The Lord certainly blessed me in being able to open my mouth boldly to expound Hebrews 10 as I ought to expound it today. O, that I could always be as forthright with heralding God’s Word as I was today. I am often amazed at how the Lord meets me in preaching and what He is able to do through the event. After the service, several people rejoiced in talking about the Lord’s presence and working with them. I felt better myself, and Pastor Bill told me that a lady in a nearby park expressed that the chapel service had done her good and was just what she needed to hear. I praise God for that. One lady asked if she could take a Bible home for her brother. Several others wanted me to “dedicate” as they said, the booklets we had given them, writing “To so and so, From Manor Church” in the front.

I sometimes think a warm sanctuary may be an asset rather than a liability to the preaching of the Gospel. Well do I remember sitting in a non-air-conditioned church as a child and, faced with the fact that this world is NOT always a comfortable place, heard the truth of the saving message of Jesus Christ and sensed the light in the preaching of that message. When we are comfortable in every way, we tend to forget how needy we are. Even the discomfort of a non-air-conditioned chapel service can serve to remind. (I know I commited a gramatical error in this paragraph, but, like the apostle John, I needed to do so for emphasis.)

One man, a regular attendee who rides the subway from an hour away and has been converted sometime during the past year or so (this man came to us confessing a life-dominating sin and asking our help), told me today that he went to a church this past Sunday where a baptism was being held. He also was baptized! Pastor Bill and I both have been exhorting people who have been saved recently to be baptized as a public confession of identification with Christ. Well, this man was very glad to tell us he had been baptized! He said he found the speaking in tongues at the other church a little odd, but he said that maybe one reason God had led him there was so that he could be baptized. We rejoice with him! It is absolutely amazing to see the work of God in this man’s life.

Please pray for us as we’re trying hard to get various long-needed building projects done, and pray for me as I’m trying hard to get the discipleship course up and written as soon as possible. Pray that everyone here would live a life which professes openly the great salvation of God, and pray that both we and the people to whom we minister would hold fast the openness in speaking and the grounds of rejoicing of our hope firm unto the end and that this itself would witness the Gospel with the Spirit attending.

Today in chapel I read Hebrews 10 out of the Great Bible of 1539 and put the old Gothic text up on the wall for people to follow. Because I had to read it slowly, as I’m not used to reading Gothic script, I believe the reading of God’s Word out of that beautiful old English translation had quite an impact.

“My fonge shall all wayes bee of the louyngekindness of the Lorde. Wyth my mouth wyll I euer bee fhewynge (shewing) thy trueth from one generacyon to another. For I haue fayed, louyngekindness shalbe built up for euer. Thy trueth fhalt thou ftablyfh (stablish) in the heauens.” Psalm 89, Great Bible

What a joy to know that as we preach God's Word in the power of the Spirit, God is showing His truth as stablished in the very Heavens to people like me and the ones to whom we minister here.