Address—Don Rule
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327.
We'll need a starter.
Our sins are.
Going.
To be.
Crystal and.
Hiding.
Love all God hurts you all right?
Don't fight with anything.
All Sandra now.
Anymore relocation?
With me?
And soon shall follow.
The hack for real estate?
We'll see you in the tower of my life.
Grow Thou shalt you want more. Great wherever God was the best of life.
Spray.
Lord Jesus.
We do desire, as we are here together this afternoon, that thou would feed us and give us from thyself that which is for our good and our benefit.
We do desire, Lord Jesus, that.
We each one may be able to know thy heart a little better.
To enter a little more, Lord Jesus, into thy wonderful love.
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For each one of us. And so we ask as we open Thy Word.
That thou would direct our hearts and our thoughts.
To thyself.
And that thou would bless thy word to us. And so we ask Lord Jesus in thy precious name.
Amen.
So I lookout at you.
I think.
This way, what if the Lord Jesus was standing here looking out at you?
What is in his heart?
Or you this afternoon.
You know, when you talk about the human heart.
When you stop and think about it.
It's actually a lot easier to understand his heart.
Than your own.
You and I have a heart that, naturally speaking, is deceitful.
And in itself wicked.
And so God says, who can know it?
But when we look at the heart of the Lord Jesus, it's pure.
There's no deceit in it.
What he says is a perfect reflection of his heart.
And so in that way we're going to look.
This afternoon.
At a prayer.
That he made.
That God has recorded.
For this audience this afternoon.
Not possible this amount of time later. Yes it is.
Because the Lord Jesus.
Probably most know about what's called the Lord's Prayer.
And maybe many of us memorized it.
Actually, in truth it would probably be better described as the disciples prayer.
But what I think of as a better for us prayer that the Lord Jesus made.
Near the end of his life, and he made it for your benefit and mine as well as others.
Is found in John's Gospel.
And when I get there, I'll give you a place.
John 17.
It's a wonderful thing.
That God has chosen.
To record a prayer.
Of the Lord Jesus.
That includes you in it.
And me in it.
Many of us are used to.
Asking for prayer from someone else.
Won't you pray for me? And then we tell them something about a need that we see in our own lives.
And here we have a prayer of the Lord Jesus.
Just before, right at the end of his life here on earth, and he prays.
First of all, for the disciples that had been with him, and he was now going to be separated from them by death and by resurrection.
And so he prays this prayer for them.
But he also in his prayer says in verse 20 of John 17.
Neither pray I for those alone.
But for them also which shall believe on me.
And so you're in that class, and I'm in that class. This prayer is for us.
That are in this room and it is a prayer, a personal prayer of the Lord Jesus for you this afternoon.
Sometimes.
I'll say we shouldn't necessarily, but we appreciate a little more when we know a particular person that we think is near. The Lord is praying for us because we think that they may better and more intelligently know how to ask the Lord or come before the Lord on our behalf.
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And here we have the Lord Jesus.
Coming before his father.
For you and for me.
It's a good person to know. It's good to know his prayers for us.
So, he says.
These words spake Jesus.
And lifted up his eyes to heaven.
And said father.
The hours come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.
Sometimes we need to pray about ourselves.
And what we're going to go through.
And that's wrong. That's not wrong, that's right. But as we see how the Lord Jesus here prays, actually he begins talking to the Father about himself and the Father 1St, and then he brings others in us into His prayer.
And so he says, The hours Come, glorify thy Son, but thy Son also may glorify thee.
Right after this he goes to the cross, and at the cross he glorifies the Father.
And he is so united in heart and thought with the Father, that he also can say to the Father, glorify the Son.
Thou hast given him power that's you have given me.
The sun power over all flesh.
That.
I should give eternal life.
To as many as thou hast given him.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God.
And Jesus Christ from thou ascent.
Maybe a feeble illustration of something that?
Why is internal life so important? Is it important so that we can last a long time?
Is that the intent or purpose of God in eternal life? Not really.
God wants to have eternal fellowship with us.
And he gave to his son.
To give that life to us.
So that you and I might have the enjoyment.
Of common enjoyment with God the Father and God the Son forever.
So he says this is life eternal, that they might know thee.
The only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent.
Feeble illustration, but.
When I was a boy, we had a dog.
Named Bell.
Colleague.
Full name was Anita Bell of Rules Roost.
From Lassie Belle of rural Haven.
Who is a purebred dog? Had a pedigree and all that.
It was a wonderful dog. We had it for 1516 years.
We love to play with Bell. We loved his children.
But there were limits.
There are lots of things that Bell didn't understand that we couldn't communicate to it.
There were lots of things that Bell probably was trying to communicate with us that we didn't very well understand. We learned some.
You know when it jumped up on your lap?
When it barked at you in certain ways that it was its manner of communicating.
I'm sure that Bell understood.
Something of our care of it, when it was fed and when it was played with and all the rest of it, but it was very limited.
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And.
Yeah, eternal life.
The Lord says here to his father for us.
I want them. You want them.
To have a life that we together can share with one another. That's the desire of the Lord Jesus.
That's his personal.
Prayer.
Connection with you he wants you and I to enjoy.
Himself and his Father for eternity.
And so he has given us a life and a nature.
That enables us to know one another.
In a very personal.
A very intimate way.
We might say Bell loved us, but who knows what that meant to the dog?
But when we speak of eternal life.
It's a wonderfully different thing.
Because there's only one eternal life.
I look at you this afternoon and there's a lot of lives that I'm looking at. There's just as many lives as there are people in this room.
But there's only one eternal life.
The life of Christ. And it's that very life that has been imparted to you and I to share in and to have and to enjoy. And what is the result?
Were able.
To have the same feelings.
We are able to experience the same character of love.
We are able to have holy.
Feelings and thoughts because we share in one common life.
And so the Lord says you've given.
To me.
That I should give eternal life.
To whom?
To whom?
He says to the father.
As many as thou hast given me.
I'll make it very personal.
Pick on one brother and sister.
To do it, but it makes it come home a little more personal.
Father.
You've given me Virgil.
As a gift.
And I want Virgil.
And you've given me Anne as a gift.
And I want Virgil and Anne to share.
With me in a common life.
Is that love?
Does that satisfies?
Here you set this afternoon in your seat, and I speak to you as a believer.
And the Lord Jesus in very personal way and in personal terms.
To the Father in this prayer.
As expressing.
That you what you mean to him is you are a gift.
Of his father to himself.
Is that satisfying to the heart?
Does that encourage?
It's his statement. It's not something I'm stating. It's not something I'm making up. It is a statement about himself.
And what is the consequence, verse three, that they may know thee?
May know thee.
Now there are lots of things that we don't understand.
There are things about other people.
That we hear about, but because of our own background or because of our lack of understanding of the profession they're in or something like that.
We don't understand.
I know one I've often used as illustration. Some of you sisters could have answered differently than I, but I never said to my wife when she was pregnant and delivered a child. I know just how you feel.
I never experienced that.
I couldn't honestly and truly say that I could understand fully what she went through during.
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The process of delivery of the child and the pain associated with it.
I didn't think Felicia ever say, well, I understand just how you feel because I didn't.
But the Lord Jesus has communicated in love.
That the Father has given you to him.
And in addition to that has given.
The place to give you his life, share his life with you in a way that.
You can understand him.
Not as a divine person completely, but you can enter into an understanding.
An enjoyment of the same things with a common feeling.
Yes, his person goes beyond human understanding, but in many respects there is that communication.
And.
It satisfies his heart.
Just comes to mind. I was sharing it with somebody yesterday I guess, and so it's a little bit fresh.
I used to think when I got to heaven, I wouldn't cry anymore.
Heaven is perfect.
Wonderful sin is gone.
Everything is just. Whatever one could imagine is wonderful.
But I believe I will cry in heaven. Why?
Because I expect to see the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have in Genesis the picture of the Lord Jesus in the restoration of his fellowship to his earthly brethren in Joseph and his brethren. And there I don't remember how many five or six or so times in which Jesus goes apart and weeps during that restoration process.
That's a picture of what's going to happen in the future when the Lord Jesus is restored to his earthly people.
And that's after you and I are with them in glory.
In those seven years of tribulation.
Are you going to watch him cry?
Without compassion, without entering into his heart.
I say it's impossible.
Having his.
You will enter in in a way.
That will.
Go through it seeing what he's going through. And as he cries, I think you will too.
But here, he says.
Verse 4.
His life. I'll just make the comment in this chapter. He hasn't actually died physically. Chronologically we still have the cross ahead. But this prayer is from him as the Son of God and in as Son of God he could speak about things future as if they had already happened.
And so some of those things in this chapter have that character, so he says.
I glorified thee on the earth, Speaking of his life and to the Father, he says. I finished the work.
Which you gave me to do.
And he's speaking as the Sun.
Even though what we would call the work of the Cross hadn't in time actually yet taken place, but he's Speaking of it as if it had, and he's praying in anticipation of returning to the Father.
And looking back over the life that he had here while he was on earth and what he's going to ask for for you.
While he's not here.
And for me?
I finished the work which thou gavest me to do, and that's the work of the cross.
It's finished. There's nothing more to be done.
The intactial fact when he was on the cross, said those words in time. It is finished. And when he had said that, he bowed his head and dismissed his own life.
A wonderful fact in itself. He dismissed his own life.
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God didn't have to.
Do that.
Man, in fact, in truth, couldn't really do that, although he's responsible for the crucifixion.
But the Lord Jesus, the divine person, dismisses his own spirit and bows his head in death.
So he says first in relationship between himself and his Father, before we're brought in. He says Now, Father, glorify thou me with thine, own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
And so he is going to return to the heavenly.
Place where he and the Father.
Had had glory together from eternity.
And he's going to return to that place of honor in his father's presence.
But he presents it to the Father as something the Father is to do.
And the Father does.
So he says in verse 6.
I've manifested.
Made known thy name unto the men which thou gavest me.
Out of the world.
That's something that he says to the father about you.
And about a.
You can say father.
I have presented you.
To those that are gathered this Lord's day.
And Pocatello ID. I mean Idaho.
I've done that.
To reach 1.
And they were thine.
And thou gavest them to me.
It's a wonderful thing to enjoy that you are a present.
Of the Father, to the Son, and it's precious to the heart of the Lord Jesus.
In such a way that he talks about it.
To his father, he appreciated that you were given to him as a gift.
And in that he also says.
They have kept thy word.
And they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me, are of thee.
And so he expresses.
What he has.
And the results of it.
As it were I value the present.
That you've given me.
And I'm going to do everything necessary to see that it's not lost.
Sometimes we get presents of one sort and another, and they don't last very long.
We're not able to keep them. Something happens to them and they're lost.
You are a gift of the father to the Son, and as such.
He's going to be sure that you're never lost.
If you could be lost.
It would be because he doesn't have the power to keep you while he wants to.
He says he's going to do that.
And so your security.
Isn't.
Really dependent in any real way on yourself.
It is his power by the Spirit to keep.
What the Father gave him.
Does that give you peace, Confidence.
I hope so.
He also says.
Verse eight I have given unto them the words which thou gave us me.
You have.
Words from the Word of God.
Where they're recorded for us?
That the Father gave to the Son to give to you.
You know, there are all kinds of places where words come from and all kinds of thoughts.
Some of them we'd be better off having nothing to do with.
Or even being occupied with.
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But here's the father.
According to what's in his own heart for you and I, giving them to his son to give to us.
Does that make them important?
To us, you know, sometimes when someone says so and so said this.
And they wanted me to pass it on. We evaluate the value or the importance of it, according to the person that said it.
As to whether we think it's important or not, but here it said, I've given unto them the words which thou gavest me.
And.
Blessed be the Lord, the next 3 words.
They have received them.
They have received.
The Lord knows.
May go beyond some of our capacity to say, well, I don't know that I've always received everything I should receive.
But the Lord can say they have received them.
And in receiving them, they know the source of them that I came out from the.
And they have believed that thou did send me.
I would believe that everyone of you that knows the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior.
No. And appreciate the truth of what the Lord says about you here.
That.
He came from the Father.
The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, and the Father in sending his Son to be the Savior of the world.
Is something that you have received and believed.
And accepting him.
So, he says.
I pray for them.
You probably prayed for some people today.
Hope so.
And I would assume so.
There are probably some that you pray for every day.
We all have limits as to the number of people we pray for each day.
Maybe you pray for five or ten or a couple 100.
But there's a limit.
In the number that you pray for.
Here the Lord Jesus says, I pray for them.
The Lord Jesus today.
Brought you.
Before his father.
Is not limited in the same way that we are, but he values you as a gift from the father.
And today, the Lord Jesus.
Brought you.
Before his father.
I pray for them.
For them which thou hast given me.
Sometimes.
We're at a table. Maybe you've been at a table at this conference and there's been some exchanges.
And somebody's being talked about I I've experienced it at this conference table.
There's some conversations going on and there are multiple people at the table and somebody's name is brought up.
And you can kind of tell some at the table are thinking at that point about something else.
Maybe they don't know the person involved.
Maybe they're distracted by something else, and so they kind of lose touch with the conversation of what's being said and who it's being said to.
Lord Jesus says and when he's praying for us.
You've given him to me.
And they are thine.
Let's try to illustrate it this way.
Suppose you're a mom or a dad. Or you're a child.
And if your mom and dad and somebody at the table starts to talk about one of your kids?
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Is that enough to get your attention? If it's on something else, I'm sure it is.
If you're a child and you're talking to somebody else, and your mom or dad's name comes into the conversation, but you stop thinking about what was being talked about.
I'm confident that your ears perk up and you start to connect.
And have interest in what's being said.
Here, when the Lord's talking, he says.
I They're yours and they're mine.
I hope it didn't happen very often when a husband or a wife will say a wife starts to talk to her husband about one of the children.
And the husband doesn't say, oh, honey, I'm busy right now.
Not a good idea if you've been in that relationship, but it's not necessarily very common thing to happen and it's the normal is that the moment somebody that you have a close relationship to?
Is involved. You pay attention, you care, you listen, and you participate.
Here the Lord Jesus is bringing you before his Father, and in bringing you before his Father, he's doing so that Father you gave.
Him or her to me?
You gave Ralph to me.
You gave Lois to me?
And so on. It's a very personal and individual thing, and perhaps in my heart more than anything else.
Is the desire that when the Lord Jesus speaks in the Word.
That we take it personally.
I had pleading thoughts of actually starting this meeting with Jesus loves me.
Why? Because it's very personal.
We visit a detention center on a regular basis and speak to the kids about the Lord Jesus, and thankfully one of the songs that's a favorite is Jesus Loves Me.
And we often say to them it's not going to benefit you at all unless you take it personally.
And it's that.
We each need to have a personal, individual, conscious relationship with the Lord Jesus.
You ate table a little while ago.
There were people at the table with you.
Was there any conscious sense that the Lord Jesus was listening to the conversation?
It's important.
To us, to develop if we haven't.
When we.
We sang 327.
Were you conscious when you started singing that, that you were addressing the Lord Jesus?
Did you consciously?
Lord Jesus.
Are we one with thee?
It's important when we sing, when we sing out of the little flock. Some are spiritual songs.
But some are direct addresses to God, to the Father, to the Lord Jesus.
I encourage you to pay attention, if you haven't to that, and when you are singing conscientiously recognize that you are.
Addressing or stinging words to the Lord Jesus.
And that the sentiments while written by someone else should come as your personal sentiments or thoughts when you so sing or speak.
When you pay attention to that, you find some of The Sims. You have to pay attention all the way.
That's what happens to say, Lord Jesus.
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And.
All the verses are addressed to him. There are others where it's mixed. Sometimes some verses are about spiritual things and right in the middle he gets addressed.
Christianity and a relationship with the Lord Jesus should develop into an intensely personal moment by moment experience.
So he says here.
I pray for them.
Well, in its context here it was the disciples that had been with him at that time, but later on, as we read, were included.
He says. I pray not for the world.
But for them which thou has given me, for they are thine.
Just comes to mind. I'll repeat it. Maybe there's some that haven't heard it. Prayer is based on the immense privilege of having common thoughts with God.
Prayer is based on the immense privilege of having common thoughts with God.
That is, the things that God is interested in, you are.
The things that you are interested in, God is, and so there is a communication. Prayer is a form of communication of speaking one to another, and it is based on the very assumption that there is common interest in what's being communicated.
Someone's sick and you pray for them. Is God interested?
Yes, he is. You know he is.
And it is well.
For us to have a conscious sense that everything we do every day.
God has a common interest in it.
In the sense of can have fellowship with it.
And if there is something that I get occupied with and I do that, the Lord Jesus wouldn't be. Let's put it this way, I wouldn't be comfortable if the Lord Jesus was visibly right there beside me when I'm doing it, or looking over my shoulder when I'm at my computer terminal.
It's time to say goodbye to it.
Because he wants.
And this prayer expresses his desires.
In his with his father in respect to his relationships with you.
I make.
When he talked to the father about us.
Do you think God said. Well, son, I'm not really interested in that particular person.
Can you imagine that you can?
You cannot imagine that when the Lord Jesus brings your name before God, God says I'm kind of busy right now.
I have some other more important things to do.
So I really don't right now have time to talk about Mary or John or Jim and so on.
No.
I pray for them. I pray not for the world.
And verse 10.
All mine are thine and thine are mine.
To me, that's. I appreciate that.
We're addressing the levers.
You'll never find the Lord Jesus speaking to God about a person in the way that's described here. And have the Father say, well, they're yours, but they're not mine.
That's that's not part of my life, not part of my people.
There are other things that we have in life that we don't share in common.
You may have your place to live, and I don't.
I live somewhere else.
You may have one kind of work and I have another. And so there are lots of things in our lives that are not truly common.
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But here?
When its people and interest in the lives of those people, it's wonderful to me to say, Lord, I'm yours.
On the Father.
And thank you both.
For your common loving care and interests in me.
Verse 11 The Lord's Prayer for us changes a little.
It's bringing into the fact that he was returning to heaven.
Those that were his were going to still be on earth, and so in that way there was going to be a physical separation as to place He in heaven with the Father to whom He was returning, and they still here on earth, but more than the earth.
Important word is the world.
The world.
The world that's that system of things in which we live, It's government.
It's entertainment, it's interests. All those things together make up what is called the world.
And the Lord Jesus.
Notice what the world is.
Well, I could say a whole lot better than we do.
And he was returning to the father while he was here. He could nurture them by being physically with them, and can I say by the activities they did together, keep them separate.
From the world because they were with Him as His disciples.
So, he says.
Verse 11 I'm no more in the world.
But these are in the world.
I come to thee.
Notice how he addressed as the father at this point.
He adds a word he doesn't just say, Father.
He says, Holy Father.
Why?
The world is an unholy place.
The world is presently a filthy place.
The interests, the ambitions, the activities of the world system.
Are against.
What God wants?
Why Just a passing comment?
Because.
When the Lord Jesus was before Pilate.
Pilate presented to the people representing the people of the world at that time, a choice.
Do you want Jesus?
Or do you want Barabbas?
And the choice was we want Barabbas.
And the world is characterized by that choice.
We want Parabus.
Rabbis, that, you know, was a murder.
The Prince of Life was cast out.
A murderer was chosen.
And the world system? Perfectly, really perfectly. I don't like that word exactly, but.
Is characterized by that choice. And so here, when he wants those of his own that are in the world, he says Holy Father.
Holiness and separation from evil and filth.
That characterizes the world, he says. Keep.
Keep.
We appreciate this prayer.
Make it personal.
To enter into the Lord Jesus praying for you.
To his father and saying Holy Father keep.
Does that motivate you to want to be kept?
To desire to be proper in your response.
Through his prayer for you.
Here he says, Holy Father, keep through thine own name, those whom thou hast given me.
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You're his. He was going back to the glory.
But the Father, he prays to the Father to keep you, because he loves you because you're his, the gift of the Father to himself. And so he says.
Keep.
It says.
Verse.
The end of the verse.
That they may be one.
As we are.
Figuratively speaking.
There's more in it than this, but it's a feeble way of trying to illustrate something.
If the Father and the Son.
Or to lock down.
The street of Pocatello.
Wouldn't you enjoy being the third one?
To walk down the street together.
In perfect harmony.
With perfect interests, with oneness of heart and mind and thought.
Lord Jesus.
Praise this for you.
Perhaps every day.
There's that expression of his desire and his love for you to have this kind of fellowship with you on a daily basis.
Hope we value it. I think we do in our measure.
So he says verse 12. While I was with them in the world, I kept them.
While I was here, I kept each one of them, Father.
Except the son of perdition, Judas.
Being a different case.
Then he says, verse 13. Now I come to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy.
Fulfilled in themselves.
Just ask you the question.
Are you enjoying?
Today, have you enjoyed today his joy?
Do the same things that gave him joy as a man here on earth. Are they the same things that today are giving you joy?
Do you enjoy?
As you pass through today the love of the Father.
He did.
He enjoyed the love of his father each day.
Just a little more challenging 1.
He says.
And the Psalm about him.
I'm determined.
To do thy will.
About that a minute.
The Lord Jesus.
Found joy.
In being.
Enjoying what God provided.
That's where he found joy.
He found joy in dependence upon his father.
He found joy in being obedient.
To his father.
He wants us to have the same joy. He prays for it.
But my joy.
That those things that brought joy to his own heart and his life here on earth would be the same things. He praised this for you and for me. That they would be the same things in which we find our joy.
I delight.
To do thy will. Oh my God, that was a joy to his heart.
I think it could properly be said he would rather.
00:55:01
Die than disobey.
There was that intense.
Joy in him.
With respect to his relationship and walk with his father.
Do we share it?
He prays that we do.
It's his desire and his prayer to the Father that we would air in and find our joy.
In the same things that he finds his.
And partly, what enables that to be true?
Is he's given us a life.
And nature.
What we read about in the beginning eternal life. It is a life and nature that enjoys the very same things he enjoys.
Perfectly.
So we can't say, well, I'm this or I'm that or I I don't have the what's necessary.
No, he's given you a life in nature that enjoys exactly what he enjoys.
And he wants us to enjoy it.
He wants us to be happy.
He wants us to have fellowship with himself.
And he will, if we enjoy the same things that he does.
I've been even at this conference, sat at the dinner table and by a little bit of observation, seeing 234 people talking together and one person gets on a certain subject and some of the others.
Lose a little bit of interest.
Maybe stop their part of the conversation and talk to each other because they've lost common interest.
In the same thing that's being said. And I'm not condemning that, I'm just trying to illustrate something and that is.
Don't you desire?
I'm sure you do.
That if the Lord Jesus were sitting at the dinner table with you today.
That every single part of the conversation he could enter into with you.
And enjoy with you.
Or have a burden if it's a burden with you in that.
Or would there be something in the conversation that he couldn't share in with you in?
So, he says.
Verse 12 While I was with them, I kept them.
And so.
He did. He kept them. I have to look at my time and it says 315 and I see it's 315.
You enjoy the rest of the chapter.
Go ahead and read it and enjoy what the Lord Jesus.
Specifically, is praying for you about.
And be sure God's hearing his prayer for you.
And may we enter in more fully.
Into it.
And enjoy it with them.
We will perfectly when we're at home in the glory.
But the Lord doesn't want us to have to wait before we get to have conversations together and enjoy and share and the same things.
That he enjoys.
Let's pray.
Our God, our Father, we.
Give thanks to thee for giving thy son.
We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for so willingly coming for the Father.
For us.
We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, that as we are here this afternoon, that we know that.
24 hours a day that thou art before the Father on our behalf.
We thank thee for thy high priestly present work for us, Lord Jesus.
And we would just desire that each one of us might grow a little in the enjoyment of moment by moment fellowship with Thyself, Lord Jesus, and Thy love.
And that each one of us would put aside from our lives anything that hinders thee from.
Being able to enjoy the activities of life with us in spirit.
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Or we with thee.
So we thank you for thy love, Lord Jesus.
And we thank you for thy present work on our behalf, and we look forward, Lord.
To the moment when.
What we now need will be perfectly realized.
When we are with thee and like thee.
And see thee as thou art.
We look forward to it, Lord.
With anticipation and thankful hearts.
Thy precious name. Amen.