Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: He established Lamb and Lion Ministries in 1980. He stepped aside from his leadership role in 2021. David is a native Texan and he resides in the Dallas area. He graduated from UT at Austin and he earned graduate degrees in the field of International Relations from Tufts and Harvard University.

Before entering the ministry, he had an extensive career in higher education, including several colleges here in Texas. In the mid-80s, he served as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of the Philippines and toured Southeast Asia. David is a longtime Bible student, teacher, and preacher.

He entered the full-time pastoring ministry in 1976 when he was called to serve at the pulpit ministry at a church in Irving, Texas. He has authored many religious essays which have been published in a variety of journals and magazines, and he's written over 20 books and has contributed to others. He was a guest speaker for us in 2024 at our prophecy conference. So welcome back, David Reagan and his wife Linda.

Dr. David Reagan: Good morning to all of you. I greet you in the name of Jesus, our blessed hope. I've really looked forward to being here, and I'm glad to have my wife Linda with me. I hope you'll meet her. She'll be at the display table that we have out there in the lobby afterwards.

As I told the group this morning, we've been married five years. She was married 54 years to her husband, who was a pastor and a good friend of mine. I'd known them for 45 years. He died in 2020. My wife died in 2020 after we'd been married 60 years. So a year later, Linda and I got married. We just celebrated our fifth anniversary. People ask how many years we’ve been married and I say 119. That got their attention.

I want to invite you to check out a new website I have. It's a personal website called drregan.com. I have many essays there about Bible prophecy, as well as videos that talk about various aspects of prophecy. This morning, I talked about prophecy. I'm not going to do that at this particular session. I'm going to talk about a different topic, one that God has laid on my heart recently.

To prepare us for that, I want to share some church signs with you that have to do with the topic I'm going to speak on this morning. For example, living without God is a lot like dribbling a football. Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil; no point. Jesus likes Facebook; he wants you to show your face and pick up the book. When life is not a bed of roses, remember who wore the thorn. Be salt and light and not salty and lit. Be an organ donor; give your heart to Jesus.

What I want to talk to you about this morning is the life-changing power of Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, I come to you in the name of your Son and our Savior Jesus. I thank you that you are God who is interested in changing lives. I thank you for the powerful, life-changing power of Jesus and your Holy Spirit.

I thank you, Lord, that you've given me this opportunity to share this message this morning. I pray that you will empower it with your Holy Spirit, that it will touch hearts for eternity. I pray if there's anyone here this morning who has not received your Son as their Lord and Savior, that they'll be motivated to do so before they leave today. Help me, Lord. No one's here to hear me; we're here to hear what you have to say. In Jesus' name, Amen.

I ran across a sign that specifically relates to the topic, a quote from Mark Twain: "The only one who likes change is a wet baby." Let God change you. We don't like change, but God is in the change business. He takes lives that are totally destitute, lives that are wallowing in sin, and he completely changes them. I'm going to show you that in this presentation.

I grew up in a very small legalistic church that taught a very radical form of the doctrine of cessationism. According to this radical form, all aspects of the supernatural ceased in the first century at the death of the last apostle. Gifts of the Spirit ceased and God no longer intervened in history by performing miracles. In short, the Holy Spirit retired and we were left to cope with life by relying on God's word and common sense.

We were, in effect, deists, believing in an impersonal God. We tended to think of salvation as simply a fire insurance policy whose greatest benefit was to keep us out of hell. It's true that if you give your heart to Jesus, reaching out to him in faith and receiving him as your Lord and Savior, one of the benefits is that you will be guaranteed not to go to hell.

But it is true that there are great blessings beyond that. The blessings of Christianity are really, really great. The Apostle Paul made this clear in his first letter to the Corinthians when he declared that the activity of the Holy Spirit and the bestowing of his gifts would continue until the day the Lord returns.

In 1 Corinthians 1:7, Paul proclaimed that we would not be lacking any of the spiritual gifts of the Spirit while awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Also, the Bible makes it perfectly clear that God does not change. Malachi declares that and so does the writer of Hebrews. Malachi, for example, says, "I, Yahweh, do not change." Hebrews says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

The God of the Bible is the God of today. He is a personal God who still performs miracles. His greatest continuing miracle, which he performs every day, every moment, somewhere around the world, is the transformation of people who receive his Son as their Lord and Savior. That is his greatest miracle.

He takes people who are wallowing in sin, wallowing in debauchery, and he forgives their sins and starts cleansing them from the inside out, transforming them into the image of Jesus Christ. This process is called sanctification. Salvation is really a process. It begins with justification, which occurs the moment that you put your faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

To be justified means that you stand before God with all your sins forgiven and forgotten. You might ask, "How can God forget something?" Well, when it says your sins are forgotten, it means that God will never use them against you in the future. They have been put aside if you have put your faith in Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Justification also means that your spirit, which has been dead in sin, has been regenerated and it begins to commune with the Spirit of God. The second step in salvation is sanctification. Sanctification relates to the soul. The soul consists of your mind, and your emotions, and your will. When you are justified, you receive the gift of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit who goes to work on your feelings, your attitudes, and your behavior, encouraging you where you conform to the will of God and trying to convict you in those areas where you are not in accordance with the will of God.

Glorification is a wonderful thing as it begins to change all of our inside thinking and so forth. The sanctification process is mentioned in Romans 6:22. Glorification is the concept of when we finally reach the end and we are resurrected from the dead or we are taken up in the rapture. We receive our glorified bodies.

Salvation consists of justification, sanctification, and glorification. When you reach glorification, you're saved body, soul, and spirit. What a wonderful thing it is. Here's a reference to sanctification in Romans 6:22: "Having been freed from sin (justification) and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit resulting in sanctification, and the outcome eternal life (glorification)."

Or 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14: "God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation (justification) through sanctification by the Spirit that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (glorification)." Justification, sanctification, glorification. Now, the speed of sanctification depends upon you. It depends upon each one of us.

Sanctification can be very slow or it can be very quick. It depends upon us and the attitude that we have once we give our lives to Jesus Christ. The reason there is a difference in the speed of sanctification is because it is possible for us to quench the Spirit. It is possible for us to stifle the Spirit. It is possible for us to grieve the Spirit. It is possible for us to blaspheme the Spirit.

Because of that, the pace of sanctification can be quite different. There are people who have been justified for 30 years who are still babes in Christ. They are babes in Christ because they have not allowed the Holy Spirit to get on the throne of their life and to begin to guide them in all that they think and do and say. When you do that, you remain a babe in Christ.

I learned a lesson about sanctification from personal experience. Many years ago, I was 40 years old at the time and I had breakfast with a man who was 70 years old. He had been a Christian all his life. As we began to talk, I realized that I was talking to a man who was very, very experienced in Christ, a man who was very advanced in sanctification.

I asked him how long he had been a Christian, thinking that he was going to say 50, 60, or 70 years. He said, "No. I've only been a Christian 10 years." I said, "How could that be? You're so spiritually mature. I've been a Christian for 30 years and I'm nowhere near as spiritually mature as you are."

He said, "Well, David, I'll tell you. I grew up in a church where you could believe anything you wanted to believe. Despite the fact that I went to church all my life, I did not become a born-again Christian until 10 years ago. When the Jesus bus came by, I jumped on with enthusiasm and took off with the Lord.

"But based upon my conversation with you, let me tell you what the problem is with you. You grew up in a church, a very legalistic church, that for 30 years had a doctrine for everything. And thus, when the Jesus bus came by, you failed to jump on. The reason you failed to jump on was because you had too much doctrinal baggage. You had accumulated it and you stood there trying to decide which one of those suitcases you were going to take and which one you were going to leave behind. Every time the bus left you, until finally you decided, 'I'm going to chuck it all and get on the bus and go with Jesus.' That's what you've got to do; chuck it and get on the bus and go with Jesus."

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about from the New Testament. This may be a shocker to you. I want to give you an example from the life of Paul. Boy, what an example he is of sanctification. As most of you are aware, Paul grew up as an Orthodox Jew. Further, he was trained in the Hebrew Scriptures by the most outstanding rabbi of his day, Gamaliel.

In fact, Paul was a candidate for the Sanhedrin itself. Paul was a zealous Pharisee. When the church was born on the day of Pentecost, he considered Christians to be apostate Jews and he sought permission from the Sanhedrin to commit his life to stamping them out. So he stood by as they began to stone the Christians to death.

He would hold the coats of those who were doing that, but he was the one who found them and then turned them over to those who would stone them to death. After making a name for himself in Jerusalem, he was commissioned by the Sanhedrin to go to Damascus and find any Christians that might be there.

Well, you know the rest of the story. Paul was confronted on the road to Damascus by a resurrected Jesus. He was then led to faith in Jesus by a man by the name of Ananias in Damascus. But what most people do not notice is that we're told in the Book of Acts that he immediately went into the synagogues in Damascus and started arguing with the Jews, attempting to prove to them that Jesus was the Son of God.

Have you ever known anybody like that? They love to beat you over the head with the Bible. They love to show you that you're wrong and prove that everything you believe is wrong. They're never effective. He wasn't effective. He was a total failure. In doing so, he was operating in the flesh; he was not operating in the spirit.

How do I know? Because his efforts to convert the Jews simply failed completely. All he did was stir them up to anger, and he finally got them so annoyed that they decided to kill him. So he escaped by being let down over the city wall in a basket in the middle of the night. As one wag has put it, that night Paul became a basket case.

He really was. He didn't learn his lesson. The bottom line is that no person is prepared to start preaching the day after they become a Christian, no matter how smart they may be or how much scripture they can quote. Instead, they must wait for the Holy Spirit to change them and shape them and mold them and gift them to preach.

That takes time. It certainly did for Paul because he did not learn his lesson in Damascus. He proceeded to Jerusalem where he once again entered the synagogues and, according to Acts 9:29, he was talking and arguing with the Hellenistic Jews and they were attempting to put him to death.

He was not operating in the power of the Holy Spirit. He was not convincing anybody of anything. He was just making them angry and they were wanting to kill him. So, guess what happened? The church got together and they took up an offering to send him home to Tarsus. We're told about this in Acts 9:31.

The church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, once they put him on the boat and sent him off to Tarsus, enjoyed peace, being built up and going on in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. It continued to increase. Let me paraphrase that for you: "Thank God we got rid of Paul. Now we can have some peace in this place."

That's exactly what they did; they sent him off to Tarsus. Did you know that you do not hear anything in the scriptures about Paul for 18 years? 18 years passed. Can you believe that? Why so long? Because he had to go through the process of sanctification. Paul, for example, had to get personally acquainted with Jesus Christ.

Secondly, Paul's mind had to be delivered from the suffocating legalism of Judaism to the liberating grace of the gospel. Paul had to learn how to teach in the Spirit rather than debate in the flesh. He had to learn all those things. Finally, after 18 years, he was teaching a Bible study in a church when suddenly the Holy Spirit moved.

Acts 13:2 says that the Holy Spirit told the church in Antioch to set Paul apart for the mission work the Lord had in mind for him. The next verse says that being sent out by the Holy Spirit, Paul departed on his first missionary journey and ended up becoming the greatest missionary in the history of Christianity. But he had to go through a process of sanctification first.

Let me give you an example of another non-biblical person that you probably know a lot about; John Newton. John Newton is a very interesting study in sanctification. Newton received some Bible teaching from his mom at an early age, but she died when he was very small. His father took him over. His father was a sea ship captain and didn't know what to do with him, so the father did the worst thing he could possibly do; he took him with him on ships.

If you know anything about sailors back in that time, here's a boy growing up with sailors on a ship. He forgot everything his mom taught him. He developed a reputation as being the most foul-mouthed man in the Navy. He could cuss like nobody could cuss. At an early age, he became captain. He was in his 20s when he became captain of a slave ship that transported slaves from Africa to England.

He was converted to Jesus at age 23, but he continued for six years to be involved in the slave trade. All the time, the Holy Spirit was working on him, convicting him of the horrendous nature of his career. Finally, at age 29, he gave up his career. He rededicated his life to Christ.

He became an ardent opponent to slavery. He abandoned profanity, gambling, and drinking. He began to study God's word. He eventually became an ordained priest in the Church of England and served for 40 years, during which time he wrote one of the greatest hymns in the history of Christianity, namely "Amazing Grace." "Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see."

Okay, we've looked at examples both from the Bible and from history of the way in which the Lord works to change lives through faith in Jesus and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. I want to give you a personal example now. I'd like to share with you the amazing personal example of justification and sanctification that relates to one of the best friends I've ever had in my life, who was called home to be with the Lord in 2017 at the age of 70.

I'm speaking of this man, Jack Hollingsworth. He served as the featured singer for 20 years on our television program and every year at our annual conference. Jack was born in Mississippi in 1947. He was the fourth of six children. His dad had a good job at a sawmill, but his dad was an alcoholic.

Like most alcoholic families, they moved a lot, usually every month when the rent was due. When Jack was about six years old, his daddy was bathing the kids one night and he called for Jack. But Jack, before he got in the tub, climbed on top of an unlit space heater to get a drink from the sink.

The heater turned over. His dad uprighted it and continued with the bath. No one knew that the gas hose on the heater had been knocked loose. This was a time before they had started adding odor to gas. Early the next morning, Jack's dad got up, went in the bathroom, lit a cigarette, and the house exploded and his father was killed.

Jack's mother remarried almost immediately to another alcoholic who also was a sadistic bully. He beat the children unmercifully, particularly Jack. Despite the fact that he was a drunk—this is hard to believe—but despite the fact that he was a drunk, he was a cruel child abuser. He insisted on reading the Bible to the family every night.

If any one of them dozed off or got fidgety, he would beat them unmercifully and yell, "God is mad at you! God is mad at you!" Jack told me that he decided early on that he wanted nothing to do with such a God. Jack's stepfather was also a psychological abuser.

He called Jack all sorts of demeaning names and constantly belittled him by telling him that he was worthless and would never amount to anything. Needless to say, Jack developed an intense hatred for his stepfather. He also developed an intense hatred for his mother because she refused to intervene to protect him and the other children.

One thing sorely missing in Jack's youth was any encouragement whatsoever. The only encouragement that Jack ever received from anyone while he was growing up came from his music teachers at school, who complimented him on his singing. In his teens, Jack made two life-changing decisions.

The first came when Jack was 15 years old. He went on an overnight camping trip with some friends. One of them brought along some beer. Jack tasted one and hated it, but he didn't want to admit it. So he continued drinking. By the time he got through with the third one, he thought he was Superman.

He thought he had made the greatest discovery of his life in alcohol and he began to drink uncontrollably. After graduating from high school—or before that, let me say this—he and his stepfather got into an argument one day. When the man shoved Jack, Jack suddenly exploded. His resentment over all the years just came to the surface and he hauled off and hit his stepfather as hard as he could, knocking him across the kitchen.

When his father got up, he took off running out the back door. That's when Jack realized that, like most bullies, his stepfather was a coward. After graduating from high school in 1965, Jack's drinking magnified, as did his involvement in fistfights. He started hanging out in bars. He found it impossible to keep a job.

He ended up in the big city of Memphis. He turned 21, married a waitress, and quickly had a son and daughter. But he was so hooked on alcohol that he started experiencing blackouts constantly. Things became so bad that his family finally had him committed to a state mental hospital.

He described it as a den from hell. People were screaming, he said, screeching, ranting, and crying while others just sat stone-faced in silence. Some were shackled, others were drooling, spitting, cursing, rocking back and forth or pacing constantly. Jack told me, "God, you must really hate me to let me be in here because I don't think much of you either."

They put him in the A&R ward. He said he forgot what the technical meaning of A&R was, but they used to call it the Alkie and Retard ward. He said it was there that Jack discovered a whole new way to get high because every day they would bring him a basket full of multicolored pills and he would take those pills and he would get high on the pills.

And then, if he got out of control, they would take him in and give him shock treatments. He had many shock treatments during that time. Shortly after Jack was released, his wife who was pregnant with their third child was in a bad auto accident and miscarried the baby. Not long after that, she was pregnant again and the baby was born malformed and died shortly after its birth.

Jack sought solace in the bottle. He was incapable of working anymore. He was constantly in and out of jail and rehab centers. His spiritual emptiness was intensified by the psychologists who counseled him. He said some of them told him that he could make up his own God. Others told him that he could forget about God. Others told him that he could be his own God.

Jack started traveling across the country to California and then back again to Florida. In the process, he was arrested many times for panhandling and loitering. The police often sent him to a mental ward at the local hospital. Jack once told me, "I'm the only person I know of in the whole world who has been declared officially insane in five different states."

During the 20 years that Jack spent wandering our nation, he tried to commit suicide two times. The first time that he tried to commit suicide, he jumped off the Mississippi River bridge at Memphis. He was so drunk that he missed the water. He landed on soft mud and broke almost every bone in his body. It should have killed him, but he lived through it.

He just kept seeking his solace in the bottle over and over. The second time he tried to commit suicide was unbelievable. He went to a drugstore and he bought two bottles of rubbing alcohol. He drank both bottles of the rubbing alcohol and then he crawled underneath a truck to die. He woke up the next morning and couldn't believe he was alive.

He wished he was dead, he felt so bad. He crawled out from underneath the truck and he said, "I looked up and it was a Salvation Army truck." Years later, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, "Jack, you couldn't commit suicide because you were under a call of the Lord to salvation."

Jack finally ended up in the beautiful Lexington, Kentucky. What a beautiful place. While he was panhandling there on the streets, he went up to people and asked them for money. They said, "We don't have any money to give you, but if you'll go in the building directly behind you, you will find help."

So he went in there and found out it was a state detox center. It was run by a little woman named Sally, who was only 4 feet 10 inches tall. 4'10". In fact, that was her nickname; Shotgun because she was 4'10". Jack didn't like her because she was a Yankee. He didn't like her because she was feisty and he didn't like her because he couldn't con her.

Every time he tried to con her, she said, "I've heard every con you can't con me." He didn't like her at all. In one of their first conversations, she scared him to death with a word of knowledge from the Lord. She told him that his alcoholism was a manifestation of a deeper problem and she told him that the part of the problem was the guilt that he felt about the death of his father.

She told him, "Jack, you didn't kill your father. His death was an accident." Jack was absolutely dumbfounded by that statement. He had never shared with anyone his deep-seated guilt over his father's death. He concluded that Sally must be a witch and he decided to have nothing more to do with her.

But he found himself unable to stay away from the detox center. He kept coming back, drawn to Sally like a magnet. One night, she stuck her finger in his face and she said, "Jack, in the name of Jesus Christ, you will never be able to get drunk again." Jack laughed and said, "Lady, you're talking to a professional drunk," and he walked out.

Well, Jack drank non-stop for a week and couldn't even get a buzz on. Couldn't get drunk, couldn't get a buzz on. Finally, he gave up and he decided to seek out Sally again. He went to her and he said, "Sally, tell me more about Jesus." And she did. Jack accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

That was December the 8th, 1988. Jack was 41 years old. The scripture that Sally read to him that captured his soul was John 14:6. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me." Here is how Jack explained what happened to him.

He said those words plowed through me like a bulldozer going through a rotten building. My walls of secrecy were demolished, my whole rotten life was exposed and laid bare, and it didn't matter anymore. I had come to the end of myself. I was crying and I didn't care who saw me.

He began an intensive study of the Bible. He got a job and kept it for a year—the first job he'd ever kept for a year. One day, Jack went to Sally's house. He knocked on the door and he yelled, "It's Jack!" Sally yelled, "Come on in!" He went in and found her at the kitchen sink washing dishes.

Jack said, "Sally, you know I have never really liked you, but I think God wants us to get married." Sally agreed. Sally agreed it was 3:00 PM and by 4:30 they were married. In 1993, they decided to form a ministry called Acts 29 Ministry. Acts has 28 chapters. They called their ministry Acts 29 to pick up where Acts left off and preaching the gospel to people.

So they formed this ministry. They bought a mobile home and took to the road singing, preaching, teaching, counseling, and praying. They lived on the faith from the get-go and the Lord provided, though he often took them to the very end of their rope. The Lord had instantly healed Jack of his alcoholism and smoking.

I mean instantly. He healed his vocal cords, restored his mind. Here is how Jack later described his transformation and renewal. He said, "The Lord restored my voice and put a song in my heart. With his precious powerful word, he renewed my mind. He healed the relationship with my stepfather and my mother. He broke the chains of emotional bondage and established bonds of love and forgiveness. He delivered me from all the satanic oppression. He healed my mental illness. He set me free. And like the demoniac that Jesus healed and delivered, Jesus told me to go and tell what great things the Lord had done for me."

In less than five years, God undid what the 40 years of suffering and destruction had done. God took this hopeless, helpless, wasted street bum and made a singing evangelist out of him. Now that's sanctification. That's the way God can change people. Jack and Sally—well, it's summed up really in this verse, 2 Corinthians 5:17: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new person. The old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come."

Jack and Sally spent the next 21 years of their life on the road, traveling all over this nation preaching, teaching, counseling, and singing. They focused on ministering to the homeless. Jack would sing to them and talk to them personally about how Jesus had changed his life. I guarantee you none of them could con Jack.

He knew all the cons. And all the while, Jack's sanctification continued through his wife, who schooled him daily in the scriptures to the point that within 10 years he began preaching at churches. They lived by faith and God blessed them, always supplying all their needs. He also worked through them to touch many lives for Jesus.

Jack spent the final three years of his life caring for his dear wife who had suffered a stroke. He dearly missed his preaching and singing, but rightfully so, he felt like Sally had to be his primary ministry. As I look back on Jack's remarkable life, I praise God for bringing him and Sally into my life.

I praise Jesus that he never gives up on anyone. I praise God that he's willing to forgive and forget when we place our faith in his Son as our Lord and Savior. I praise God for what he has done with Jack. That's his police picture and his picture later on after he came to the Lord. Jack became quite a singer.

We called him Jumpin' Jack because Jack could not stand still when he sang. He danced, he jumped around all over the place because he was so full of the Spirit and so full of his gratitude to God for his salvation and changing his life. Oh my, what a singer he was. I can imagine him right now in heaven dancing before the Lord and singing, and the Lord embracing him and loving him.

We produced an album about Jack's songs. It's not available anymore, I don't think, but we produced an album and the song in that album that blessed me the most is the one I want to end by blessing you with. It's a song that's entitled "We Shall See Jesus." It was written by Diane Wilkinson, who recently was called home to be with the Lord. She wrote many gospel songs.

When we got through producing the video ourselves, we sent it to her. She called me one day and she was sobbing, just crying. She said, "This is the greatest version of my song that I have ever heard. I want to give you permission to use it anytime you want to on television, on the internet, at churches, whatever. I want this message to get out and Jack has done it better than anybody."

I ask, "Are you ready for the Lord's return?" I hope you are. But so many people say, "I have sinned too badly to be forgiven by God." I hear that all the time. Or they say, "I'm going to do a lot of good works and I'll earn God's salvation through good works." Well folks, number one, there's no sin so terrible that you can commit that's going to keep you from the love of Jesus Christ.

Take David, for example. He was guilty of adultery, he was guilty of murder, but he went to God and repented of these sins and God forgave him. God loved him and it was amazing what happened. Let that be an example to you. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "By grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It's a work of God, not of works lest anyone should boast. It's a gift of God."

There's no one here who sinned so terribly you cannot be forgiven by God, and you cannot earn your salvation. One of my friends, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, often puts it this way. He says every religion on planet Earth can be summed up in one word: Do.

You've got to earn your salvation. You've got to do this and this and this and this and maybe you will have the hope. Muhammad died saying he wasn't sure whether he was saved or not. But Jeffress points out that Christianity is the only religion in the world that can also be summed up in one word, and that word is: Done.

Jesus did it all. He did it on the cross. He died for your sins and my sins. If you want to be reconciled with your creator, you must put your faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior and he will forgive you. You will be born again and receive the power of the Holy Spirit. He will begin working inside of you to sanctify you.

Lord, I come to you in the name of Jesus and I thank you that you are a personal, patient, concerned God full of lovingkindness. I am awestruck by the fact that you desire to save us from our sin and then shape us into the image of your precious Son Jesus. Help us, Lord, to be open to your desire to change us through the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, Amen.

(singing)

One day on a hillside, people gathered,

Hoping to see him as thousands were fed.

He touched the blind eyes, healed broken spirits,

With compassion, he raised up the dead.

But once on a hillside, people gathered,

Watching as Jesus was crucified.

No one showed mercy to the one who had healed them,

Yet Jesus loved them as he suffered and died.

But once on a hillside, people gathered,

For Jesus had risen and soon would ascend.

And then as he blessed them, he rose to the heavens,

But he gave them this promise to come back again.

And we shall see Jesus, just as they saw him.

There is no greater promise than this.

And when he returns in his power and glory,

Yes, we shall see Jesus just as he is.

We shall see Jesus, just as they saw him.

There is no greater promise than this.

And when he returns in his power and glory,

Yes, we shall see Jesus.

We shall see Jesus.

We shall see Jesus just as he is.

Maranatha!