jesus was talking to the apostles just before he died on the cross.
[00:38:25] And Philip said to him, lord, show us the Father and it is enough.
[00:38:30] Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and still you do not know me? Philip, whoever has seen me has. Has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father?
[00:38:45] Do you see what Jesus say?
[00:38:47] Jesus is saying the very same essence that the Father and the Holy Spirit has. He has.
[00:38:57] But that essence is united with humanity so that we. It makes God tangible to us. It makes God visible to us.
[00:39:07] It makes God.
[00:39:09] It makes us possible for us to love God.
[00:39:15] When was the last time that you meditated on the wonder of God? Being willing to live in a human body on a broken earth and to be treated the way we treated Him?
[00:39:32] Human? He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
[00:39:38] Christ is wonderful because he reconciles us to God through Him, reconciling all things unto him through Christ reconciling all things to God, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether of things on the earth or in the heaven.
[00:40:03] Sin alienates us from God.
[00:40:06] Christ reconciles us to God.
[00:40:09] Reconcile means to restore harmony. There was a discord between humanity and God and we couldn't fix it.
[00:40:18] So Jesus Christ restored harmony between God and us.
[00:40:25] Every time you sin, you create discord between you and God.
[00:40:30] And every time you repent, Christ restores the harmony.
[00:40:37] He is called the Prince of Peace and he makes peace.
[00:40:42] We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:41:07] You'll never.
[00:41:09] You'll never be in awe of the wonder of Christ until you are reconciled to God by Christ.
[00:41:19] Would you hear this?
[00:41:21] I want to speak to some of you this morning who have a sense of being far from God.
[00:41:30] Maybe you have a longing in your heart to be closer.
[00:41:36] Maybe you feel far from God because of something you've done or not done.
[00:41:43] Ah, maybe you feel far from God because somebody taught you that he was angry and wanted to punish you.
[00:41:52] But for whatever reason, this morning, if you don't feel close to God, I want to hold up to you the wonder of Jesus Christ.
[00:42:08] It is his deepest passion to reconcile you to God.
[00:42:13] It is this deepest passion to use all that he is and all that he is able to do to make peace and harmony between you and God.
[00:42:27] It's not something you have to work for.
[00:42:30] It's not something that you have to go on a quest for it is a simple quiet moment in the human heart that says to Jesus Christ, I receive you as the one who reconciles me to God.
[00:42:49] I receive you as my reconciler.
[00:42:53] It's as simple as saying to God, to Christ, would you please restore harmony in my soul with the living God.
[00:43:03] It's as simple as saying to Christ, I want to be at peace with God, would you please make peace with my soul and God.
[00:43:14] Church, Jesus Christ is altogether wonderful, both because of who he is and because what he does.
[00:43:24] And your sense of wonder will go up as you see him more clearly and you allow him to have his perfect work in you.
[00:43:34] Our dear Heavenly Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would continue to whisper to our hearts.
[00:43:43] I pray that we would be reconciled to God.
[00:43:48] I pray that in a simple moment and prayer of faith we would receive your grace.
[00:43:56] We would have a new sense of harmony with you, a new sense of peace with you.
[00:44:01] And we would leave this place with souls that are enriched by the wonder of Jesus Christ.
[00:44:08] And I ask it in Christ's name, Amen.
