Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through John 13:31-38, emphasizing the transformative power of the cross in the lives of believers. He highlights Jesus' new command to love one another as He has loved us, which sets a standard for Christian love that is sacrificial and steadfast. The sermon challenges listeners to reflect on their spiritual maturity and loyalty to Christ, reminding them that true discipleship is demonstrated through love and reliance on God's strength rather than their own.
Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. Amen.
If you have a child that needs to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available this time, first grade and under. My wife's going to be doing that today. And so be thankful for that opportunity.
If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in John chapter 13, verses 31 through 38. We are continuing our series in the Abide in Me passage, How to Remain in Christ.
The first week we looked at Jesus washing his disciples' feet. And then last week we looked at what it looks like to live in betrayal. We've all faced betrayal in life. We've all faced people turning their back on us. How did Jesus respond when Judas was going to turn his back on him?
That's how we looked at it. And today Judas has left the room.
And we are here with the 11 disciples. And the entire mood of the entire room begins to change. And so we're going to look through this. I know I've got a lot on your notes. We're going to move through this very briskly today. So follow along well.
And we'll begin reading by standing with verses 31 through 38. So let's all stand. The words will be on the screen as well for you this morning. The Bible says,
We're going to unpack all that here in a minute. Little children, I am with you just a little while longer. You will look for me. And just as I told you, the Jews, so now I tell you where I'm going, you cannot come. I give you a new command. Love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.
By this, everyone will know that you're my disciple. If you love one another.
Lord, Simon Peter said unto him, where are you going? Jesus answered, where I'm going, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow later. Lord, Peter asked,
why can't I follow you now? I will lay my life down for you. Jesus replied, will you lay down your life for me? Truly, I tell you, the rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times.
Father, we thank you for what you've done. We thank you for the reading of your word. I pray that you'll be with the service today that would glorify you as you were glorified on the cross. In your name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
One year and two months before I was born, I was born in December 8th of 1988. In October of 1987, who was alive in October of 87?
The Story of Jessica McClury
Raise your hands. Most of the room. Good. You may know this story that I'm going to tell. It's about a little girl who was 18 months old. Her name was Jessica McClury.
You may know this story. National News. She fell into an abandoned well in a little town called Midland, Texas. While she was there, she had dropped 22 feet in an eight-inch pipe, and everything instantly changed. A normal Saturday became a national emergency.
Ordinary people who were trying to do their jobs became rescuers in desperate need of help. And as the story goes, for 58 hours, an entire country watched and waited until she was safely rescued.
Now, the remarkable part about this whole story is the rescue team knew something that the watching world didn't fully know. As they were interviewing people later, they were asking them a couple of questions, and they knew that it was going to require more than just good intentions.
They couldn't just reach down, grab her, and yank her out. They had to take precision.
They had to carefully plan this rescue if this girl was going to be saved. They had to actually dig a new tunnel and a new way to get to her 22 feet down in order for them to get her out.
And after 58 hours of painstakingly, meticulously planning this rescue, they were able to take her out and rescue her safely.
She went on to do great things. But I tell that story to get us in the mindset of John chapter 13, because the disciples in this moment were thinking in very simple terms, right? This is how they were thinking. Jesus, I love you.
They were thinking, Jesus, I want to follow you, right? That's good intentions. And Peter actually was convinced that he was ready to do this. And Jesus knew that they weren't ready.
Jesus knew that the rescue was coming, but it wasn't the way they expected it to come. Most of these men in this room thought Jesus is going to overthrow the Roman government. He's going to set up his kingdom.
We're going to be his 11 now that are going to surround him on his throne. He's going to be the king.
It's going to be a great thing. Like he's going to come and set it up.
But Jesus knew that change was coming and he was preparing them for this plan that was going to happen.
The cross, as we're going to look at today, was exposing their limits of where they were at in their life. It was going to redefine how they loved one another, how they were going to show toward each other love. And it was going to show their loyalty and where they were truly at.
This is the moment in this passage where the tide begins to change. The night that we ended with, the then it was night, began to change everything. And I want to ask you one question to get started this morning. How has the cross changed you and me?
As we look to the cross of Jesus, as Jesus was in this room with his 11 disciples, he looks and he sees the cross in his mind and he knows that he's going to give his life for the men in this room and for the men and women in this room here today.
And he begins to change their way of thinking as he is looking toward the cross.
And what he does is the very first point that we have in verses 31 and 32, he begins to define that all glory must go to God.
Every action, every step, every word, every thought, everything we do must give glory to God.
The Cross and Glory
The cross changes our view of glory. And he says this, now the son of man is glorified.
As we walk through this passage, you could probably fill out these blanks beforehand because they're not really genius blanks here, but we start with the son of man being glorified. This term starts with now the son of man is glorified.
It is crucial for this moment because as we looked at just a couple of weeks ago, Judas has left the room. The betrayer has left the room and everything is now set in motion.
The cross is on Jesus's mind because he knows that this is what's going to happen.
And Jesus, I think this is so fascinating as we look at this because we're going to when Jesus looks at the cross, he doesn't look at it as a tragedy. He looks at it as a moment of glory.
We look at it as defeat oftentimes, right? We see the cross.
We see the death. We know there's victory on the other side, but there is that moment of defeat and the disciples were living in that defeat. They knew that there was a betrayer that happened. They knew that something was going to happen.
And this is a moment where Jesus, the son of God says, this is meant to give glory back to God. John's gospel.
He looks at the cross as a humiliation thing, but he also looks at it as an exaltation of we are exalting Jesus on this cross, not merely as an hour of grief, but as an hour of glory.
And as we walk through this passage and as we walk through this, I want you to really begin to understand that Christ, the son of man that is used here is a direct correlation to Daniel chapter seven.
And it ties us to the suffering that Jesus is going to go through. He is the son of man that's going to suffer for you and for me. And he's going to die on this cross for you and for me. My wife is teaching science right now.
So she runs all these little things by me and she came home the other day and she was like, James, I think I want to get a caterpillar for my room. And I'm like, why do you want to get a caterpillar for your room?
She was like, well, I want us to be able to go through all of the cocoon stages. And my mom began to think on that, right? A caterpillar goes into this cocoon stage.
It goes into this stage of life where it's going through massive metaphors, massive change that's going to happen in its life to come out on the other side as one of the most beautiful things we see.
This is what Jesus is going through. He's the cross from here's end is going to go through pain, is going to go through change so that as he comes out on the other end, God is the one that is getting glory.
Oftentimes in our life, if you're like me, you're going to go through situations,
you're going to go through heartaches, you're going to go through hard times, and you're going to think that that situation has been the situation that defeats you.
I'm here to tell you that as we look through the cross, as we look through God, as we look through his son, that situation is simply merely God working in us and God working through us so that we can give him glory back for what has happened.
As our missionary shared about the refugees in Durban, they are attacked and they are hurt day to day, and these are ways where they are able to get up and they are able to sing the goodness of God
because they are looking at the glory of the cross as they go through their life. Not only is the son of man glorified, but God is glorified in him. The cross displays the character of who God is. God begins to glorify everything that he does through the cross.
And I want to look at the cross for just a moment, and I want to look at what the cross does for us. There's three things that I wrote down that I'm going to go through very quickly. The first is this, God's justice is in the cross.
When you begin to look at the cross, you begin to see the justice of God working through the cross. Sin was not ignored.
Sin was judged. At Calvary, God did not look down and take the sin of all mankind and sort of just sweep it under the rug. I've got a 12-year-old son, almost 13, and I'll tell him, hey, go clean your room.
And I'll walk into his room that's supposed to be clean, and it looks clean on the outside, and then I'll pull up his blanket that he has draped over his bed, and everything that was on his floor is now pushed underneath the bed.
It's not really clean. It's been swept underneath the bed. And I'm like, what are you doing in here? As a good, loving father, I have to correct him, and I have to bring justice. I can't just say, well, you did your best.
No, I have to be a loving father who is going to be justice in that way, and sometimes the wrath of the father has to come out on the son. And God, in that same way, could not forgive our sins without the cross.
The justice of all mankind had to be laid out on the cross for our sins today.
The judge that sits in that courtroom and judges the criminal for what he did wrong would not be a justice judge if he allowed him to get away with his crimes.
He would not be a loving judge if he allowed him to get away from his crimes. We would say that that would be a corrupt judge.
That would be a judge that needs to get voted out. We need someone else in that position. And so a judge has to commit justice, and God, in his same way,
remains both just and the justifier in his love toward us because he sent his son to die for our sins and justify us on the cross.
We truly reckoned our seriousness of our sins with the cross and know that God's justice is in the cross.
God's holiness is also in the cross. God's holiness is shown in the cross, and it shows that how God cannot even look upon sin.
Understanding Abandonment on the Cross
Jesus cries out on the cross the abandonment of God, and he says, my God, my God, why are you forsaking me? God, why did you turn your back on me? And it shows us that God can only look upon holiness.
And the cost of the holiness was that God had to turn his back on his own son.
And for that moment in that brief period of time from all eternity past and the time of all eternity present in that moment on the cross was the only time that Jesus wasn't connected to the Father. And he cries out in pain, and he says, God, what are you doing?
Why did you turn your back on me? And it shows us that God desires us to be holy, and God desires us to love one another, but we must be holy. And God looks upon us and says,
I can only look upon holiness. If you ever in your life treat sin casually,
begin to ask yourself, God, why have you abandoned me? God, why are you not around me? Because we are not treating sin the way God treats sin.
It repulses him, and it is something that we must turn away from, and we must turn to God. But not only is God justice in the cross, not only is God holy in the cross, but God is faithful in the cross. If you don't hear anything about from today,
know that God is faithful. Every promise that God gives, every prophecy that God gave throughout scripture,
every picture that Jesus painted as he was here walking and talking with his disciples, every illustration he gave was simply fulfilled in the cross.
From Genesis to the prophets, from the prophets to the gospels, all the way up into the cross, everything that Jesus did, he kept his word.
And I'm here to tell you that the cross was not plan B for the world.
The cross is plan A, and it was promised before the foundation of the world, because God is faithful, and he is just, and he is holy, and he is here to tell us that I love you so much,
that I'm going to send my son to die for you, to live his life perfectly, to redeem you of your sins. Where do you need to trust God's faithfulness this morning?
As I go through my life, I'm daily in this moment of saying, God, I need to trust you in this moment. God, I need to trust you in this situation.
God, I need to trust you in this area that I don't even know what's going on. And oftentimes, this is where we need to meet God in his faithfulness.
So not that we see that the Son of Man is glorified, and we see God has glorified him, but we see the Father and the Son begin to glorify each other.
There is this mutual language that we see. We see that the Son glorifies the Father, the Father glorifies the Son, and it all intersects in the cross that represents the perfect unity of the Godhead.
The cross lays out this glorification, and the only true glory that God has is when we are centered on God. When we center our life around God.
I just did a wedding, so marriage counseling's on my mind a little bit, but I tell each and every person that I go through marriage counseling, I say, listen, as you're walking through your life, young man, and you're
going through your life, and young lady, as you're going through life, if you keep your mind and your eyes focused on Jesus and the cross, these two couples are going to come together in perfect unity.
I said, young man, if you're leading your life, and you're trying to lead towards Christ, and your wife, who is loving and caring, but she is not keeping her eyes on Jesus, there is going to be conflict because
you're not going to be in unity with one another. The cross brings unity with the Father and the Son, and it brings unity in you and ours life. There are times where I'll have to tell someone,
listen, you may not be able to change that person, but you can pray for them through the cross, and the Holy Spirit's going to be able to do a whole lot more in that person's life than you will ever be able to do.
So whose glory are we living for this morning? Whose glory are we beginning to live for this week? Are we living for our own glory?
Are we living for the glory of God? And then verses 33 through 38, as we quickly move through this, we begin to see the future of the disciples. We begin to see how the cross changes those that are following him.
These 11 men, I want you to really put your mind in this picture. Their feet were just washed by Jesus. He just gave this Passover meal.
Judas has now left, and now they're sitting here, and their mind begins to go from, okay, what is Jesus talking about? Why is he saying these things?
We see Peter ask this question, why can't I go with you? So there's these questions that are surrounded in the room, and we begin to see a couple of things. They all start with L. The first one is the limits of the disciples in verse 33. Where I go, you cannot come.
Jesus tenderly calls them this phrase, little children. He says, you have the mindset that is real, right?
You're following me. You care about me, but your actual devotion is limited. Your strength is limited in this area. I know you want to follow me, but you're not yet ready.
You're not ready to follow me in that area, and it begins to show and expose the gap between desire and full maturity and ability. Good intentions are not the same as spiritual maturity. My four-year-old, who's about to be five, he wants to drive my vehicle.
He wants to get in my car and say, dad, let me drive your fast car. He has all intentions to do that, but he is not yet mature to do that. When I was his age,
at the age of four years old, I got in my mom and dad's old Chevy Astro blue van. If you meet my mom at any moment of time, she will tell you this story. Some of you may have already heard this story.
And I got in my mom and dad's Chevy Astro van. We had came home from the grocery store, and they were all the kids.
I was four, so my younger brother was two. And the kids were all helping unload the groceries, and then we were getting back in the vehicle, and we were going out to go somewhere. I was four. I don't remember where we were going. I had just learned how to unbuckle my seatbelt.
If you've ever rode in an old Chevy Astro van, you know that sometimes you don't have to push the brake pedal to change the gear shift, and you could just pull the gear shift, and it would change gears. And so I get up in the driver's seat. I unbuckled my seatbelt.
All the siblings are inside. My older brother had come out, Jason. He had just gotten there, and I'm up in the driver's seat. I'm standing on the steering wheel. I'm standing on the seat. I'm acting like I'm driving. I grab the steering wheel, the shifter, and I pull it down into neutral.
We parked on a hill. The next thing you know, the van starts rolling backwards. I'm just grinning.
I'm just a happy little kid. I'm driving. This is great. My older brother, he jumps out of the car. He had a stuttering problem. He runs inside, and he's trying to tell mom and dad, James, van, road.
That's all he got out. My dad opens the door. The van's going, I'm just grinning. I'm driving. It's the greatest experience ever. My dad runs down the driveway, jumps in the driver's seat,
skins his leg up as it goes across the road, runs over the neighbor's mailbox, hits a pile of dirt. I'm great. Nothing's wrong with me. I got to drive. But was I mature enough to drive? Was I ready to drive? Am I still mature enough to drive? Some would say no.
But we go through these things in life, and we begin to ask ourselves,
are we spiritually mature? Sincerity does not equal readiness. I was sincerely wanting to do that, and yet there was a consequence that happened after that, and we won't go through that part of the story. But how often do we overestimate our spiritual strength and get burnout because we're not trusting the Lord?
We must be founded on the Lord Jesus Christ and everything we do and say, God, I know my limitations.
I know what I can and can't do. I'm going to need you to step in and take care of the rest because I don't know how I'm going to go through it. We see the limits of the disciples. We see the love of the disciples in verses 34 and 35.
This mark begins to change everything. He says this. He says, I give a new command to you. What is new? Is love new?
The New Command to Love
Church, is love new? Oh, this command, love your neighbor as yourself, was mentioned in Deuteronomy. This was mentioned in the Old Testament 3,500 years before this time was here. The disciples had never, they're like, God, what? New?
Love? New? I love my wife. We know what love is. In the Greek, we've got like 17 definitions for the word love. Jesus, what are you talking about? Love is new?
The love was not necessarily new, but it was the standard by which we love one another is the newness.
He makes this statement, as I have loved you, they're going to look back and think, how did Jesus love me? He went to the cross and died for me. All of a sudden, this standard of the bar of love has now been raised to the measure of the cross.
It is sacrificial, it is serving, it is steadfast, and I don't have time to expound on all those things.
But the scholars point out that it's not the newness, but it's the idea that's found in the model of who Jesus is and the measure of his sacrifice that begins to say, this is now the measure of how
you're going to live your life, and you are going to have this power that is love, that as the Bible says, by this type of love, all men are going to know who you're my disciples.
If I were to take a straw poll at your work, or your school, or your place of employment, wherever you're at, and I were to go to your employees or employer, and I were to say, give James an evaluation, does he love sacrificially?
Does he love in a serving manner? Does he love in a steadfast way? Would by the measure of his love, would you know that he was a Christian?
This is what Jesus is saying, is you are going to love in a way that that's going to be the badge that people are going to know that you're my disciples. It's not the gifts that you have. It's not the prophecies that you have.
It's not the knowledge that you have. It's not the preferences that you have.
It's not where you go on Sunday, but it's by the way you love one another that people are going to know that you're my disciple.
In the book of Acts, as we just finished looking at it, the outsiders looked at the early church, and this is what they said, see how they love one another. Why don't we have this love?
They're loving in a way that we don't even understand. I've got to go and ask them about their love and how they're living and how they're abiding in this love that is so influential.
Disciples' Loyalty and Confidence
And then we begin to see the loyalty of the disciples, and this is where we're going to begin to wrap it up. The loyalty of the disciples this morning, we begin to see that their confidence needed changing. I'm a confident guy.
I believe I can do a lot of things until I can't do them, and I believe I can't do them, but I'm going to try anything.
And as one of the ladies that was, we were out and about this week, and we were having lunch with someone, and she asked me if I had ate the food, or it was at the rehearsal dinner, Friday night for the wedding.
They had some like brie cheese that was deep fried with caramel on it, and I'm like, that's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life. Cheese deep fried with caramel. What are you eating right now?
And she was like, well, you know, you should at least try it once, right? You should at least step out and try it.
I'm like, yeah, okay, I'll try it one time. So I stepped out, and I began to step forward, and my mind was thinking about Peter, right? Jesus is saying all these things, and Peter goes,
well, Jesus, I don't know about these other 10. I'm not going to deny you. I'm not going to leave you, Jesus. I'm going to be the one that stands no matter what.
And it begins to expose how common we are and how much we can relate to Peter, because oftentimes we see the danger, we see whatever it is, and we're like, you know what? I can handle that.
I'm going to go forward, and I'm going to do that until we fall flat on our face. And this is what happened to Peter.
Peter made this proud claim, Lord, why can I not follow you? Lord, why can't I go where you're going to go? His heart was sincere.
It's almost like a child, as Jesus said, little children. It's like a child's like, Dad, I want to go and lift the weights that you're lifting, right?
Birdie's starting to lift some weights, and so we had some time in between football practice and soccer practice for Hudson, and so they had the leg press machine there, and he showed me, Dad, look how strong my legs are.
He threw like 250 pounds on there. And so he's lifting it, and I'm like, all right, throw like all the weights that you got on there, and it was like 600 pounds or something, and I've just throw the weight up, and it's like nothing. He's like, Dad, how are you doing that?
This is crazy.
This is the disciples, right? They're sitting here, and they're like, I've got the courage. I've got the sincerity. I want to follow you. But yet, things begin to happen in their life, and they don't.
We know by the end of the story that all the disciples have now left Jesus when he's on the cross, and there's only one John who comes back.
But I pulled a couple of scriptures from some what we call synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and I want you to understand sort of where Peter's at. What happens to Peter's life?
The first thing, I didn't put these on your notes. It sort of came to me this weekend. The first one is this, the pride that Peter had, he began to compare himself to others. In Matthew, he says, though all men deny you, Jesus, I'm never going to deny you.
Pride began to get in his life, and the pride that happens in our life will always cause us to fail because we believe in ourself, and we don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to take care of the things that are in our life. We see the prayerlessness in his life.
When Jesus, in the book of Luke, goes to the garden and begins to spend time in the garden praying, he tells his disciples, Peter, James, and John, stay here and pray with me while I go a little further and pray. And when he comes back, he sees Jesus,
or Jesus sees Peter, and he sees that he no longer relied in the spirit, but relied in the flesh and fell asleep. His prayerlessness allowed him to neglect what God had began to start in his life. Not only was his prayerlessness there, but his impulsiveness.
We see in, I believe it's Mark and in Matthew and in John as well, that as Peter is standing in the garden and the soldiers come to arrest Jesus, he says, you're not going to take Jesus from me. He pulls the sword out and he chops the guy's ear off. He's impulsive.
He's stepping out. He thinks, I'm going to act fast. I'm going to do this for Jesus. And he does it all in the flesh. There's no spirituality.
There's nothing there that was for the glory of God. And all of his zeal without submitting himself to the Lord Jesus Christ got him in trouble. And Jesus looked at him and said, why did you do that?
And he reached down in love to the guy that was going to beat him in the face, that was going to whip him and was going to do horrible things to him, picked up that ear and put it
back on him and healed him in that moment. You can see Peter's reaction.
You can see where he's at and the proud claim that he had began to go over and overwhelm him. And then Jesus makes this prediction, this painful prediction about Peter's life, right?
He's already said, one's going to deny me. One's going to betray me. But now he says, Peter, specifically to you, you're not going to betray me, but you're going to deny me.
And he says that before the rooster crows three times, you're going to deny me all three times.
Jesus knew Peter better than Peter knew himself. Don't you hate that when someone knows you better than you know yourself? Like you've got a wife, you've got a mom, and they're like, yeah, I told you that was going to happen. I didn't need you to tell me that. This is Peter.
Restoration After Failure
He's like, Jesus, are you sure about that? Failure was coming.
But as we can look forward, we can know that there's restoration after failure. Failure is not final. Failure is not final in our life, but it is just the moment where we begin to see that I need this change to happen in my life. Sometimes God lets us fail on purpose.
I played football for many years. I now get the opportunity to coach football.
As I played football, my coach would line me up and he would say, okay, I want you to do this drill or this. And he wouldn't necessarily correct me in the moment.
I would think I'm doing a great job and I'd go back and look at the film and he'd go, all right, let's look at film.
James, you did wrong here. You did wrong here. I'm like, coach, I did what you asked me to do.
What are you talking about? I did wrong. It's like, well, you should have contained here. You should have done this. I'm like, well, why didn't you correct me? He said, because I needed you to see it yourself.
Now as a coach, I did the same thing without even realizing it. All right, guys, this is how I want you to do. I coach my quarterbacks on how they should do some things and they make a mistake and they go, coach, how did I do? Well, you didn't do it right. What?
What? How did I do it right? Well, let me show you how to do it the right way. And so I step in and as a coach, I lovingly teach them and tell them how to do the things the right way. This is what Jesus was doing in this discipleship.
He's allowing them to fail so that he can come back to Peter and he can go to that seashore where Peter's at and he's fishing and he says, Peter, do you love me?
Peter, do you care about me? Peter, do you care about my church? I'm going to use you in a mighty way, but do you care? Jesus in that moment begins to show through what was going to happen that was painful, that was going to be heartbreaking. He begins to show the love of himself in that moment.
We ourselves can look at Peter and we can say, how often am I a Peter who tries with all good intentions to do right, but yet I fail and I feel like my life is useless and I can't be used by Jesus.
And all of a sudden he comes to us and he says, but do you love me? I loved you.
I died on the cross for you. I forgave you of your sins. Would you come back and follow me? And oftentimes we just need to be reminded that Jesus is calling us back to follow him.
Invitation to Reflect on Change
Maybe for the very first time this morning, as Terry comes and we begin to close in the invitation today, where are you at with Jesus? Jesus, has the cross changed you so much that you're like the disciples that say, I can't do anything. I can't make a step. I can't make a thought.
I can't make a word come out of my mouth without thinking, is this going to glorify God? Or we live in our life just for our own selfish ambitions as Peter was doing, right? Peter's like, hey, Jesus, I know these other guys, they're a bunch of wimps, but I'm Peter, right?
Upon this rock, upon me, you changed my name. I'm going to stand and I'm going to stand up for you. And no matter what happens, nothing's going to happen to me. I'm going to follow you, Jesus. And he lived in pride instead of living in view of glory of who Jesus is.
How are we living in that view of the cross? Has the cross changed how you show love toward one another? Has the cross changed the way you are treating those that are around you? Or are you still just loving ourself? Has the cross changed who you are loyal to?
A bride in Christ is not sentimental. It's not saying I'm going to go down to the jewelry store. I recently got a new ring.
I don't ever wear jewelry, but I fall in love with the Jerusalem cross. And just because I put this ring on my finger with the Jerusalem cross on it doesn't show the world that I love Jesus more than anything else. It's not sentimental. It's not like, hey, look at me.
Look at how great I am because I've got Jesus's cross on my neck. No, it's am I living a way that's transformational that if I took this off, if I never wore another cross necklace, people would know that I am a follower of Jesus by the way I love one another.
Father, I'm telling you, the closer you get to the cross, the more your glory, the more your love, and the more your loyalty will begin to change to say, God, I can't do that.
God, I can't say those things. I can't act this way because I'm looking at you in view of everything that I do and everything that I say. And we begin to change the way we live our life because the cross changes every single one of us. Father, we love you.
We thank you for what you've done. You are so good. You are so holy.
God, I just thank you for the justice that you've given. I don't always like it. I don't always like having to conform my ways to your ways. But God, I know that you're doing those things in our life to draw me closer to you.
God, I pray that you would help us to draw closer to you each and every day. For it's in your name we pray. Amen. Let's all.
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