Remember Your Creator When You Are Young | Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 12:1-8

If you have got your Bible, I am going to read to you this morning from Ecclesiastes 12. If you have been with us in recent weeks, we have been looking into this book.

And I am jumping to the end of the book now to look at some conclusions that Solomon - whom I am taking as the writer, though his name is never mentioned here, though he is the son of David in Jerusalem and many of the autobiographical statements certainly fit Solomon.

But now, at the end of the book, he is coming up with some solutions. I will read the first seven verses. Ecclesiastes 12:1-7

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them’ –

“before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain;

“when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim;

“when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint;

“when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.

“Remember him – before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well,

“and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

That’s as far as I am going to read.

You know, old people and young people can develop negative stereotypes and attitudes about each other. We live in a world when in the last few decades, culture, which was normally geographical – a Canadian culture, a German culture, an Indian culture – has tended to become generational.

When an 18-year-old in Toronto and an 18 year old in Tokyo and an 18 year old in Tehran all see the same movies, play the same video games, listen to the same music, come under the same influence, and in this global village of which we are a part, the gaps exists not between geographical cultures, but generational cultures. So much so, some years ago somebody invented the term “the generation gap”.

And this chapter we have read together (Ecclesiastes 12) is an old man writing across the generations to young people he describes as being in their youth.

You know, every old person you ever meet was once a young person. Now I know that’s hard to believe sometimes. They have known the dreams of youth, the aspirations of youth, the energy of youth, the vigor of youth, the temptations of you, the frustrations of youth, the ambitions of youth, the fears of youth. They have felt the inadequacies of youth.

And if they think back, they will understand what it’s like being young. And Solomon does that in this chapter.

Solomon started his life well. He lived his middle years well. It’s in his older years that he began to turn away from God, Scripture explicitly says, and begins to live in a world that is defined only by what is tangible and visible. He calls it life under the sun, meaning purely what you can see and touch and taste and hear and smell.

But the conclusion he comes to 35 times in this book is it has become (you have heard the word many times now in the last few weeks) meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless. It’s a phrase that keeps reoccurring; 35 times he uses the word.

And what life is like, he says, is like chasing after the wind, trying to catch it and take it home with you and you can’t do it.

And so, he writes Ecclesiastes as a pretty depressing record of what it is like to live under the sun. And in the first 11 chapters he searches in all kinds of possible areas to find meaning.

Once in a while there is a glimmer of hope that shines through, but normally he falls back into the depressing meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless – everything is meaningless.

And then he comes to Ecclesiastes 12:1. He starts by saying this:

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.”

This is an old man talking. “If I could only start my life again, I would remember my Creator.”

Remember - not just be aware that He is there but bring Him into the very center and core of your life. That’s what it means to remember Him.

And he gives them three reasons why they should remember their Creator.

Remember your Creator before – three things he says:

“Before the days of trouble come (in Ecclesiastes 12:1).”

In other words, before you mess up your life.

Ecclesiastes 12:2:

“Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark.”

He begins to describe the effect of growing old. Remember Him before you get old.

And in Ecclesiastes 12:6:

“Before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken.”

And he describes then what it is like to die. Remember Him before you die.

I am going to add a fourth one to what he explicitly states here by the fact he begins,

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.”

And so, the first one I want to look at is: Remember your Creator because He is your Creator. He is not an imposer into your life. He created us; therefore He knows us; therefore He understands us.

When God is introduced in the Bible to us, in the very beginning, He is introduced as our Creator.

“In the beginning God created” (first four words of the Bible) “the heavens and the earth.”

Now God as Creator has become a controversy in the last 150 years because in 1859, Charles Darwin published his book “The Origin of Species”. And based on his observations in general, but his observations in particular, in the Galapagos Islands of mockingbirds and tortoises, he came up with the idea of the transmutation of species, as he called it (more popularly known as evolution).

That is, that over long periods of time, many millions and billions of years, life slowly changes, adjusting to its environment. The fittest survivor gets stronger and the weakest become eliminated.

And as a result, naturalism (that is, a natural process) is taking place through all this period of time, began to replace theism (the idea that God lies behind the universe) until the standard explanation for the existence of the universe and of life is it’s a natural process and does not require God.

Now I am not going to go into discussing that debate and dilemma this morning other than the problem that Solomon has been struggling with through this book is the meaninglessness of naturalism – life under the sun – purely natural, purely material, purely what you can see, touch, handle etc.

And his conclusion is that when you look at life from that point of view, it is meaningless.

Now I want to ask the question, why is that a problem to us? Dogs don’t get worked up over the meaning of their lives. As long as you feed them, pat them and take them for a walk and throw a stick once in a while, they are happy.

Horses, who are fairly intelligent, don’t suddenly stop in their tracks and say, what is the meaning of this?

Having been in the Rocky Mountains these last few days, seeing an eagle soaring high up over the mountains, it doesn’t, as it soars in that beautiful way in which it catches the thermals and swoops and dives; it doesn’t suddenly stop and say, what is the meaning of all this?

So why does Solomon get concerned about this? Well, he gives us a glimpse into why back in Ecclesiastes 3:11 where he says,

“God has set eternity into the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

There is a capacity in every human heart that does not belong in the animal kingdom that says, “I was made for something bigger than this, something more than this.”

Eternity is a multi-dimensional awareness. There is a lot more to life than just being here. And now at the end of the book he is trying to find this meaning that he could not find in the natural material world. And he says,

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.”

Because, he has explained earlier, that naturalist explanations do not meet the deep needs of the human heart.

Let me read you some things he said in Ecclesiastes 3:19. He said,

“Man’s fate is like that of the animals…

“All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal.”

In other words, if you look at life purely from a naturalist point of view then we are simply clever animals – but for what purpose? Here today, gone tomorrow.

He says in Ecclesiastes 3:21:

“Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

Who knows that we have anything about us that is more significant than a dog or a cockroach?

Ecclesiastes 9:2, he says,

“All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean …

“As it is with the good man, so it is with the sinner.”

So, what’s the point?

And he concludes in Ecclesiastes 8:15:

“Nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be merry” (Do you know why?) “for tomorrow we die.”

So just live for the now.

Richard Dawkins is a well-known name now. He is professor at Oxford University. He is one of the leaders of the new atheism; his book “The God Delusion” is one that has sold many copies. I have read it and probably some of you have.

And one of the things that Richard Dawkins says – not in “The God Delusion” but in “The Selfish Gene”, one of his earlier books – he says,

“The universe that we observe has at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”

And he doesn’t say these words, but the gist of what he says is, “so get used to it and stop looking for meaning.”

But we can’t because something inside us says there’s got to be something more than this.

Now the reason to believe in a creator is not because we need one to make life make sense, but the reason to believe in a creator is because He has revealed Himself to us in creation, in conscience and in Christ.

Now we haven’t time to look at those three primary areas in which God has revealed Himself but the Scriptures tell us “The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands.”

Paul says men are without excuse because of creation. And then Paul also says that why is it that Gentiles who do not know the law of God, by nature, know what is right and what is wrong? It’s because there is a conscience that bears witness to God, and supremely, of course, He is revealed to us in Christ.

It is not my purpose though to look at those – we could do that on another occasion; we have done it in the past in fact.

But it is not actually difficult to believe there is a Creator. I remember on one occasion being in a high school in England. And I was talking to a class of kids when a girl put her hand up and she said to me, “Do you believe in creation?”

So, I said, “Yes, I do.”

And she said, “Eww, nobody believes that these days.”

I said, “You’re wrong. I do.”

She said, “Eww, I don’t.”

I said, “So what do you believe?”

She said, “I believe we just happened.”

“What do you mean we just happened?”

“Well, there was a piece of matter that exploded.”

“Where did that matter come from?”

“It just happened.”

And I am not doing justice to her now – I am going to just shorthand what she said, but basically a piece of matter exploded and was blasted across the universe in little pieces. Some pieces were hot; some pieces were cold. The hot pieces created a gravitational pull that caused the cold pieces to revolve around the hot pieces. One hot piece was the sun; one cold piece was the earth.

On the earth there was land and there was sea and there was algae that formed in the sea and the algae began to swim and develop some fins. And one day the algae fell out of the pond, began to walk, climbed a tree, ate a banana, scratched itself, came down the tree and became a human being.

Now I’m speeding up the process, but that’s basically what she said.

I said, “Do you believe that?”

She said, “Yes.”

I said, “Eww.”

I said, “Let me tell you something.” I said, “I have got a watch here. But let me tell you where I got my watch from.” I said, “You may find this hard to believe but I’ll tell you where I got this from.”

“In the town where I live” I said, “there is a main street and on the main street there are several shops. There is a jewellers, there is a leather shop, there is a paint shop, there is a glass shop, there is an ironmonger and there is a gas mains that runs down that street.”

“And one day that gas mains exploded and these shops just blew up into smithereens and pieces of metal were flying around and pieces of glass were flying around. And some of these pieces of metal came together, a few jewels came and landed on them, another piece of metal came and landed on the top and then a paint pot flew by; the lid happened to come off, a paintbrush happened to dip inside and go “boop, boop, boop, boop twelve times and then another little paintbrush went doodldoodlo 60 times and then two little skinny little bits of metal landed, and another like that.”

“And then a piece of glass flew by, landed on the top, a screwdriver flew by, stopped, screwed in four places. And then a piece of leather smashed into the side, another piece of leather smacked into the other side. And the whole thing landed in the rubble and I went through the rubble, picked it up and found it and it’s kept perfect time ever since.”

Do you know what she said? “Eww.”

She said, “You didn’t get your watch that way.”

I said, “You have never seen my watch before. You have no idea where my watch came from.”

She said, “You didn’t get your watch that way. You are lying to me.”

I said, “How do you know that?”

She said, “It is obvious.”

I said, “You are dead right. Of course, it is obvious.”

“Do you think this watch is smart? You are smarter than this watch. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Corn Flakes – you shovelled it in? What is going to happen to that Corn Flakes during today? It is going to somehow inside get broken down and going to become flesh and bone and blood.”

“I mean you tell me a machine you can just shove corn flakes into and it kind of transforms it into itself. You are a million times smarter than this watch and you know it’s obvious this watch is not a fluke.”

Now you say, well that’s naïve. That’s not naïve at all – that’s not naïve at all. Effects have causes.

And Solomon says that while you are young and while you are trying to live with all the dreams and ambitions and vigor of youth, do not make the mistake that I made later, says Solomon in effect, you have a Creator and that Creator knows you, that Creator loves you, that Creator plans for you, that Creator understands you.

Abraham Lincoln wrote,

“I never gaze at the stars without feeling that I am looking into the face of God. I can see how it might be possible for man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist because of all the mess of humanity, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the sky and say, ‘There is no God.’”

And Lincoln was no fool.

Now says Solomon, “Remember your Creator firstly because He is your Creator, He knows you better than anybody else.”

Second thing he says is,

“Remember your Creator (Ecclesiastes 12:1) before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them.’”

There is a day coming when you begin to say, “I find no pleasure in them.” So, what he is saying is this: remember your Creator before your life is wasted.

And Solomon’s experience of having known God and then to have turned away from God and to look out and say it’s meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, he is saying it is possible to waste your life. And while you are young, remember your Creator.

You see the biggest impressions are made when we are young, the biggest decisions we make is when we are young. A time of greatest temptation is while we are young.

Paul said, “Timothy, flee the evil desires of youth.” Though temptation is not limited to being young; it is often more subtle when we are old. But there are more obvious temptations when we are young. And he says you can waste your life.

Now we are designed and intended to enjoy our youth. A couple of verses before this: Ecclesiastes 11:9 Solomon writes,

“Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.”

So, he says, youth, being young, is supposed to be a great time. Be happy. May your heart give you joy.

And then two verses later – Ecclesiastes 12:1:

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.”

So put these two things together. Be happy, young man, while you are young. Remember your Creator while you are young.

Those two things are the same thing because to find happiness and joy (let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth), is to be reconciled to your Creator, to know Him and to live with a sense, not only does life make sense but that He is there to guide me and lead me.

Now I know a lot of young people get very afraid of that. The idea of Christ being lord in their lives is one which they fear.

I remember on another occasion in another school in England, it was an after-school Christian group, and I had spoken at it. And at the end of it, there was a girl, another girl; she was about 18 years of age. And I could see she looked upset. I went across to her and I said, “Are you okay?” And she began to cry.

We sat down together. I never know what to do with people who cry (I am not good at that). So, I thought, well, I’ll ask her some questions. And I said, “Are you a Christian?”

And she said, “No, no I am not.”

So, I thought, “Aha, she’s crying because she wants to become one. That’s great!”

So, I said, “Would you like to become one?”

And she said, “No, no, no I don’t.”

“Oh, you’re not a Christian?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to become one?”

“No, but I do. I don’t but I do - I do, but I don’t.”

“Well, thank you - that’s very clear. Why do you and why don’t you?”

She said, “I don’t want to because I am scared. I am scared that God will spoil my life for me. But I do want to because I know I need to.”

I said, “Why are you scared that God will spoil your life?”

“Well, He will probably make me go and be a missionary in Africa or something.”

“You don’t want to do that?”

“No, I don’t want to do that.”

I said, “Whatever plans God has for you, they are good. And what He does; He works in us, as Philippians 2:13 says, to will and to act according to His good pleasure. He puts the desires within and then He gives us the enabling to fulfill those desires.”

“So, if you give your life to Christ, don’t worry about the future, because He will work in you in such a way that what He wants to do with your life will be what you want to do with your life because He has put the will, the desires within you.”

Well, she did become a Christian and I knew the leader of that group – she was a teacher from that school – used to bring groups of them up to Capernwray for some of our youth weeks in the summer. And I kept contact with that young lady – she came several times to Capernwray.

She ended up marrying a young man who I knew – apart from her, who I knew him anyway. And you will never guess what happened. They are missionaries in Africa. That’s absolutely true.

Do you know why they went to Africa? Because they wanted to. Do you know why? Because the Spirit of God led them.

Paul writes in Romans 12,

“Present your body as a living sacrifice to God.”

That sounds like a contradiction – living sacrifice – sacrifices normally die. Well just die to yourself and present yourself to God and you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, he said, His good, pleasing and perfect will.

Now, says Paul, you present yourself to God and then you will discover this. Not you will know this first – no – then you will discover His will is good, pleasing and perfect.

Young people need a cause to follow. Young people need ideals to live by. Young people need and want to make this world a better place. Young people are idealistic. They become cynical after a while, like most of us do, about some things.

But let Jesus Christ get hold of that, let Jesus Christ be the cause that you live for and the center of your life, because you can get to the point where you have wasted your life, says Solomon.

And then the third reason is “Remember your Creator before you get old” (this is Ecclesiastes 12:2-5) “before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, etc.”

Let me read it to you from The Message, which is a paraphrase but it reads well. It says,

“Remember your Creator before your vision dims and the world blurs and the winter years keep you close to the fire.

In old age your body no longer serves you so well. Muscles slacken, grip weakens, joints stiffen, the shades have pulled down on the world, you cannot come and go at will, things grind to a halt.

“The hum of the household fades away. You are now awakened by birdsong” (that means you will wake up early every morning). “Hikes to the mountain are a thing of the past. Even a stroll down the road has its terrors.

“Your hair turns apple blossom white, adorning a fragile and impotent matchstick body. Yes, you are well on your way to your eternal rest and your friends are making plans for your funeral.”

That’s a bit discouraging, isn’t it? But you know, it’s absolutely true.

I talked to somebody about 3 weeks ago who said, “I bought my plot.”

“What do you mean you bought your plot?”

“Well, I have bought my burial place.”

“Really? Are you going to die?”

We don’t think so, but we will. And growing old comes to all of us. It comes a lot quicker than you think it is going to come. (I am giving you my testimony now.) We cannot avoid it.

When I grumble about my birthday, my wife says, “Well, be glad you have got one. If you didn’t have a birthday, you’d be dead by now.”

So, yeah, I’m glad about my birthday. Thank you very much. But the years go faster and faster and faster and Solomon is writing as an old man now.

And he says before you get old, because when you get old, and as he describes here, your sight is dimmed, you have trembling hands, you are stooping posture, you are losing your teeth, you have cataracts on your eyes, loss of hearing (this is another paraphrase by the way). You wake up early, your hair goes gray, your movements are slow, you have lost your sex drive, you have got a weakened spinal cord, you have deteriorating mental powers – you can’t remember anybody’s name, loss of bladder control, heart failure, death.

(I am sorry about that!)

On the plane last week, I was reading a newspaper, which had an interesting article on the effect of declining population in many of the developed nations and in particular in China, where people are no longer having the families that replace them.

Winston Churchill used to say you should have four kids – one to replace mom, one to replace dad, one for increase and one spare. That’s what he said. (I am one of six, so I am one of the spares.)

But in many parts of the world the population is decreasing, which means – and as life expectancy exceeds - there is going to be an ever-greater number of older people supported and sustained by a decreasing number of younger people. So, it talked about the economic effects of this, it talked about the whole question of pensions.

But one interesting thing was it said that with the decline in the number of young people, there will be a slowing down of social change.

Now some of you might be glad about that, but it was saying was this: that it is young people who change the world, it is young people who follow their ideals to make what they consider the world to be a better place.

And with less young people, there will be less vigor, less energy, less passion and therefore less changes.

Now I found that an interesting comment.

You know Paul told Timothy to let no one despise his youth. Being young can be a wonderful time of your life when you have vision and you have a sense of direction, you have a sense of anticipation and you plan that your life be significant.

And says Solomon, you make sure that time in your life, before you get old and you are settled down into routines that are going nowhere, you make sure you get the Creator, you remember God; get God into the center and focus of your life.

We don’t have a practice life and then come back and do the real one. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? If you could have, “Okay I am going to give you 40 years, you know, do what you like and then after that we’ll get you starting again, we’ll have you born again. And now, with the information from those 40 years, you can do what’s right this time.” We don’t have that privilege.

I will never again re-live today. While you are young, remember your Creator, he says, because you are going to get old and you will regret if you have lived your life purely under the sun.

And then the fourth reason he says is, “Remember your Creator” (in Ecclesiastes 12:6-7).

“Remember him – before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, or the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

There are six images there in those two verses. Five of them are all about decomposition. He talks about the silver cord is severed, the bowl is broken, the pitcher is shattered, the wheel is broken. It sounds like a junkyard doesn’t it - you know, the cord is severed, the bowl is broken, the pitcher is shattered, wheel is broken. It sounds like a junkyard but actually it is talking about you and about me.

And then he says,

“And the dust returns to the ground from where it came” (the dust returns to dust).

All that is material is going to perish - it is going to end. There is only one thing that will not and it’s the sixth image. He says,

“And the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

He says every part of you that is tangible and physical is going to perish, it is going to be severed, broken, shattered, returned to dust, but there is one part that won’t: the spirit returns to the God who gave it.

I told you before about a friend of mine who was attacked in her home – she and her husband were attacked and she was killed, murdered. And on her tombstone – her name was Jill Tracey – on her tombstone, her husband has put these words, or words to this effect: “Here lies all that can die of Jill Tracey.”

Because there are things that can die and they are all in this grave – her body. But there is that which cannot die and that isn’t here.

The spirit returns to God who gave it. In what condition is that spirit returning? Hebrews 9:27 says,

“It is appointed to man once to die and after that to face the judgement.”

We will stand before God, every one of us in this building this morning, everyone listening to my voice – you will stand before God. And the issue that day will be am I in Christ? Do I have an identity of righteousness that is not mine; it is Christ’s that’s been imputed to me because I have come to Him in repentance?

We will have no good of our own to plead on that day. We can only on that day throw ourselves completely on Christ; He alone is my hope.

There is an old hymn. The first line is,

Rock of Ages, cleft for me

Many of you know that, but there is a lovely verse in that hymn:

Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.
Naked, come to You for dress;
Helpless look to You for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly
Wash me Savior, or I die.

Nothing except Christ is going to be my standing.

I went for a walk last night just after I got back (to chew over my message really) and somebody on the street who I didn’t know but who seemed to recognize me, said, “Have you got a moment? Can I ask you a question?”

I said, “Certainly.”

She said, “How can I be sure of heaven?”

That is a good question to be asked on the street, isn’t it?

So, I said, as I always do with that kind of question, “Why are you asking me this question?”

She said, “Because I have a friend who is not sure.”

(Well, that’s fine. I’ve counselled a lot of friends of people.)

I said, “Are you sure?”

She said, “I think so.”

“On what grounds?”

She said, “Well I prayed a prayer” (and told me when she had prayed a prayer) “and I have tried to live right since.”

I said, “You know, the only grounds on which you or anybody else or your friend will ever have confidence about heaven is not when you say, ‘I have been living pretty well’ or even ‘I have prayed a prayer’, but my only way of being sure is that my standing before God is the standing of Jesus Christ, not of me, that it is Christ and all that He is that I am united with. Not my history, not my past, but I have cast myself on Christ.

Nothing in my hand I bring
Simply to Your cross I cling.

We talked for 30 minutes.

And he says, “You are going to die. You are going to die. Remember Him before that.”

And the issue is that day is Christ my Savior; am I living with Christ as my Lord? Because you know you can have a saved soul but a wasted life.

Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”

And you would be aghast at what people are giving in exchange for their souls, because they are so trivial.

And Solomon is writing with the hindsight of a life that has known God, that had, in his early days, experienced God working in wonderful ways in his life, experienced God giving him remarkable wisdom.

But because his heart (as it says in 1 Kings) was turned away from God, he now finds himself detached and separate and looking back and saying, “Everything has just fallen apart. There is no meaning. It is empty. And before I die myself, young people”, he says “young people remember your Creator while you are young because He is your Creator. Before your life is wasted, before you get old and before you die.”

And I wonder if there are some young people here this morning and you have never given your life to Christ. You may have paddled around but you have never wholeheartedly given your life to Christ and say, “Lord Jesus, all that I am I give to You, my Creator, my Savior, my Lord, in order that not just that I enjoy the certainty of heaven one day on the basis of what Christ has done, but here now on earth I can live life that has meaning and purpose and direction.”

And if God has spoken to you this morning and the Spirit of God is at work in your heart drawing you to Himself, then some of you need to say this morning, “Lord I surrender this morning to You. Thank You for dying for me and rising again from the dead to live in me as my Lord, my Savior, my King.”

And I am going to lead you in prayer in just a moment. But there may be some of us and you say, “well I am no longer young, but I have missed the boat as a young person.”

But God is drawing you. It is never too late, never too late. You too this morning can say, “Lord, forgive me for these wasted years but I thank You that You will save me as I trust You and put my faith in You.” And He will.

Let’s pray together. And maybe if God has been speaking to you and you know that you are not in a right relationship with Him, that you pray words like this: Lord, I thank You that You are my Creator and You understand me. You know me better than I know myself. You made me for a purpose. I thank You, Lord Jesus, that You died in my place to deal with my sin, to break that barrier between us that I might be forgiven and born again by the coming of the Holy Spirit to impart a new life in me. Lord, I give myself to You. Please forgive me. Take Your place as my Lord and my King. Thank You for hearing my prayer.

And Lord, I pray this morning for any who have prayed those words and that is the expression of their hearts. I pray that by the Holy Spirit, You would give them a fresh sense of Your presence, You would give them a fresh joy, a fresh awareness that life makes sense and they make sense as they live under the lordship of Christ. Do a deep work in people’s hearts I pray. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.