He Who Began A Good Work In You

Now this morning, Pastor Bailey is up from Bloomington to preach to us this morning. Now some of you guys know Pastor Bailey and some of you may not. Tim is the former pastor of Trinity Reformed, which is our sending church, and is a dear father to many of us, to my wife and me especially. And so we do love them very much and are looking forward to hearing from you this morning. And the baptisms are after the prayer, the preaching. Don't you think? It's good to be with you. When we came in, a woman walked out of the door as David finished teaching, and I looked at her, and I thought, I know that woman very well. Who is it? And it was Vanessa, you know. And so your brain on blood pressure meds, and as you get older, it does weird tricks on you, but it's very good to be with you and to see you all.

I regretted on the way up that our son Taylor and his wife Reza are not here for us to see this morning. They send their greetings, but thank you for the many years of love and care and patience you had for them. And I hope it's simply a payback to Trinity Reformed Church in Bloomington for the patience they had with many of you. I think I'm going to begin the sermon with a little word to mothers, and then you'll give a charge. You understand what I'm saying at the baptism. But I want to say just a couple of things to you mothers. Zach, this also. Thank you. Because it just makes you uptight as a speaker that you're not going to make noise on the pulpit.

Zach's going to work on my car, he says. I don't know if he'll be able to help me, but I noticed a problem. Okay, mothers. At the end of preaching down in Bloomington before I resigned that pulpit, I came across something that I want to give you the name of and the author. And I want to just make a few exhortations to those of you who are mothers. Young or old, it doesn't matter. Perspective mothers. The title of the book is called Female Piety, The Young Woman's Guide Through Life to Immortality. And it's by a guy named, a pastor named John Angel James, who lived from 1785 to 1859. And the chapter is titled To Young Mothers. If you send my wife or me an email, we will send you a copy of it, all right?

it really had quite an effect on me. I read the whole thing myself, and then I read it out loud almost immediately to my wife. And when you see how long it is, you'll realize that it really had quite an impact on me. It's my conviction that in a feminist culture, it's very difficult for us to repent of our... cowardice and fears and weaknesses men, and for women to repent of their pushy, what's a better word to use, their pushy femininity there. Their pushy femininity. That's not the word I would use outside of church, but I think it's a good compromise. So every woman today, including in homeschooling homes and in churches that are most conservative, is raised to whoop men. That's what homeschoolers do. We've watched it our whole lives. Homeschoolers want their daughters to go to Washington, D.C. and have internships and become lawyers and have it all, just like what's-her-face Amy Comey. I know.

And, you know, she's good, and she comes from a good community up in northern Indiana. If you know anything about Stephen B. Clark and Man, Woman, and Christ, that's the same community that she comes from. You may not know this. But no, just no, no. You women do not need to be all you can be because you've been called to be mothers. Okay? And that is a job that will start the moment you become pregnant, and it won't end until you die. And your responsibilities will not become any less when you have grandchildren instead of children. Okay? My wife, I see her less now than I did when we had children in the home. And it's because she's helping everybody. They're her children. And so I think it's very difficult for us.

repenting of being pushy women and repenting of being pathetic men, which is the state of our culture in the Western world, it's very difficult for us to not become stick figures. I am a woman. We referred to them growing up in our home. Our kids referred to them as prairie muffin women. They all wore dresses and had lace. And of course, I love dresses. I love lace. And then the men become Woman, hear me roar. You know, the men become these stick figures of masculine authority and courage and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just both bad, both no. Because that's not who you are and it's not who your wife is. Okay? You're not fooling anyone. What we need...

is we need men and women who embrace the sexuality that God gave them at the moment of conception and try to live it out, and they will fail all the time. And the best thing about evangel churches is every one of them that I am privileged to go in, I always hear the theme of, Lord, help us, we're weak, you know? And it's such a unique note. strucken our churches because everybody else is flattered by social media and thinks their church should do the same. Now, what does this mean this morning? Well, John Angel James was a hero of Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon thought about as highly of John Angel James as anybody.

He is godly, and he says something in this essay that I fear that I didn't say the way I should in my ministry, and that is the first and most important raiser of children and educator and trainer of children is the mother. Now, that really is a bit off-key for us. Because we've been taught the father's the head of the home, the husband's the head of the wife, we have elders who are men, and it's all true. But to say who has what title is not to say who has what duty. And the thing that people don't realize about the ministry that my wife and I have had is I tell people, I've been telling them the last year, Everything I did in ministry, I did because my wife told me what to do. And I said that to my best friend and his wife, Robert Woodyard. Some of you have heard him speak. And his wife goes, no, Tim. I say, yes, Fema. Are you serious? Fema, how could you not know this? And so one of the things that happened this week is Mary Lee told me what was going on with their children who are now grown and married and have their own kids.

I knew what I had to do. I called up Robert and I punched him. I didn't tell him Mary Lee told me to call you up and punch you. I never went into an elders meeting and said, my wife says we have to do this. Sometimes I went into staff meetings and said that, you know. Listen, our wives are not stupid. They're not stupid. And God is not pleased by a gentle and quiet woman who thinks that should also be stupid. And she should hide her wisdom. and she should not be her husband's helpmate. And so I want you to realize that Spurgeon's hero said, the mother is always the most important instructor of the children. Okay? The mother. And if you look at the truth of the influence of an older woman who's godly and teaches younger women of the church, and how that has a ripple effect going across the church from...

the mother in Israel, to the other women, and then up through the husbands, who happen to be elders. And then the elders' agenda of the man who puts it on the agenda because his wife has been instructed and has antennae out there. She may be a doula like my wife, right? Are you with me? And guess what? Doulas learn a lot about husbands. I mean, can we all see this, you know? And so then all of a sudden, the elders know how to help a man of the church. Is it wrong that they know that through the doula who talked to the older, the younger women? No, it's not wrong at all. It's not wrong at all. And so I hope that all of you who are mothers will realize that very soon your children are going to be teenagers, okay? And when they're teenagers, I keep warning you all, they will.

finally have the freedom to sin publicly the way you've taught them to sin. You won't be able to squelch it anymore and hide it and sweep it under the carpet and not let people in the home. You won't be able to control your image anymore because your children will be your image. I mean, you guys get this, right? And so mothers, raise your children in such a way, and this is what I always say to them. Raise your children in such a way that your children do what? Now, yes, honor God, have faith, go to church, but here's a little jolt so that your children make you happy. I said to one young man this morning, you better make your mother happy because I'm tired of her children making her sad. And then I was done with him.

I did tell him Mary Lee and I are very, very tender towards his mother, and I hope he is too. John Angel James starts this section with a couple scriptures. You might sit here thinking, well, what scriptural basis does this have, right? And so here are the scriptures. First of all, 2 Timothy 1.5, I have been reminded, Paul's writing to his young pastor, his son in the faith, I have been reminded of your sincere faith which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded now lives in you also. No mention of dad, no mention of a grandpa. You know, from mother to mother to son. And so you may have...

a husband who is a Nabal. I'm sure there are Nabals in this church. You be an Abigail, okay? You be an Abigail, all right? And Abigail had some chutzpah. I mean, that woman, she was a trip. How many of us would like to be married to Abigail? Okay, and then the second scripture is, Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanders or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be keepers at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands. We could also talk about the qualifications for being entered into the widow's list.

that the Apostle Paul gives, you know, and he says that they should have proven their godliness in the years before they became a widow, and one of the ways he lists is what? Well, raising their children. And so, women, you are not to be a prairie muffin. I would almost say, please, don't give a rip what other women think about you. Choose one woman in the church that you care what she thinks about you. And choose that woman carefully. Forget your stupid social media. Just forget it. Now, you get a twofer, okay? But as I said, you can send Mary Lee or me an email, and we'll send you this whole chapter. I'm sorry it's antiquated. The language is precious, you know? And so you'll have a little bit of difficulty reading it through.

That's okay. Let's hear the Word of God from Philippians 1, verses 1 to 6. This is the Word of God. It's eternally true. Paul and Timothy bond servants of Christ Jesus. Now, I'm sorry, but we've gotten to the point where you need to read the footnotes in your Bibles, and you need... to know about certain words what the actual Greek and Hebrew are. And you know what word is here when you read the word bondservant, don't you? It's slave. And so I'm just going to read slave. I'm going to be a slave to the original instead of to the guys that are trying to soften it up for us.

Paul and Timothy, slaves of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy. In my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident in this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of every heart here be acceptable.

In your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. It's sort of the beginning of a new year. It was last Sunday. And even if you don't have New Year's resolutions, you can have New Year's depressions. Because you can look back at things that you have done that caused you to groan in the shower when you get up in the morning. And to lie awake at night without sleeping. You can be so aware at the beginning of a new year that you have not improved the time, but much of it you've wasted. And many of us, knowing what a gift repentance is, and how good it is to be in a church that points out our sin, think the point of it is...

for us to walk around like one of your mothers who will remain nameless, I tell her, would you please stop apologizing? Every conversation I have with you, it doesn't matter what it's about, it can be about lollipops. She'll say, I'm sorry. Another woman, you go by her, and she's just like somebody trying to keep you from seeing that she's going by you. And so nobody can love her. I mean, we all do love her. She's very lovable. But she just never allows herself to receive any good gifts in her life because of how awful she knows she is. And she is awful. But listen, what God does with us is make us the subject of the love of other believers. And that love is not ignorant.

Because if that love is ignorant, then the love of Jesus for us and his Father was ignorant. God did not wait to send his Son until we were his friends. And so why we're constantly trying to show God what good friends we are and how we're becoming better friends. And, you know, honestly, all that is is our attempt to merit salvation. You remember Luther preached through Galatians twice because... He said by his own testimony, I can't stop trying to live so that God will accept me. And so I have to preach through Galatians again, you know? I have to keep preaching it to myself. When we try to make ourselves good enough to merit God's redemption and his sanctification, what we're actually doing is giving ourselves to our pride because it's pride that wants God to be on the receiving end from us.

you know, of our merit. Now, I'm not saying that God doesn't want us to give to him. God has created us for the purpose of good works that he ordained before time. We are to bring him fruit. It's one of the great tragedies today in the church. Nobody ever talks about fruit. And yet, it's one of the fundamental laws of nature. And it's all through Scripture. You know, God blesses us through fruit, and God curses and punishes us by not allowing us to have fruit. I don't know what this says about my peach tree. Trust me, that peach tree, it just year after year after year has me panting in the spring. It has hundreds and hundreds of little peaches on it.

But before the year is over, every one of them is gone. You can prune them down to one peach every six inches. And you climb all through the tree and take off. By the end of the year, there's none left. You look on the ground. Where did they go? You look for a raccoon. You look for birds. You all understand me talking about my heart going out for p***. peaches, you know? A peach tree that doesn't give you peaches should be cut down, and it's been 13 years now. We did get a couple a year ago. I mean a couple. Now, God wants us to give him fruit. God created us for the purpose of fruit. When we're at the marriage feast of the Lamb, clothed in white, our dress will be the fruit that we have borne him.

Okay, the Apostle Paul is saying here that this church in Philippi is his fruit. And he says that seeing the fruit gives him such incredible joy. Are you all with me? That's the whole meaning of the beginning of the text, where he says what? After the typical opening, he says, I thank my God in all, not just some. but all of my prayers, all right? All of my remembrance always offering with joy. So joyful prayers, thanking in remembrance always. And so it's very clear that the Apostle Paul has seen great fruit in this church. Well, you can imagine in this church, there are people who are very, very aware of their sin.

and think that they're the ones that have to protect themselves from being flattered. They're the ones that have to decide when and where and from whom they will hear good news, because they're the perfect keeper of all the bad news, particularly about themselves. You all with me? Now, just now, you... I have said this so often with Mary Lee and counseling with the other pastors. You'll have some alpha male sitting. At least that's what he thinks he is. And I remember one guy, he ran an entire ministry to people with substance abuse problems. It was successful. He had a stellar reputation. And was that me? I'll be a stick figure from now on.

And what we found out was that this dude, while helping people repent of alcoholism, was an alcoholic, all right? And, you know, it was a growing realization, and he had some other problems that were actually more serious, all right? And finally, you know, 500 pounds of pastor go over to his house one night without letting him know that we're coming, and it's not David and me. So that kind of narrows it down since Phil Moyer is... And of course, he is on guard the minute we come in his house, you know. And we sit down and we try to be very tactful and say that maybe he does not realize the danger he's in. But he doesn't get it. And so then we have to become a little bit pushier and be a little more direct. Are you with me? And so...

We get a little more direct. All of a sudden he's like, are you kidding me? You think I'm da-da-da-da-da-da? You think I don't know myself? And I looked at him and I said, yeah. I said, you don't know yourself. What makes you think that you know yourself? Why do we think we know ourselves? Why do we think that God and his servants cannot speak to us? in a way that we didn't know until they spoke to us. Would we object to God all of a sudden speaking from heaven to us? No, we'd trot that out. I had a message from heaven. But we demand that God speak to us directly and never use sinful men. You have the right to speak to me like that. Well, listen.

Let me give you a picture of what's going to happen to your life if you won't let sinful men speak to you in God's behalf. If you think you're the perfect keeper of what good should be said to you, all right? Notice I said what good should be said to you. I just talked to you about saying something negative to it, but I'm talking about good, all right? So there was a guy that I served for decades, decades. And this guy was brilliant. You know, I had the terminal degree, and sometimes I'd get anonymous letters from him. And this guy, man, when he took you apart, you'd done nude that you was taken apart. And, you know, he had discernment, but he was exclusively negative. All right? Particularly, I remember a Sunday where one of his sons was preaching for us.

And I'm in the back of the church, and as his son goes up there to preach, and his son preached for us maybe once every five years. And as his son goes up to preach, I see this man scurrying out of the church. And I go up to him and I say, let's say his name is Stephen. Stephen, what are you doing? Well, I'm going to go work in the nursery. And I said, but your son. It's going to preach. Don't you want him to feed you God's word? I mean, can you think of anything that would make you happier than having your son feed you God's word, you know? And he said, he didn't say anything. And I said, Stephen, don't you think that your son needs to hear his father say to him, well done, son. Now, this was a guy that was in his 40s at the time.

his son. And you know what he said to me? He looked at me and he said, he doesn't need that. All he needs to know is whether God approves of what he has to say. And of course, we all know what that is. That's a Pharisee. A Pharisee always has higher motives than you suspected. You know, he thinks his son is in danger, you know, that he would give him a compliment and his son would stop caring what God has to say to him. I didn't say anything more, but I did. I just felt so sad, so sad for his son. And do you know that when that man got older, he stopped coming to church. He'd drop his wife off. And we were friendly. I liked him. He liked me. I remember one Easter, he came to pick his wife up after the Easter service. And I was the first out, you know, to be at the door to greet people. And I saw him out in the car, right?

you know, where the cars drive through. So I went over and knocked on the window and Stephen opened the window and I looked at him and I said, I am so glad, Stephen, that you have principles that kept you from joining and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus this morning. And he looked at me and he was like, and then he asked me to repeat it. And so I repeated it. I'm so glad that you have firm principles that keep you from celebrating the resurrection with the people. God. And he kind of laughed. He declined. And in the end, he was alone in his house, sitting in a chair, often watching television, sports. And near the end of his life, I went into him. I would visit him occasionally. And I said to him, Stephen, I am so sorry for you. Why is that? And I said, because.

I said, your whole life, you have criticized other people. And the Bible says, judge not lest ye be judged. And we always think that that means that other people will judge us. But the first judge, when we are judgmental, is always ourselves. And I said, here you are at the end of your life, and you have no one else to judge now because you just sit here alone all day, every day. And so you are eating yourself up. from inside with your own judgments. And of course, he knew it was true. And I said, but what makes me sad, you know, in other words, we all do that, you know, get us alone. And sometimes there's no limit to the negative thoughts we have, you know. I said, what makes me sad is that God has ordained the church to give you an accurate view of yourself.

But you have cut yourself off from the bride of Christ, and so you cannot receive the love and the peace of other Christians' judgments. You refuse to receive them. You look at the Apostle Paul and Timothy's relationship with each other. You look at the letters they write. You look at their relationship with their churches and how it is that we don't see the intimacy and affection. and love. It's beyond me that there would be any church which is dead orthodoxy and truly reformed and disembodied brains and think they're biblical? I need you. Trust me. And you think you don't need me? Now, I'm only saying that for David. He's your shepherd. David needs you. Do you see all the things he does wrong? Help!

Help him. Help him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I know. And David is, I like the word preternatural. He is like, David misses nothing about you. Okay? He just doesn't. He may not say it since you're a woman. And he may be better with men. He doesn't miss anything. And isn't this what we see in the New Testament? The Apostle Paul says, Ah, man, you guys give me joy. And can't you just imagine how we'd receive that if we didn't know it was in the text of Scripture and had to do with Philippians? You know, he wrote us and he said, there he goes again. He's always trying to butter us up. What does he want now? You know, what do you mean he has joy all the time about us? I remember the time that I shoved his nose in his dirt. I'm always joyful for you. You see, It's not that the Philippians didn't sin. I plead with you, Doyen, sin to keep. Agree with one another in the Lord. You know, they had sin. But it was the Apostle Paul saw the trajectory of sanctification. Do you know what a trajectory is? He saw the long-term direction. He saw that it was up.

and you're going to go up and down by each time your baby is able to be nursed or not able, and each time your baby's not able to be nursed, you're the worst mother in the world. And then the baby nurses well for 24 hours. I'm a mother. And then bam and bam, and this is the way your husbands are. This is the way our widows are. This is the way we all are. We're all up, down, up. down and we think, what is wrong with me? And so the Apostle Paul writes this and says, I'm always having joy about you. And we say, no, you aren't. But we don't disrespect him. We let him say it if it makes him feel good, you know. The Apostle Paul knows you better than you know yourself. As a matter of fact, your wife knows you better than you know yourself. That's why she makes you so angry. Your children certainly know you better than you know yourself.

Do you think you have anything you don't know about your papa? Well, yeah, yeah, but I'm not talking about that stuff. Yeah, yeah, you know him pretty well, although that guy's lying about you. But that's what boys do as they get older, you know. You have to have some years of indignity. So the Apostle Paul says, and then he gives the reason. He gives specifics. He says, in view. of your participation in the gospel for the first day until now. So what gives him joy and what makes him thankful is that they responded immediately to the gospel and that they have steadied the course until now. Do you remember Pastor Dave saying during the Sunday school class about the issue of the 23-year-old who's been baptized and there's no fruit? Remember him?

And he said, it's time for a conversation. You remember that? That is a child who is not walking with his father's father. And the church is filled with people who turn away from God at some point in their lives. Sometimes they come back. A lot of times they don't. We were in a conversation recently where we were going back over the people that we have cared for through the years. three separate families came up that had been under formal and intense discipline. Three families. And in each case, one of the main, if not the main issue for years, had been their oldest child. And all three families, after they left the church, those children died. All three of them died.

And you say, oh, but that's, what are you trying to say? I'm just making an observation. And I have read Proverbs, and Proverbs says that the fool dies. And can we please allow Scripture to have authority? Can we please see that as we raise our children, and if we raise a fool, there's a good chance that fool will die. Okay? And so very serious things are going on with us raising the children who are dedicated or baptized or are the children of the church. Very, very serious things. And the Apostle Paul says to the church in Philippi, you responded immediately from the beginning, and you are still to this day walking with God. That's why he has joy in them. And then this precious verse.

For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Now, if I ask you whether you in your own strength and wisdom think that you will get home, you know, that you will make it to the end, that you will follow God to the end, and you're really honest with me and I say, do you have doubts about that? Many of you would say you have doubts about that. Okay? And that's not wrong. But here comes your pastor, the Apostle Paul and Pastor David, and they say, I have confidence that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not your prerogative to say that David is sentimental or romantic and that he doesn't know the dark secrets of your heart.

It is not right for you to refuse to hear a word of blessing and faith from the ones that feed you and clean you and lead you. And so at the beginning of this new year or one week into it, I want all of you to realize that it's God who began the good work in you. You did not begin it. If I ask you how you came to faith, you would describe it as God reaching down into a hole. snatching you like a mother cat with her kittens, you know, and lifting you up and setting you on a high rock, right? That's how David says it, right? Are you all with me? And so he who began a good work in you, you didn't begin a good work towards God. It was not prevenient grace. Oh my goodness, what a hopeless message, you know? It was him plucking you. All right.

So we're all on the same page there. He will complete it. He started it. He will complete it. Okay? He will complete it. If you've ever tried to teach your children, your sons, let me talk to dads about how to work. You know that a mother is always willing for her son to stop the job before it's finished. And you know that most fathers are always willing. for the son to finish the garage doors and the door to the house. And then to wrap up, this is the old school painting, wrap up the brush and the roller and saran wrap and put them in the refrigerator. To use the vacuum time after time after time and never empty it and never clean it.

In other words, there are certain things that are, to not put the tools away. Go with me. This is how we work. We don't complete our work. We have a job, we get tired of the job, and so we stop at mid-job, or we stop it without cleaning up, or we stop it without putting the tools away. But you know that if you're a good dad, you teach your son. that he hasn't finished until he's finished, right? Isn't this just basic fatherhood, right? A mother's work is never done, so she can't ever teach her daughters to finish their work. That's a joke, all right? What did Jesus do for 30 years? What did he do? He worked. I was wondering why some guy named James is going to lead the painting, and he walked out during the first part of the worship, and I said, what do you know about painting?

You know? Jesus knows what it is to finish work. And the work he's doing on you is called sanctification. And it is bloody awful. There is no way you'll get through it without despairing again and again. The only way that you will allow your elders and pastors to rebuke you and the older women to rebuke you and to exhort you and to admonish you is if you are convinced that God is using them to finish his work. If you get focused on the pecking order in the church of who's good and who isn't, it's over for you. Because you no longer are thinking of God finishing his work. You're just thinking about your relative order of morality and motherhood and fatherhood. And that's just bogus. It's bogus. You chase that, you'll be like a dog chasing his tail. Okay? Your pastors want you to fail and to hear their admonishments.

I always tell people that in the book of Proverbs, there's only two kind of men. One kind will not listen to rebuke and is a fool, and the other kind listens and is wise. And we never think about it, but there's no third kind. What would the third kind be? Well, the third kind would be somebody that doesn't need to be rebuked. You know, there's nobody that doesn't need rebuke. I mean, that's a whole celebrity Christian thing. Are you kidding me that Al Moore and John MacArthur don't need to be rebuked? Oh, my goodness. So the final thing I want to say to you is I want to talk to you about your marriages. Now, it can be awkward for a pastor to talk about his sins because you can judge him harshly, but I'm going to talk about one of my sins. One of my sins is the sin of anger, all right?

And so when we got married, Mary Lee came from a family that never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever got angry. And all their discussions were on the level of, did you notice the Chicago Tribune headline about the taxes going up in DuPage County? You know, which we lived there, so I guess it was interesting, but they never talked about anything real. You know what I'm saying? And they never got angry, and I don't think I ever saw your father angry, ever. I knew when he had gotten angry once because he came back from the breakfast with one of our brothers-in-law with a blood vessel in his eye. And so you put a woman who grows up in a home where nobody ever gets angry. With Tim, it's difficult. And so time after time after time, I would get angry, and then I would ask her forgiveness.

And after a number of years of this, I had enough self-awareness, barely, that I went to her one day and I said, lover, listen, I know I've asked for forgiveness for my anger again. And I know that I have done it time after time after time. And I know that that would indicate I'm not really repentant. Because if I were truly repentant, there'd be a metamorphosis. You know, I would flip. And I said, I haven't flipped. And so if you were to say to me that I never am sincere when I apologize, you would have justification to say that. But I want to say something to you. The Bible says that he that began a good work in me will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ. And that's all I can hold out to you. And that's all I can hold out to myself. Now, if you ask her whether that was the last time I ever got angry, bust out laughing. But if you were to ask her whether she's seen a trajectory of self-control in my life that grows, she would say, yeah, it's still a besetting sin, but I found that at this point in my life, I don't have it nearly as much, and I'm so relieved. Now, can you hear the Apostle Paul saying to you that he is convinced that he that began a good work in you will bring it to completion?

on the day of Jesus Christ. Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up on the child who is showing tendencies to be a fool. Don't give up on your husband. Don't give up on your wife. Don't give up on your parents. Don't give up on me. Don't give up on Vanessa and Max, David. And I know a lot of you are about to, but please do not. Give up on Abram. That's a joke. Abram, you've always been so clean. From the time you were a little child, you've been clean. Are you that clean? I know. And I knew he would say no. Let's pray.