Letting the Spirit Have His Way with Us

Romans 8, let me invite you guys to turn. In your Bibles to Romans chapter 8, we'll be looking at a handful of passages of scripture. We've been doing a verse by verse study through Romans 567 and 8, a journey to the heart of the gospel. And what we're going to be doing, starting today is we're gonna turn a corner.

We've completed our study of that section of Romans, and I've seen a lot of wonderful gospel realities that are true of every believer in Christ. But it's time to turn a corner now and just ask, what do we do with all of this? the question is what then shall we do? If we just walk away from the truths that are in this section of the book of Romans and forget about them, well, then they're not going to do us much good.

But what do we do with this stuff that we have learned that serves to unleash these realities in our lives and in our ministry to others? That's the question that we are asking. Nancy Percy. In her book Total Truth, quotes from Charles Spurgeon, when he says the gospel is like a caged lion.

It does not need to be defended, it just needs to be let out of its cage. And there's a sense in which I think we do well to view the gospel truths in this section of Romans in the same way. What do we do that would serve to unleash these realities to operate in full effect and influence in our lives and in our ministry. And so we're gonna be compiling a list in the weeks to come of what do we do with these things and we're going to begin that list this morning.

And here's the first thing that we should do with these things that we have learned, and that is let the Spirit have his way. Let the Spirit have his way with us. Just let him, the third member of the Trinity, let the Holy Spirit do what he wants, and have his way with each of us. In Romans 8:4, Paul speaks of us walking according to the Spirit, verse 6 of us setting our minds on the Spirit, and verse 14 of us being led by the Spirit.

And back in chapter 7, verse 6, he talks about serving as slaves in the newness of the Spirit. All of these are various ways of saying, let the Spirit have his way, walk, set your mind on, be led by and serve according to the Spirit. Let him have his way. If the Spirit could just have his way with us, we'd be OK, right?

notice the difference between Romans 7 and Romans 8. In Romans 7, the words I, my, and me show up 47 times. I think that's actually just from verse 6 or 7 onward, it shows up 47 times, I, my, and me, and the word law in verse 6 or 7 onward throughout the rest of the chapter shows up 22 times, 19 of those times it's referring To the Old Testament, law. and so the, there, there's an absence of the Holy Spirit in chapter 7.

There's one mention of the Spirit early in chapter 7, but one writer says there's an absolute and eloquent silence in chapter 7 regarding the Holy Spirit. And what I think Paul is trying to convey to us is that whether Jesus, or whether you, you may not know him, or even if you do know Jesus, if, if you orient your life around the law of God and the do's and don'ts of the law of God saying I gotta do this and I can't do this and And you just orient your life around that law, the best it's ever going to get is the good I want to do, I don't do.

And the evil I hate, I find myself perpetually doing. Paul cries out for deliverance and then comes into Romans 8, and in Romans 8, there's literally an explosion of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who's mentioned only One time early in chapter 7 is mentioned 20 times in Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8, and we would say even the gospel itself represents an explosion of the Holy Spirit. What Romans 8 in part is all about is teaching us how to live life in the Holy Spirit, and to let this good Holy Spirit have his way with us, letting him have his gospel way with us, and what a radical difference has made in our lives now that we have received the Holy Spirit, and we need to ponder that life is very different now that we have the Spirit compared to the way it was before we received the Spirit of God on the day of our conversion.

Francis Chan in his book, The Forgotten God, shares an interesting perspective and let me just read this to you. He says, years ago when a random thought came into my head, I decided to share it with my wife.

Have you ever wondered what caterpillars think about? I asked. Not surprisingly, she said no. I then proceeded to tell her about the confusion I imagined a caterpillar must experience.

For all its caterpillar life, it crawls around a small patch of dirt and up and down a few plants. Then one day it takes a nap, a long nap. And then what in the world must go through its head when it wakes up to discover it can fly? What happened to its dirty plump little worm body?

What does it think when it sees its tiny new body and gorgeous wings? As believers, we ought to experience the same astonishment when the Holy Spirit enters our bodies. We should be stunned in disbelief over becoming a new creation with the Spirit living in us. As the caterpillar finds its new ability to fly, we should be thrilled over our spirit empowered ability to live differently.

And to live faithfully. Isn't this what the scriptures speak of? Isn't this what we've all been longing for? Yes, it is, and it's the longing of Romans 7.

It's the longing that is satisfied. In Paul's explanation of the gospel in Romans 8 with the explosion of the Spirit who dwells inside of us, dwells inside of our bodies, and empowers us to live differently than we ever could before, if we would let this Spirit have his way. With us. What we're gonna ponder this morning is 6 things that the Spirit does with regard to us who are God's, children.

We're not gonna do exegesis, we've already done the spadework in the passages that we're going to look at in Romans 8, but we'll hit some highlights as we reflect upon what the Spirit does with regard to us who are God's children, and it'll leave us With a matter of, OK, if this is what the Spirit's doing, then I need to let the Spirit have his way as he seeks to do these things. Number one, the Spirit liberates us from the law of sin and death, or the law of sin and death. that law that says you sin, you die.

Well, we've sinned and we're gonna live forever, because of what God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit have accomplished for us in bringing about our salvation.

Paul says there is, therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin. And of death, not he will set you free, he has set you free. If you're a believer in Jesus, you are in fact free from the law of sin. And the law of death, and the law of sin and death.

If you tie those two together, you are free from sin and from sin's power to where you do not have to do sin's bidding any longer. Sin is not your master any longer. The Holy Spirit has set you free. Paul is informing us.

that we have been free from sin, the Holy Spirit has accomplished this, the Holy Spirit was all involved in this. It was a spirit that came upon Mary and caused her to conceive in her womb and give birth to Jesus Christ, the Messiah. It was the Spirit that descended upon Jesus at his baptism and entered into him and drove him into the wilderness to be tempted. And it was the Spirit that empowered all the miracles that Jesus performed.

The writer of Hebrews tells us, That it was through the Spirit that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice. It was the Spirit that raised him from the dead. It's the Spirit that came on the day of Pentecost, God the Father, God the Son, and yes, indeed, God the Holy Spirit, and their Trinitarian working towards our salvation have brought this to pass to where if you are a believer in Jesus, you are free from sin. Now, that sounds great.

That's good to know. And yet often we don't let the Spirit have his way with us. And the reason is, is because sin, as much as we dislike it is often the only home we've known. For most of our lives, pet sins and sins that enslaved us before, even though we know technically we're free, it's been home to us for so long that it's what we often find ourselves retreating back to in moments of anxiety.

In moments of temptation, in moments of frustration and anger, and when we're feeling out of control, we hate the sin, and yet there's something comfortable about it. There's something insecure and unsettling about embarking on a life of freedom with all of its unknowns. But the Spirit has done all that he has done in conjunction with the Father and the Son to bring us into this life of freedom from sin into the life that God has prepared for us. We need to be willing, To step away from the comforts of these comfortable sins that have been home for so long and embark in trust of God into this life of freedom that Christ died in order that we might walk in.

Russell Moore in his book Adopted for Life, tells the moving story about how he and his wife Maria had adopted two boys from a Russian orphanage, and I won't recount the whole story, but just a portion of it. He says in his book, when Maria and I first walked into the orphanage where we were led to the boys that the Russian wards had picked out for us to adopt, we almost vomited in reaction to the stench and the squalor of the place. The boys were in cribs in the dark, lying in their own waste.

That's all the life that they had ever known.

And one thing led to another and all of the legalities ended up getting taken care of and eventually they were able to come back and actually, take the boys home to be with them, and he describes the moment where they brought the boys out of the orphanage to take them to the car, to take them back to the United States, and listen to what he says. He says, we walked out into the sunlight, the terror of two boys. They had never seen the sun. And they had never felt the wind.

They had never heard the sound of a car door slamming or had the sensation of being carried along at 100 MPH down a Russian road. I noticed that they were shaking and reaching back to the orphanage in the distance. He says, I whispered to Sergei, now Timothy, that place is a pit. If only you knew what's waiting for you, a home with a mommy and a daddy who love you, grandparents and great grandparents and cousins and playmates and McDonald's Happy Meals.

But all they knew was the orphanage. It was squalid, but they had no other reference point. It was home. He goes on to share how he has that memory real vivid in his mind of them turning and reaching back for the orphanage and he says, I see myself in them.

He sees that same tendency in him to reach back for the sins he hates because it's been home. What are those homes to you? Those, those sins that have been home for so long that as much as you hate them, you find yourself going back to them. Realize that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit have, have, have accomplished this salvation for you to beckon you out of that into a life of freedom and as unsettling, As it may be with all of the unknowns, it must be good.

And we can trust God with this freedom that he has paid such a high price to accomplish for us. The Spirit has liberated us from the law of sin and death. Let him have his way with you and walk in freedom, walk in freedom. There's a second thing that the Spirit does with regard to us who are God's children, and that is he inhabits us, making us His.

He inhabits us, making us his home. Paul says in Romans 8, however, you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you, but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead and dying because of sin, Yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. Verse 11, the Spirit dwells in you.

Again, in verse 11, the Spirit who dwells in you. What we learn here is not just the fact that the Spirit happens to be present somewhere inside of us, the literal language is that, the word dwell is the word for house. The Spirit makes us his house. He dwells in us, not as a tenant, not as a renter, not as a guest, not as a guest who says, man, if you could just give me a corner of your being to, I'll just stay right here and I'll be happy right here.

I would be most honored if If you would just allow me some little place inside of you. That's not what Paul is talking about. The Spirit has come in and said, this is my home. I am dwelling here inside of you, you are my home.

Meaning you don't belong to you anymore, you belong to the Spirit. You don't belong to sin anymore. You belong to the Spirit of God. You don't belong to Satan or to the world or to the flesh anymore.

You used to be one of the world's addresses, owned by the world, owned and operated by the flesh, and by Satan. But all of that has changed. The Spirit has moved in and said, this is my home. And he makes himself at home.

Tim Hawkins, the Christian comedian, whom I have never quoted from in a sermon before, said, I read it just this week where he said, I take people seriously. When they tell me to make myself at home, I rearrange their furniture. And I yell at their kids. When the spirit, when we say to the spirit, come in.

what he does is he makes himself at home, and he rearranges the furniture. And he has the right to do that because he says, this is my house, you are my house. And I, dwell here as the owner of this house, and we need to let the Spirit have his way and say to the Spirit, you have every right, and you have my permission to rearrange my life in any way that you see fit for my good and for your glory. Let the Spirit have his way.

Let him truly be at home in you. You're not flattering the Spirit to give him some small place in your life, or some small place in your weekly schedule where you give him Sunday morning, you can have Sunday morning. No, no, the Spirit wants everything. You are his home.

There's a third thing that the Spirit does with regard to us who are his children. Let's word it this way, and that is he enlivens our spirits by making vivid to us the reality of our justification. He enlivens our spirits by making vivid to us the reality of our justification and the very context of talking about us having the Holy Spirit of God and the Spirit dwelling in us, essentially to have the Spirit in us is to have Christ in us. And so he says in verse 10, and if Christ through the Spirit is in you, though your body is dead and dying because of sin, yet your Spirit is alive because of, we could translate this because of justification.

Because of the reality of your justification as a believer in Jesus, your spirit is not only theologically alive, but it is enlivened by that reality. In fact, as one writer says regarding this very passage, he says, it is the Spirit who actualizes the doc. The doctrine of justification by faith in believers' lives and guards it from becoming a sterile intellectual dogma. Our spirits are enlivened as the spirit, one of the reasons God has given us a spirit is to actualize or to make vivid the reality of our justification in Christ.

What is our justification? We've been learning about that in Romans. It is on the day of our conversion when we come to God in bankruptcy and say, God, I can't save myself. And I'm coming to you because you are the only savior for me.

And I believe in Jesus, who died and was raised and he's now exalted at the right hand of God. Be my Lord and be my Savior. Romans 5 and beyond teaches us that in that moment, God justifies us. What that means is God makes a decision at that moment wherein he says, I will forever think of all of your sins as forgiven.

And I will forever think of you as righteous with the very righteousness of Jesus. And I declare you to be not guilty and righteous in my sight and utterly free of condemnation. And then he says, and by the way, this decision I've just made and decree I've just uttered will forever govern the way I go about relating to you from this day forward. I will never ever look at you again.

Without seeing you through the lens of this decision of justification that I have rendered. The God of the universe thinks about me that way. That's amazing. And that's such an amazing reality that God's like, Milton's never gonna get this on his own, so I'm going to give him the spirit.

And one of the things that the Spirit will do in Milton's life is he'll actualize this doctrine, he'll make it vivid and bring Milton into an understanding of this. That's why the doctrine of justification is so important, it's central. In the book of Romans itself, Paul, he's writing to believers, Christians, like many of us in this room and And he spends chapter 12, and the first half of 3 laying out the doctrine of sin and the fact that we need a savior from our sin problem.

And then in chapter 3, verse 21, he says, now let me unfold for you the good news.

And he spends the rest of chapter 3, all of chapter 4, all of chapter 5, 57 verses doing nothing but unfolding for the Roman Christians, the doctrine of justification. Here's what it is, here's what it means, here's why it had to happen, here's how it did happen through Christ, and here's the blissful consequences of the fact that it has happened in your life. And I want you Christians, To listen to me as I, as I begin to explain the good news of the gospel, I'm gonna spend 57 verses doing nothing but putting in front of you this reality.

That's the spirit inspiring Paul.

Seeking through Paul and through the book of Romans to actualize the doctrine of their justification. Because the spirit knows how central this is in our lives, how powerful this is. In my own life, the more I orient my life around the reality of my justification and remind myself of, of its truths, the more I catch myself being changed. Timothy Keller said some time ago, when we feed on, remember and live in accordance with our justification.

It mortifies our idols and fills us with an inner joy and a desire to please and resemble our Lord through obedience. I love that list. Who wouldn't want this list? Mortifies idols, we all want that fills us with inner joy, we all want that.

A desire to please and resemble the Lord, a desire to obey Him and being filled with that, we all want that. Where do we get that? Where does that come from? Well, it comes from the Spirit of God.

But it is nurtured within us as we feed upon and remember and seek to live in accordance with the reality of the way God has chosen to think about us in our justification. Keller in another place says this, sanctification happens. To the degree that we feed on or orient ourselves or have commerce with the pardon and the righteousness and the new status we now have in Christ imputed through faith. Justification indeed is a once and for all occurrence that happens at the moment of conversion, but a daily focusing on and celebrating of this once and for all reality is a key to sanctification.

And so let the spirit have his way with you, and, and relish and celebrate the fact that you've been justified. You can spot a spirit controlled Christian a mile away. One of the earmarks of a person who's letting the spirit have his way in his life is that he loves the doctrine of justification. He celebrates it, even to the point of being obsessive about it, because there's so much abundance inside of this doctrine.

Let the Spirit have his way in your life, at Cornerstone, we need to let the Spirit have his way in our church by really making a big deal out of this amazing reality of our justification. There's a 4th thing that the Spirit does with regard to us who are God's children, and that is he empowers us to kill sin. See, the, the Spirit is not all like just only positive. The Spirit is immensely positive and the things that he wants for us.

But when it comes to sin, the Spirit is very much against sin. And his goal is that sin be killed in us. This is a real challenge for us because I see this tendency in my own life, and I think many of us would confess to the same thing that, that we, we make compromises with sin. we can coddle sin, we, in our lives, we do a lot of sin management, right?

Just, yeah, I know, I know this is here and I, as long as it stays in its place and doesn't get out of control, everything's OK. And we live a lifestyle of just trying to sin a little less, and the sin that is in our life that we don't want to let go of, we just trying to do the sin management thing. The Spirit was not given to us so that we can cuddle sin and compromise and tolerate sin in our lives and do a lifestyle of sin management. God says, I gave you my spirit so that by my Spirit, you can kill sin.

In Romans 8:13, Paul says, if you are living according to the flesh, you must die. But if by the Spirit, by the Spirit, you are putting to death or you are killing the deeds of the body, you will live. The deeds of the body is an expression that speaks of sin, the deeds of the flesh. And the deeds of the flesh are not our physical body necessarily, although that evil principle inside of us is profoundly affiliated with our physicality, as we've learned.

Basically, he's talking about killing sin. And look what he says, by the Spirit, you are killing sin. You don't try to kill sin on your own, you kill sin by the Spirit. The Spirit says this is why I'm in your life, this is why I'm inside of you.

One of the reasons is to empower you to kill, to murder sin in your life. So, well, how do I kill sin? Well, you mortify it by not letting it be conceived. not even giving sin a place in your life.

Lust when it is conceived, it gives birth to sin. When lust comes and seduces us and, and through our union with that lust, sin is conceived and then sin gives birth, or that sin is born. And so we kill sin by not letting sin even be conceived and if sin has been conceived, We kill it before it is born. Maybe you've started tolerating an idea of sin and it's capturing your imagination.

You've not executed that or carried that out yet, but it's not too late, mortify and kill that sin before it is born. And if you've already acted upon that, you've already sinned and it's already been born, you mortify sin through confession and repentance. You, you go to the people that you've wronged, you go before God, you confess your sin is sin, and you, you repent. You mortify the sin that way, however often you need to.

And when tempted with sin, The spirit does not want us to think compromise, toleration, coddling, or sin management. He wants us to think murder. That's, we need to get mean and nasty and, and develop an attitude against sin. In our lives.

We're not mean towards other people, we're mean against sin, especially our own sin. John Piper says it this way, there is a mean streak in the Christian life. There is a violence, there is a militancy. But it is exactly the opposite of selfish violence against people.

It is a violence against the flesh or against the deeds of the body, our flesh. The Christian is not mean to others, he is mean to his own sinfulness, his own flesh. We need to get serious about sin in our life. And become resolved that I, I will not rest completely until sin is murdered.

You say, Pastor, I've been trying to kill sin in my life for years and the desires for particular sins are still there. Well, we're not talking about killing the desire for sin. The fact that you have a desire for something wrong, that's not a sin that you might have that desire. It's what you do with that desire.

That's what you're supposed to kill. And we are to live a lifestyle of killing sin in us, living lives whereby through the Spirit, we're mortifying sin and growing in righteousness. There's a 5th thing that the Spirit does with regard to us, who are God's children, and that is he leads us in the ways of sonship. He leads us in the ways of sonship.

Paul says for all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. And in saying that, a lot of people look at that and say, oh, I know what that means that those that are effectively being led by the Spirit of God, those are sons of God rather than sons of the devil. I think that's certainly involved in what Paul is saying, but I think his point is deeper. He's, he's wanting us to infer something about the nature of the Spirit's leadership, not so much about those that are being led.

And what he wants us to infer is that when the Spirit effectively seizes control of a person's life, the Spirit seeks them and he seeks to lead them in a lifestyle of full privileged sonship with God. To where a person is not seeing themselves as merely a slave of God, even though we are slaves of God, and he is our master, to where we don't just see ourselves merely as subjects of God, and he is our King, and we are his subjects, even though that is true. But God didn't give us a spirit to just lead us into understanding ourselves as God's slaves and subjects.

He gave us the Spirit to bring us fully into an understanding of and a living in the good of a fully privileged sonship lifestyle.

Verse 15, you've not received the spirit of slavery, leading to fear again. God didn't give you the Spirit so you can keep walking in slavery to send slavery to the law, and even seeing yourself only as a slave of God, you are a slave of God, but you're more than that. God gave you the Spirit so that you would not be living a lifestyle of fear with regard to God, fear of his wrath, fear of his anger, fear in the sense of a distrust and a suspicion of God where I'm afraid to trust God because I'm afraid of what he might do.

And so you're afraid to fully entrust yourself to him.

God gave you the Spirit in order to take away those fears. So that you will live a life of sonship. Look at this, you've received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which, in other words, by the Spirit, we cry out Abba, Father. God has given us the Spirit.

He's made us his sons, full of amazing realities, but he knows we're never going to get that left to ourselves. He gives us the Spirit and assigns the Spirit the task of leading us into the ways of fully privileged sonship with God. To where the Spirit would lead us to those moments where we come before God in moments of pain, in moments of temptation, in moments of grief, and in moments of sorrow, in moments of joy, in moments of worship, in moments of temptation, we come to God and all of those venues and say, Abba, Father.

When those words, as it were, come out of our mouth, They are spoken by the Spirit.

They are spoken by means of the Spirit. The Spirit is immensely satisfied when we come to God and relate to him as Father, because that's why the Spirit was given to us. And not only that, but when we come to God and say, Abba Father, the Father responds and says, essentially, my child, And how do we receive that? Well, the spirit mediates that response.

We could translate it this way. when we cry out Abba, Father, the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. We come to God in moments of pain and moments of joy, Abba, Father, and the Father responds, my child, and he mediates that response to us through His Spirit. He has given us the Holy Spirit to lead us into the ways of fully privileged sonship.

As sons, and as daughters of God, and if you're a daughter of God, it's fine to think of it that way, but just know you're a daughter of God with full rights of sonship before Him. There's a 6th and final thing the Spirit does with regard to us as children of God, and that is he helps us with our weakness. He helps us with our weaknesses and our ignorances. You might say, man, everything that's being said here is great.

I want that in my life, but I, I've known the Lord for, I don't know how long, and I've, there's so much weakness in my life, there's so much ignorance still in my life, surely the Spirit of God is put off with me, and is repulsed by my ignorance, repulsed by my weakness. And the wonderful thing about what Paul teaches in Romans 8, is that the Spirit is not repulsed by your weakness, he's not repulsed or disgusted by your ignorance. Paul actually teaches that the Spirit is attracted to your weakness.

He moves towards your weakness, and towards your ignorance, and says, I'll take this, I'll take this, and I'll help you.

In the same way, the Spirit helps our weaknesses, Paul says. He helps our weakness. In other words, he gets underneath our weakness, he owns our weakness and says that's mine. Whatever the weaknesses in your life that, that plagues you, the Spirit looks at that weakness and says that's mine.

I own that. And I'm going to help you. I will get underneath that with you and assume responsibility for helping you with that. Paul says with regard to our weakness, he says, what we need is prayer in areas where we're weak, but what, we don't even know how to pray as is necessary.

And so even praying regarding our weaknesses, we're weak in that, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings that are too deep for words. Always indicating that the Spirit prays for us before the Father. And he prays for us regarding areas where we are weak and ignorant. And if we, and he prays with groanings, he prays with a passion, a great feeling, sympathy, and a restlessness that says, I won't be satisfied.

I won't cease my groaning until I have gotten what I'm requesting on behalf of this child of God. And if we could but hear the Spirit interceding for us with the passion with which he prays regarding our weakness and ignorance, we would say that's it, that's it, that's exactly what I want prayed for me in my area of weakness. But not only that, verse 27, he God who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the spirit is. In other words, he knows approvingly.

He grants success to the mind of the Spirit because he intercedes for the saints, according to the will of God. The amazing thing is when the Father listens to the prayers that the Spirit prays for us, the Father's saying, that's it, that's it. That's exactly what I want asked. That's exactly what I would want the Spirit to ask me for, to give freely to this child of mine.

In the prayers of the Holy Spirit, our deepest need meets with God's perfect, gracious will. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you can make quite a list going through the New Testament of reasons why God has given us the Spirit and all that God is using His Spirit to accomplish in our life. I just I just have to ask myself if as a congregation, we just said, what, God, we're going to let your spirit have his way.

We're going to let your spirit have his way with us. What could God do in us as individuals and our families, and as a church in this community and beyond if we gave the Spirit his way with us, we would hate sin, we'd be, not tolerating sin, we would be seeking to mortify sin, we would love our salvation and our justification. We would live lives of belonging to God, we'd be walking in fully privileged sonship and our weaknesses and our ignorances, we wouldn't be afraid to admit those things because we know that the Spirit is there to help us.

It's our job to confess our weakness and ignorance, and the Spirit is there to help us with those things that we confess to.

What might happen if we let the Spirit have his way with us? Let's pray together. If you're here today and you've never put your trust in Christ, Maybe God's spirit is working in your heart right now and drawing you to Christ. And if so, I beg of you, let the Spirit have his way with you.

He's drawing you with love and a freedom and a salvation and a forgiveness and a relationship that is beyond anything you can imagine. Respond to the Spirit and let him lead you to Jesus. Father, we thank you so much for the gift of salvation and all of its nuances and facets, and we thank you for the Holy Spirit whom you have given to us, Lord. whose role it is, is to make known to us the things that have been graciously given to us by God.

May we submit to the Spirit's working and let the Spirit have his way. With us and cease resisting the spirit and grieving the spirit. As he seeks to unleash the fullness of the goodness that's in your heart towards us in the gospel. We thank you for the opportunity to give up our offerings to you, Lord, receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, and all God's people said,