The call is for everyone, just different according to your willingness to hear and obey. Secondly, the call is not about perfection but a call to follow God and walk with God. It may be because someone prayed for you, not that you prayed.

We may linger in our wilderness for a night, but blessedness will come in the morning. The Psalmist declares, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning”! Oh, our night may be twenty or thirty years long, but if we hold out and trust in God, morning will come.

God’s patience and repeated warnings provide many opportunities for repentance, but the children of Israel disregard the God of their redemption.

Take a little of Christ with you in all you do – don’t act one way at church on Sunday and another way the rest of the week.

In today’s passage, the Apostle Paul is praying for a young church that their love for one another and that their faith might continue to grow by the power of God. The Church of South Washington Street as a new “church” is in need of the same prayer.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:12, 13)

As a child in S.C., I remember Hurricane Gracie . The sky was very dark, the wind howled, trees could be heard breaking, and the rain was torrential. Those things combined to make me very frightened. I was alone at the house, or so I think, but a neighbor knew this and came across the street to check on me. Her words to me were ” Be not afraid, it’s in God’s hands”. Now why she thought that would be calming to an eight-year-old, I don’t know but after uttering those words she went home. So, when Tindley says, “Though the night is dark it won’t be very long. Thanks be to God, the morning light appears, And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah”, I feel like I have lived through it.