August 4, 2004

Reading through the Bible in one Year: 1 Thessalonians 4-5

Weekly Memory Verse: Romans 8:26-27

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

Romans 9:1-5 (NASB95)
¹ I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, ² that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. ³ For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, ⁴ who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, ⁵ whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. ^[1]

In the last chapter, Paul had finished with the thought regarding being elected, or predestined as believes.  He carries the thought forward in this chapter relating to how the Jews were his kinsmen, and they were elected as sons.  Paul's heart was toward the Jews, his first desire was to lead all the Jewish brothers to come to know their messiah.  Paul states that he wishes he could give up his own salvation, if they would just listen to the Gospel. 

The Messiah, Jesus Christ came to save the Jewish people just as the Old Testament prophecies had predicted.  The Law and the Prophets looked forward to the coming Messiah, and many things in the Old Testament were shadows, and examples of what the Messiah would be like when He came.  Paul was greatly distressed when the Jewish people rejected Jesus as Messiah.

Exodus 4:22 (NASB95)
²² “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Israel is My son, My firstborn.

Hosea 11:1 (NASB95)
¹ When Israel was a youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.

Genesis 15:18 (NASB95)
¹⁸ On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates:

2 Samuel 7:11-16 (NASB95)
¹¹ even from the day that I commanded judges to be over My people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. The Lord also declares to you that the Lord will make a house for you. ¹² “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹³ “He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ¹⁴ “I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men, ¹⁵ but My lovingkindness shall not depart from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. ¹⁶ “Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.” ’ ” ^[2]

The term "Israelite" narrows the meaning of the passage, it takes the idea of being Jews from the general meaning of a race of people to the meaning of a people who were constantly under God throughout their history.  It causes you to think back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their story.  It causes you to consider the story of the captivity in Egypt, the great deliverance, and the exodus.  It causes you to remember all the problems and the victories that are listed through the Old Testament.  In short, it causes you to think of a people that God rules over.  Israelite indicates that it is all about God, not about the people.  The very term "Messiah" indicates "the anointed one" that was promised and prophesied about.

Romans 9:6-13 (NASB95)
⁶ But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; ⁷ nor are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.” ⁸ That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. ⁹ For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.” ¹⁰ And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; ¹¹ for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls, ¹² it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.” ¹³ Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” ^[3]

Paul narrows the thought here, considering the fact that the Jews had rejected their Messiah as a whole, but there was a blessing in disguise.  Just because the Jews had the heritage of the Israelites behind them did not make them automatically Israelites!  The Israelites lived a life of faith looking forward to a fellowship with God just as it had started with Abraham.  Paul indicates that the Israelites originated in the idea of faith.  We have been studying Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in our Genesis study, and we have covered the intense way that they believed God and acted upon His promises to them.  You cannot study the life of Abraham without noticing that faith set him apart from the rest of his world. 

Hebrews 11:1-2 (NASB95)
¹ Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ² For by it the men of old gained approval. ^[4]

Faith set the Israelites apart from the other nations.  It was an act of believing the one God who is all powerful and over all, then acting upon the belief as if it were true.  For a picture of what faith is, read through Hebrews 11, then look back in your cross references at the people that are mentioned in that chapter and check out their stories.

Verse 8 narrows down Paul’s argument going back to the beginning.  Paul goes back to what set Abraham and Isaac apart from the rest of the world.  They believed on the promise of God and acted upon that promise.  (For more information on this, check out the archived studies on Genesis.)  When God told Abraham to move, he went, when God told Abraham he would be a father at an old age, Abraham believed Him.  When God told Isaac that he would be a father, Isaac waited for over 20 years to have a set of twins at the age of 60, he believed God.  The issue with these men was that they really believed God, they had faith in His word and treated it as if it were reality in their lives, even when it wasn't. 

Paul's argument in this chapter clarifies that to be an Israelite does not mean that a person has inherited this trait.  There were many in the Old Testament who were born Israelites, and went astray that God made a point of killing off.  Consider the people during the exodus that turned to idols, and God killed them, consider another time that God caused the earth to split and took a large number to sheol, or hell.  Paul is establishing that just to be a Jew by heritage did not give them the privilege of being God's children by faith.

The argument is continued later in this chapter establishing that being a child of faith is being a child of Abraham.  He was the father of faith, and everyone who believes in God becomes a member of Abraham's promised children.  Think about it this way, when you accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, the Bible teaches that your old dead life is thrown away and cast off.  It is replaced with a new life that Jesus puts in you.  This is the meaning of being "born again".  Our old life of the world and of the flesh no longer applies, the new life that is born of the Jewish God Jesus, is Jewish in nature because Jesus is the Jewish God.  In short, old life is buried in the grave, crucified on the cross with Jesus, and the new life of faith rose with Him from the dead.  The life in Christians is the life of the risen Messiah, Jesus. 

I am going to close here, more can be said on this, but we have enough to chew on today. 

Father, as we consider that we are children of promise through Abraham, put the passion in our hearts to act like it.

In Him,

Joe Turner.

August 5, 2004

Reading through the Bible in one Year: John 3-4

Weekly Memory Verse: Romans 8:26-27

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

Romans 9:14-18 (NASB95)
¹⁴ What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! ¹⁵ For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” ¹⁶ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. ¹⁷ For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” ¹⁸ So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. ^[1]

The question almost seems goofy, but as you look at the logic that Paul has been using, it is a valid question.  God did not choose the firstborn to follow the procedures of man, He chose his people according to their faith in Him.  This was contrary to the way that men thought, and caused heartache for the firstborn and their descendents.  The thing to remember is that God's ways is not our ways, His design of divine election is not according to our understanding, it is according to grace. 

Romans 3:10-18 (NASB95)
¹⁰ as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; ¹¹ There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; ¹² All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” ¹³ “Their throat is an open grave, With their tongues they keep deceiving,” “The poison of asps is under their lips”; ¹⁴ “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”; ¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood, ¹⁶ Destruction and misery are in their paths, ¹⁷ And the path of peace they have not known.” ¹⁸ “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Exodus 33:19-23 (NASB95)
¹⁹ And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” ²⁰ But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” ²¹ Then the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; ²² and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. ²³ “Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.”^[2]

None are found righteous, therefore if getting to heaven depended upon good works, or deeds of righteousness, God would be in heaven by Himself.  Nobody would make it. 

The reference that he quotes is from Exodus 33 where God has Moses up on the mountain and He passes before Moses when He hides Moses in the rock.  This is interesting because at the same time, Israel is down in the valley repenting after making a golden calf to worship.  Moses had just displayed a tremendous act of anger and had destroyed the tablets that God had written on for him.  Israel had just experienced about 3000 of their people being slaughtered due to the golden calf.  It was a dark time in the history of Israel, yet it was a bright time because God verified that He had called them. 

Exodus 9:13-17 (NASB95)
¹³ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me. ¹⁴ “For this time I will send all My plagues on you and your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like Me in all the earth. ¹⁵ “For if by now I had put forth My hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, you would then have been cut off from the earth. ¹⁶ “But, indeed, for this reason I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. ¹⁷ “Still you exalt yourself against My people by not letting them go.^[3]

Have you ever considered that God even elected to allow the unrighteous and obviously not Jewish Pharaoh to live?  Pharaoh didn't have a clue as to the way that God had allowed him to come into power, or the intentions of God for his life.  God made it clear that He was disappointed in Pharaoh’s actions.  The rest of the story about the plagues is a demonstration of how that God hardened his heart.  Yet consider this, God is responsible for allowing Pharaoh to live.  Therefore, since God elected Pharaoh to power, He also permitted him to make bad choices, which by default means that God hardened his heart. 

Romans 9:19-22 (NASB95)
¹⁹ You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” ²⁰ On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? ²¹ Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? ²² What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? ^[4]

Continuing the same logical step, if God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, then God must be involved in every single person's life on earth, whether he knows God or not.  God created each person unique, and allows each one of us to make decisions on our own.  He has elected where we will ultimately end up in our lives because when He observes man not following the right path and allows him to continue down that path, in a way God is responsible.  God could kill them, or divinely reveal Himself to them, correcting their error, but God does not work that way. 

Pauls argument makes a strong case for the predestination view where God only chose the elect, therefore He also chose who was going to hell.  Yet how can this be?  Didn't God give each man a choice as to where He could accept or reject Him?  God also gave man free will where he could choose whether he follows God or not. 

In these verses though, that is not what is addressed, God placed each person where he or she is at.  Every one of us is created unique with a unique set of parents and unique circumstances in our lives which make us what we are.  God elected for us to be born of the parents that we came from, and He set up the parameters of our lives, just as a potter works the jar of clay.  We cannot tell God to unmake us, or to have us born of different parents, or even to change our race.  We are created unique and special in God's sight for whatever use that He elects us to have in our lives.

Pharaoh made a choice not to follow God's design, and opted for filling his own desires.  We also make the same decisions in our lives.  Paul was addressing the Jews here informing them that God had created them and had made them special.  They had no choice in being Jewish, God made them that way, but God does have the ability to either save or destroy each man. 

Notice, the vessel does not have the right to ask God why he was made the way he was.  But the vessel does have the the right to decide if He is going to live according to God's design and if He is going to follow God.  If the vessel chooses to live a life that is against God's design he will be destroyed, yet if the vessel lives life according to God's design then he will be kept forever. 

The Bible Exposition Commentary makes an interesting note on this, both Pharaoh and Moses were murderers, both saw God's mighty wonders, yet Moses chose to follow God and Pharaoh chose not to follow God.  They were on equal ground.

I hope that my rambling made sense today, I am going to close here.  It looks as if I will be going back to work pretty quickly and need to take a nap.  If you have any comments that you would like to add, please write in.

Father, as we consider Your words, and ponder the meaning of divine election, help each one of understand the mysteries of Your word.

In Him,

Joe Turner.

Hi Erik,

I agree with what you stated in your letter, and concur that a lack of rest probably added to the confusion regarding the passage.  I have been working weird hours, without much rest in between, and even that has been disrupted by my internal clock, working nights and sleeping days is hard for me.  But that is no excuse.

When I read through your letter today, I understand what set off the emotions, and realize that hardening of the heart is very confusing, and it steps back into the argument that was raised concerning predestination.  Rather than defend my position, I am going to send along the reference that I pondered over as I studied the passage:

“God’s Righteousness (Rom. 9:14–18)

The fact that God chose one and not the other seems to indicate that He is unrighteous. “Is there unrighteousness with God?” Paul asked; and then he replied, “God forbid!” It is unthinkable that the holy God should ever commit an unrighteous act. Election is always totally a matter of grace. If God acted only on the basis of righteousness, nobody would ever be saved. Paul quoted Exodus 33:19 to show that God’s mercy and compassion are extended according to God’s will and not man’s will. All of us deserve condemnation—not mercy. The reference in Exodus 33 deals with Israel’s idolatry while Moses was on the mount receiving the Law. The whole nation deserved to be destroyed, yet God killed only 3,000 people—not because they were more wicked or less godly, but purely because of His grace and mercy.

Paul then quoted Exodus 9:16, using Pharaoh as an illustration. Moses was a Jew, Pharaoh was a Gentile; yet both were sinners. In fact, both were murderers! Both saw God’s wonders. Yet Moses was saved and Pharaoh was lost. God raised up Pharaoh that He might reveal His glory and power; and He had mercy on Moses that He might use him to deliver the people of Israel. Pharaoh was a ruler, and Moses was a slave; yet it was Moses who experienced the mercy and compassion of God—because God willed it that way. God is sovereign in His work and acts according to His own will and purposes. So it was not a matter of righteousness but of the sovereign will of God.

God is holy and must punish sin; but God is loving and desires to save sinners. If everybody is saved, it would deny His holiness; but if everybody is lost, it would deny His love. The solution to the problem is God’s sovereign election.

A seminary professor once said to me, “Try to explain election, and you may lose your mind; but explain it away and you will lose your soul!”

God chose Israel and condemned Egypt, because this was His sovereign purpose. Nobody can condemn God for the way He extends His mercy, because God is righteous.

Before leaving this section, we need to discuss the “hardening” of Pharaoh (Rom. 9:18). This hardening process is referred to at least fifteen times in Exodus 7–14. Sometimes we are told that Pharaoh hardened his heart (Ex. 8:15, 19, 32), and other times that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27). By declaring His Word and revealing His power, God gave Pharaoh opportunity to repent; but instead, Pharaoh resisted God and hardened his heart. The fault lay not with God but Pharaoh. The same sunlight that melts the ice also hardens the clay. God was not unrighteous in His dealings with Pharaoh because He gave him many opportunities to repent and believe.”^[1]

Considering this reference and the mystery of divine election, I agree with you that God hardens the heart of those who sin.  But, the sinner also chooses to disobey God, thus making the decision to harden his own heart.  As Weirsbe pointed out, the fault was on Pharaoh’s side, not on God’s.  He is righteous and issues judgment when it is deemed necessary. 

You are also correct in the point that the pot cannot make a decision to be what it is.  I agree with you also that I pulled the passage out of context.  I apologize for that, and I feel that the way I approached it demonstrated that I was struggling with the passage and trying to understand it.  Praise God that you were sensitive to the trouble that I was having and sent in your comments.  I hope that none were confused by my musings.  Consider this:

“The grammatical structure of vv. 22–24 is difficult.³⁰ The NIV has chosen to separate the final clause of v. 22 along with all of v. 23 from the narrative both before and after. As a result, v. 24 would explain that even believers were at one time “objects of wrath.”³¹ Even though God has mercy on whom he chooses to have mercy, those who turn to him in faith, both Jew and Gentile, find themselves called by God. Far from being an arbitrary despot, God allows those who believe to take their place as “objects of his mercy.””^[2]

As I continue to ponder your response, I am convinced that we are looking at the same coin from different sides.  Somewhere in the middle there is a balance, both views are just as correct, which makes the mystery of divine election so difficult to understand.  God placed in each man a wiggle which causes him to either accept Him or reject Him.  And God knows who will make the decision.  On one hand it could be said that Jesus died only for those who were to be saved because He knows which people will make that decision, in other words, divine selection.  On the other hand it can be said that Jesus died for everyone, and each person makes the decision to choose or reject Him.  The really difficult thing to understand is that both statements are true, God works in both directions at once in some kind of mysterious way that causes the blending of both views to work.  Yet if you take each view by itself, it cancels out the other.  Go figure.

Thanks for your response on this, I have learned a lot from your wisdom.

Joe.

August 5, 2004

Reading through the Bible in one Year: Leviticus 25-27

Weekly Memory Verse: Romans 8:26-27

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

I have attached a note from Erik at the bottom of the study.  It is loaded with excellent comments, be sure to read it.  I will also follow that note with a few comments.

Romans 9:23-26 (NASB95)
²³ And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. ²⁵ As He says also in Hosea, “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’ ” ²⁶ “And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

John 4:21-24 (NASB95)
²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²² “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. ²⁴ “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

John 4:42 (NASB95)
⁴² and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.” ^[1]

Paul noted that God did not just call the Jews, He also called the gentiles.  Jesus stated this when He spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well.  This had to be a shock to some of the Jewish community at his time.  One thing to notice though is that when Paul gave a radical new idea, he backed it up with scripture. 

Look at the promises that are contained in the words of Hosea though.  God calls Gentiles as "beloved", the word in the Greek is from the word "agapao" the "agape" love that is given by God to the Christians.  In my opinion, this love cannot be found outside of God, and in the Bible, it is spoken of as a characteristic of Christians.  Paul made it clear to the Jews that God had not only called the Gentiles, He also adopted the Gentiles as sons of God.

Ezekiel 44:9 (NASB95)
⁹ ‘Thus says the Lord God, “No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh, of all the foreigners who are among the sons of Israel, shall enter My sanctuary. ^[2]

In Paul’s day, it was common for there to be Gentile converts into Judaism.  These people converted to the religion, but were still outsiders in the inner workings of the Jewish rituals.  There was areas in the temples where they were not allowed to bo, and certain restrictions that were placed upon them.  Paul is taking the stand that the Gentiles stood on equal ground with the Jews.

John 1:10-13 (NASB95)
¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. ¹¹ He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. ¹² But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, ¹³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.^[3]

Paul echo's Johns words, in stating that when God came to the Jews and they rejected their Messiah, God opened the door to anyone who believes in Him to be saved.  This is important, because without this distinction, we as Gentiles are still outsiders in the Kingdom of God.  Yesterday I was scratching at the surface of this, but was not able to put it in words. 

Romans 9:27-29 (NASB95)
²⁷ Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved; ²⁸ for the Lord will execute His word on the earth, thoroughly and quickly.” ²⁹ And just as Isaiah foretold, “Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity, We would have become like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.” ^[4]

The problem that Paul faced was that God had called the Jews as His people.  Yet from the prophecies that Paul quotes, there was only a remnant of the Jews that would survive the judgment of God.  Most of them would be lost.  The prophecies make it clear that if God did not preserve a remnant, the Jews would eventually follow the path of Sodom and Gomorrah.  This prophecy looked forward to the time when Christ will restore the remnant of the Jews during the end times.  Yet Paul uses this illustration to speak of how that only a remnant of the Jews of his time actually believed in the Messiah. 

It's kind of a funny way that God worked.  He saved a remnant of the Jews so that that remnant of the Jews could provide the environment for the Messiah to come and be crucified.  When that happened, the remnant of the Jews provided a way for the gentiles to come to know God just like the prophecies had stated.

Romans 9:30-33 (NASB95)
³⁰ What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; ³¹ but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. ³² Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, ³³ just as it is written, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.”^[5]

The problem that the Jews had was that they forgot what faith was all about.  Just like the Samaritan woman mentioned above, at one time, they understood the idea of faith, yet had given it up to attain righteousness through the law.  God did not give the law to replace faith, He gave it as a guideline for them to follow in worship and in every day life.  It was not taken that way, by this time in history, the law had become the requirement for all Jews to live by.  They threw off faith, and took on works. 

The Gentiles were not concerned with works because they did not have that chain of traditionalism blinding them.  Therefore when the Gentiles had the opportunity to believe, they believed wholeheartedly, just like the woman at the well.  They recognized Jesus as Messiah long before the Jews even considered the fact.  The Gentiles, being outsiders were able to understand the scope of the situation without being confused by the old covenant. 

Jesus was a stumbling block because He stood for a life of faith, He asked them to step outside the law to see things from a faith perspective.  The difficult thing that they faced was that Jesus gave them a free gift, it wasn’t earned by their efforts.  Please note:

“So Paul was saying that God had brought together in his new order those of faith regardless of their national background. Although he worked out his redemptive plan through his Son Jesus, a descendant of David in terms of his human nature, his new people are comprised of those who are Gentile by birth as well as Jewish. It is faith, not national origin, that brings a person into the family of God.”^[6]

To take a quick thought, in our churches today, have we become like the Jews of old?  Are we so steeped in our traditions and our doctrines that have been handed down that we fail to see the big picture?  Why is it that faith is not displayed in our churches?  Perhaps we have become blinded by our own law, taking what was freely given and changing it into a bondage in a form of a law.  I would challenge each of you to read God's word, and look at it from a new perspective, be willing to question the conventions that have been taught, and search out the Scriptures, see if what you have been taught is true.  Learn from the scriptures what true faith is all about.  If your church is focused on works, and on doing good things, take a fresh look at the idea.  We don't want to end up like the Jews who became blinded by their own doctrine and forgot how to have faith.  (End of commercial break.)

I am going to stop here, there is more that could be said, but in light of Erik’s note, I want you to be able to dig into it and enjoy his wisdom.

Father, as we consider Your word, open our eyes and our understanding so that we can get a handle on the idea of election.  Also give each person the assurance that You hand picked each one of us.

In Him,

Joe Turner.