Tried With Fire

I don't consider myself a very emotional person, but I was a watering pot yesterday. It started with Pastor Ryan's sermon on Hosea which culminates in God's call to return to him in chapter 14. This chapter is very personal because it was the text of one of the first sermons I ever read by C.H. Spurgeon after my ex-husband walked out. I wept then as I prayed for him to return to God and to his family. So yesterday's sermon brought a flood of memories. But God's faithfulness to the unfaithful isn't only true of those who commit obvious "bad" sins. His faithfulness extends to all of us because who among us hasn't gone after other gods in our hearts? Yet God continues to draw us again and again with a love that does not let us go. Then in the evening, a lay brother, Will Brown, spoke on Christ fulfilling the office of prophet, priest, and king using John 17 as the text. There were so many messianic expectations over the years, so many wrong ideas...

This is what Jesus prayed in John 17 . If anyone prayed without selfish motives, Jesus did. If anyone prayed in full accordance with the will of the Father, He did. v.1 - glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You v.4 - glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. v.11 - Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. v.15 - I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. v.20 -21 - I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. v.22 - that they may be one, just as We are one v.23 - that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world...