Let me share a good thing. Sometimes I get scared. For example, last Saturday I started to fret about the Saturday evening service—would anybody come on this third week?

I finished my service preparations about mid-afternoon and then devoted time to preparing for the Sunday evening service. About 4:00 PM I felt the need to stop working on the theological problems for Sunday night and simply try to get my soul ready for the Saturday evening ministry.

I sought the Lord concerning how I might do this most effectively. It seemed good to take a book of Scripture and pray through it. I chose the book of Ephesians because of the great passages that related to the weekend's messages on God's sovereign grace. I chose a version that I don't usually read. I made a clearing on my desk for book and elbows and began.

For about an hour I listened to the Lord and spoke to the Lord. I simply read slowly—like when you try to make a good dessert last longer by taking little bites. And I stopped often to savor—for instance, when he said to me that his purpose for me was to spend all the coming ages showing me the incomparable riches of his grace (Ephesians 2:7).

There came over me in that hour a deep peace. The fretting disappeared like the space shuttle getting smaller and smaller as it sinks into the vastness of space. O, the vastness of the power and grace of God! O, how infinite and unshakable his omnipotent kindness to us in Christ Jesus!

I felt as I walked over the bridge to the church that my God was the most real thing in the world. Nothing mattered but being known by him, being destined, being called, being justified, being glorified. I felt as though I weighed two ounces and stood in the sun on a mountain of granite ten thousand miles thick.

What words can express our debt for the Word!

Beckoning you all to clear a place for the elbows and the Book,

Pastor John