Forgiveness as a Process

SERMON: 2013-10-27--ac13111--forgiveness-as-a-process-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:54:41.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: The material transitions from spoken pastoral application (Candidate 5) into structured hymn lyrics/singing (starting with Candidate 6: 'Just as I am without one plea...'), marking the end of the sermon and the beginning of musical content. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:50:23.300-00:54:38.860 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, I put it out last week that, in my personal opinion, one of the most moving scenes in the story of Joseph is that scene where he finally reveals himself to his brothers. And the operative word there is the word "finally" because if you're familiar with the story, you will know that even though he immediately recognized his brothers when they came to him looking for grain, they did not recognize him. And he was in no big hurry to tell them that he was their brother Joseph. In fact, what he did is he put them through a whole series of tests that are described for us in chapters 42, 43, and 44. Those tests can perhaps best be summarized like this. First of all, he accused them of being spies. Genesis 42, verse 9, "You are spies, you have come to see where our land is unprotected." Three times in that chapter, if I add them up correctly, he accuses them of being spies and then he throws them all in jail. And there he keeps them for three days. Then when he releases them from prison and he sends them back home, he tells them to come back with their younger brother, Benjamin. Remember now, Benjamin is Joseph's full brother. He is also with Joseph the son of Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel. And just to make sure they come back with Benjamin, he takes Simeon and he keeps him back as hostage. And so they go back home with their grain, they prevail on Father Jacob, who is deeply troubled that his second favorite son is now going to run the risk of losing his life. But eventually they run out of grain and so they go back to Egypt with Benjamin in tow. And then Joseph throws them this huge feast and he arranges them all in order of their age. Imagine the freak out. That would give them because they have no clue what is going on. Benjamin gets five times as much food as anybody else, that makes me wonder how much of an appetite that dude had. Then comes the final test. They get their bags of grain, their silver is again put in the bag as before, that's all part of the narrative, but then in Joseph's bag or in Benjamin's bag he puts his cup, his silver cup. So sends them back home, no sooner are they out of sight than he turns to his steward and he says go after them and find out in whose bag is my silver cup. And of course you know the story, it's Benjamin's bag. So the steward wants to take Benjamin back to Joseph while he lets everybody else go on but his brothers by now have learned their lesson. They all come tromping back to Joseph and they refuse to sell out their younger brother Benjamin. And it is in that context then when he has put them to the test and he knows they are changed men, that he finally reveals himself to them. He says in Genesis 45 for I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. And the purpose of this test then was to find out have my brothers changed? Do they hate Benjamin as much as they have hated me? And are they as careless about their father's feelings as they were when they sold me into slavery? And obviously they sustained the test, they demonstrated that they were changed people and so now Joseph could no longer contain his emotions and he reveals his true identity to them. And from that is I think a second lesson that I want us to learn this morning from the story of Joseph and that is this, forgiveness and reconciliation, the two are not the same as perhaps we'll have occasion to see, but forgiveness and reconciliation are both a process. That is to say it takes time to ensure that it has been properly completed. Perhaps you will have discovered as I have over the years that forgiveness for a lot of God's people is problematic in the sense that we know it is a Christian virtue. We know that we are to extend forgiveness to one another in those places where we have been injured. We know that God in Christ is supposed to give us grace to do that. And as best as we can we often say that we forgive, but truth of the matter is it is remarkably difficult, isn't that true? It is remarkably difficult to let bygones be bygones and to let forgiveness truly be completed. I will never forget, first church, we had two men who were at odds with each other. And every time communion came up, because they knew they were supposed to walk in forgiveness, they would shake hands and make up and as soon as communion was over, they went back to hating each other and this went on for years and years and years. And the reason for that is that forgiveness is in fact a process. And what I want to do in the time that we have this morning is try to walk you through this chart, there is a copy of it in your bulletins. I want you to take that out if you please. It's got today's scripture reading on one side, the chart is on the other side. You have to have pretty good eyesight to be able to read that. But I want to take some time to walk through it. It's one of the most helpful charts I have ever seen in terms of walking out the process of forgiveness. If you have been reading my book on Joseph, you will know it's reproduced there. It's also in a couple of the other books that I've published earlier. But it's very helpful to understand how forgiveness works and how you can tell that forgiveness has really been accomplished. So let me walk you through it piece by piece, beginning in the bottom left-hand corner with the offensive event. An offensive event is that place where we do anything to one another that produces hurt or anger. It's a place where we sin against each other. It can be a major thing, such as you killed my child, or you burned down my house, or you caused me to lose all my possessions. It can be a relatively minor thing, such as I walked into the room and you didn't acknowledge me, or you didn't say hello to me, or you hurt my feelings by that particular remark. It can be real, or it can be imagined. Real is if the event actually happened and I really did to you what you think I did to you. Imagined, of course, there are many things that people think people are doing to them that don't in fact happen at all. It's just totally coincidental and it's not aimed at you at all. I'll never forget, years ago, one of my elders, first church I pastored, was furious with me because I had passed him on the road and I had not waved to him. The reality was I didn't see him. I was trying to keep my eye on the road, thank you very much, but he thought I slighted him and deliberately ignored him, which wasn't true at all. Whatever the case, offense produces hurt and it produces anger. Let's have that slide up. Hurt and anger, and the degree to which hurt and anger happen in light of an offense, and this is really important, is determined, keep that slide up please, is determined by two additional factors, one on behalf of the offended person and another on behalf of the offender. At the risk of belaboring this, I think this is just so important and so helpful, I'm going to take a little bit of time this morning and walk you through each of the four factors under each one of those, beginning then with the offended factor. Let's begin with the fact that one of the first conditions that determines the degree to which we are wounded by the actions of another person is our respective commitment to the relationship, and as a general rule, it's safe to say that the closer we are to each other, the greater is the power to hurt each other. Strangers, at least emotionally, seldom hurt us in the way that a loved one can, and the reason for that is not hard to figure out. The closer you are in relationship, the more open your hearts are to each other, the less your defenses are up, the more you know each other, and the more you know exactly what buttons to push to get a rise out of the other person, isn't that true? And so if you look at your life and the lives of people around you, most conflicts that produce hurt and anger are in close relationships, and I would include in that family, business relationships, and I would add to that church community, because you see in church community we're supposed to be family. We open up our hearts to God, we open up our hearts to each other, and the result is that not infrequently we step on each other's toes. How many of you here would say that at some point in your life you have been offended by something somebody in the body of Christ said or did to you? Can I have a show of hands? How many of you think you might have stabbed somebody in that process? Well, we're honest. We're honest. I'll never forget, years ago the Lord gave us the slogan, "Maranatha, a place to belong." Remember that? In the old building we had big poster hanging up front, beautiful poster. Never imagined the emotions that would stir in the hearts and lives of some people. Because what it did in retrospect, it connected with the deep longings that so many of us have to belong and to be part of community, and it raised levels of expectations of what that was going to look like. And then when sometimes those expectations were not met, because we are sinful people living in a sinful world, it produced hurt, and in some cases produced anger. You see, the degree of hurt and anger is determined by the closeness of the relationship. My wife can hurt me much more than my mailman ever can. So that's a condition that's very important to understand. Second one in that list is a thing called ego strength. And ego strength is what we talked about last week in connection with Joseph. Ego strength is not just having a thick skin that makes you immune to criticism. Ego strength is all about how solid you are at the core of your being. And Joseph, because he was loved by his father and knew the presence of God in an unusual way, Joseph was solid to the core of his being. And the more solid you are, the less you are influenced by people around you, the less you are impacted by what they say and by what they do, because you know who you are, you know whose you are, and you can stand before God. And the opposite is true too. The lower your ego strength, the more you are at the mercy of people around you. And people who grow thick skin are often very sensitive people who have learned to build walls around them so they will not get hurt by the hustle and the bustle of life and relationships. But get past those walls, and you discover that we live in a world where many, many people are fragile. So the more fragile you are, the more you take to heart what is being said and done, and the greater will be your hurt, and the greater will by times be your anger. Third one on the list then is decision to forgive. Forgiveness never happens automatically. It is a choice that we need to make, and we need to make it again and again and again. As I've often said, whenever we are in a situation where somebody has hurt us or where we have become angry, we are confronted by one of two choices. We can hold on to that hurt and anger, and we can nurture it. We can dwell on it. We can amplify it. We can brood on it. We can bring other people in on the picture, and the more we do, the deeper it will go, and the more we will become captive to Satan's power. Because Satan's strategy is to try to get us lost in injustices so that we think we are righteous in our cause and we are justified in our actions. And that's why the Apostle Paul talks about that in Ephesians 4.26 and 27. He says, "Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger." And then that last phrase, "Give no opportunity to the devil." Unresolved hurt and anger opens you up to the enemy who comes in like a flood, and when he comes in like a flood, it's extremely difficult to get rid of him. And all you need to do is look at your own life. If you have allowed unforgiveness, hurt or anger to fester, it begins to taste mightily good, and you take delight in feeling the way that you're feeling, and before you're very far down that road, you are convinced that you're right, everybody else is wrong, and you're waiting for the whole world to come and kneel at your feet to say that it's okay, is that true? Yes? Am I the only one that ever feels that way? No, no. This is how humanity works. And so, the other option that I have is to forgive. But forgiveness has to be rooted in the fact that this is what God desires for me, and this is what God has extended to me, and therefore I, in turn, can also forgive. And that robs the devil of that groundwork that he lays in our lives to take us captive. Second Corinthians, chapter 2, 10 and 11, Paul says, "What I have forgiven, I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us, for we are not unaware, we are not unaware of his schemes." Forgiveness doesn't mean condoning the sin, doesn't mean pretending that we haven't been injured, it doesn't mean saying that it is okay. Now, it is following the steps of God in saying that ultimately God is the judge of the living and the dead. It's not my job to play God, judge or jury, in somebody else's life. That is God's domain. God wants me to forgive. And it's interesting in that connection that here in chapter 50, when Joseph's brothers come to him the second time, just absolutely petrified that now that Jacob is dead, they're afraid Joseph is going to come after them all together, and of course you have Joseph weeping and then he says these words, "Don't be afraid, am I in the place of God." He knows it's not his job to judge, because you see God knows the heart, and you and I, when we enter into this process in our own strength and in our own wisdom, we just make a mess of it. In fact, we start a cycle of retribution. And I did a study one time of all the trouble spots in the world where you have these intractable wars that take place. And do you know that in almost every instance it is based on some sense and historical sense of injustice that has not been resolved and that has not been forgiven, and that becomes the fuel from generation to generation. Everybody loses and Satan's power is released in the destruction of vengeance and hatred. So the decision to forgive makes a big, big difference in terms of how deep our hurt and our anger goes. And the fourth one is a personal history of giving and receiving forgiveness. That is to say, our ability to forgive others is in direct proportion to how much forgiveness we have experienced, first of all, from God, and secondly, from other people around us. If we have experienced forgiveness, we know the freedom that comes along with it and how that can restore relationships. If we have never experienced forgiveness, if we have grown up in a family where you've got to pay for every mistake and every error and every slight, then we become vindictive. Don't know what forgiveness looks like. Think of forgiveness as weakness rather than strength. And so we pride ourselves in the fact that we are strong and we are never wrong and the hurt goes deeper and deeper and deeper. So that's one element in terms of the factors on the part of the offended party. Paul says this about it, "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgives you." As I said, the more we know that we have been forgiven, the less judgmental we are of others because we know what lives in our own hearts, and the easier it is for us to extend forgiveness as God has also forgiven us. All right. Then to the offender and on the offender's part, there are also four qualifiers that determine how deep the hurt and the anger will run. And the first one of that is the severity of the injury or the severity of the offense that is committed against me. Let me put it this way. Some of you here are housewives and let's suppose that you are a fastidious housewife. I mean, you like the place neat and you're married to a slob because we all know that opposites attract, right? And besides that, he's probably subconsciously rebelling against your neatness freakness. And so he goes out of his way to leave his stuff all over the place. So the wet towel is on the bed and the underwear is all through the bathroom and the toothpaste is not properly rolled and squeezed and Lord knows whatever else. Now if you're that kind of wife, chances are that in your household, a few tears have been shed about this because why? You take it personally. If he really loved you, then wouldn't he take your feelings into consideration? So yes, it causes hurt, causes anger and probably more than one or two little fights as the years go by. Now that's bad enough but that doesn't begin to compare to if you discover that for the last 10 years he's been carrying on an emotional or a sexual affair with your best friend behind your back. In the light of that, his dirty underwear pales in significance, wouldn't you say? Or let's suppose you have a kid and has gone to high school or college party and has come home sloshed and you're not accustomed to your kid losing control like that. And as a parent you're not entirely happy and you can take that personally because it's not only bad for you but you're making me look bad because I'm your parent. Doesn't begin to compare when he drinks and drives, gets into an accident and kills somebody and now is charged by the police. So the severity of the injury makes a huge difference in how easy or difficult it may be to forgive how deep the hurt goes or how deep goes the anger. Second one there is acknowledgement of wrong. Saying sorry doesn't always immediately fix every situation but saying I'm sorry and meaning it from the core of your heart goes a long ways in making it easier to forgive. Let me tell you a deep dark secret. I don't know if I've ever told this story. It's the story when my wife and I before we were married got into big trouble with a preacher. And here's how the story goes. The year was 1970. I had finished my first year of seminary and got sent out on summer assignment as many of you know to Frederick to New Brunswick where I met my wife Michelle was on a team of four or five girls from the Niagara Peninsula who were part of what was known as summer workshops in ministry program that time sponsored by the youth movement in our denomination. One is swim for short. And most of you know the story of when I saw her come down the plane I said that's going to be my wife. It took her three days to know that I existed but eventually we went out. But remember dating was not allowed. And so the challenge during those six weeks that we were together was to not let anybody know that we were interested in each other because that would upset the team dynamics with all the other girls. Right? I mean you've got to be wise and careful about that. So we did really well until the last night of the last week. The last week we were in charge of a youth camp and all of us had a cabin of kids I had a cabin of boys she had a cabin of girls and so did all the other team leaders mostly kids from the community. And I don't know how this happened. I really don't but somewhere along the line we got the idea that the last night of camp was a free for all that nobody went to bed and everybody ran wild. So what did we do? We left the kids in their cabins alone and she and I went off for a walk into the woods. Now you got a picture of this. This is all very innocent just so you're clear but we're out in the woods and our kids are raising havoc in camp. They are all over the place so much so that the preacher has to herd them back into their cabins asks the other counselors where are John and Michelle and the answer that he gets is they've gone off into the woods by themselves not a good answer. He was livid and to my shame I have to confess that we actually saw him looking for us with a flashlight, we're not so stupid as to come out of hiding at that particular point in time and so eventually he got all the kids quieted down and you know whatever else and we snuck back into our cabins and slept a very peaceful sleep until very early next morning. He comes walking into my cabin like an army drill sergeant and he says I want to see you in my cabin right now. I knew what was coming. So with fear and trepidation I go reporting to my drill sergeant and he gives it to me up one side and down the other, how could you leave these kids alone? They come out of bed, families, what kind of model are you demonstrating by going out and making out in the woods and all of that kind of little over the top I thought honestly but he was really, in case you haven't got it, he was really mad and this went on for quite a period of time and honestly I had no defense, I mean what are you going to say? So I just stood there and when he was finished I said you know, you're really right, I was wrong and I'm very sorry, took him a while to get over himself but it went a lot better than if I had said to him, here's my ten reasons why I did what I did and I'm justified in my actions. Sometimes you just have to know when you're at fault and own it and I love the way Jesus puts it in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, 25 and 26, he says settle matters quickly with your adversary who has taken you to court, do it while you are still with him on the way or he may hand you over to the judge and the judge may hand you over to the officer and you may be thrown into prison, I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny, saying I'm sorry and saying it as many times as you need to say it helps diminish the hurt and helps diminish the anger. And the third one in that category is intentionality, was it done on purpose or was it done accidentally? I remember when we were kids at home and we'd get into a situation where we broke something of mothers in the kitchen or we made a big mess and spilled whatever else and of course our response was always we didn't do it on purpose, right, I mean it was an accident which typically would be true and I'll never forget my mother saying in each of these situations and you'll have to forgive my Dutch here but her response would be, we would say listen I didn't do it on purpose, she would say, that zou er nog bij moeten komen ook, loosely translated it's very difficult because it's idiomatic, that would be adding insult to injury, in other words it was bad enough that it was accidentally that we did it but if we did it on purpose that would have been a thousand times worse and we all know situations, I would say that most of the time when people hurt each other in most situations it's accidental, it's thoughtless, it's careless, it's whatever but you know as well as I do that there are particular situations where particular people do particular things that are intentional and if you've ever been in a situation where somebody does something to you intentionally then that is much more difficult to forgive because there's an intent behind that that can really go deep because that becomes a personal rejection. All right moving on, one more in that list and that of course is frequency, does it keep happening? If my spouse is unfaithful to me once that is bad enough and may be hard to work through and hard to forgive but it is very different from repeated infidelity or if my spouse overspends one time and abuses the credit card that's very different if it is a repeated process because repeated processes destroy trust and so you've got all of those factors working together determining how deep the hurt goes and how deep goes the anger and let me say again it's very important to understand this because what it does is it explains why two people can live in virtually identical situations and have an entirely different outcome and an entirely different response. I've often heard the question I've often heard it said for example take two kids raised in the same broken family. One turns out to rise above it all and does well in life and isn't significantly or negatively impacted by it but another just goes down and down and down. You know families like that I know families like that they grow up in the same nest but one somehow rises above it and the other is overcome by it and sinks down under the load. Well those eight factors that we've just been talking about are definitive in determining what happens to me in that particular situation and that's why it's so important to understand this because I know parents over the years who have justified their actions towards their children by pointing out to the one kid who did well and that becomes proof that I've been a good parent never mind that there are seven others or however many who have gone down the tubes. Different people react differently because of the dynamics and the factors involved are different. You with me so far? Two more things that I want to mention before we wind up this morning and that is this. First of all notice that this whole process consists of a cycle. You'll notice that the offensive event produces hurt which produces anger and produces information gathering. Lord willing we'll come back to that in more detail next time. Information gathering means that you are trying to find answers as to the how's and the why's of what has happened and why it has happened. But then notice the arrows go backwards also after information gathering. You're back to anger and you're back to hurt. Here's a really important thing to understand. Let's say that your husband who has really hurt your wife and you've been gracious enough to say I'm sorry and you're hoping that that has fixed it but she keeps coming back to it again and again and again and you're frustrated because you said listen I've already told you I'm sorry I can't undo it why can't we let the matter rest isn't that a good typical male response. It is a cycle. The hurt produces anger produces questions I get answers to my questions and now my anger doesn't diminish it increases because now I know what you really did and now I am really mad at you for what you've done to me. And as I get angrier I feel the hurt all over again. And so this goes through the cycle however many times it needs to happen before it is finally totally released and it is here that God's people tend to short circuit the process thinking that once is good enough it seldom is depending on how deep it runs. Do you understand what I'm saying? Part of forgiveness is giving each other the space to let that process do the job until every question is answered all the anger has been bled off and all the hurt has been released only then can the rest of forgiveness truly be realized. So that's one thing I want us to notice the second thing I want us to notice yet is that there is a major obstacle to this whole process in that obstacle is called denial. Denial means refusing to acknowledge either the hurt or the anger. How many of us haven't found ourselves in situations where we have seen somebody hurt by somebody else and we try to be sympathetic and we say to them well you know that must have really hurt. And very often what do people say? Didn't bother me at all. And then there are people that we know are angry and we try to point out that maybe they should deal with their anger and they come at us and say I'm not angry that's your imagination man. And then of course they go on and they tell their tale of woe to the next ten people that they meet but they're not angry and they're not hurt. Well denial is refusing to be in touch with your hurt and refusing to be in touch with your anger. And there are multiple reasons why denial is such a powerful tool to keep us from resolving conflicts. One reason is because we're not in touch with our emotions or it takes time to be in touch with our emotions. I don't know about you but there are days when I feel a certain way after a certain thing has happened and I'm out of sorts and I don't quite know why I am out of sorts. Anybody here ever feel that way? You're just in a bad mood. You know you want to kick the dog in the camp and slam the door. And if somebody says to you you know what's the matter with you? You don't know because you really don't know. And it takes time to get in touch with feelings because feelings are incredibly complicated. And for Christians they're really complicated because for Christians there is a lot of shame associated with negative feelings. Is that true? We know we're supposed to be kind loving and forgiving and so doggone it if I have to kill myself to be that way that's what I will try to be. But you can't force yourself to being something other than what you are. And Christians need to realize that we have this treasure in earthen vessels. And Christians bleed just as easily as non-Christians do and they hurt just as badly as the pagans do and frankly they get just as mad and just as angry as the worst of the worst because we share a common humanity. And being a Christian doesn't mean that you're going to have a stiff upper lip all the time. Doesn't mean that you can pretend oh this didn't bother me or I'm not really angry when everything inside me says I'm angry. Part of being a Christian is that God is big enough to handle our emotions. If you don't believe that read the Psalms and you discover how miserably authentic the psalmist is in the middle of conflict and pain and confusion. But there's still a third reason why denial is such a powerful coping mechanism. And that is because the human psyche can only handle so much pain. And when that pain level is overloaded we disengage and we shut it out. And we all do that in varying degrees. We do that by not thinking about what has hurt us. In my situation when there is something that really deeply pains me and I'm trying to get in touch with my feelings I have to process it for two or three days before I can even afford to let my mind go there. And much as we see that explains why you've often heard the story of veterans that have come through war and they've experienced horrors beyond description and they'll never talk about it because it is simply too painful to put into words. And I've worked over the years with lots of people that have gone through childhood sexual or emotional abuse. And people who are really quite intelligent and creative whose systems have been overwhelmed by pain at a very early level in life have learned to shut it out to such a degree that very often they don't even remember what has happened. They just push it all away and life goes on and everything looks to be okay until something triggers their pain and they have to come to grips with the fact that all is not well in this house. So dealing with that is incredibly painful. It's often the last thing that God's people want to do. But you see every place where you and I shut down we lose the ability to give the positive to the other people in our lives. And you've often heard me say if you don't want to deal with your crud for your own sake then do so for the sake of your children or the sake of your grandchildren because they're the ones who have to live with the fact that you're not living fully and aren't able to give expression to the deepest parts of your life. And so it is. That when we come to faith in Christ, particularly when we say Lord I want to grow up and I want to be like Jesus. God takes us at our word. He breaks down the walls of dissociation. He breaks down the walls of denial and we begin to connect with the hurt and we begin to connect with the anger and the questions start coming to the foreground. That is not a bad thing. That is a good thing because God is trying to release the poison. He is trying to conform us to the image of Christ and the image of Christ is that we should walk in love even as he does. And so you can be assured that if you're serious about following Jesus if there are unresolved places of hurt or unresolved places of anger they're going to flush out when God triggers those memories and all of a sudden you find yourself back there in ways that you could not possibly imagine. You see somebody mistreating a child in the grocery store and all of a sudden you're back to that beating that you received when you were three years old. Or you see a scene in a movie. Nobody else catches it but it goes through all your defenses and it hits a spot deep inside you and you are undone, paralyzed, unable to move because the Holy Spirit is cleaning it out. The beauty is that God is very good at what he does. And in all my years of helping people or trying to help people walk through this I have never seen anybody repeat the same thing twice. It often feels like it but there are always deeper levels until all the toxin has been removed [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:50:23.300; remove through 00:54:41.000] and we can freely love and [CUT] forgive the way that God in Christ has forgiven us. Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am, I'm waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blood, to thee whose blood can cleanse each spot, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am all tossed about, with many a call, with many a doubt, fighting and fears will be thinned without a Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am for it shed my side which has been me all the life, and all I need is thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am thou wilt receive, will welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve, because thy promise I believe, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:54:41.000; resume after this marked segment]