When I Don’t Desire God
June 28, 2008
[Our small group just completed a several month study of John Piper's book, When I Don't Desire God. My study guide to this book is now available online (Word document, pdf). Here are my introductory paragraphs - Coty]
God created mankind for a purpose: To bring glory to His Name (Isaiah 43:7). How do we glorify Him? For over twenty years, John Piper has argued that the Bible teaches that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” That is, we glorify God when we can say with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25-26). We show that God is great and precious and trustworthy and beautiful when we live and act and feel in ways that magnify His value compared to the value of the world around us. This is our calling. This is our reason for existence.
Yet we don’t wake up spontaneously each day feeling that God is great and marvelous. Quite the contrary. Most mornings we wake up feeling groggy and cranky, acting self-centered and self-absorbed. If we depend on our spontaneous feelings, most of us will spontaneously act like this world is all that is important, that our time and our comfort and our success are the overarching values in life.
So how do naturally self-centered persons live a life of joy in God?
The answer is twofold. First, by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, changing our hearts from within, so that we confess our sinfulness, our lack of delight in God, and trust that Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty we deserve for that sin. This is the gift of faith, of new birth.
But genuine believers in Christ Jesus still generally wake up groggy, cranky, self-centered, and self-absorbed. The Bible does not teach that we are born again and then live happily ever after with continual joy in God. Instead, believers are commanded to “Rejoice in the Lord always!” (Philippians 4:4); believers are commanded to “Be transformed through the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2); believers are commanded to “Know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). We are dependent upon God for any spiritual good (John 15:5); yet our dependence is not passive. We are actively dependent. We must fight to fulfill the command to rejoice in the Lord. We must fight for joy.
That is the theme of John Piper’s 2004 book, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. As explanation for the purpose of the book, Piper quotes Augustine:
I was astonished that although I now loved you . . . I did not persist in enjoyment of my God. Your beauty drew me to you, but soon I was dragged away from you by my own weight and in dismay I plunged again into the things of this world . . . as though I had sensed the fragrance of the fare but was not yet able to eat it.
This is the air we breathe. This is where most Christians live most of the time. We do not rejoice in the Lord always. Yet we must.
When we find ourselves not rejoicing in Him, how should we respond? Should we question our faith?
This book is extraordinarily helpful in this regard. Piper begins by giving us the best introduction in all of his writings to our obligation to delight in God. He shows that the Bible tells us not to expect this delight to come automatically, just as constant joy in marriage does not come automatically. Instead, we are to fight for joy.
The rest of the book carefully shows what this fight for joy looks like, pointing time again to Scripture as our guide. The bottom line is simple to summarize: Immerse yourself in the Word! Pray! See God in the world around you! But Piper carefully nuances those instructions, discussing both why they are difficult to follow, and the biblical help to using them effectively.
For the last several months, our small group has been going through this book. In the process, I have developed a study guide that supplements the book.
Desiring God has a study guide online that contains questions on each book chapter, along with some questions from the video available on DVD.
This study guide is quite different. Rather than help you understand the book, this study guide aims to help you initially to interact with key biblical texts on the topic, prior to reading Piper. Then, when you read the chapter, you are already familiar with some of the texts, and, like a good Berean, are in position to assess “if these things are so” (Acts 17:10-11).
I encourage you to read this book, and to consider using the study guide as you do so. Ideally, go through the study guide together with a friend.
We are all in a fight for joy. God offers us the greatest joy imaginable in Him – and then He commands us to pursue that joy. Will you fight well – for your joy?
Fighting with you to delight in Jesus above all the world has to offer,
Coty
Sins We Blame on Others
June 26, 2008
My friend Ben Reaoch, a pastor in Pittsburgh who frequently attends our church planter network meetings, has a challenging and convicting post on the Desiring God blog, listing 12 sins that we regularly blame on others. Here are the first two; read all twelve, and ask God to search your heart:
1) Anger
I wouldn’t lose my temper if my co-workers were easier to get along with, or if my kids behaved better, or if my spouse were more considerate.
2) Impatience
I would be a very patient person if it weren’t for traffic jams and long lines in the grocery store. If I didn’t have so many things to do, and if the people around me weren’t so slow, I would never become impatient!
Elijah and the Priests of Baal
June 19, 2008
As part of my devotions this morning from the Bible Unity Reading Plan, I read the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal from 1 Kings 18. The king of Israel is apostate, worshiping false gods, the Baals and the Asherim. The people – though they were chosen as special to the Lord a thousand years previously, and though their very name, Israel, was given by God (see verse 31) – are “limping between two opinions” (verse 21); not really knowing who is mighty, they are trying to cover all bases by worshiping both Yahweh, the Lord God of Israel, and the local Canaanite deities.
So Elijah tells them this makes no sense. Either Yahweh is God or He is not. If He is God, follow Him; if Baal is god, follow him (verse 21). Yahweh’s claims are exclusive: “Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that Yahweh is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other” (Deuteronomy 4:39). He won’t share the pantheon with other supposed gods.
Elijah therefore sets up a contest on Mt Carmel between Yahweh and Baal through their representatives: Himself on the one hand and the 450 priests of Baal on the other. Both build altars, kill bulls, and prepare the bulls to be burned as a sacrifice, but neither is to set the wood of the altar on fire. “And the God who answers by fire, He is God” (verse 24). Interestingly enough, the priests of Baal are amenable to this. Do they really believe Baal will answer? Or do they anticipate that neither offering will be burned, and they will win simply by force of numbers?
The priests of Baal go first, and cry out to their god for hours and hours. They even cut themselves so that blood flowed out over them to show their devotion. Elijah mocks them, and they rave all the more.
Felix Mendelssohn’s musical version of this story in the oratorio Elijah is very insightful. The priests of Baal sing initially in majestic and complex 8-part harmony. But as time goes on and their frustration grows, they lose control, demanding that Baal answer them: “Hear and answer!” They repeat the command several times and then wait. A long silence ensues, before a final, feeble, “Hear and answer.” But no one does.
Elijah then has water poured over his altar so that there can be no mistake about the origin of the fire. He calls the people to him and, instead of complex 8-part harmony or cutting himself so that blood spurts out, he simply prays to God (Mendelssohn, once again, captures the tone perfectly). Here is his prayer:
O Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Yahweh, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Yahweh, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” (verses 36-37, emphasis added)
The fire immediately falls, consuming not only the bull and the wood, but also the water, the stones, and the surrounding dirt. The people are rightly chastened; they fall prostrate, calling out, “Yahweh – He is God! Yahweh – He is God!” Mendelssohn – again, rightly – sees this as an allusion to Deuteronomy 6:4, and has the people sing that entire verse.
There are numerous lessons we can draw from this marvelous story. Let me just mention three in brief:
1) Elijah sees that it is necessary to establish not only that Yahweh is God, but also that he, Elijah, is God’s servant, he is God’s mouthpiece, he is truly communicating God’s Word to these people. He had called on the rains to cease, and a great drought ensued (17:1). Many evidently blamed Elijah for their suffering; Ahab calls him the troubler of Israel, the one who brings disaster on Israel (verse 17).
This relates directly to our present sermon series, “God Gave Pastors and Teachers.” As we have seen, people have a tendency to “surround themselves with teachers to satisfy their own desires, to scratch their itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3). Those who fulfill God’s calling to preach the Word in season and out of season will be accused, like Elijah, of causing trouble, of not being responsive to the times. How important it is for those called by God to “be clear-headed in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of a preacher of the Gospel; fully accomplish your ministry” (2 Timothy 4:5). But it is equally important for the church, the people of God, to recognize the preacher and teacher who is faithfully preaching the Word, to stick by him in good times and bad, to learn from him, and to recognize him as a gift of God for their building up.
2) Second, notice verse 37. Elijah locates the problem in the hearts of the people. And he knows that no power encounter, in and of itself, is going to cause the people to follow God wholeheartedly. Remember, the people of Israel in the time of Moses saw God work miracles in ways unrivaled across history, but just a few weeks later they grumbled against Him in the desert. The only solution is for God Himself to change their hearts.
Elijah apparently is skeptical that such a heart change has taken place, given his actions in chapter 19. And, indeed, while the number of God’s faithful followers is larger than Elijah thinks (19:18), it is undoubtedly smaller than the number who appeared to repent on Mt Carmel.
But God does change hearts, replacing those of stone with those of flesh. In today’s New Covenant, He promises to write His Law in our hearts, He promises to give us the Holy Spirit, He promises that He Himself will complete the good work that He begins. Praise God that he takes sinners like us, who in and of ourselves will waiver between two opinions, who will never be steadfast in faith, and changes us, setting our feet on the Rock, and enabling us by His grace to live for His glory.
3) Finally: Who are the Baals and the Asherim in your life? Who are the rivals of God? What powers and sources of success and strength are you holding on to, limping between two opinions, sometimes acting like Jesus is Lord and sometimes acting like this other rival – money, sex, accomplishment, recognition, autonomy – is your true source of satisfaction? Do you know, are you convinced, that if you depend on any of these, a day will come when you, like the priests of Baal, will cry out, “Hear and answer, O my God!” – and you will hear nothing? A day when all your sources of joy and hope come up empty?
There is only one God. Worship Him alone.
[You can listen to Mendelssohn’s version of the conflict between Elijah and the priests of Baal as tracks 12 to 19 on this link. Free registration may be required.]
Church Membership and the SBC
June 14, 2008
An encouraging vote took place this week in Indianapolis at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Before telling you about it, some background:
We gladly cooperate with the SBC through sending a proportion of our offerings – at present, five percent – to local, state, national, and international efforts to spread the Gospel. We ourselves were beneficiaries of this cooperation among independent churches, receiving in our first years about $25,000 in grants through the SBC, as well as practical help on a number of issues. I am particularly pleased that our giving supports the International Mission Board of the SBC - one of the very best mission agencies, which over the last 25 years has refocused its efforts on church planting among unreached people groups – and seminaries such as Southeastern here in North Carolina and Southern in Louisville, which are now staffed by dedicated biblical scholars committed to raising up the next generation of expository preachers.
Most Baptists through the centuries have understood the Bible’s teaching on church governance as we do: Local churches are autonomously governed, with the congregation as the final authority (we’ll look into the biblical support for this position and examine how to live out this conviction practically in my sermon on July 13). Therefore, denominational structures have no authority; they are voluntary organizations, made up of independent churches. Local, state, and national organizations can offer useful advice to churches, but each church in the end makes its own decisions.
While we gladly cooperate with the SBC, a loose organization of autonomous churches totaling several million people will always include a wide range of views on some important issues. One of these issues has been regenerate church membership – that is, the conviction that no one should be a member of a church unless he or she has been born again by the Holy Spirit. Baptists have always championed this biblical idea, and I doubt that any church in the SBC would teach anything to the contrary. But in practice, many churches have no idea whether or not members are born again, for they haven’t seen a number of them for years. This comes out starkly in the summation of the annual reports churches send in to the denomination: In 2007, SBC churches reported having over 16 million members, yet on an average Sunday, only 6 million attended services.
Tom Ascol, who heads Founders, a group encouraging the return of the SBC to its doctrinally reformed roots, has tried for several years to pass a resolution at the annual meeting calling for repentance from this practice, and advocating a return to a biblical view of church membership. I was particularly frustrated at the annual meeting two years ago in Greensboro, when a committee kept such a resolution from coming to the floor for a vote, giving very lame excuses. Finally, this year the convention passed a modified version of Tom’s resolution. You can read the details of the process on his blog. The text of the resolution is below.
Of course, the resolution itself accomplishes nothing. But let us pray that this will be one more step in returning the SBC both doctrinally and practically to its biblical roots, to the glory of God in all the earth, as one by one churches clean up their membership roles and take care to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, until we, together with all Christ’s body throughout this planet, attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of Christ’s full stature.
Coty
- WHEREAS, The ideal of a regenerate church membership has long been and remains a cherished Baptist principle, with Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message describing the church as a “local congregation of baptized believers”; and
- WHEREAS, A New Testament church is composed only of those who have been born again by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word, becoming disciples of Jesus Christ, the local church’s only Lord, by grace through faith (John 3:5; Ephesians 2:8-9), which church practices believers’ only baptism by immersion (Matthew 28:16-20), and the Lord’s supper (Matthew 26:26-30); and
- WHEREAS, Local associations, state conventions, and the Southern Baptist Convention compile statistics reported by the churches to make decisions for the future; and
- WHEREAS, the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention annual Church Profiles indicate that there are 16,266,920 members in Southern Baptist churches; and
- WHEREAS, Those same profiles indicate that only 6,148,868 of those members attend a primary worship service of their church in a typical week; and
- WHEREAS, The Scriptures admonish us to exercise church discipline as we seek to restore any professed brother or sister in Christ who has strayed from the truth and is in sin (Matthew 18:15-35; Galatians 6:1); and now, therefore, be it
- RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 10-11, 2008, urge churches to maintain a regenerate membership by acknowledging the necessity of spiritual regeneration and Christ’s lordship for all members; and be it further
- RESOLVED, That we humbly urge our churches to maintain accurate membership rolls for the purpose of fostering ministry and accountability among all members of the congregation; and be it further
- RESOLVED, That we urge the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention to repent of the failure among us to live up to our professed commitment to regenerate church membership and any failure to obey Jesus Christ in the practice of lovingly correcting wayward church members (Matthew 18:15-18); and be it further
- RESOLVED, That we humbly encourage denominational servants to support and encourage churches that seek to recover and implement our Savior’s teachings on church discipline, even if such efforts result in the reduction in the number of members that are reported in those churches, and be it finally
- RESOLVED, That we humbly urge the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention and their pastors to implement a plan to minister to, counsel, and restore wayward church members based upon the commands and principles given in Scripture (Matthew 18:15-35; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15; Galatians 6:1; James 5:19-20)
How Do I Respond to God?
June 5, 2008
In the sermon text for this coming Sunday, God says that missionaries will bring “all your brethren from all the nations as a grain offering to the LORD” (Isaiah 66:20 NAS). In this context, the grain offering is a particularly powerful symbol. Unfortunately, I doubt that I will have time to bring out the rich imagery of this offering on Sunday. So here is an excerpt from a sermon I preached ten years ago on this offering. You can see the entire sermon - about twice as long - here. May we present ourselves - all of ourselves - as this type of offering, holy and acceptable to God - Coty
How should we respond to God’s love? The grain offering described in Leviticus 2 pictures our proper response beautifully.
In this offering, God shows us that we should respond to His love by offering our entire lives back to him. And He shows that a life holy and acceptable to God is not the result of our naturally sweet disposition; there should be no self-glorification, no pride in our status before God. Instead, a life offered to God needs to be characterized by prayer, infused with the Holy Spirit, and based on the promises of God
This is the picture of the grain offering. Let’s look at now in greater detail.
God gives us the first clue to the meaning of the offering in Leviticus 2:1. If you check different translations, you will find this offering is called the “meat” offering (since in the early 1600’s “meat” simply meant any type of sustaining food), the grain offering, the meal offering, or the cereal offering. But in Hebrew, none of those different descriptive words is included in the name of the offering!
Young’s literal translation captures the Hebrew well: “When a person bringeth near an offering, a present to Jehovah . . .”
You see the difference? God’s title for this offering is, in effect, the Present Offering. This offering is our gift, our present to God. We are told later that it consists of grain, and so most translators have avoided the seemingly redundant name, “Present Offering.” But in so doing they have hidden from readers this first, important clue to God’s purpose for this offering.
The other distinctives in the selection of the offering clarify its meaning.
First, the offering is of grain, which in Palestine at this time would be wheat or barley. Several differing forms of preparing the grain are allowed. In effect, God is saying He doesn’t care about the exact form, as long as the Present Offering consists of the staple food of the Israelites.
We Americans have a hard time understanding staple foods. The Israelites — like the majority of people living in the world today — consumed more than half of their calories and probably more than 40% of their protein from their staple food.
I well remember my first week in western Kenya 31 years ago, when a student asked me, “What is your staple food?” I was puzzled; the idea of a staple food had never occurred to me. I told him our staple was wheat, but that was wrong. The correct answer is that we don’t have a staple food; no one food provides a large percentage of our total calories. But my friends in western Kenya are much like the ancient Israelites: their diet has little variety, as most eat a dough made from cornmeal boiled in water — ugali — every meal, every day, 365 days a year. Indeed, the Luhya people in western Kenya have a saying: “If I haven’t eaten ugali, I haven’t eaten.”
This puts a whole new meaning to the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Many Kenyans are walking ugali — really! Their hair, their skin, their muscles — most of their substance at one point in the past was a piece of corn.
Now, the Israelites were similar. For the common Israelite, meat would have been a delicacy, eaten on special occasions but not every day. Wheat and barley, however, they would eat daily, so that to offer grain was to offer themselves, their daily life; it was to offer what they consist of.
So the grain offering pictures my giving my daily life, my usual self to God.
Even though this is a picture of our daily life, the Israelites could not bring any wheat and barley to God. In the rest of chapter 2 God lays out six requirements for the Present Offering: four items that must be included, and two items that must be excluded from the offering. Let us examine each of those in turn:
Fine Flour
First, the Present Offering must be made of fine flour. Fine flour would differ from normal flour in two ways: it would be ground longer, and thus be consistently fine, and it would be sifted to remove the bran, stones, and any other impurities.
Now, if the Present Offering pictures the offering of our daily life to God, the requirement of fine flour is a picture of our need to be holy. Like the flour, God asks for a life that is consistent and balanced, rather than inconsistent and lumpy. He doesn’t accept an offering full of stones and weevil parts; He wants a life set apart to him, He wants a life lived up to its potential, as day after day we glorify Him.
Who can live a life like that? None of us can on our own; God’s command, “Be holy, for I am holy” is a demand we cannot meet. But remember, these offerings are God’s provision for our weakness. All these offerings point to Jesus as the example for us to follow, the power within us enabling us to live a holy life, and the perfect person with whom we are identified. Jesus did indeed live this perfectly balanced and consistent life; Jesus offered up to God a life with no impurities. And when we receive Jesus as Savior and Lord, we become identified with Him, so that we can stand holy and blameless before God.
Frankincense
Second, the flour is to be mixed with frankincense. The priest is to burn this incense completely with a portion of the flour or bread, producing a sweet, pleasing aroma before God.
What does the incense picture? As always, we use Scripture to interpret Scripture. Consider Psalm 141:2
May my prayer be counted as incense before you; The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.
We see similar images elsewhere, such as Revelation 5:8
The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
In each case, incense represents our prayers. Now that’s a wonderful image, isn’t it? Just as the smoke of burning incense rises up, filling a room with its pleasant aroma, so our prayers rise up to God, pleasing Him.
The incense in the Present Offering thus pictures prayer in our daily lives. As we offer ourselves to God, we are to have hearts that praise him in all circumstances, lives lived out in constant, conscious dependence upon him. Our contact with the Father is to be continuous — and this pleases God. When we praise and magnify the Lord, when we turn to Him in the midst of our difficulties, we please Him greatly.
Oil
All grain offerings were to include oil. Note verses 5 and 6:
And if your offering is a grain offering made on the griddle, it shall be of fine flour, unleavened, mixed with oil; 6 you shall break it into bits, and pour oil on it; it is a grain offering.
Remember that Samuel anoints Saul and David as king by pouring oil on their heads. And, as we will find out later in Leviticus, oil is poured on the priests at the time of their consecration.
What does this represent?
The oil pictures the Holy Spirit. Samuel was acting out the Holy Spirit coming upon Saul and David for the important task of kingship. Similarly, the priests need the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill their responsibilities before the Lord. Just so, if our lives are to be pleasing to God, they must be characterized by dependence on the Holy Spirit.
Salt
The fourth required element in the Present Offering is salt. Consider verse 13:
Every grain offering of yours, moreover, you shall season with salt, so that the salt of the covenant of your God shall not be lacking from your grain offering; with all your offerings you shall offer salt.
We use salt today primarily to flavor our food, but before the age of refrigeration, salt was mainly a preservative. Meat spoiled in a couple of days if it was not salted. So salt is a symbol of permanence.
God does not leave much to our imagination here, as he labels this as “the salt of the covenant.” Salt was used at the time of making covenants, making promises, again as a symbol of permanence.
So as we offer ourselves to God, we are to be seasoned with salt. We are to depend on God’s eternal covenant with His people, His unfailing promises to us. This is not a relationship that we flit in and out of; God has called us to Himself from the beginning, and His promises never fail; just so, we need to acknowledge that we are His forever, and that our commitment to Him is everlasting.
In addition to these four required items, God forbids the presence of leaven and honey in the offering. Consider verses 11 and 12:
11 ‘No grain offering, which you bring to the LORD, shall be made with leaven, for you shall not offer up in smoke any leaven or any honey as an offering by fire to the LORD. 12 ‘As an offering of first fruits, you shall bring them to the LORD, but they shall not ascend for a soothing aroma on the altar. (NASB)
Leaven
“Leaven” is sometimes translated, correctly, as “yeast,” but don’t think of the tiny brown balls that come out of a Fleischmann’s envelope. Yeast at this time was sourdough, usually left over from the previous baking. The baker takes the sourdough starter and mixes it with the rest of the dough. As the natural yeast feeds on the starch, spreads throughout all the dough, giving off carbon dioxide, causing the bread to puff up and rise.
In the New Testament, Jesus tells His disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees. This is explained in different passages as both their teaching and their hypocrisy. A little bit of legalism, a little bit of hypocrisy, can flavor your entire life, making it unfit for a sacrifice to God.
So leaven pictures the tainting of our lives with what seems to be small, but spoils it entirely. Even a little bit of pride, of thinking that we deserve what we have, spoils our offering to God. We must come to him completely humble, completely dependent upon God’s goodness for our standing before God.
Honey
Finally, verse 11 tells us that no grain offering is to contain honey. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with honey — God reminds the Israelites that honey is to be offered as first fruits, thanking God for his provision. And the dietary restrictions contained in chapter 11 do not forbid the eating of honey. But it is not to be offered up as part of the Present Offering. Why?
Some have suggested that honey is representative of our natural sweetness, of our natural abilities and dispositions. When we present ourselves before God, we do so not on the basis of our natural sweetness, our natural selves, our natural talents. Jesus tells us, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” If we come before God depending upon who we are, depending upon our disposition, our talents, then we are saying that there is something worthy of his attention in us. Instead, we are to come before God only in response to His undeserved love.
So the Present Offering is a picture of our responding to God’s love by offering our daily lives to Him.
Conclusion
God’s love for you is deeper and more profound than the best human love. How will you respond?
Romans 12:1 tells us how to respond.
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Given the great mercies of God, given His great love for us, given that He has chosen us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight, the only logical thing to do is to respond! The only logical thing to do is to offer ourselves back to Him, to offer Him even the daily grind of our lives, to make holy every single thing we do every day, as we glorify Him in our lives.
Present your life to him, all of your self, the very stuff you are made of!
- Present Him a life bathed in prayer and praise;
- Present Him a life based on His promises;
- Present Him a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit;
- Present Him a life not based on natural sweetness or abilities, but a life lived in dependence upon Him, devoted to accomplishing His purposes for you in this world.
This is the grain offering, the Present Offering, the presenting of yourself fully to God. We are to say, “You have made me to be Yours; here I am! I have come to do your will! Take me! Use me for Your glory.”
