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Seize the Moment – Day 1085
Praying the Prayer Book of Jesus!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Tuesday, March 7.
Are you ready to take your prayer life to the next level? My hope and prayers for you is that you will start a 150-day prayer journey through the Psalms and experience God’s blessings. Make the commitment today that you are going to open your Bible to the prayer book of Jesus, meditating upon a Psalm each day.
The Psalms are a collection of poems and songs, which have served as the prayer book of God’s people, including Jesus Christ, for three thousand years. It is my intent to help you approach each Psalm in the same way you do the Lord’s Prayer, as God’s means of grace to form your prayers through His words. This way, while your own thoughts and feelings will inform your prayers, your heart and mind will be directed by God’s Word and not your current situation.
Psalm 1 is the starting point of our prayer journey and an entry way into the theme of the book of Psalms – there is a way that leads to God’s blessing, just as surely as there is a path that leads to destruction. Psalm 1:6 clarifies, “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Jesus invited His disciples in Matthew 7:13-14 to choose the narrow way that leads to life and avoid the broad way that leads to destruction. Furthermore, Jesus identified Himself as “the way” (John 14:6) and as “the door of the sheep” (John 10:7). Jesus invites you to pray in His name and experience the blessings of God (John 14:13-14).
Seize the moment and pray Psalm 1, meditating upon the image of your roots growing deeply into the living waters of Jesus Christ (John 4:14). As you pray, may you experience the nourishment of the Spirit of God coursing into your life, making your tree stronger, and bearing fruit upon your branches (John 15:1-8).
God bless you!
If you would like to receive a personal phone call today, all you have to do is dial the phone number below right now and one of us will call you soon.
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Seize the Moment – Day 1084
Pray for your Family and Friends!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Monday, March 6.
We have arrived at Job 42, the last chapter, where we now experience the restoration of Job’s health, family, and fortunes. This amazing turn of events demonstrates God’s mercy and grace, but there is an important nuance found in Job 42:10, “The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the Lord increased all that Job had twofold.” [emphasis added]
When did the restoration happen? Don’t miss this! It was when he prayed for his friends who were rebuked by God in Job 42:7-9:
It came about after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, that the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has. Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.” So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job. [emphasis added]
Job’s faith was counted to him as righteousness; therefore, his prayer was effective (Romans 4; James 5:16)! God responded to Job’s faith and accepted their sacrifice offered to God for the atonement of their sins. God doesn’t want any to perish, but for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9), so He calls forth His faithful servants to pray in faith for their friends and family to be saved from His coming wrath.
Seize the moment and pray for your family and friends – be a stretcher bearer by bringing them “to the throne of grace, so that [they] may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Luke 5:17-20; Hebrews 4:16).
God bless you!
If you would like to receive a personal phone call today, all you have to do is dial the phone number below right now and one of us will call you soon.
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Grow Strong in God’s Grace Wk 4
Grow Strong in God’s Grace: Learning How to be a Faithful Farmer for God’s Harvest!
Cultivate the Soil: The First Step of the Farmer’s Strategy!
Matthew 13:3-9; 18-23 (NAS95)
Friendship is a lot like gardening! It requires you to cultivate the soil – to work the ground.
In friendship, just like with gardening and growing plants and flowers, you have to know the person well enough to know the state of their “soil,” and what each person uniquely needs to grow and be healthy, because every person in your life is different.
Mark 4 includes the foundational parable of the four soils, and it concludes with Jesus’ promise of what His Word and Spirit will produce in people when their hearts have been cultivated. Mark 4:20 promises, “And those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.”
In this parable, Jesus described four types of soil into which the Word of God is sown. These soils represent four conditions of people’s lives: When the ground is cracked, due to being dry and hard (15), God’s love is like a spring shower to soften it. When the topsoil is shallow, due to rocks (16-17), God’s compassion is like rich mulch that brings greater depth. When there are thorns and thistles (18-19), God’s grace uproots sin to heal the land.
God is working in every condition, but not every person reacts the same way to God’s Truth. That makes friendship hard! But, just like with gardening, it’s worth it!
Seize the moment and cultivate the ground of the people in your life. We have been invited to work the garden of God’s creation as Image Bearers. Pray and ask God to help you in your friendships.
“Preaching is sowing, prayer is watering, but praise is the harvest.”
– C. H. Spurgeon
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Seize the Moment – Day 1082
“There is a Redeemer”
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Seize the Moment – Day 1081
King of the Hill!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Friday, March 3.
When I was a young, developers built a neighborhood in the forest behind our home. It was sad because those woods in northern Connecticut contained the stone fences of early settler’s farmsteads and the arrow heads of the Indigenous people. Though I was saddened by this development, like most children, I adapted and explored this new kind of playground. We played king of the hill on the large mounds of excavated dirt – one of us would stand at the top and defend our rightful place at the top from the other kids. Don’t we all want to be the king of whichever hill we are standing?
God concluded his speech to Job by describing a mighty beast named Leviathan in Job 41. As verses 33-34 stated, Leviathan was the king of the hill, “Nothing on earth is like him, one made without fear. He looks on everything that is high; He is king over all the sons of pride.” Why did God end His speech with His champion poised at the top of the hill? He explained His purposes in Job 41:9-11:
Behold, your expectation is false; will you be laid low even at the sight of him? No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse him; who then is he that can stand before Me? Who has given to Me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine.
If you expect to defeat Leviathan in battle, then you are wrong; dead wrong! Here’s the point: If you can’t expect to have supremacy over Leviathan, then how do you expect to have supremacy over God or even comprehend His ways. There is only one God, and you are not Him!
Seize the moment and surrender your hills by inviting God to take His rightful place in every situation of your life – “The LORD is King forever and ever” (Psalm 10:16a)!
God bless you!
If you would like to receive a personal phone call today, all you have to do is dial the phone number below right now and one of us will call you soon.
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Seize the Moment – Day 1080
A Righteous Response!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Thursday, March 2.
I love it when people tell me the questions they’ll ask God when they are face-to-face with Him in Heaven. I smile to myself because I know they’ll do no such thing because there is only one righteous response to being in the presence of God. Twice we see Job’s righteous response to God. The first is in Job 40:4-5, “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth. Once I have spoken, and I will not answer; Even twice, and I will add nothing more.” The second is in Job 42:1-6:
I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.”
Both responses are worth meditating upon as Job responded to the presence of God, who had arrived in the power of the storm and had spoken to Job. Not surprisingly, Job did not follow through with his own plans of what he was going to do when he was finally face-to-face with God, as he had boasted he would do in Job 23:3-4, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat! I would present my case before Him and fill my mouth with arguments.” Instead, Job responded with humility by repenting of his sin and praising God for His glory. This is the righteous way to respond to God’s presence!
Seize the moment and bow done before Him (Psalm 95:6-7; Philippians 2:9-11)!
God bless you!
If you would like to receive a personal phone call today, all you have to do is dial the phone number below right now and one of us will call you soon.
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Seize the Moment – Day 1079
God Cares about His Creation!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Wednesday, March 1.
God’s questions in Job 38:39-39:30 continue to proclaim God’s glory by pointing to His supremacy over the animal kingdom. God faithfully provides for the lion and the raven (38:39-41), gives life to mountain goats (39:1-4), controls wild donkeys and wild oxen (39:5-12), protects the ostrich’s young (39:13-18), provides the horse with strength (39:19-25), and gives flight to hawks and eagles (39:26-30). God rules over all of creation, including the animals for which He cares and provides.
God had a reason for asking this series of rhetorical questions. For the same reason, Jesus referenced the animal kingdom in Matthew 6:25-27:
For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?
Jesus used this truth to illustrate why people should not allow their lives to be driven by worry, but rather to believe God cares and trust that He provides for all His creation. A commentator notes about Jesus’ use of the birds in the Sermon on the Mount:
Jesus was saying God has built into His Creation the means by which all things are cared for. The birds are fed because they diligently work to maintain their lives. They do not store up great amounts of food, but continually work.[1]
Seize the moment and work hard like a diligent farmer, all the while trusting God to provide because He cares about you (2 Timothy 2:6; Matthew 6:33; 1 Peter 5:7).
God bless you!
If you would like to receive a personal phone call today, all you have to do is dial the phone number below right now and one of us will call you soon.
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FOOTNOTES:
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Seize the Moment – Day 1078
Show us Your Glory!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Tuesday, February 28.
Have you ever been stuck in a rut? This phrase came from the early 1800’s when the wheels from covered wagons would end up in a worn groove, known as a rut. It was difficult for them to go where they wanted to go when they were stuck in the well-worn path of those who has gone before them. Today, we use it as an idiom to mean that you are trapped in a non-changing pattern of life, work, and/or personal behavior.
After thirty-five chapters (Job 3-37) of dialogue between Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, they were stuck in a rut of a well-worn pattern of conversation. God rescued them by responding in Job 38:4-7 with the beginning of a litany of questions that would lift them out of their rut:
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Through a long series of questions, God helped Job gain a new and larger perspective on his suffering. Question after question, God emphasized to Job how little he could see from his current vista. Was God being demeaning to Job? No! The proclamation of God’s glory gives us a larger perspective on life. When we get stuck in our own limited perspectives of our circumstances, we often get stuck in ruts that disallow us to see a way out of our predicaments.
Seize the moment and gain a new perspective on your life and the ruts you currently find yourself stuck in. This is why Jesus Christ came – to show us God’s glory and rescue us from the ruts of our sinful ways (John 3:16-17)!
God bless you!
If you would like to receive a personal phone call today, all you have to do is dial the phone number below right now and one of us will call you soon.
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Seize the Moment – Day 1077
A Warning to Teachers of God’s Word!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Monday, February 27.
Have you ever felt like the preacher needs to listen to his own preaching? Job 37:23-24 captures the final words of Elihu’s six-chapter speech to Job, “The Almighty – we cannot find Him; He is exalted in power and He will not do violence to justice and abundant righteousness. Therefore men fear Him; He does not regard any who are wise of heart.” Elihu appealed to Job, one last time, to fear God and repent of his pride (being “wise of heart”). Elihu believed he saw Job’s situation accurately and that he was speaking on behalf of God to Job. He made this dramatic claim in Job 36:4, “For truly my words are not false; One who is perfect in knowledge is with you.” When I first read this, I thought he was talking about himself, and I was struck by his arrogance – the audacity! It is one thing to be convinced that you are called to be a teacher of God’s Word, but it is altogether a different thing to believe that when you speak, it is synonymous to speaking God’s perfect knowledge.
Elihu needed to heed his own counsel! Out of one side of his mouth Elihu said he was speaking with the words of God, while out of the other he claimed God could not be found. Little did he know that God was about to give him a strong dose of humility by showing up in the whirlwind, and answering in Job 38:2, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” This is a powerful illustration of how God will humble the proud of heart, especially the very messengers who communicate His Word to the people – fear God you who are called to teach God’s Word for you shall incur a stricter judgment (James 3:1)!
Seize the moment and get your heart right – “humble [yourself] in the presence of the Lord” (James 4:10; cf., 1 Peter 5:6)!
God bless you!
If you would like to receive a personal phone call today, all you have to do is dial the phone number below right now and one of us will call you soon.
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Grow Strong in God’s Grace – Wk 3
Grow Strong in God’s Grace: Learning How to be a Faithful Farmer for God’s Harvest!
Farming as an Everyday Illustration for the Spiritual Life!
John 15:1-8 & Matthew 11:28-30 (NAS95)
I have spent the last two Sundays cultivating the soil for this year’s sermon series, “Grow Strong in God’s Grace: Learning How to be a Faithful Farmer for God’s Harvest!” In the first week, we looked at what it means that we want to “Grow Strong in God’s Grace” from 2 Timothy 2:1-6. I connected this year’s series to the previous two years of teaching, which were also grounded in the teachings of Paul about how we are to live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ by learning from the athlete in 2021, the soldier in 2022, and now the farmer in 2023.
Last week, we went deeper into the theme verse of 2 Timothy 2:6 to learn why Paul used the imagery of a hard-working farmer for the Christian life, and I started preparing you to see the richness of soil and efficacy of seed that God has given from His Word utilizes farming as an everyday illustration for the spiritual life. Today, I start a 5-Sunday emphasis on the teachings of Jesus so that we may learn exactly why and how Jesus used this imagery. From His teachings, we are going to learn over the next month the four steps every hard-working farmer must follow:
- Cultivate the soil.
- Sow the good seed.
- Care for the maturing plant.
- Reap a harvest.
We are going to see from Jesus’ teaching how these four steps are essential in the life of every disciple of Jesus Christ to learn how to be a faithful farmer for God’s harvest. It is important that you know that Paul was building upon the teachings of Jesus and using everyday cultural-relevant imagery to call forth faithful living to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul was following in the footsteps of His master, and we are to do the same!
Let’s dive in and see what we can learn from two of my favorite farming illustration given to us by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The first is from the Gospel of John 15:1-8, where Jesus taught using imagery from a vineyard, which was an agricultural image that already had deep religious meaning to the Jewish people to whom Jesus was speaking:
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.
The most pressing need for the Christian’s ministry in and through the local church is that each follower of Jesus daily answers Jesus’ personal call to be His disciple, chosen and called by the Father, and operating in the sustaining power of the Holy Spirit. Above all other expectations, responsibilities, or demands placed upon you, this is your first calling. It is my desire, through this sermon series to call members of the body of Christ out of the perpetual spin cycle of the tyranny of the urgent and into the long obedience of the most important – the Harvest! Os Guinness reflected, “Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service.”[1] The Christian life and ministry flows out of the abundance of personal intimacy with Jesus Christ, from the Source of all lasting fruit. As Jesus said in John 15:8, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” An abiding relationship with Jesus that brings glory to God through your life and ministry is the essence of prioritizing the strengthening of your spiritual vitality above any measurable effectiveness in meeting the expectations of others.
Disciples of Jesus Christ must prioritize the harvest, but like I taught last week based on 2 Timothy 2:6, if you are going to work hard as a farmer, then you must make sure that the fruit you are reaping is something you first would bring home to your own family before you export it to other people’s families, communities, or nations. In today’s technological world, there are many people who are seeking to influence others and create platforms for themselves without going through the deep work of spiritual formation. Ultimately, let us never forget that you can teach people what you know, but you will only replicate what you are! There is much evidence of this as we experience leaders’ charisma outpacing their character, leading to scandals that are diminishing the name of Jesus, giving the church a black eye, and hindering the harvest work. If we have learned anything from Mars Hill, and the surrounding discussions in the contemporary church about toxic leadership, it is that the ends do not justify the means. God cares as much about the process as the fruit; in fact, the Bible teaches that God cares more about the process! Jesus overcommunicated this in his calling of the disciples in Matthew 16:24-26:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”
The fruit that proves you are abiding in the vine of Jesus Christ is the fruit of the Spirit – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:22-24). This is the maturity of a disciple who is putting on display (manifesting, proving) the fruit that Jesus Christ commands us to export to the nations for God’s glory. Jesus is the embodiment of the Father and the perfect example of God’s truth and grace, holiness and love, judgment and mercy (John 1:14; Colossians 1:15; 2:9). Jesus intimately knows God and invites people into this depth of relationship that God offers us – for a person to be in Him and for Him to be in the person, which is the abiding imagery of John 15:4-7:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Jesus commands us to learn from Him and, in doing so, live our lives as He lived his life on Earth – submitted to His Father’s will and connected to His source of power. That is the exact point of the second farmer’s illustration I want to share with you, and many of you know this is my favorite of all the images Jesus gave us for the Christian life. It is from the Gospel of Matthew 11:28-30, where Jesus taught using imagery that would be seen six days a week on many family farms in every Jewish community – the yoked oxen working out in the field, which, like the vineyard, was an agricultural image that already had deep religious meaning to the Jewish people to whom Jesus was speaking, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” I was blessed to be able to watch a farmer yoke together two oxen at the Indiana State Fair last summer. What a treat! Listen to the power of Jesus’ illustration from a farmer’s perspective:
Typically a young, untrained ox is yoked with an older, trained ox. The younger learns from the older. If a trained ox can pull 5,000 pounds and an untrained ox can pull 2,000 pounds, together they can pull 10,000 pounds – much more than the sum of the two. Over time, the untrained ox becomes trained and the two begin to walk in-step with each other. Then they can pull 15,000 pounds.[2]
Jesus captured this picture for His Jewish audience with His graceful invitation to come to Him by taking His yoke upon themselves. Until a Christian submits to the direction and pace of Jesus’ life, and is willing to do nothing apart from Him, there is no good work that can be done through his or her ministry. Outside of the yoke of Jesus Christ or outside of the branch’s abiding connection to the vine, who is Jesus Christ, the Christian becomes a stumbling block to the harvest work of the church. As Andrew Murray wrote in Absolute Surrender,
Oh, become nothing in deep reality, and, as a worker, study only one thing – to become poorer and lower and more helpless, that Christ may work all in you. Workers, here is your first lesson: learn to be nothing, learn to be helpless. The man who has got something is not absolutely dependent; but the man who has got nothing is absolutely dependent. Absolute dependence upon God is the secret of all power in work. The branch has nothing but what it gets from the vine, and you and I can have nothing but what we get from Jesus.[3]
Similarly, the yoke emphasizes that Jesus is bearing the burden of the work in and through a person’s life. In both conceptual metaphors, Jesus emphasized that it is not the disciple who is producing the results; rather, it is the Holy Spirit who is the One bearing the fruit. Once again, I turn to Andrew Murray, who nuanced the responsibility of the Holy Spirit’s role in the abiding relationship found in the vine and branch imagery. Listen closely to this amazing truth that he published in 1898:
A law can compel work: only love can spontaneously bring forth fruit. … It is only when good works come as the fruit of the indwelling Spirit that they are acceptable to God. Under the compulsion of law and conscience, or the influence of inclination and zeal, men may be most diligent in good works, and yet find that they have but little spiritual result. There can be no reason but this—their works are man’s effort, instead of bearing the fruit of the Spirit, the restful, natural outcome of the Spirit’s operation within us.[4]
In conclusion, in the easy yoke of Jesus Christ, there is great joy to be found in laboring with Christ, rather than working for Christ alone and by your own strength. The laborer is no longer straining for acceptance from God, or other people. As Dr. Bill Thrasher of Moody Bible Institute, explained during one of my doctoral classes, “The place of rest is under His yoke. Working is drudgery, working for the Lord is dreary, but working with the Lord is delight.”[5] Jesus invites His followers to take upon themselves His yoke and learn from Him how to be faithful to their calling first by answering His call to Christian discipleship and making Him and His heart their preeminent priority for their own lives. In doing so, you will not only be found faithful at the end, but joyful in your work along the way. As Jesus promised in John 15:11, at the conclusion of sharing this farming illustration of the branch and the vine, “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 4.
[2] Janet Pope, “A Yoke? What’s that all about?” (November 20, 2013). Accessed February 24, 2023. http://www.janetpope.org/a-yoke-whats-that-all-about/.
[3] Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender (Chicago, IL: Moody Press. First published 1895, scanned and corrected by Claude King, September 1999), 76.
[4] Andrew Murray, The True Vine: Meditations for a Month on John 15:1-16 (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1898), 27. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://ccel.org/ccel/m/murray/true_vine/cache/true_vine.pdf.
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