Intercession

I Samuel 12:19-25—And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God, that we die not; for we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king. And Samuel said unto the people, Fear not; ye have indeed done all this evil; yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart: and turn ye not aside; for then would ye go after vain things which cannot profit nor deliver, for they are vain. For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake, because it hath pleased the Lord to make you a people unto himself. Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you: but I will instruct you in the good and the right way. Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart; for consider how great things he hath done for you. But if ye shall still do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king.

Acts 4:23-31—And being let go, they came to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said unto them. And they, when they heard it, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, O Lord, thou that didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is: who by the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David thy servant, didst say, Why did the Gentiles rage, And the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, And the rulers were gathered together, Against the Lord, and against his Anointed: for of a truth in this city against thy holy Servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever thy hand and thy council foreordained to come to pass. And now, Lord, look upon their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thy stretchest forth thy hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of thy holy Servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness.

Revelation 8:3-5—And another angel came and stood over the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should add it unto the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel taketh the censer; and he filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it upon the earth: and there followed thunders, and voices, and lightnings, and an earthquake.

Let us have a further word of prayer: 

Beloved Lord, we are so glad that we are here. You have been so great in speaking to us in each of these sessions. We thank You, Lord; it is Your mercy and grace. Now we come to this time, and we have already prayed for it. Now dear Lord, all we want to tell You is that without that anointing we can do nothing, neither in the speaking nor in the hearing. When the anointing is present, then we shall hear Your voice and in some very real way our hearts will be touched. You see the days that we are living in—the confusion, darkness, deterioration, and paganization that is taking place on every side, Lord, we need You. Reach us this evening. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Amen. 

The theme of these times has been very simply that we need to be linked to the Lord in heaven and especially when there is a turning point in divine history. We have spoken a number of times of those turning points, whether it was Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, John the Baptist, or before John the Baptist, Daniel. There were others, too, like Nehemiah and Esther who were smaller but very real turning points in the divine purpose. 

Samuel’s Commitment to the Lord

I have been sharing on Samuel. He ranks very high in the Jewish tradition. It is quite amazing how much is accredited to Samuel. At this turning point, Samuel was the man whom the Lord used. The three totals I have spoken of are seen in Samuel. Total and unconditional commitment to the Person of the Lord Jesus, total surrender of his will to the Lord’s will (perhaps the most difficult of all), and total and utter obedience to the Lord Jesus. If those three T’s are present in your lives, you will not fail. You are on the road to becoming an overcomer. There is no way that you can be totally and utterly committed to the Person of the Lord Jesus and not win. There is no way that you can surrender your will—in which is found all of the problems we face so often—to His will and not win. If you are totally obedient to His voice, to His commands, you will surely win. It is as simple as that. However, the tragic thing is that we make a huge mess out of our Christian lives. No sooner are we saved, than we begin to draw back from any total commitment to the Person of the Lord Jesus. We have battles over our will—my will and His will. Whom shall I marry? What career I should take? Where shall I live? What shall be the future? My will and His will can be two very different things. We get into a total confusion over this because we have within our being a civil war. We have seen the results of the civil war in Libya and Syria. But many Christians have a civil war going on in their lives. They have never surrendered their will to the Lord Jesus, never surrendered their will to His will. The result is confusion and failure and defeat. 

We Must be Under His Lordship

I have spoken on ministry to the Lord. That can never be fulfilled in your life and mine unless those three T’s are in place. I can prophesy without any fear of contradiction, at least from heaven, that if you do not follow these, you will never minister to the Lord Jesus. It is impossible without total abandonment to Him. You have to be under His Lordship. It is one thing to know Him as Savior, but it is another thing to know Him as Lord. It is yet another thing to know Him as Head. That means a body; that means fellow members. We spoke on ministry to the Lord, worshipping the Lord, really serving Him with love. That is ministry to the Lord. We can get into all kinds of ministry—to the temple, to the tabernacle, to a work, to a system, to an organisation—but ministry to the Lord is to be first and foremost. We see that in the life of Samuel. He was totally committed to the Lord, totally surrendered to the will of the Lord, totally obedient to the Lord. He ministered to the Lord from an early age, all the way through his life to his death.

Samuel’s Life Was One of Intercession

But there is one further matter, and it is the matter of intercession. That shines out of Samuel’s life. I read the account of how he said that he would not sin by ceasing to pray for a difficult, gain-saying people. Samuel is one of the greatest examples in the Word of God of an intercessor. Unfortunately, this word intercessor or intercession has been devalued. People talk about intercession but what they really mean is prayer. Real intercession is in another dimension. One of the greatest lessons we learn from Samuel’s life is his intercession. He was above all an intercessor. We cannot ignore the fact that everyone whom the Lord has used at a turning point, a new era, a new phase, a new epoch in divine history has been an intercessor. You cannot ignore it because it shouts at you.

Abraham Was an Intercessor 

God called Abraham My friend. He even said at one time, “Shall I withhold from Abraham what I am going to do?” When the Lord said, “I am sick of the sin and iniquity of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I am going to judge them;” then Abraham began his intercession. It is very interesting that he went down from fifty to forty-five to forty. (He was really Jewish.) Then he went lower, down to thirty, twenty-five, twenty. Each time the Lord said, “I will withhold; I will not judge.” Abraham never got to five, and there were only five righteous people in Sodom. Maybe there is a lesson to learn there, I do not know.

Moses Was an Intercessor

Moses was an intercessor. The humour of the Lord is something that has fascinated me. When I was young, I thought God was humourless, but I have discovered that God has enormous humour. I think it is amazing when the Lord said to Moses, “Stand aside, Moses, I am going to destroy this people. I am sick of their murmuring, stiff-necks, and being critical the whole time. They are never thankful for what I have done for them; after all I brought them out of Egypt, turned the whole of Egypt upside down to save them, and they have spent their time murmuring.” Then He said to Moses, I think with enormous humour: “It is okay, Moses. I will make of you a new nation.”

He knew very well that He was putting Moses to a test. Moses was no ordinary person. He was brought up in Pharaoh’s household, educated to the highest degree in Egypt, and a military hero. We learned all of this from our tradition; not all those traditions are stupid. These things are even referred to in the book of Acts. I would have thought that if Moses had had only a little bit of commitment to himself or to his future or a desire for the fulfilment of his own will, he would not have obeyed the Lord. He would have said, “Lord, I think that is an interesting idea you have. I am a bit fed up with these people myself. Maybe you can start afresh with me and my family, Aaron and Miriam. We are of better stock than these others.” But not Moses.

The moment the Lord said it, he remonstrated with the Lord. He was an intercessor. He pleaded with the Lord to forgive the people. He said, “What will the nations say? You brought these people out with an outstretched arm and mighty miracles. They will say, ‘You took them out to destroy them.’” The Lord relented. I think He knew all along that Moses had already abandoned any big ideas of himself.

Samuel Was an Intercessor

When you come to Samuel, he stood between the Lord and a sinning people. If we were to say it today, it is not an unsaved nation. We would say he stood between the Lord and the church, the redeemed, the people of God, and he pleaded with the Lord for them.

David Was an Intercessor

I have recently been reading through the Psalms. I am amazed at how much of an intercessor David was. Again and again in his psalms, when he talked about the judgments of the Lord upon Israel, he pleaded with the Lord to remember His covenants with the fathers and the promises He made concerning this people. That was the basis of his intercession.

Nehemiah & Ezra Were Intercessors

We can go further with Nehemiah. When we read the paraphrase of Nehemiah’s intercessory ministry, we are speechless. He wept before the Lord and stood between Him and the people. He was an intercessor. He saw the walls of Jerusalem completely rebuilt. Ezra was also an extraordinary person. He restored the Word of God and the Law of God to its rightful place at the heart of the people.

Daniel Was an Intercessor

We know that Daniel was a great intercessor because we have the record in Daniel 9. Daniel 9:1-2 gives us the date: “In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, I, Daniel, discovered by reading from the scroll of Jeremiah the seventy years that were determined for the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem.” Then back a few more pages to chapter 6: “In the first year of Darius the emperor, certain satraps, that are princes, came to the king and said, “O king, you are god in the flesh. Will you decree that no one is allowed to pray except to you?” The king, of course, thought it was a marvellous idea. And they said, “May the lions’ den be made ready for anyone who disobeys this rule, for the law of the Medes and Persians cannot be changed.”

In other words, Satan was so bothered with Daniel’s intercessory ministry that he prepared an incredible strategy to trap Daniel and murder him. But Daniel went straight on. He opened the shutters of his window toward Jerusalem and prayed. He was standing on the words of King Solomon: “If anyone in exile prays towards this city and towards this house that is named with Your name, hear them, answer them and bring them back from captivity.”

That kind of intercessory ministry is tremendous. If Daniel had not fulfilled his intercessory ministry, Jerusalem would not have been rebuilt, nor the house of the Lord, nor Bethlehem, nor Nazareth. Nothing else would have been rebuilt. But it all had to be rebuilt for the coming of the Messiah, because Micah had prophesied in Micah 5:2: “But thou, Beth-lehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.” That is Jesus.

Isaiah Was an Intercessor

Or we think of Isaiah when he spoke of the way of the sea, passing just north of Capernaum, and south of Nazareth, speaking of those who were in darkness that they shall see a great light. But there was no Nazareth; there was no Capernaum. They had been destroyed and had to be rebuilt. Maybe Isaiah thought this intercessory ministry had only to do with the Jewish people going back to the land but, in fact, it was to do with the coming of Messiah.

God is Calling for Intercessors in Our Day

No matter where we turn in the Bible we find intercessors. It is almost as if the Lord is loudly saying: “If you and I are going to be a link, we have to become intercessors.” We are facing the second coming of the Messiah. We also have in front of us ruin, deterioration, paganisation, especially of the so-called Christian nations. It is happening with such incredible speed that it can only be spiritual, fallen, angelic beings that are responsible for it. What are we to do? We can talk till kingdom come and not get anywhere. The fact of the matter is that this question of intercession is absolutely strategic. It is vital to the coming of the Lord. If you and I, poor material as we may be, are not by the grace of God turned into intercessors, we shall lose much.

Intercession is to Do With Spiritual Character 

The first thing I want to mention about intercession is that it is a matter of spiritual character. Why does the Lord call for intercessors? Because the intercessor has within him or her a spiritual character that is being formed by the Holy Spirit. These features that we see in Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Daniel, John the Baptist have to be found in us. Or do we expect to be carried on beds of ease into the coming kingdom? Do we think that the Lord will mollycoddle us and simply carry us? The Lord is seeking to train us.

Why is intercession so important? I have often said you will never be an intercessor if you do not recognise that this world is essentially a spiritual place. It is not just a matter of what you touch, see, hear, and feel. It is something spiritual. It is the things which are invisible that are so powerful. All those eternal matters are invisible. Until our eyes are open to see that we are born into a spiritual world, we will never see the need to be an intercessor. I have said to you before that the Lord could do the job much easier without us. I am now old enough to be able to say that it is the Lord’s people who are the problem. The Lord would have been back ages ago but for us. We murmur, hold back, follow our own will, do our own thing, and we ask the Lord to clean up the mess. Then we make another mess and ask Him to clean it up again. Then we make another mess. We never learn.

We Have to See that this World is a Spiritual World

To be an intercessor is to have our eyes open to the fact that this world is essentially a spiritual world. Once our eyes are open, we are at least ready for the education that the Lord will lead us into. Intercession, in my estimation, is the highest calling that any child of God can be called to. People think the highest calling is to be an apostle, teacher, shepherd, or evangelist. Higher than all these is the intercessor. Why does the Lord put such a value on the intercessor? The intercessors have to learn how to reign with Christ down here in the conditions of a fallen world. They have to learn how to distinguish and discern the will of God in any given situation and then pray it into fulfillment. In Greek, prayer is just simply the pouring out of the heart. It just pours out. You are full of emotion, distress, anxiety, and you pour it out. The Lord Himself said you have not because you ask not. You ask. Be careful what you ask for because He may give it to you and send leanness into your soul. But the fact is that is prayer and anyone can pray.

To Be an Intercessor We Have to Know the Will of God

Intercession is in another dimension. First, you have to know what the will of God is in any given situation. That means you have to be able to discern the will of God in that situation. You have to learn how to hear the Lord speaking. You have to learn how in fellowship with other believers that this matter of knowing the will of God is corporate. Why does the Lord find this matter of intercession or of being an intercessor so important? It is all to do with reigning with Christ.

First, it is to discover the will of Christ, to know the burden on His heart and what His will is. Then it is the enabling of the Holy Spirit to persist until it is done and fulfilled. Our dear Lord gave us a pattern prayer, and there is a lot of misunderstanding about it. Some believe you repeat it all the time like a Buddhist mantra, as if it gathers some sort of value. But our Lord said and it is all in the present: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, sanctified be Thy name (that is present), Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done as it is in heaven so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread (present). Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses against us (present). Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one (present).”

The Kingdom Has to Do With the Throne 

It is extraordinary that we take this one phrase “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done as it is in heaven so on earth” and refer it to a huge future matter? Well, maybe in the very end “may Your kingdom come and your will be done as it is in heaven so on earth” is huge. But our Lord meant it a different way. When you are in difficult situations, when the evil one is bothering you, when you are facing problems that are impossible, when you have persecution, deterioration, apostasy, then Thy kingdom come. In other words, people who live in the republic have no idea of a kingdom, generally speaking.

The kingdom has all to do with the throne, and that throne is the centre of authority. The one who sits on it is either king or queen. When you pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we are saying, “Let the will of the enthroned Messiah be done in this matter.” We are invading it in the name of the Lord. We are facing something that is a deterioration and not the will of the Lord. But first we have got to know what the will of the Lord is. What is the King on the throne with that sceptre of His strength in Zion, ruling in the midst of His enemies, saying to us? Why should we throw in the towel and say that it is far too difficult? The Lord has a purpose to fulfil even to the actual day of His coming. 

Does it not say in the prophecy of Joel that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved? We know that right up to the last moment, people are going to be saved, but how can they be saved if they do not know the name upon which to call for salvation? The fact of the matter is you have something tremendous here. There can be no intercession without the three T’s—total commitment to the Person of the Lord Jesus, total surrender of my will to His will, and total obedience to what He says. Out of that, intercession comes.

You can be the youngest person here but God will lead you in the end to be an intercessor. He can start your education right now. You can be the oldest person here and maybe you feel you are way beyond it and have failed the Lord very largely, but the Lord can still turn you into an intercessor in your last days. I hope you begin to see how important this matter is.

No Intercession Without Denying Yourself

There can be no intercession or intercessory ministry without denying yourself, giving up all rights to yourself, taking up your cross and following Him. In Mark 8 it says: “And he called unto him the multitude with his disciples, and said unto them [that is how important this matter is], if any man would come after me, let him deny himself [give up all right to himself], and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his self-life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his self-life for my sake and the gospel’s shall find it” (vv. 34-35). That is the beginning of intercessory ministry. It is when you are ready to give up all rights to yourself, when you are ready to be committed to the Person of the Lord Jesus, when you are ready to follow the Lamb wheresoever He goes. It is so simple, but so profound and for most Christians unknown in experience.

Intercession is Travail

Intercession is not just saying a few words, not reading a liturgical prayer. Intercession is travail. The apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 4:19: “My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be fully formed in you.” It is interesting to me that the little word there is again. It means that he had been in this travail for their spiritual birth, and now he was in travail again for the Lord Jesus to be formed in them fully. Mysterious? This Greek word is the agony of childbirth. The apostle is saying that intercession is not just pouring out your hearts; it is travail, a burden that is conceived by the Holy Spirit in your spirit and cannot escape without intercession.

When you have gotten on your knees and prayed your heart out with others, you feel it is like a tank of water that has been drained. You get up and you feel it is over. But the next day the water has risen again and the pressure is on once more until the birth comes. I sometimes wonder if the reason we have so few believers who go on into maturity is because there are so few brothers and sisters who travail for them that Christ will be fully formed in them. I thank God that I had a number of older folks who prayed for me all through the years in the secret place. I did not know anything about it. They never told me. I only found out later that they prayed day and night. We need this kind of intercessory ministry.

The reason why we have so little maturity, so little spiritual growth, so few growing into soldiers of Christ, or ones who can take responsibility in the things of God is because there have not been people who have travailed for them. Intercession begins with the knowledge of the will of God. We know what the will of God is for the church. We know that it is for the house of God to be built, that the body of the Lord Jesus be fully formed and built up in love. We know a wonderful window into this matter in the book of Revelation where we are told: “and the bride has made herself ready.” This is a foundation for intercession. We have the revealed will of God for the church. But what do we see? We see appalling apostasy on every side.

War the Good Warfare

In the latest vote by the Parliament, by both commons and lords in Britain for same sex marriages and gay rights, an evangelical leader, a spokesman for evangelists, has drawn up a marriage sermon for evangelicals and same sex marriage. I never thought such a thing could ever happen. It is amazing, but if we have the Word of God there is ground for us to intercede. It is no wonder to me that the apostle Paul said to Timothy, “War the good warfare.” He was properly referring to a word in Hebrew. In Hebrew it says, “It is the war of the service of God. War the warfare of the service of God.”

It was to do with the Levites and priests. Mr. Sparks used to refer very often to that Scripture in Numbers. Does what I say have any reaction in your heart? We have got to such a position where we do not have enough intercessors. We have enough praying people; but where are the intercessors? Corporate intercession is one of the most powerful instruments in the hand of God. 

When the Lord Jesus, as Head of the church, by the Holy Spirit is able to make known what is His mind to the members of the body and harmonises and symphonises them so that they begin to pray in tune with one another, we know that kind of prayer in the end will be fulfilled. Here then we have something to pray for.

This Gospel Shall be Preached in all the Nations

Here is something else—this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all nations for a testimony and then the end shall come. Therefore we have an absolute foundation for intercession to pray for gospel work all over the world that men and women may come into a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus even at the very last hour. It is in the Book. It is not as if we are cooking it up. It is there.

God Shall Return to Israel

Let us also remember Israel. Definitely, the Word of God says that the natural branches will be re-engrafted into their own olive tree. We are told that when the full number of the Gentiles be come in, God will turn again to the Jewish people and save them. So now we have a foundation for intercession. We know it is the revealed will of God to save His people—not necessarily all of them—and re-engraft them into their own olive tree which actually is the church. If you are a wild olive branch, you have been grafted into the good olive tree which is contrary to nature. But the wonderful thing is the natural branches are laid on one side in the present, but there is coming a day where they will be re-engrafted, and that is the end of the cycle of redemption. It is the last final chapter, the last paragraph.

Two Sisters Used in Intercessory Prayer in the Middle East

There are many other things I could talk about from the Word of God that are His revealed will. Our biggest problem is that we have bred a kind of Christianity which is a stranger to real intercession. I wonder what would have happened if the two sisters that prayed for the Islamic world had never prayed. I knew them. I saw their intercessory ministry. It was never boring. It was always from one to the other to the other like a tennis match all the time going backwards and forwards until one of them would say, “Are we there?” And the other would say, “Not yet.” Then back they would go, and I had the feeling they were on a gunning placement, turning around and shooting down enemy aircraft. I have never forgotten it.

They had people from all the Middle East, from Baghdad, from Algiers, from Casablanca, from Benghazi, from Tripoli, all over Egypt, and Beirut, calling them. I used to think: What is this? These two old ladies are supposed to be retired. They were busier than most people I had seen much younger. What is it they were doing?

I remember once asking Auntie Alex who was Estonian: “Auntie, you have been in Egypt all these years. How many people have you led to the Lord?” She looked at me and put up five fingers. I was young and arrogant and I said, “Five! You have been here forty, fifty years, and you have only seen one person come to the Lord every ten years.” I have never forgotten her answer. She did not rebuke me because I knew nothing about intercession; she just simply said, “There will come a day when thousands upon thousands of Muslims will come to the Lord.” I have lived to see many thousands of Muslims finding the Lord. It is so incredible we cannot keep abreast of it.

Margaret Barber 

I think of dear Margaret Barber and her niece. She was discredited in the mission that she went with to China. There was jealousy in the mission; they did not like her. There was enormous attraction that the girls had for her in this girls’ school. They began to spread stories about her, until in the end she had to resign from the mission. Then she had to leave China and she went back to Britain.

She went to Keswick and heard Bishop Handley Moule speak, a godly man. She asked to speak to him and then told him the whole story. He said, “Sister, have you sinned?” She said, “Well, I have done some things in my mind, but I certainly did not do the things I was accused of.” He said, “Do you believe God called you to China?” She said, “Yes.” Then he said, “Then to China you go.” She protested and said, “How can I go? The mission is against me; they blackened my name. How can I go?” He said, “You go with God.”

So she took her niece and went to China. She spent those years in intercessory ministry. She prayed that God would raise up a Chinese to be a minister of the Word of God and lead the people of God in China. And you know the rest of the story of how He raised up Watchman Nee.

Prayer for Bakht Singh

I could give you a whole number of other instances of intercession that are incredible of those who are utterly committed to the Lord. I remember dear Lady Daisy Ogle and Miss St. Clair who told me the story of how God led them to India, to a home in Bangalore. There they began to pray for India. They were very distressed by their spiritual condition. They began to pray for a man, an Indian, to be raised up as a man of God and lead many to the Lord. They prayed and prayed and prayed. It was real intercession.

One day they heard about this Sheik who found the Lord, who had been thrown out of his home and his wife had left him. They heard he was going to preach in Bangalore so they went to hear him. While he was preaching, the Lord said to both of them independently, which they only found out when they got back home. “This is the man you have prayed for.” It was Bakht Singh. You see, God is not mocked. This matter of intercession will go on to the very coming of the Lord. And I think that to be an intercessor is to be an overcomer. It is as simple as that. May the Lord challenge us!

What is the Lord’s Calling? 

If you wonder what you as a young person should do, maybe thinking what He is saying is a bit strange, just ask the Lord: “What shall I do?” If you are an older person and feel you have not been an intercessor like this, I would say to you that in a moment of quietness offer yourself to the Lord—total commitment to His Person, total surrender of your will to His will, and total obedience to what He says to you. And you will begin a journey that will end in the throne of God.

May the Lord challenge us in these days of darkness, apostasy, and deterioration. We know the coming of the Lord is near, but we are not escapists. We are not sort of thinking we are going to get out of all this. We are here in some very real way to be intercessors to the last day of our life on this earth that others may come to the Lord, others may be built up, others may grow, and that the purpose of God for His church will be fulfilled and the purpose of God for the gospel to the nations and the purpose of God for Israel be fulfilled. May the Lord challenge us!

Shall we pray:

Beloved Lord, You know our hearts. We have been talking about being links, and we want to be that link with You, Lord. We want to be the link in this turning point in history. We want to be intercessors. Help us, Lord; You see how foolish we are, how slow so often to learn. Lord, have mercy on us, reach us, and bring within our hearts a readiness to sacrifice, to give up all rights to ourselves, to take up the cross and truly follow You. Help us, Lord, to let go of our self-life that we may find it unto life eternal! We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.