All right. We are continuing our series Dangerous Prayers, and I'm absolutely enjoying it. But before we dig into the service, I just want to acknowledge again that we are a multisite church with six locations in Minnesota, one in Spain, one in Swaziland, an online group that watches us all the time. And I'm just thanking God for what he's doing. We are praying about more campuses, and we are celebrating that with this technology we can right now have our other campuses watching and tuning in and being a part of this. So as a celebration of all that God's doing and say hi to all the other campuses, let's just show our joy and appreciation for what God is going, and let's clap and say welcome to all the other campuses. Can we do that? It's all good. (Clapping.)
I'm just blown away with what God is doing. The other day I was in Valencia at our campus there. It was packed. We are trying to figure out where do we go from here, what do we do, and that hasn't always been the case. It's summer. If you think Minnesotans disappear in the summer, you should see Spaniards. They are like, "It's hot, we are out of here. Good night." So it was packed. And so that one is growing. Our Edina area campus is just bursting at the seams. We have prayer and plans for a couple more next year. So thank God for all he's doing.
Now as we are in this series Dangerous Prayers, I have enjoyed it because it stretched us, and it is one of those series that is kind of hitting us. How many know what I'm talking about? It hits you. Maybe hurts a little, but it hurts in a good way. It is like having a workout and being sore afterwards, but knowing that you're being built up and you're going in the right direction. That's what this feels like. Now, it has been said about pastors that our job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And I think that's what we are doing in this series. Some of you are like, "Oooh, that kind of got me."
And I do want to give a shout out to our ladies in the church. A couple of weeks ago I preached pretty hard to the men. And I said, you know, "You've got to take care of the ladies or it hinders your prayer," and "You're the thermal mug and she is the teacup," and "Come on, take care and be nice."
And the ladies, instead of coming up to me and saying, "That's right, way to get the guys," no kidding, I had probably close to three dozen ladies come up to me and say, "Where's our message, the hard one? Where are you going to give us the hard message to tell us how to live so that we can be like you really took it to the guys. When are you going to take it to us?"
And I was like, "Okay, I'll work on it. All right!"
One lady came up to me and she said, "After you preached that message my husband left in tears bawling." And she goes, "Later on that week he washed my feet and said, 'I want to be a man of God that takes care of you.'" And she said, "I started crying, thinking I want to be a woman of God that's worthy to have her feet washed." And she said, "Just tell me how to be the woman of God that's worthy of having my feet washed, because my husband is changing and I want to match what's going on in his life."
So this is what God is doing in this series, and I thank God for this that we are growing and being challenged. And today is another one that's going to hit you, and your flesh is going to rebel against this one. When I tell you what this prayer is, your flesh is going to rebel immediately and say, "Not for you. Don't take this one too serious. This is not a prayer. That one is dangerous. Don't do it."
Now don't listen to your flesh. Listen to what the Spirit of God is going to say to you, because the prayer we're going to look at today is found in Psalm 139. And I'll tell what you it is before we read it. It's just this it can be two words or four words Search me. If you want it as four words, it's Search Me, O God. You're going to ask God to search you and to look inside you and see if there is anything that needs to go. You're going to go and say, "Search me. Put the spotlight on. Look at my life, God, and take a look." And, again, your flesh is like, "No, don't do that."
Some of us have a natural rebellion against holiness and about the things of God and holiness. Maybe we had a bad experience of holiness and we kind of pushed it away. We thank God for grace, but we don't pursue for purity and holiness. Holiness has a bad rap. It's a beautiful thing. Some people think holiness means you have to wear all black clothes, ladies have to put their hair in a bun and no makeup and you've got to look mean. That's a bad view of holiness, okay? That is not our view. I think we can look like the culture, but we can be holy. We can be relevant, but we can be holy. We can be in the midst of people and not look different because our hair is different and we have no makeup and all this, but we can look different because our speech is godly, our conduct is godly, our marriages are godly, our Internet history is godly. We can have holiness and stand out in those ways and not by our looks. It's a bad thing that that's what people think of holiness.
I know some of are like, "I don't even know that look."
But I grew up in that a little bit and went to a Bible school that was like that. I remember they asked an old preacher, they said, you know, "Are you for makeup or opposed to makeup?" This is back when makeup was an issue for ladies in a holiness church.
And I'll never forget. His name was C. M. Ward. And he said, "I am for makeup. If the barn needs paint, paint it."
I was like, "Awww!" He said it; not me. All right?
But I know some of you, you're like, "I don't even know that world of holiness. I don't even know that world."
Okay, but here's the thing. It is sad we don't even know holiness today. We love grace and we need grace, and it's all about grace. But we need holiness. And the holiness, the purity in our life needs to reflect our joy of what God has given to us.
I thought about this. How can I illustrate this for you? I love to give illustrations to help make the Word be applicable to your life. And this is what God gave me. I was doing our devotions, and I was sitting on kind of our three season porch. We have this area where we look in our backyard. We have trees in the backyard, it's kind of a wetlands area. And we love to do our devotions there. And as I was doing that I looked down and I saw our landscaping, all these beautiful plants and flowers and, you know, the mulch and everything. And then I noticed there are all these weeds growing in it. Not little weeds. I'm talking like four foot tall weeds. I mean, neglect all summer long weeds that looked almost like they were plants because they were flowering, you know. But they were weeds. As I'm doing that, God gives me this little illustration, so I'll share it with you.
You may not know this, but in 2008 our church had a financial crisis. Okay, the economy had a financial crisis. Ours was unrelated, but we had a financial crisis. And I can remember standing before the church and saying, "We need the best gift that you can give financially. We are in a crisis. We need to get through this."
And I can remember God telling me, he said, "You're going to give all your landscaping money." Now, so you understand this, we had just purchased a new home. It was February. We had no landscaping. It was mud. And in the spring we were going to do landscaping. We had just three or four thousand dollars. Not that much, but it was set aside for landscaping. Really. And so God says, "Give that. You're going to give that."
So I told Becca, "I think God wants us to give this money."
And she said, "Well, what are we going to do for landscaping?"
I said, "Well, we won't have any this year. We just have to be obedient."
So we did it. We gave the money with joy. We didn't make a big deal out of it. As a matter of fact, we didn't tell anybody. About six weeks later a guy visiting our church, doesn't go to our church, and he says, "Hey, I'm worshipping today, and all I keep thinking about in worship is I'm supposed to do your landscaping." He said, "I own a landscaping business. Does that make any sense to you?"
And I'm like, "Yes. Stay there." So I go and grab Becca, and I bring her over. I said, "Tell her what you just said."
He said, "I don't go to your church. I'm worshipping and God says I'm supposed to do your landscaping. Does that make sense?" She starts to cry. I tell him the story. He's like, "Done!"
Now I want to let you know he comes and does our landscaping. It is not three or four thousand. It's like twenty some thousand dollars worth of landscaping. He takes it to a whole other level. He is doing the landscaping and it is so amazing that our neighbors came over and they are like, "Hey, can we hire you?"
He goes, "I don't usually work in your neighborhood." I mean, like, wow, he's like this level (indicating) of landscaper guy. You know, it is absolutely amazing. It just looks spectacular. And here's the point what I'm getting to, not about like give and watch what God does. But I will say this: When you're obedient, okay, when you're obedient God is smiling, and when God is smiling, anything can happen. Okay, I'm not guaranteeing you that if you're obedient and give the money, he's going to quadruple or seven times your investment. But I am guaranteeing you this: When you're obedient, God is smiling, and anything can happen. And you want to be in that position.
But here is where I'm going now. It's been a few years now. I'm looking at our landscaping. The weeds are there. I'm so grateful for the gift that was given to me, but I'm looking at the weeds, and I'm realizing that the gratefulness that I have for the gift that was given to me is not being reflected in the weeds that are growing in my landscaping. They in no way show how grateful I am for the gracious gift that he gave to me. And yet through neglect, through my own busyness, through just life, through the fact that weeds grow way faster than I ever thought they would, okay, in no way does it reflect how grateful I am. And I'm looking at these weeds and I'm thinking to myself, if he were to come up to our house, if he was to pull up into our yard and pull up in the driveway and I saw him out there in his car, I would run out there and I would be like, "There is nothing to see here, nothing to see! I'm so grateful for what you did for us. I'll take you out to dinner. Don't go in the backyard."
Think about it. We're so grateful for grace and what God has done, the beautiful garden that he gave you. But are the weeds that are growing in your life not a reflection of how grateful you are of grace? Like you love grace, but the weeds of lust and anger and greed and just all these other things that are growing in your garden, are they saying that, you know, "I don't know if he really appreciates grace. I don't know if he really appreciates all that I've done."
"I don't know if she gets it. She used to be this. I planted this beautiful garden and yet she's letting it go. She is not working on those habits that are holding her back. She is still getting drunk on Friday night and it is tearing her down. And that weed of alcohol is growing over and over again. I don't know if she understands the grace that was given to her."
Wow! God has given us so much. Grace is so beautiful. And I'm just praying that the weeds that are there in our life, we'll want to pull them out, we'll want to do a little maintenance. We'll want to pray, "Search me, O God. Pull out the weeds so my current day position shows how grateful I am for the grace you gave me that one day."
Wow! All that from weeds and landscaping. I thought about this. I thought I need help to pull those weeds out. So I thought about getting the interns out there, because it is a sermon illustration. And then I thought that's an abuse of power, so I did not do that, all right? Just so you know.
But the Holy Spirit will help you pull the weeds. The Holy Spirit will help you take care of it. And today I'm praying that the Holy Spirit will help us to pull out the weeds that shouldn't be there and don't show how much we love the beautiful thing that God has planted in our life.
So with that being said, let's look at Psalm 139. We're going to take a look at this and let it speak to us, and let's let God pull some weeds in our life. Psalm 139. I'm going to read it in the NIV and in The Message, because I love the way The Message says it. I'm going to read verses 1 through 6, then jump to 23 and 24.
1 You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Verse 23. Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Let me read this in The Message and let it speak to you.
God, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you; even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back; I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—I can’t take it all in!
Verse 23. Investigate my life, O God,find out everything about me;
Cross examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—then guide me on the road to eternal life.
Wow! Strong, strong things from the Word of God.
One more scripture I want to read; 1John 3:1 3. See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
Can I stop there for a second? Think about it. See what great love God has put on us, that he has planted a beautiful garden of grace and he called you his child.
And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. This is the verse I want to get to: 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Just as he is pure, we purify. If we have the hope of heaven, if we have the hope of salvation, if we know the beautiful joy that God has done, that he has planted this beautiful garden in our life, then we are going to purify ourself because he is pure and he wants us to be pure. So let's look at this. Search me, Search me, O God. The Psalmist says, "Search me, O God, know my heart. Test me, purge me and lead me." He says search me. And he's asking God to put the spotlight on it. And if you can envision this, he's saying put the spotlight on every single area. Go from room to room of my life, God. Go everywhere with that little spotlight, the big spotlight. Put it on. Look behind every hidden area and put the spotlight on it. And look if there is anything that shouldn't be there and get it out.
I was thinking about this with the spotlight. My wife Becca absolutely loves the CSI show. She just loves the whodunit CSI. And as I'm watching it, it always bothers me that they don't turn the lights on. When they go to a crime scene it's dark and they walk around with a flashlight. So I'm like, "Turn the lights on, guys." So I had to research that, and I found out they don't turn the lights on because they don't alter the crime scene in any way, shape or form. And then the other thing is when they have the flashlight on, it helps them to focus. If they hear a noise over there, they've got to look with the flashlight, and then they go back to what they are focusing on. And they spotlight and they focus exactly in every single area looking for anything that's out of order. That's the picture. The Psalmist is saying "Search me. Look for every little area."
As a matter of fact, when the Jewish people would purge their house of leaven we'll get to that in a minute they would take a candle; they didn't have a flashlight. But they would take a candle at night to every little corner and look with a candle because they want to make sure every little area was investigated with intensity. That's how we are praying. God search me. Search me. Look with intensity to every single area of my life. Search me.
Now think about it. We don't pray that prayer very often, and that is a prayer we need to pray. And the reason it is dangerous is only because our flesh is mounting up up against it saying, "Don't pray that! Don't pray that! Don't pray that!" But don't listen to your flesh.
Now it's interesting that the Psalmist would say, "Search me, and then look at what's on my heart." God already knows what you're doing. Hebrews says there is nothing hidden. Hebrews 4 talks about that. There is nothing hidden. So the Psalmist is saying, "Search me and look." And so why would he say that? If God already knows what you're doing, what you're thinking, he knows your words before you speak them, why would you have to invite God to search you?
Here's why. You're saying, "I want to up the relationship to another level. I want to be more transparent to you." God is waiting for you to initiate the transparency that will take you to another level. He's already there. He's just ready to see if you're going to go there.
So he's saying, "Will you allow me to search you? Will you allow me to point those areas out? I want permission to go into that room, into that habit, into that behavior, and search you." And you have to give God permission.
And really what you're doing is you're saying, "No more games. I want our relationship to be more intimate."
Now, we are great at covering things up. How many know that? We are great at covering things up. And ever since Adam and Eve, we've been covering things up. Think about it. When Adam and Eve sinned they started us down this journey of cover ups for our sin. They sinned, and what do they do? They go and hide from God and then they sew fig leaves and cover up. God's like, "What are you doing?"
"Well, we heard you and we hid. We're hiding. We're trying to cover it up. Nothing to see here. New fig leaf attire. Nothing to see." You know?
And ever since then we've been trying to hide from God. And ever since then God is saying, "Open yourself up. Let me search you. Let's be in relationship. That's not how I want it. I don't want you distant from me. I don't want you just getting grace and then running away. I want you getting grace and then let's move forward in the grace I give you."
Amazing thing that when God uncovers those things and points them out to you, you know they are there, he knows they are there. And when he does it, he doesn't say, "See, I should have never saved you in the first place. Look at how bad your sins are." He doesn't do it that way. He says, "I love you, and I want to get that out. I want to take care of it. We are not going to just leave that there. We are going to put the new thing in." He loves you. So you can be vulnerable with God. He is not going to abandon you.
I mean, it is not like people are worried, you know, when they are dating, like, "Well, if I reveal too much, is she going to run for the hills or not? Let's keep the façade up." You don't need to keep the façade up. God is not going to run from you. He's okay. He's going to be right there with you. He already knows it, and he's just asking you to increase the relationship to a new level of intimacy.
Another thing, when you say "Search me," you know what you're doing? You're increasing your effectiveness for God. When you say, "Search me, O God," you are increasing your effectiveness for God and you become more useful in his hands. Because as people look at your life and see the weeds being pulled out, they see effectiveness. They are like, "Wow, look what God is doing in them." And you look more beautiful and no one has to wonder about your life.
I think this: I wonder if our neighbors wonder about our life right now because of our weeds. I don't know if you do this, but sometimes I'll drive by a house, ad I'll see a lawn that's long, dandelions everywhere, landscape is horrible, and I'll think, "What's the story?" Did they get divorced? Is it in foreclosure? Is there an addiction?"
You're like, "All that from weeds?" But it doesn't fit in, it doesn't fit into the way it was, what they had, what they spent, what they purchased. And so something must be wrong. When people see the weeds in your life, they think something must be wrong. But when they see the weeds being pulled out and they see those things happening, it's attractive and you become more effective for God.
And I think about this, at the Edina area campus, there was a guy that wasn't a Christian, he is not a Christian. He started coming to our church because his niece is coming to the campus. He's like, "Can I come to the church? I'm seeing all the good that is happening in her life. And I was wondering, we are not a part of church or anything, but can I just bring my whole family here? Because what is happening in her life is so amazing I was wondering if we could get around what is going on." That's because she is becoming more effective as God pulls out those weeds that are there. She has been given grace and the weeds are going, and it is catching the attention. As you pull the weeds out, it will catch the attention of the world. Because, hey, guess what? We are in the beautiful landscaping business of beautiful lives, and weeds don't sell. Weeds don't sell. But when you start pulling the weeds out and it looks beautiful, it's, "Hey, that's what I want. I want in on that."
Third thing it does, it increases our happiness. Holiness increases your happiness. Now you're thinking, "No, I don't think so." Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. Think about this: Does lust or purity increase your happiness in the marriage? Does adultery or faithfulness increase your happiness? Does greed or generosity increase your happiness in life? Does anger or peace increase your happiness? Does being drunk or being sober increase your happiness? Think about this. Does being in bondage to a sin that you have to run back from work, jump on the Internet and you can't wait to be online, and you say, "I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it," but you come home from work and you go to the Internet and you click away on this, or living free and not being bound by it?
This increases our happiness. Holiness increases your happiness. And if it doesn't, then we are living holiness wrong. The closer you get to God, the more you look like him, the more you are with him, the more it increase your happiness. And here's the thing, it is God's desire for you to look like him. Let me say that again. It is God's desire for you to look like him. Here is what I mean. He gave you grace, and he didn't want to stop there. And some churches, it's a wrong thing to say, "All right, you're saved, you're not going to hell. Thank God for grace," and then we leave you there. That's wrong. It's you've been given grace, now God has work for you to do. Because you've been given grace, he wants you to help others find grace. Guess what? He wants to purify you and pull the weeds out of your life because he is holy and he wants you to be holy.
And here's the thing, holiness is waiting for you in heaven. Follow me on this. Holiness is waiting for you in heaven. Why not get what is waiting for you in heaven in your now? If it's good enough for heaven, it should be good enough for your now. Does that make sense? There is no anger in heaven. There is no lust in heaven. There is no profanity in heaven. Why not get what's in heaven in your now and look more like heaven and see what other blessings will flow into your life as you get more heaven into your now? So God saved you, and he put you to work, and he's purifying you.
Now here's the problem with people that don't know Jesus. They think it's the other way. They think I need to pull all the weeds and get to work, look like I'm busy, so when God comes he's happy. Okay? Wrong. You receive grace, God is happy, you're happy, then you get to work, then he pulls the weeds. You can never pull enough weeds to get God's salvation. He's like, "I'll forgive you. I'll give you grace. I plant the beautiful garden. Then we get to work together doing things." And you should find your job, your place to work in the church and to be involved, to do the good works that Ephesians says you're created for, and then he says, "I'm going to purify you. I'm going to cleanse you." All those that have the hope of heaven purify themselves on the way to heaven and want to get what is in heaven in their now. That's how we live.
2 Corinthians 7:1 says, Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends these promises of heaven let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reference for God.
Wow, that's the way we should live. That's the way we should go, saying, "God, I want you to perfect this holiness. I want to get rid of these weeds. I want to up our relationship. I want to be closer to you. I want to do this. I want to be more effective around people in this world. I want to get what is in heaven in my now. I want to do this." That's the mission we are on. It is God's desire for you to look like him. Wow!
And the way to do that, you can say, like, you're going to start thinking more of God. You're going to think of how important he is in your life and think more of God and less of yourself. You're going to respond often. And I know last week we had an alter time where people came and took a knee, and you're going to make that a regular time like, "God, Search me." You're going to pray this, "Search me."
You're going to be in your SOAP scriptures daily. Just this week I was drawn to this. As I was doing my devotions, just keeping regular spiritual weed maintenance if you will, as we are reading this week, it was 1 Corinthians 5, and I was reading 1 Corinthians 5, I couldn't help but Paul was talking to a church that had some immorality going on, and he said, "No, no, weed that out of the church. You shouldn't do that." And then he went and talked about the passover, and he talked about Jesus is our Passover Lamb and we need to enjoy the grace he has given us, and he said we need to purge ourself of all the leaven. And that's what I was talking about earlier. Paul was saying Jesus has paid the price and given us this beautiful grace, and just like the Jewish people would go around and look for the leaven and get rid of all the sin before we they'd eat the passover, he's saying, "Church, listen up. Get rid of the sin and pull the weeds. Get rid of the leaven. Get rid of the bad stuff, because the gift of grace is so beautiful. Receive the grace, but do the job to get rid of the sin, and thank God for the grace that's there."
See what's going on when you read the Word of God, and all of a sudden you're doing regular weed maintenance and you're letting God pull those things out, he'll speak to you while you're doing your devotion time.
You can ask others to help you on the journey. You can say, "Help me out. I need help on this journey. Will you point out something in my life?" You can talk to a trusted friend. You can use other people as markers and you can say, "I want to follow them as they follow Christ. They are further along."
Another thing is never compare yourself to other people when it comes to holiness. Compare yourself to Jesus. This is not something we are graded on a curve. "Well, I'm better than those guys, so I'll lighten up." That is not the way it is. Compare yourself to Jesus. You're saying, "Jesus, I want to be holy as you are holy."
And the last thing, something that can really help you out, as you pray "Search me, O God," I think there is a practical way that you can apply this to your life. Saint Ignatius Loyola came up with this. He called it the Prayer of Examen. He said basically this: At the end of the day, do the Prayer of Examen and look into your life, and as you get done with your day, just say, "God, today as I walk through my day" now you can do this with your planner. You can actually have your phone or your iPad or whatever you use for your planner, paper planner, whatever you've got, and you can say, "God, at the end of my day I want to walk through this day, and I want you to say when did you smile on my day. The Prayer of Examen. When did you smile?" So you go through your day, and you're like, "Oh, that meeting there, I held my temper, didn't I? I didn't blow up. That was good."
And God is like, "That was good. I was so proud of you. Good job."
"And then there, that was good. And, you know, I remembered that and I gave a little bit there, and I helped that person and did that. Then I came home and played with the kids."
You know, you might be surprised that God is like, "I was smiling there, too. I was so glad you played with the kids."
And you go through it. "Okay, God, when did I grieve you? When, as you examine me as I look through my day, when did I grieve you?"
And all of sudden you're like, he points out, "You remember that joke that you told at lunch? Remember how you felt that little embarrassment rush? That was me saying the joke was off color and it wasn't acceptable."
"I'm sorry, God. I'm sorry. Pull that weed out of my life. Where else did I grieve you today, God?"
"Okay, in the car when you were yelling those words that no one heard, but I heard. I know your boss ticked you off, but that's no reason for those words to be coming out of your mouth. I don't care if it's in your car or not. In the silence of your car those words shouldn't be coming out of your mouth. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth is speaking. So let's deal with that."
"Okay."
"And later on you kind of got a little edgy with your spouse. I wasn't happy with that."
"Oh, no, I know."
"Why don't you ask forgiveness before you go to bed so you can sleep good."
All right, wow! Search me, O God. Search me. If we did that, how many know we are going to live a whole different life? We are going to get the positive reinforcement from the Holy Spirit. We are going to get the conviction. Not bad dog, bad dog, bad dog! But instead it is, "Hey, that's got to go. This is how I want you to live." And the Holy Spirit will help you.
And even if you think, well, I don't know how to live. Ask God to tell you who you should talk to. Who has this virtue in their life that I need to talk to? God, if I'm not treating my spouse right, who has a great marriage that I can go talk to and have them speak in my life? God, if I have an anger problem, who have I heard share that they had an anger problem that God healed them of? Who can I talk to? God, how can I change this? And he will lead you and guide you. Search me, O God. Search me, O God. I think we need to pray it a lot more than we do. So let's pray now.
Lord, search us. Search us. Search us. Help us, God, to understand that we need to invite you to a deeper level of intimacy. We need to invite you to say pull out the weeds, pull out the things that shouldn't be there. And you already know what's going on, but we want to give you permission to do surgery, to pull weeds, to eradicate the sin that is there, and to help us to be more holy, more pure, to look more like you. Lord, if it's in heaven, we want it in our now. So, God, help us to put it in our now. Help us to pray at the end of the day what made you smile, what made you frown. And the things that made you frown, God, may you lead us, may you purge it out of us and lead us into the way everlasting.
Thank you, God, for this dangerous prayer. I pray we pray it. I pray we overcome our flesh and we pray Search me, O God.
In Jesus' name I pray. Amen, amen.
