To Philadelphia - Audio
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
There was a misprint in the bulletin, Dick Hillis, not Hollis. His wife was called home to be with the Lord, and we need to be in prayer for the family of Dick Hillis. Would you join me in prayer at this time? God gracious God and Father, we thank you today for the privilege of prayer and being able to come into your presence and know you in an intimate way, to draw close to your breast and feel the warmth of your heart. And to know, dear Father, how deeply you love us. Father, we pray today that you would impress upon us who claim to bear the name of Christ. From the Grace Baptist Church, a church located at all of them crazy, that Father before we can hope to enjoy and to be used of God, and to enjoy the fruit of our eternal labors, there must be that which is prepared in our heart. We must be ready to speak to our heart today about what readiness is, about what being prepared to do something for God really amounts to. We pray for the family of Dick Hillis, we pray Lord that you would comfort them at this hour. Lord, in the midst of all things, our earnest prayers for Jesus Christ to be praised in our life and in death, for we ask it in His name, amen. Some time ago on the editorial page of the New York Times, an article was carried entitled God Bless America. It was written by Janina Atkins, a Polish immigrant, she said, "Just six years ago, I came with my husband to this country with two dollars and sixty cents in my purse, some clothes, and a few books, and a bundle of old letters, and a little eider down pillow. I was an immigrant girl hoping for a new life and happiness in a strange new country. There is something in the air of America that filled my soul with the feeling of freedom and independence. This be got strength. There is no one here to lead you by the hand and order you about. We believed in the future and the future did not disappoint us. Today my husband is studying for his doctorate and we live in a comfortable apartment. This is just one of many many stories that would be very very similar. If we were to study the lives of the people of our nation, their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents, their great-great-grandparents, millions of others like Janina Atkins have come to this country looking for independence and for freedom and for hope, looking for a new and a better life. As a symbol of this, the nation of France gave to us a great statue, the Statue of Liberty, that is near the entrance of New York Harbor. And nothing says it better than what's inscribed at the bottom of that statue. It says, "Give me your poor and your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, the tempest folks to me. I lift my lap beside the golden door. It is the world's tired, the world's poor, the masses, the wretched, the homeless, the hurting, these are the ones who are ready to enter through the golden door to the United States of America." Right here in our own church and as I look around and pick up faces, I know there are people who have come here or whose parents have come here or whose great-grandparents have come here to the Gallopin Valley and to the United States of America for a better life. Their Dutch, their German, their English, their Eastern European, their French, their Italian.
Transcription truncated.
Exhortation to the church in Philadelphia to hold fast what you have.