, good morning, Cornerstone family. thank you to Justin and the team for leading us in worship. it's my privilege to bring the, the word of God to the people of God this morning. And, As we get into the word, let's go ahead and, and bow in prayer, that the Spirit of God would speak to all of us through his preached word.
Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you so much for just the blessing of being together again, to hear your word preached, and we ask, Lord, that as we interact with your word, that your spirit, would, would fill each of us, and Lord, that you would help me to use, the gifts that you've given me to, to speak, with conviction and comfort as the oracles of God. And Lord, that we would all be instructed and encouraged and that we would find ourselves believing more this morning and looking to Christ and that we would find ourselves repenting in an ongoing basis and receiving that grace of repentance through your Holy Spirit. we pray this in Christ's name.
All God's people said, Amen. When I was in college at Cal State San Bernardino, one of the emphasis that I had as an English major was early American literature. And one of my favorite characters and authors in American history was Benjamin Franklin. one of the works that we were exposed to was his autobiography.
And in his autobiography, he set out at one point in his life to achieve moral perfection. And the way he went about this is he basically had 12 different virtues that he tried to perfect himself in, and he would give a week to one virtue, and when he had felt like he'd perfected himself in that virtue, he'd move on to a second one and a 3rd 1. but he says in his autobiography, quote, as I knew or thought I knew what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined....
