Today, I don’t have anything original to share, but this quote by Brennan Manning made me deeply thankful for the overwhelming grace of God and I want to share it with you:

“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last ‘trick’, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

‘But how?’ we ask.

Then the voice says, ‘They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’

There they are. There *we* are – the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”
― Brennan Manning

True Love Weights (or, the one about sex)

“Are you married?”

That would always be the question from the time I was about 14. During any conversation with a person I just met, their eyes would casually drift over to my ring finger on my left hand and they would see the small silver ring that I wore with pride. This ring that symbolized purity. This ring that made the bold statement that I would be saving sex as a gift only to be experienced with my wife. This ring that symbolized everything that I would soon find out stood in stark contrast to the culture around me. This ring I wore not out of faithfulness to God’s standards, but as an ostentation. A show. A lie.

Because what is purity, and what does it involve? Is it simply abstaining from an act with someone else until marriage? Because if that’s all it is, I’m doing pretty good. But what if it’s more? What if it involves, like Job, making a covenant with your eyes to keep from looking at another lustfully? Have I succeeded? Can I succeed? Can any of us?

About four or five years later, as I watched that little silver ring fall out of the 3rd story window of my dorm room and into the grass below, I’d settled on an answer.

Before I continue to tell you my story, let me back up a bit more and write about when I first got that little silver ring. If you aren’t familiar with certain strains of evangelical Christian culture, you may not know about True Love Waits. It’s an organization that is built on the premise that  complete abstinence until marriage is integral to God’s design for human sexuality. After taking a class on the matter, there was a big ceremony where all the participants would get a small silver ring to wear as a symbol of purity, of their intent to abide by God’s way with regard to sex.

So don’t get me wrong, I fully support and agree with that message and, as both a Christian and a youth minister, I advise others in the same way. But my experience in this “class,” left a lot to be desired. For one, we heard the message in its simplest form, stripped of all context “don’t have sex  because Leviticus says so.” And further on, “don’t have sex because you’ll get an STD.”

I have very little respect for the husband-wife duo who were tasked with teaching us what scripture says about sexual relationships. Rather than hear and understand why one’s sexuality is so important, why waiting until marriage is a good thing, we simply heard, “NO!”

Everything built on the premise that sex is dirty, ugly, taboo.

Everything built on the lie that sex is not a good thing.

I now believe that sex, in the confines of marriage between a loving husband and wife, is good and holy, and reflects the Father in more ways than we can name. I believe it is important to speak about it, and not pretend it doesn’t happen. I believe that sex is good, and if it should be talked about anywhere, it is most definitely the Church’s responsibility to reclaim sexuality in the way it was intended, rather than treat it as an unmentionable obscenity.

If I listened to those teachers from my church, I wouldn’t have believed any of that. I would be afraid of sex, or just as bad, like a child told not to eat the cookies from the cookie jar, or our first mother told not to eat of the tree, I would’ve run headfirst into a lifestyle I wasn’t at all prepared for.

So my experience with “the sex talk” was an unpleasant one, at best. But I wore the ring anyway.

Maybe it made me feel holier than I was. Maybe it gave me a sense of security in that, hey maybe I had raging hormones and looked at every girl I saw with lust in my heart and my mind wasn’t nearly has pure as my left hand ring finger was, but at least I wasn’t lying like my friends who still wore their rings, even though I knew for sure that they’d been anything but pure.

And what about pornography?

The place I never wanted to go, but went anyway.

It wasn’t enough for me to just imagine it, like any good millennial, I was a very visually immersive teenager. What I desired in my heart, I needed to see with my eyes. And when those images met my retinas, they never left. And though I wore a ring around my finger, I didn’t wear it around my heart.

So flash forward back to the year I threw the ring out the window. I was majorly conflicted. See,my freshman year of college, I joined a group called “Dude Church” which acted as an accountability group where a bunch of guys got together and talked about sexual temptation, porn, and lust and prayed for one another. What becomes problematic about a group like that is, no one likes to let loose their dirty little secret, and rather than become supportive, it can easily become another avenue to heap shame and condemnation on yourself in the prison of your own mind. Honesty is freeing, yes, but it is also the scariest thing you can do.

So, keeping my confessions to a bare minimum, selectively choosing what to say and what to leave out, I’d trapped myself in my guilt. Rather than believing that there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, I defaulted to the shame I’d learned to embrace in my True Love Waits class.

And the “wait” became more of a “weight” on my chest, a noose I’d tightened around my own throat. And with all my emotions pulling me higher and higher, I could not longer breathe.

So that moment on the top floor of my dorm was pivotal for me. It was the turning point between the version of me that I wanted the world to see and the one that actually existed. It was when I began to finally understand that when I leave this world, I want to leave it as a man with no secrets, as a man who finally understands the grace of God as a transformative force, rather than an empty, ostentatious formality.

So, thinking about whatever I believed purity was, I’d decided that I was not. And I took off the ring and watched it as if fell. And I didn’t go look for it later. For me, symbols are powerful. A ring was more than a ring. It was a false impression. It was a source of pride I’d put in myself and my ability to stay away from that dirty thing called sex. And as long as I didn’t cross the line, I was fine.

But that’s simply not true. Wasn’t it Jesus who said that lust and adultery are one in the same? That the intentions and motives of the heart make you just as culpable as if you’d committed the act itself?

And now, years removed from shedding the ring, I don’t believe that God’s impression of me is tied to how I squandered the gift of purity I’d mistakenly made into an idol. I believe that God’s view of me is tied to the sacrifice of Jesus that we celebrated last weekend at Easter. That the grace of God in Jesus covers all my sins past, present, and future.

And the lust, pride, anger, and idolatry I’ve so willingly ran headfirst into, that was washed away at Calvary and I am free.

Purity isn’t something that, once you’ve ruined, you can never get back. Purity is a process. One where you fall down on your face and rise again. Because if the Gospel has taught me anything, it’s that God’s approval of me is not contingent on a list of rules I keep, it is contingent only on Jesus Christ.

For clarity’s sake, I absolutely believe in God’s design for sex. I believe that abstinence until marriage is a key to joy. I believe that sin is serious, so serious that Christ had to die and defeat death for it to be erased. But I believe in a God who saves, who redeems the unredeemable, who sets us free from destructive patterns.

If your purity becomes an idol, you are sinning.

If what people think of you is more important to you than what truly is, please reevaluate your addiction to self. Because before God, all of our sins are out in the open, and we cannot hide.

Be honest. Be forgiven. Be free.

Struggling with Sin (and the masks we think we hide behind)

I remember sitting in my older Sister’s youth class once as a kid. I don’t remember why, but I remember that I was there. Larry, the youth minister, was clutching a piece of tin foil in his hand and talking about how we so often hide behind masks, and then he pushed it into his face and made a cast of his face from it, to illustrate his point.

Being a kid who obviously didn’t belong in a class full of 15-18 year olds, I didn’t really have a good grasp of what was going on, so I started laughing at the awkwardness of the situation and everyone stared at me. Years later, my sense of humor hasn’t changed much, but I did one day learn to understand exactly what it was he was talking about.

It took me a while to truly understand “the sin that so easily entangles.” To really “get” why we would have any desire to hide.

But, like all children, I grew up, and now, more aware of all my frailties, I stand as a man in desperate need of the grace I so vehemently preach.

And, thank God, I am not alone:

 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:15-25)

Paul grasped the struggle of sin better than countless theologians since could ever hope to know. He lived it. He didn’t describe it in the polished, pretty way we so often describe our battle with sin. He didn’t try to make himself look good, and he was one of the foremost leaders in the church at the time!

What’s more, he didn’t simply speak of his sin in the past tense. We know Paul had a long rap sheet before he came to Christ, but Paul’s struggle is one that he refused to gloss over and pretend didn’t exist.

The raw honesty in Romans 7 shows us in and out of leadership what is required. A realistic look at who we are, and and intimate understanding of what can save us from this “body of death.” (Spoiler alert: It isn’t in or of ourselves.)

This puts me in the mind of Peter Parker in the Spiderman comics. More specifically, with Venom.

You are probably familiar with the story. Alien symbiote bonds with Spidey and takes over completely, turning him into this ravaging monster. He grapples with the fear of losing the power the alien gives him and the fear that it will take him prisoner completely.

It is a strong example of what sin does to us. However, the difference is, Venom comes from outside of Peter Parker. In our own struggle with the sin that so easily wraps itself around us, it comes from within. But like Peter, or like Frodo and the ring, we do not want to let it go.

Christian culture can be divided into two camps: Those who know full well that, apart from Christ, they are messed up sinners without hope, and the people who live their entire lives trying to convince themselves and everybody else that they aren’t.

Because if you know you are a sinner and embrace that Jesus is the source of all the good in you, your life will be lived not to please everyone around you. Not to keep worrying over whether or not you’re on God’s “nice list” and fear the proverbial lump of coal in your stocking, but knowing that because of what Jesus has done, your sins have been thrown into the ocean, never to resurface.

Yet we still struggle. Paul’s words are as much a source of comfort as they are of conviction. He identifies with the human condition.

He is a church leader, an apostle, a man who regardless of his sins in the past, saw Christ and was changed forever, who isn’t afraid to say “I am a mess.”

Isn’t that a source of hope for people like you and me? That we aren’t alone in our struggles.

The only one who can rescue us is Jesus, and Paul’s letter to the church at Rome assures us of this, even before chapter 7.

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:9-11)

Reconciliation meaning that which was severed, is now put back together. Meaning the estranged are received as wayward children embraced by the love of a Father who never gave up on them. Reconciliation, meaning that the rift between God and those engaged in battle with their own sinful desires is healed, and that wound will never be reopened. Forgiveness. You aren’t immune to sins pull, but you are exonerated.

I read a story in the beginning of a book by Michael John Cusick called  Surfing for God: Discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle.

In it, he tells of a teacher whose student is struggling with lustful thoughts. It grieves the student (much like it grieved Paul) that he continued to do what he didn’t want to do, what he knew he shouldn’t do. And the teacher spoke a story to him.

There once was a beautiful skylark who flew high above the sky. One day, the lark saw a merchant pushing a cart full of huge, delicious worms down the road. The bird flew down and asked how much the man was selling them for, and replied, two worms for one feather.

“Well, it’s just one feather, it won’t hurt anything.” the bird said.

He immediately plucked a feather and gulped down the worms. They were incredible.

So he returned day after day to the peddler. And day after day, he continued to pluck them until one day, the bird discovered he could no longer fly. He was crushed, he had squandered all of his feathers and lost his purpose, what he was made to do.

The bird had an idea. He went to work plucking worms from the ground and gathered enough to give to the man and get his feathers back. So he went. And the old peddler laughed and said “I deal in feathers for worms, not worms for feathers, and with that he disappeared.”

The teacher stopped the story and the student sat, dumbfounded. “It breaks the heart of the Father when we trade our feathers for worms,” the teacher said, “but moreso, it breaks the heart of the Father when we think we can buy them back.”

We cannot ever buy those back.

Those were bought back for us, long before we even sold them.

“While we were sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.”

So today, I pray that you have come face to face with the Cross. The beauty of that symbol is that what was an instrument of death became our redemption. The body of death, or more clearly, the day to day struggle with our sin that never seems to have an end, has been overcome by the death of Jesus, who in his glory and grace, refused to stay dead, showing his power over the death we deserved and offering us a life free from shame forever.

What we could never buy back for ourselves, that which we lost in sin, it was bought for us.  And to think it’s our responsibility to do it ourselves is an insult to the grace of God. 

The struggle with sin is real, it is strong, overwhelming, persistent. But the love and grace of God is also real, it is strong, overwhelming, persistent. It is with us even when we try to hide behind platitudes and tin foil masks. When we don’t want the world to see us, God sees us. And because of Christ, he loves us just the same.

The Man that God Wants

I looked down at the note card filled with writing and then back up at him. I saw eyes full of pain, scarred from a life of bad decisions and suffering inflicted on him by others. I saw genuine repentance in his eyes. I saw a heart that seems irreparably broken into pieces by a lifetime of living a life that he was not made to live.

It was a normal night with the prisoners, like the many I had experienced over the past four years. I spoke on Ezekiel 37, the same passage I preached from my last Sunday at Beulah. There are some things that God just sears into your head, never letting you forget. And from time to time, it becomes necessary to speak those same passages over others. As I talked about the grace of God, a God who does better than simply making us to be good people, but instead brings us from death to life and continually issues the charge for his people to prophesy  and let the power of God bring the dead around us, the dead in us, to life again, I looked out, wondering if the words I believed were from the Holy Spirit held any weight or could hold meaning for anyone in the room.

And I caught one man’s eyes. He may have been in his mid thirties and had tattoos all over exposed skin. He looked lonely, quiet, and like he didn’t really feel comfortable. We broke up into groups and the man I locked eyes with came up to me and asked if he could speak to me away from the group. Hesitantly, as to not want to leave my partner alone, I went to the corner with him where he handed me a note card with prayer requests written all over it. In it, he talked about a lot of things that were going on in his life. The rest of the details were very personal and it’s not my place to share, but on it he wrote, “please pray for God to help me change into the man that he wants me to be.”

We talked for maybe 20 minutes and he began to cry. He kept saying it felt stupid to cry, and I encouraged him to do whatever he needed to do. The Spirit then prompted me to intercede for him out loud, so I put my hand on his shoulder and prayed for Jesus to overcome him with need. Need for him, daily, purposefully, an ever consistent longing for the presence of God that will break the chains of addiction, depression, and the need to be self-sufficient.

We were not made to do life alone. And from my one bedroom apartment to the college campus I lived on then to a homely old prison chapel made of cinderblock walls and pews creak and groan when you sit on them, God has a funny way of placing people in our path that need his mercy.

I need his mercy, every day of my life.

And this man, who told me that he didn’t believe he could even construct a pure thought if he tried, was so overcome with his need for a Savior that I looked at him and smiled. From somewhere deep in my soul, I smiled and told him that maybe the purest thought we could ever have is in our need for God. We spoke about a lot of things that night, and he pretty much spilled his whole life story to me in the span of a few minutes and I was reminded of why Prison Fellowship has been such a huge learning experience for me.

I let him know that, though I’d never struggled with some of the things he has dealt with, I know what it feels like to feel so incredibly lost that the only words you can speak to God are “help me.” I understand that most days I value myself and my desires above my desire for Christ. I know what it feels like to be addicted, lonely, and afraid. But that he is not alone.

That Jesus Christ is the only desirable thing in me, and the sole objective of our lives is to make him the sole desire of our hearts.

He told me he missed feeling the Spirit on him, and I told him that I do too.

He told me he wanted to become the man God wants him to be, and I told him that I do too.

And as he spoke, I saw the spark of desire in his eyes and knew that he was so close to seeing what I strive (and many times fail) to see every single day.

God wants a broken heart, a contrite spirit, he wants us to be men and women that are primarily concerned with desiring him more fully. He is not content with half-hearted devotion, but instead wants everything from us.

A decision to follow Christ is not about the perks you can amass, it’s about finding your greatest treasure buried in a field and selling everything to buy the field so you can have the only thing that consumes your heart. It’s about coming to end of yourself in a jail cell and realizing your need to be saved. It’s about sitting across from a self-proclaimed loner/addict/criminal and seeing his desire for Christ and reminding yourself that he and you aren’t so different. It’s about growing up in a Christian home with loving parents and being so consumed with doing the right thing that you lose your way and become a slave to legalism and secret sins that rip your soul to shreds and coming to the end of yourself in a college dorm room your freshman year and realizing your need for Christ and knowing that you are nothing without him.

If those guys at prison and I have anything in common, it’s that we are united in our inability to save ourselves.

Humanity’s common denominator is its collective brokenness.

May Christ raise us up to be men and women who seek him, who desire him above every worthless thing and every worthless lie we have believed.

I pray that for me, that I could be the man that God wants me to be.

And I pray that for my brothers who have lived a life they weren’t meant for, that God would call each and every one of them to repentance and into a relationship with Jesus.

I’ve heard so many people talk about “jailhouse religion” and it frustrates me to no end. That may be true for some, but to doubt that God meets us at the end of ourselves and brings the dead to life in Jesus is to doubt that he is who he says he is. And, like I told my new friend, I don’t presume to know your life, to understand the depths of who you are, and I in no way mean to belittle the struggle that is this life, but God loves you. He loves you so much that he sent his son to die for you so you would be set free. Acceptance of this doesn’t make life easier, but it makes it better. It bends it toward purpose and makes you into the man or woman God desires for you to be as you desire him more and more every day.

I kept my friend’s note card. And I prayed for him, that God would undo the shackles he has placed on himself, and that at the end of the day, the desperation he feels would point him to Jesus, and if the only cry he can muster is “help” that God would honor that and draw him to himself. That his desire for Christ would overwhelm every vain thing that tries to take its place in his heart.

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.”-A.W. Tozer

—————————————————————————————————————————–

The Man that God Wants

I looked down at the note card filled with writing and then back up at him. I saw eyes full of pain, scarred from a life of bad decisions and suffering inflicted on him by others. I saw genuine repentance in his eyes. I saw a heart that seems irreparably broken into pieces by a lifetime of living a life that he was not made to live.

It was a normal night with the prisoners, like the many I had experienced over the past four years. I spoke on Ezekiel 37, the same passage I preached from my last Sunday at Beulah. There are some things that God just sears into your head, never letting you forget. And from time to time, it becomes necessary to speak those same passages over others. As I talked about the grace of God, a God who does better than simply making us to be good people, but instead brings us from death to life and continually issues the charge for his people to prophesy to the ruah (breath, wind, spirit) and let the power of God bring the dead around us, the dead in us, to life again, I looked out, wondering if the words I believed were from the Holy Spirit held any weight or could hold meaning for anyone in the room.

And I caught one man’s eyes. He may have been in his mid thirties and had tattoos all over exposed skin. He looked lonely, quiet, and like he didn’t really feel comfortable. We broke up into groups and the man I locked eyes with came up to me and asked if he could speak to me away from the group. Hesitantly, as to not want to leave my partner alone, I went to the corner with him where he handed me a note card with prayer requests written all over it. In it, he talked about a lot of things that were going on in his life. The rest of the details were very personal and it’s not my place to share, but on it he wrote, “please pray for God to help me change into the man that he wants me to be.”

We talked for maybe 20 minutes and he began to cry. He kept saying it felt stupid to cry, and I encouraged him to do whatever he needed to do. The Spirit then prompted me to intercede for him out loud, so I put my hand on his shoulder and prayed for Jesus to overcome him with need. Need for him, daily, purposefully, an ever consistent longing for the presence of God that will break the chains of addiction, depression, and the need to be self-sufficient.

We were not made to do life alone. And from the college campus on which I currently reside to a homely old prison chapel made of cinderblock walls and pews creak and groan when you sit on them, God has a funny way of placing people in our path that need his mercy.

I need his mercy, every day of my life.

And this man, who told me that he didn’t believe he could even construct a pure thought if he tried, was so overcome with his need for a Savior that I looked at him and smiled. From somewhere deep in my soul, I smiled and told him that maybe the purest thought we could ever have is in our need for God. We spoke about a lot of things last night, and he pretty much spilled his whole life story to me in the span of a few minutes and I was reminded of why Prison Fellowship has been such a huge learning experience for me.

I let him know that, though I’d never struggled with some of the things he has dealt with, I know what it feels like to feel so incredibly lost that the only words you can speak to God are “help me.” I understand that most days I value myself and my desires above my desire for Christ. I know what it feels like to be addicted, lonely, and afraid. But that he is not alone.

That Jesus Christ is the only desirable thing in me, and the sole objective of our lives is to make him the sole desire of our hearts.

He told me he missed feeling the Spirit on him, and I told him that I do too.

He told me he wanted to become the man God wants him to be, and I told him that I do too.

And as he spoke, I saw the spark of desire in his eyes and knew that he was so close to seeing what I strive (and many times fail) to see every single day.

God wants a broken heart, a contrite spirit, he wants us to be men and women that are primarily concerned with desiring him more fully. He is not content with half-hearted devotion, but instead wants everything from us.

A decision to follow Christ is not about the perks you can amass, it’s about finding your greatest treasure buried in a field and selling everything to buy the field so you can have the only thing that consumes your heart. It’s about coming to end of yourself in a jail cell and realizing your need to be saved. It’s about sitting across from a self-proclaimed loner/addict/criminal and seeing his desire for Christ and reminding yourself that he and you aren’t so different. It’s about growing up in a Christian home with loving parents and being so consumed with doing the right thing that you lose your way and become a slave to legalism and secret sins that rip your soul to shreds and coming to the end of yourself in a college dorm room your freshman year and realizing your need for Christ and knowing that you are nothing without him.

If those guys at prison and I have anything in common, it’s that we are united in our inability to save ourselves.

Humanity’s common denominator is its collective brokenness.

May Christ raise us up to be men and women who seek him, who desire him above every worthless thing and every worthless lie we have believed.

I pray that for me, that I could be the man that God wants me to be.

And I pray that for my brothers who have lived a life they weren’t meant for, that God would call each and every one of them to repentance and into a relationship with Jesus.

I’ve heard so many people talk about “jailhouse religion” and it frustrates me to no end. That may be true for some, but to doubt that God meets us at the end of ourselves and brings the dead to life in Jesus is to doubt that he is who he says he is. And, like I told my new friend, I don’t presume to know your life, to understand the depths of who you are, and I in no way mean to belittle the struggle that is this life, but God loves you. He loves you so much that he sent his son to die for you so you would be set free. Acceptance of this doesn’t make life easier, but it makes it better. It bends it toward purpose and makes you into the man or woman God desires for you to be as you desire him more and more every day.

I will keep my new friend’s note card. And I will pray for him daily, that God would undo the shackles he has placed on himself, and that at the end of the day, the desperation he feels would point him to Jesus, and if the only cry he can muster is “help” that God would honor that and draw him to himself. That his desire for Christ would overwhelm every vain thing that tries to take its place in his heart.

“O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.”-A.W. Tozer