In times of hardship, the true answer for the Church is a greater revelation of Jesus Christ standing at the centre of his people. His blazing gaze does not condemn believers, but purifies their hearts so they can worship without compromise
The big idea
When the persecuted churches needed help, God didn't send money, political change or a rescue. He gave them a greater revelation of Jesus, and that bigger picture of Christ is still the answer for the church and our nation today.
Key points
Revelation is one revelation of Jesus Christ. The whole book is about Him. Its images aren't puzzles to fear but reveal Jesus and the struggle between Christ, the enemy and the church.
The church is undermined in three ways. Persecution, compromise from inside (especially comfort and luxury) and false teaching all have the same answer: a bigger picture of Christ.
His blazing eyes purify rather than disqualify. Jesus sees us fully, not to eliminate us but to burn away whatever stops us worshipping Him freely.
We are companions in suffering, kingdom and endurance. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega and the head of the church. We gather because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, or it becomes just a club.
The Word should sound like a trumpet. Scripture is meant to grip and change us, not just be flicked through.
Jesus stands in the middle of the church. The living Word chose to appear amid the compromise and complications of the local church. The solution isn't in pastoring but in the revelation of Christ.
Key scriptures
Revelation 1:1–13: the one revelation of Jesus Christ, standing among the lampstands in the church
Revelation 2:10: be faithful, even to the point of death, like Polycarp
Acts 5:1–11: Ananias and Sapphira, compromise from inside the church
Revelation 18: Babylon, the world's luxury that compromises the church
John 1:1: the Word who was with God now stands up, living and not stuck on a page
Takeaways
Bring your problems, personal and national, to Jesus and ask for a bigger picture of Him.
Invite His blazing eyes to search you and purify whatever stops you worshipping freely.
Remember why you are here, and walk with your church family through joy, suffering and daily endurance.
The big idea
Exiled on Patmos for refusing to say "Caesar is Lord", John could do nothing for the persecuted churches he loved. God didn't send money, political change or a rescue. He gave them a greater revelation of Jesus.
The church is still threatened by persecution, compromise and false teaching, and our nation has many needs. The answer is the same: a bigger picture of Christ. When His eyes like blazing fire look into our hearts, they don't disqualify us. They purify us so we can worship Him freely.
Key scriptures
Revelation 1:1–7: The revelation of Jesus Christ, sent to the seven churches
Revelation 1:8: "I am the Alpha and the Omega"
Revelation 1:9–11: John on Patmos, "your brother and companion", hearing a voice like a trumpet
Revelation 1:12–13: Someone like a son of man among the seven golden lampstands
Revelation 2:10: "Be faithful, even to the point of death"
Acts 5:1–11: Ananias and Sapphira, compromise from inside the church
Revelation 18: Babylon, the luxury of the world and the call to rejoice
John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word"
One revelation of Jesus Christ
The book is the revelation of Jesus Christ, not "revelations". It is one revelation, and the whole book is about Him.
The enemy confuses the beginning (creation) and the end (Revelation), leaving people to live in the mess in between. Clearing up both helps us live godly lives.
Prisoners' letters were censored. Rory remembers writing in code to his girlfriend from the border. In the same way, John wrote in images that appeal to the imagination of God's people.
The horses, beasts and numbers aren't puzzles to fear. They reveal Jesus and the struggle between Christ, the enemy and the church.
Three ways the church is undermined
Persecution
Persecution runs through Acts, Revelation and the world today. In South Africa we have the blessing of freedom of worship, with 500 churches meeting in Pretoria on a Sunday.
Compromise
When persecution fails, the enemy compromises the church from inside, as with Ananias and Sapphira.
Babylon grips the rich and sells them a luxury life. By the world's standards, most of us who own a house and a car live in luxury.
Even the church can become a form of Babylon: comfortable, entertaining and measuring success by numbers.
Compromise comes in little by little, through money, unhealthy closeness and sexual immorality.
"That's not a successful church. That's a compromised church."
Heresy
False teaching means too much grace, too much law or too much prosperity. God's answer to all three threats is a bigger picture of Christ.
His blazing eyes purify us
Rory's dad could look at him and know his motives and fears. Jesus sees us even more fully, but not to eliminate us. As a qualified fireman, Rory notes that fire burns, but it also purifies.
"He's looking at the very things that are stopping me from worshipping Him, and He's going to burn them and purify them until I do worship Him freely."
We may want to look away, afraid of our secrets being revealed. We can still pray, "Lord God, search me." Ask Him first to illuminate what's wrong by His light, then eliminate it by His fire.
"Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face…"
Companions in suffering, kingdom and endurance
John writes as "your brother and companion". We share the joys of the kingdom, like a new marriage. We share suffering, like a cancer diagnosis. And we share the daily, faithful perseverance of walking together.
Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the A and the Z. Before anything was written about you, He was there, and He'll be there after it.
Jesus holds the beginning and the end of the church. He is its head, not any pastor.
Polycarp, the 86-year-old bishop of Smyrna, refused to honour Caesar. He said God had been faithful to him for 86 years. The fire burnt around him without touching him, and he would not deny Christ.
Why are you here?
John was on Patmos "because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus". The same is true of the church family:
Visitors from Romania and Germany working against human trafficking
A farming family from Groblersdal who ask each year whether to move
A couple who drove an hour from Rams every Sunday for over a year
A woman who came 31 years ago, raised her children here and buried her husband from this church
"If we forget that, this coming together just becomes a club."
When the Word sounds like a trumpet
John heard a voice like a trumpet: piercing, compelling and conversation-stopping. Does the Word of God still grip us, or do we just flick through it?
"I want the Word to fashion me. I want the Word to change me."
Jesus stands in the middle of the church
John "turned around to see the voice". The Word who was with God became flesh, rose and now stands up again, living and not stuck on a page. He stands among the lampstands, in the middle of the church.
Jesus was born in a dirty manger, and His throne was a cross. He chose to reappear in the compromise, persecution and complications of the local church.
Rory's spiritual father, Dudley Daniel, taught that divorced people should stay in the local church until God heals both hearts. A divorced couple now serve faithfully in 3Ci, honouring each other with their daughter beside them. The ex-wife once told her former husband:
"The church is big enough for both of us."
The solution isn't in pastoring. God can put pastors on islands. The solution is in the revelation of Christ.
Takeaways
Bring your problems, personal and national, to Jesus and ask for a bigger picture of Him.
Invite His blazing eyes to search you, and let Him purify whatever stops you from worshipping freely.
Check your life and church for quiet compromise, especially comfort and luxury.
Read Scripture to be changed, not just to tick a box.
Remember why you are here, and walk with your church family through joy, suffering and daily endurance.
Reflect and discuss
Where are you hoping for an intervention when God may want to give you a greater revelation of Jesus?
What would it look like to let Jesus' blazing eyes search you rather than looking away?
In what small ways might comfort or luxury be compromising your faith?
Why are you in the church where you are? How does that change how you see it?
When last did the Word of God sound like a trumpet in your life?
A written record of the teaching. Search it with your browser’s find (⌘F / Ctrl+F).
We will see if we clap at the end of the series. Welcome. Good morning. It's great to see you. Thank you. Awesome.
We're going to try a new way of preaching because I'm tired of walking down the aisle, turning around, and you seeing my bald head. So I thought I'd try and preach from here. We all got a bit of vanity in us. It's really nice to see you.
John is a theologian. Much of the New Testament was written by Paul and written by John. He's a theologian. He's a pastor. He's the one who leant on Jesus' chest. He's very, very close to Christ, and he's a poet, and he loved the churches.
He was about eighty-something years old. And there was a culture amongst the Caesars in Rome that if you went into the temple, you had to take a little bit of incense and you had to put it in the fire and say, "Caesar kyrios, Caesar is Lord." And what had happened is that Paul and Peter had been killed. Timothy had been beaten to death. The new sport in Rome was feeding Christians to lions, and 40,000 Christians had been killed.
And John said, "I will not take the incense and put it there, because Jesus Christ is Lord." And they knew that if they martyred him, they would have a revival that broke out in the world. And so they put him on an island, like Mr Mandela to Robben Island. They thought, "Well, he's going to cause trouble here, so let's just remove him and put him on an island." So they took John and they put him on an island exactly like Robben Island. It was just a quarry where they bashed limestones together.
And so he had to sit there as this pastor who deeply loved the church, with incredible persecution against the church, kind of thinking, "I can't help them. What must I do? We need an intervention. We need God to break through. We need somebody to go and help them. They need money. They need some intervention. They need political change." And God doesn't do any of that. He gives them a greater revelation of Jesus.
And so we've got this country with all sorts of issues, and the answer is a greater revelation of Jesus. And so we have these incredible ideas, and obviously we need a government and we need systems and we need better roads and we need all of those things. But the reality is, what we need is a bigger picture of Christ.
And like what most of you say, it is not the revelations of Jesus Christ. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ. Not the revelations with an "s". It is one revelation. The whole book is of Jesus Christ.
And so what the devil does in any part of life: you mess up the beginning and you mess up the end, and you don't know what to do in the middle. And so what happens is people get confused around creation and they get confused around Revelation, and they live their lives in between this mess. And so we have to clear up the creation and we have to clear up the Revelation, and we can actually start to live godly lives in this world. Amen.
But the problem as a prisoner is, when you wrote a letter, it went through the prison warders before it could get to the mainland. I know that. I went to the border. Some of you don't know what that means. It will be good for you. I look at some of you youngsters and I think, "Oh, a nice little couple of sessions with an 18-year-old corporal will do you the world of good."
Speaker
Rory Dyer
Date
25 October 2026
Series
Blazing Eyes, part 1 of 3
Includes
Video · Audio · Notes · Transcript
But I went to the border and I used to write letters to my girlfriend. But the problem with the letters, they went through the sergeant major and then they went through the people on the border, to make sure we were not giving the secrets away of our defence mechanisms in South West Africa. And so we used to write in code. "I l-love you. I like you. I luscious you. I love you. I l-love you." And we'd write in code. We'd underline some words, put some words in capital letters.
And John is exactly the same. He knows that if he writes about authority and Rome and Caesar, the guys are going to edit his letters. So he appeals to the imagination of the people of God, so that the spirit man inside of them would understand and they would be enlightened. And so God has to take off our conservative nature and lift us up into the realm where He has recreated us as newborn people, and start to understand this great revelation.
And so you see four horses running in different directions, a white horse and a red horse and a black horse and a green horse, and you hear Armageddon and 666, and you think, "What is all this stuff?" It's a revelation of Jesus. And we see these monsters coming out of the sea with ten heads and seven horns, and one looks like it's been cut. It's a revelation of the power and the struggle that is happening between Christ and the enemy, between the church.
And I want to tell you three ways you undermine the church. Persecution happens in Acts and it happens in Revelation and it happens all over the world. With the blessing of our government, we don't live persecuted. There are 500 churches meeting in Pretoria right now, and it's one of the blessings that we can say of our government. Thank God that we have the freedom of worship in our nation. We meet every single Sunday, and down the road they're meeting. We have this incredible freedom of worship. There are people that don't have what we have. So we're actually not really persecuted.
And so the enemy works three ways all the time. Persecution. Compromise. Ananias and Sapphira: the book of Acts comes, the power of God is there, they try to persecute them, they can't persecute them, so they compromise it from inside. That's exactly what happens.
You've got these two cities that are working, Jerusalem and Babylon. And Babylon in the book of Revelation comes in and grips the rich people of the world and sells them a luxury life. You must be careful of luxury, people. The Bible says, "You who live in luxury will be judged at the end of the world." It's frightening. And most of us, if you own a house and a car, you live in luxury according to the world's standard.
But you must be careful that we don't buy into the compromise instead of the radical gospel. Because at the end of Revelation it says, "Rejoice, saints, apostles and prophets." Because even the church can become a form of Babylon. We can look successful. We've got buildings. We've got air conditioners. Actually, we've bought into the compromised system of the world, which is: keep people comfortable and entertain them and tickle their ears with what they want to hear. And we will measure our success by how many people come. That's not a successful church. That's a compromised church.
We are here because of the revelation of Christ. And when He grips our heart, we won't clap at a video, but we'll let His blazing eyes pierce into the very recesses of our heart.
Jesus doesn't look at me with blazing eyes so that He can eliminate me because I'm not worthy. He looks at me with blazing eyes. Have you ever had those people that look at you? You say, "He sees straight through me." When my dad looked at me, he knew everything about me. He knew my motive. He knew my fears. He just looked at me, and I thought, "How does he know?" Because he was my dad.
When Jesus looks at us, He knows. But He doesn't look at us to disqualify us. He looks at us like fire. You might not know this, but I'm actually a qualified civilian fireman. You never knew that, eh? There are a lot of things you don't know about me. I'm a qualified civilian fireman. A fire burns, but a fire also purifies. It completely purifies.
So when Jesus looks at me with eyes like blazing fire, He's not just eliminating me because I'm not able to stand. He's looking at the very things that are stopping me from worshipping Him, and He's going to burn them and purify them until I do worship Him freely.
And so, eyes like blazing fire. I want to look at God and I say, "Lord God, search me. Search me, Lord God. Look into my eyes." Because I'm scared of having my sin revealed. Because I'm scared of having the secrets of my heart revealed. When the blazing eyes look at me, I want to look away. And I think, "No, I can't." No, you can. You can.
And in this series, may He grip us with His blazing eyes. May He look deep into our souls. And God, if there's anything inside here that is stopping me from worshipping You freely, oh God, would You first illuminate it by Your light, and then would You eliminate it by the heat of Your fire, so that I can worship You freely.
Little bit by little bit, this compromise comes into the church. Pastors start earning too much money, start getting too close. Sexual immorality takes place. And that which is meant to be alive starts to compromise. And God is saying the way you deal with compromise is by looking full into the face of Christ.
And the third way that you mess up the church is with heresy, false teaching. Too much grace, too much law, too much prosperity, too much this. And so we've found this whole time we are holding persecution, and we are holding compromise, and we are holding heresy. We're holding it all, saying, "God." And you know how He deals with it? He gives us a bigger picture of Christ.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.
I've been studying this now for about three weeks. I've been deeply gripped, because I'm a pastor. And when he writes this, he says, "I, John, your brother and your companion." We're in this together. "I, John, your brother and your companion." I know so many of your situations.
John says this. He says, "Your brother and companion in the suffering, in the kingdom, and just the daily perseverance." Some of you just got married. Unbelievably great joy. We're in the kingdom. We're celebrating unbelievable life. And recently I got a message from one of my friends: "Hey Rory, pray. My wife's just been diagnosed with breast cancer." We're in it together. We're doing this together. We're in the company together. And just the faithful endurance, day after day after day, week after week, we're walking together.
So: "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending His angel... To the seven churches in the province of Asia: grace and peace to you from Him... the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us." Say, "loves us." "And has freed us from our sins by His blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve His God and Father, to Him be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen. Look, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him." They're going to get a fright.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega." Later on it says, "I am the First and the Last." At the end of the book it says, "I am the Beginning and the End." I don't know where you are in your life right now. I don't know your situation. I don't know your circumstances. But I want to tell you this.
In the written word, alpha and omega is the beginning of the Greek alphabet and the end of it. It's the A and the Z. "I am the A and the Z." You know what's ever been written about you? I want to say, before anything was written about you, God was the Alpha and God was the Omega. So everything that's ever been written about you, He was before it and He'll be after it. And so you have to learn how to have perseverance.
John's on this island thinking, "God, You need... God, God, You've got..." "I'm the Alpha and the Omega. I've got the beginning of the church, John, and I've got the end of the church. I'm the head of the church." Not you, John. Not you, Rory. Not you, Dr Dale. Jesus.
And I keep saying to people, don't line up here for prayer, because you're trying to bypass the theology of God wanting to reveal Himself to you, that can actually handle suffering. One of the great pictures in Revelation 2, it says, "You must be faithful even unto death."
And there's a beautiful martyr in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, a man called Polycarp, who was the bishop of Smyrna. And at 86 years old, he came up to the altar to offer his sacrifice to God. And the soldiers stopped him and said, "You must now take the incense and you must say, 'Caesar kyrios, Caesar is king.'" And he said, "For 86 years God has been faithful to me. I will not do that." And so they committed him right there to burn at the stake.
And as they lit the fire and put him into the fire, the fire burnt all around him. You can Google it. It burnt around him. The fire did not touch him. And eventually they had to kill him with a dagger. But he would not deny Christ.
And we sit here sometimes: "I don't like this, and I don't like that, and I don't like this." Look into the blazing eyes of Christ. Let Him become big again in your life. Let Him fill your view. Some of you never left here after you studied, because God called you to this church. Let Him become big in your life. You could be living in New York now with fancy degrees, but God put you here.
Where are the people from Romania and Germany? Where are those guys? There are people here from Romania and Germany. Why don't you stand? Stand. Stand. Keep standing. Keep standing. Keep standing. It's good to have you with us. Welcome.
This is what John says. He says, "I'm here because of the word of God and because of the testimony of Jesus." Let me ask you this question. Why are you here? Why are you here?
I'll tell you why those men and women are here. They're here in anti-human trafficking. They are here because of the word of God. God sent them from Romania and Germany to meet their friends in South Africa, because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Why are you here, Gary? Three sons, big farms in Groblersdal, brothers in grapes and oranges and mielies and cattle. These brothers getting richer and richer and richer. Why are you here, Gary? Because of the word of God and because of the testimony of Jesus.
They nearly went and relocated down to the Cape. Every year they ask the question, "Is our time finished? Should we go and start a church in the Cape? What should we do?" Robert now is on a mission with Clint in the Transkei. They're coming back now. Why are you here, Susan? Because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Hey guys, we're not some random, put-together group of people. I have two things in common with this man. You've heard me say I have two things in common with him. We went to the same school at different times. We all had houses, and then there was a leadership house in the school with a thatch roof. He lived there. I lived there. It was in that leadership house that God revealed Himself to me and said, "You're going to be a preacher." And him too, but 30 years apart. And he leads worship and I preach. Why are we here? Because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
This man's name is Hilton. He lived out past Roodeplaat. What's that place called? Rams. And one day God said, "You and your wife must go and worship in Pretoria." And he drove from Rams, an hour every Sunday, for over a year. Drove back again. Came for the evening service. Why? Because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And if we forget that, this coming together just becomes a club. Just a club.
That lady came up here with her husband 31 years ago. She and her husband left, had no children, came up here and served this church because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Her children were born in this church. Her children have got married out of this church. Her husband passed away, and we did the funeral in this church, because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Welcome, you German guys. Welcome, you Romanian guys. Welcome, because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, for the things of this world will pass away in the light of Your glory and grace.
"I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet."
Hey, you know what I saw in the foyer? I saw two things. I saw some people blocking their ears. I'm being serious. That's why we did it. I wanted to see what the response was to the trumpets. I saw some people blocking their ears and other people taking out their cameras. What are you going to do when the Word of God starts trumpeting over your life? What are you going to do?
That was really funny. That was really amazing. You know where we got them? I preached last week in Johannesburg and that brass band was there. I said, "We've got to have them." Because I'd never been to a church with a brass band. Now I've been to two in a row. "So what's your church like? I want to bring my parents there." Don't. Anything can happen.
But what's going to happen when the brass band starts playing, friends? When the Word starts bellowing over your life? It's going to play again. And I want you to go and just download every trumpet that you can hear, and just close your eyes and say, "God, with Your trumpet..." It's a piercing noise. It's an attention-seeking noise. It's a compelling noise. It's a conversation-stopping noise.
But does the Word of God still do that to you? Does it still do that to you? Does it still grip your heart? But we just flick: one proverb, one psalm, one book of Acts. I want the Word to fashion me. I want the Word to change me. I want the Word to humble me. I want the Word to empower me. I want the Word to make me generous. I want the Word to tell me to say sorry. I want the Word to dig so deep in my heart that the lusts and desires of the flesh would pass away.
How are we doing, Damon?
"Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia..." "I turned around to see the voice." That's ridiculous, eh? "I turned around to see the voice." How do you ever see a voice?
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." He's a person. Then He comes and hides Himself on the pages of Scripture, and we read about Him. Then He gets incarnated and becomes a person again, and we see Him. Then He dies and gets resurrected and goes to heaven, and we read about Him in the pages. And in Revelation, He stands up again. So you can see the voice. He's not stuck on a page in a book. He's living.
"I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man." Hey, where's Jesus? Where is Jesus? He's in the middle of the church.
John's on an island. He's worrying: "Oh God, I'm on the island. I'm stuck. I'm the leader. If I don't get there, Lord God, what's going to happen?" He says, "Don't worry. I'm amongst them." Doxa Deo, Lewende Woord, Moreleta, CRC. "I'm amongst the church. I am in the middle of the church."
And inside of that are those seven churches. Read it, friends, and you will be deeply challenged. Deeply challenged. And I hope some of you will repent, because some of the Scripture says, "Repent now." And all of us need to repent of some things. I need to repent. But Lord, when I come face to face with Your Word that sounds like a trumpet, oh God, may I repent of my arrogance or my compromise or whatever it might be. But I know this: God is amongst the churches.
You see, friends, we don't understand Jesus. When He came, He never came in an air-conditioned Life hospital in Pretoria East. He came in a dirty manger amongst cattle poop. When He died, His throne was not some kind of golden thing with lights, which the church compromises with, putting pastors on a thing with lights and thinking, "Woo, look at the church." No, that's not the church. When He came, His throne was a cross.
And when He reappeared, He chose to reappear in the compromise and the persecution and the heresy and the complications of the local church.
"I think God's going to appear to CRC." Surely not, Lord. I'm only joking. "And Lord God, You're going to appear to 3Ci?" "Yes. I'm going to come and stand in the middle of you. I come and stand in the middle of you, and then from that position I'm going to start working with you."
You know, when I got saved, my spiritual father was a man called Dudley Daniel. He's a beautiful man. He had a liver transplant. When we had the function here a couple of weeks ago with young Herman, I sent him a message. I said, "Dudley, I remember the day that you SMSed me when you came out of hospital and you said, 'Rory, I'm okay. I'm going to live.'" I just started to weep. He was my father. He taught me about God.
And I'll never forget, in Durban once, we were having a city celebration. We had a big tent, and there was a gap between the tent and the stage, and he was preaching about Christ, and the rain was coming in the gap. So as he was preaching, we were looking through a filter of water. But he was preaching about the church that Jesus is building.
And he said this amazing thing when he was preaching. He said, "If you get divorced, you must stay inside the local church until God has dealt with both of your hearts and brought complete healing, because if Christ is the King, then you must submit to Him." I thought, "What? How?"
And I walked in today, and there's a man standing at the door with his ex-wife and their daughter. And his ex-wife is remarried, and they lead in our church. And he's on a mission trip in the Transkei right now. And he married again in the church, and they both remarried. I know their story. But as I looked at it today, I thought, Christ is going to come and stand amongst the church with all her stuff.
Now, I didn't know this, but the first time that lady came to church was 13 years ago, probably when I arrived. And I said this: "If you're divorced, you're welcome here." And so she felt welcome here. And then she sent a message to her husband and said, "The church is big enough for both of us."
The church is big enough for both of us. The church is big enough for both of us as we work out our differences, as we work out our past, as we work out our preferences. The church is big enough for both of us.
As they stood there, I just walked away and I thought: he's honouring her, she's honouring him, and their daughter is standing together with them. God, Your eyes must be like blazing fire. God.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His glorious face, and the things of the world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. Amen.
Well, that didn't come out anything like I was expecting it to.
I'm your brother, and I'm your companion in the suffering, in the kingdom, and in the daily perseverance. I love being a pastor in this church. It's one of the very greatest joys of my life. It's a privilege. But the solution is not in pastoring. God can put pastors on islands if He wants to. The solution is in Christ. The solution is in the revelation of Christ.
My prayer is simply this. Pray this with me. Heavenly Father, as we look into Your eyes this week, at this scripture, would they blaze into the depths of our soul. In Jesus' name. Amen.
