Alec Seekins
June 9, 2019
Series: The Other Hours

My name is Alec Seekins. I’m the high school pastor, and I’m happy to have some of my friends over here this week. We just got back Friday morning at 12:30 in the morning. We got back from summer camp. We spent a whole week just hanging out with each other, hanging out on the beach, going to Six Flags and going to the water park—and really, just kind of trying to grow together as a family. That was the thing that we were really pressing into—this idea that church is meant to be a redemptive family.

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about that capacity for redemption that we find in Jesus. Particularly, we’re doing this series, as you guys know, on the Other Hours. And today we’re going to finish up our sub-series on sexuality within that. And we’re going to talk, not about the Other Hours this morning, but about sexuality for the rest of us.

In church, I’ve noticed something, that we have a tendency to focus on one particular facet of sexual purity, that is good and is true and is right and is holy, but really only apples to a very, very small portion of us in the room. And, as an unintended result, we end up with a bit of a distorted view of what sexual purity means. We’ve come to believe that sexual purity is only something that can be maintained. That it’s only something that we can hold on to. We forget that sexual purity for the rest of us is not something to be maintained, but it is something that can be obtained. We never find ourselves in a hopeless situation when it comes to sexual purity.

So we’re going to dive into that a little bit today. I don’t know about you guys, but I love playing in the mud. I think I probably love playing in the mud a little bit more than the rest of you because, as an adult, I have found an excuse to play in the mud. A couple of times a week I go into a ceramic studio, and I pretend to do art, but the truth is, I’m making stuff, but really, I just want to get covered in mud.

I think most of you, if you reach back into your childhood, you can remember how much fun the mud is. I remember being four years old and loving getting covered in mud. I remember we had this big back yard (it probably wasn’t that big. I was four years old and everything seems enormous when you’re four years old). But I remember, we had this back yard that seemed enormous to me. Around the edges of the back yard, there was all this grass and weeds and stuff; and there was this big tree that would hang over the back wall—I think it was a willow or something like the—and it would create kind of a cavernous room on the inside. I remember I would get really excited, but a little bit terrified, every time I went through the willow branches, and I went in there and there was this empty space in there. It was really exciting because it was dark and cool.

I remember I’d have to leave that space after a couple of minutes because it was too scary for me. In the middle of the yard there was a big dirt patch, because—Phoenix. Right? You guys know the struggle, I’m sure most of you have a spot in the middle of your yard where it’s nothing but dirt because it’s this dried clay earth and this is not a place where grass is supposed to grow.

My parents were kind enough that they would let me, and my brother, and the neighbor kids, we would get to dig holes in the big, giant dirt patch. And my brother and I had developed a giant bean-shaped hole in the back yard. And my favorite thing to do was to go out there with a shovel to dig it up a little bit, make it a little bit deeper, a little bit bigger, and then grab the hose and fill it up, and then put the dirt back in there and smoosh it up until we had this silky, smooth, creamy mud that we could play in. I think some of you are having a very nostalgic moment like me right now, remembering that mud. And we would get in the mud and we would sit down and start to scramble to see who could get the most mud—as if we were living in a world with an economy of mud. Right? Whoever had the most mud was the wealthiest person in the kingdom of mud. Whoever could build the tallest tower, the biggest pyramid of sloppy, wet mud, they were the greatest architect the mud world had ever known.

I remember the dream was that someday we might dig this hole deep enough, that I could sink in past my feet, my ankles, my knees, my waist, my chest, my shoulders and into mud head, where I would be completely submerged in the beautiful mud.

I remember Clay Face from Batman was my favorite bad guy because he was living the dream. He was all mud, head to toe. I remember thinking, “I want to be Clay Face. But I’ll be a good guy Clay Face. But I want to be made out of mud.”

And, no matter how much I loved playing in the mud, there always came a moment when I was ready to go back inside. Maybe it’s because I was hungry. Maybe it’s because it was bedtime. Maybe it’s because my favorite TV show was on. (For those of you who are old enough to remember the days before Netflix, when your show was on, you drop what you are doing and you go, because you don’t know if the rerun is ever going to play. And that’s a serious thing. Man, Netflix is a good thing, isn’t it? It’s a bad thing, too. But it’s a good thing.)

So, I would come to this point where I was read to go inside, and I would walk up to the back door where my mom would be waiting for me. I would look at her, covered in mud, and I would say, “I’m ready to come back inside.” And she would look at me. And there’s something I didn’t understand at four years old, and I’ve come to understand as an adult. There is a fundamental principle in the universe, written in the law of physics, that four year olds who are covered in mud and carpeted living rooms cannot, or at the very least should not, mix. So I didn’t understand that I couldn’t come inside like that.

But my mom would look at me, and I”m fortunate that I had a good mom who never looked at me and said, “Ooh, Alec, you’re filthy. You’re going to be banished to the backyard. That creepy, cavernous tree is going to be your new home and the stray cats are going to be your new brother and sister. You can never come back inside because you’re just so dirty.”

No, I had a good mom. And so, she would say, “Ok.” And she would walk around to the side of the house, grab the hose, turn it on and say, “Come to me and I’ll get you clean.” And she would begin to hose me off, head to toe. She knew that wasn’t something I could do for myself. Those of you who have four year olds know better than I do that a four year old is not capable of getting themselves clean. Four year olds don’t understand that they have a bottom of their foot, or a back, or that mud can get between their ears, or maybe in their hair. They might hose their hair down and they’re like, “Oh, I’m clean.” But it’s still just more wet mud falling down their face. Four year olds are incapable of cleaning themselves. They forget that there’s mud in the pocket because they put it there because it’s money — you know, the economy of mud. They don’t know that. And so they need someone to wash them, to make them clean.

When my mom was done washing me and every single drop of mud was gone, she would bring me inside and wrap me in a towel. And I would eat the food that she had prepared for me, sleep in the bed that she had made for me, under the roof that she and my father had provided for me. And I would be part of their family and I would be home. I needed to be cleaned.

Now, there are some children in the world, very few and far between, who, for whatever reason, manage to live their entire lives without getting so muddy that they would not be welcome in the home. I would not be surprised that there were none of them in this room. Maybe there’s one. Maybe there’s two. I imagine there are more unicorns in the forest than there are those children in the room or in our city. They do exist. There are kids who, for whatever reason, were never compelled, were never tempted by the mud. Or maybe they were a little bit, but they were a little more mature than the rest of us at that age. They looked at the mud and said, “You know, that looks like fun, but I won’t be able to go back inside once I get muddy. And I don’t want to have to go through the process of getting clean.”

There are so few of those. So, for the rest of us, what do we do when we’re muddy? For the rest of us, for whom sexual purity is a ship that has already sailed, do we have any hope? Yeah, we do. Jesus is on the side of the house with a hose, and it’s on, and he’s saying, “Come to me and I’ll get you clean so you can come inside and you can be a part of my family.” And Jesus is good at getting us clean. He knows what to do.

I think, unfortunately, in the church, with best intentions, we’ve misunderstood this. I think we’ve had a conversation where we kind of miss the mark. It’s had some really, really damaging consequences. I’ve sat in more than a few small groups or Bible studies or accountability groups. And I’ve heard someone talk about this concept of a “purity card.” Some of you may have grown up and may have actually, at some point in time had a little card that you signed, saying, “Oh, I’m not going to do anything bad, sexually speaking, my whole life.”

And it’s great intentions. I’m not trying to knock you, if you did that. If it was effective for you, wonderful. If you ever taught that, I’m not saying you did something wicked or wrong, but I think this is where we’ve overemphasized the wrong thing. This is where we’ve overemphasized staying out of the mud as the only way we can get pure, and we’ve forgotten the good news of the gospel when it comes to our sexuality. That Jesus can make us clean again.

And so, we have this idea of this purity card. It’s something that you’re given at birth. You only get one and you’ll never get another. And once it’s gone, that’s it and you’re done. There’s no redemption. Jesus will forgive you, but you’re still not pure anymore. For some reason we apply this to our sexuality, but not as much to any other sin or any other facet of purity. And I think it’s done something really damaging in the church.

I have a friend. The conversation I had with this particular friend is one I’ve had with many, many people. But I can remember specifically this conversation with this one friend of mine. They were explaining to me how, when they were a child, they were sexually abused. And that left them with this question and this uncertainty about their purity. And they grew up and they were following Jesus. They weren’t making any mistakes or any failures of their own, sexually speaking, but they had this burning question: Am I still pure? Am I still clean? Am I still really a virgin?

It didn’t matter how many good leaders explained to them, “No, that was never a decision you made. That wasn’t a sin of yours. That was a sin of someone else’s. You are still pure. You are still clean.”

It didn’t matter how much someone articulated that to them, because it didn’t jive with the concept of purity card that they had learned. Because they can say that one plus one equals two. They can add it up and it just didn’t seem to make sense. So they had this burning question: Am I still pure? Am I still clean? And they grew up and they got out of high school and they went on into early adulthood. There was a particular evening, and it wasn’t a temptation toward sexual pleasure that drew them in. It wasn’t a lie of intimacy drawing them in. But it was a temptation of getting a satisfying answer to this question that caused them to go out one night and find someone to sleep with.

And I remember my friend explaining to me the feelings that were washing over them after they slept with this person, the first time they ever consensually slept with someone. And there was a little bit of guilt and a little bit of shame, my friend said, but overwhelmingly, those feelings were eclipsed by a sigh of relief that came from their very soul that said, “Finally I know that I’m dirty. I know that I”m not clean. I know that I’m not a virgin anymore. Finally I have a satisfying answer to that question.”

What have we done? What have we done, that in the church, we’ve missed something so vital about the gospel, in such a pivotal part of our lives, that has led to that result? The truth is, I can guarantee you, there are a handful, if not dozens of you in this room, who have that exact, same story. And my guess is, there are probably even more of a very similar story, where it wasn’t abuse, it wasn’t something nonconsensual, it was just a decision that you made at some point in time to jump in the mud because it sounded like fun. Maybe you knew it was wrong. Maybe you didn’t at the time. But it was a decision that you made. And then you decided, “You know what? The purity card was gone. I can never get clean again. I’m stuck so I might as well get back in the mud over and over again. I might as well make my home here. There’s no hope to get clean. Every time I get out of the mud and I start scraping it off of myself, I realize I’m still stained.”

We have missed the gospel when it comes to our sexuality. No matter how stained you are, no matter how dirty you are, Jesus can get you clean. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. It’s not as though, yeah, the purity card is gone forever. Jesus will forgive you, but you’re still going to be rotten for the rest of your life. No. Jesus is really good at cleaning. He doesn’t stop halfway. He is a good, good mother. He is a good father. He knows how to wash us.

A few years ago, I started to realize and piece this together, because I was watching the sixth graders. I’ve been a pastor here for a long time. I did youth ministry for two or three years as a volunteer leader. I interned for one year and then I was the junior high pastor for three years, and now I’m just rounding out my fifth year as the high school pastor. As such, I’ve gotten to actually, a couple of weeks ago, I graduated my second class of sixth graders out of high school and into early adulthood. And I’ve been paying attention to the things that we say around church. I realize that this is an area where we’ve started to make some mistakes.

I’ve had more than a few conversations with someone who, at one point in time was a small, innocent eleven year old child, relatively innocent and even ignorant when it came to sexuality, and I sat across from them a few years later as they were telling me about their brokenness in their sexuality, about the failings that they had made. And they’d seen the weight of the hopelessness of “I can never be clean. That card is gone.”

And when I started to realize this, I asked myself is what we’re talking about—what’s really in the Scripture? So I started looking. What does the Bible say about sexuality and about purity? And I realized something really interesting, that kind of surprised me. The Bible has a lot to say about sexuality. It has a lot to say about immorality when it comes to sexuality. It has a lot to say about purity. But most of the time it doesn’t actually overlap those two things. Usually when it talks about purity, it’s not talking exclusively about sexual purity. It’s talking about head to toe—your body, your soul, your heart, your spirit, your mind. Full and complete purity. It’s not singling out a conversation on purity. I think that’s interesting, because you guys knew when you looked at the sermon title for today, when it said, “Purity for the Rest of Us,” you knew we were continuing to talk about sex. Because, in church, when we say purity, we mean sex 99% of the time. But that’s not what we see in the Bible.

Now, there are a few places in the Scripture where those two concepts do overlap and the Bible has a lot to say about sexuality and about purity. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure there are more that I have not been able to find. But I have, thus far, been able to find about three of them. Three places in the Scripture where those two concepts are exclusively intertwined. The first is a place where it talks about how important it is that the marriage bed remain undefiled. The second is in Corinthians, and Melissa did a fantastic job preaching on that last week. If you didn’t catch that, I would encourage you to get on our app or on YouTube and to watch that or give it a listen. There’s a lot of parallels between that.

The third place is here in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7. It says this:

3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.

So what does Paul start off saying? He says it is God’s will for you that you would be sanctified. Now, pay attention to the verbiage here, because he’s using some active verbiage here, not passive verbiage. He’s not saying it’s God’s will for you that you would remain sanctified, that you would stay sanctified. He’s saying it’s God’s will for you that you would be sanctified, that you would become sanctified. That word, sanctified, in case you didn’t know, means to become clean, completely and totally and wholly. To be set apart. To be made pure. It is God’s will for you that you would become sanctified.

If that verbiage wasn’t clear enough, pay attention to the next few verses. Because he says “Look, guys, here, church in Thessalonica, there’s an issue that we need to address. Some of you have been sexually exploiting others in the church.” Whew! That’s not light stuff. These are not innocent people when it comes to their sexuality. In the church that he’s talking to, these people are dirty, or broken. And he’s saying that God’s will for you is that you would be sanctified. Sexual purity is not only something that can be maintained, it’s also something that can be obtained. It’s not only something that we have to hold on to from birth, it’s also something that we can receive from the Lord as he washes us.

Paul, here, when he’s writing to the church in Thessalonica, he’s not talking to the eight-year-old girl who’s never had a crush on a boy and telling her “Stay away from those boys who smoke cigarettes.” He’s talking to the twenty-eight-year-old woman who’s had more sexual partners than birthdays. And he’s saying, “Come to Jesus. He’ll get you clean.” He’s not talking to the four-year-old boy who still thinks that girls are ucky. He’s talking to the forty-year-old man whose pornography addiction and infidelity has cost him two marriages. And Paul is saying to him, “Come to Jesus. He’ll get you clean.” He’s saying your sexual purity is not something that can only be maintained. It is also something that can be obtained.

This is the gospel. Why have we cut it out in our conversations on sexuality, and left ourselves with only a conversation about sexual morality, and forgotten what sexual purity really means and how we get to it? Why have we forgotten that the ship has not sailed for us because of the blood of Jesus? There is no sexual brokenness that is too strong for the sacrifice that Jesus made. It does not matter.

I know that we’ve been getting scared, some of us, because there’s been so much more sexual brokenness churning up in our world, and maybe you’re seeing people that you love falling deeper and deeper into sexual brokenness that looks a little bit new and a little big foreign to you. Well, guess what? Don’t be afraid. Whether it’s you experiencing it or ones that you love, because there’s no sexual brokenness more permanent than the blood of Jesus. He an wash us. End of story.

Paul doesn’t leave them there with the idea, with this concept that maybe Jesus can cleanse you and make you clean. He actually gives some steps to take. He doesn’t leave us with an ethereal through that maybe Jesus will wave a magic wand and —ta da!—you’re sexually pure again. He says that there are some steps to take. What he says is to flee sexual immorality. Walk away from it.

Essentially, what he’s saying is, get out of the mud and come to Jesus so he can get you clean. But you’ve got to get out of the mud. It doesn’t matter if you bring fists full of earth with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re dripping head to toe, covered completely. It doesn’t matter if every single square inch of your clothing is stained. Come to Jesus. He’ll wash you. He’ll make you clean. He’ll make you pure. No ifs, ands or buts.

I had always believed that there were some ifs, some ands and some buts about it. I had heard that in church—in a good church. And I missed it. I just felt the blood of Jesus wasn’t sufficient for my sexual failings. But it is. The experience I’ve had in my life is that Jesus is capable of washing it all away. But we’ve got to get out of the mud.

It doesn’t matter if we fall in the mud on the way to Jesus a dozen times. It doesn’t matter if we get halfway washed and we jump back in the mud. It doesn’t matter if we have an addiction that calls into the mud over and over. Jesus can wash us. There is purity for every single one of us in this room, regardless of what your sin is. It doesn’t matter. He’s that good. It means something for me. My guess is, it means something for you. It’s a profound reality that changes the game.

I am a bit of a nerd. I know I look like a homeless person and not a nerd. But under all of this, there is a nerd, I promise. My wife will tell you the truth of it. And, as a nerd, I really love watching TED Talks. And the nerdier the TED Talk, the more likely I am to watch it start to finish. In particular, I found one of the veins of TED Talks that seems to be popping up a lot lately, that gets me excited, is neuroscienece. I know the vast majority of you in the room here the word neuroscience and think, “Boring. Next. Not watching that video.” I think, “Yes! I’m going to go deep down this rabbit hole of neuroscience talks.”

And I’ve noticed in all the conversations about neuroscience, there’s this particular buzz word that I hear over and over again and it’s the word neuroplasticity. If you’re super bored because you just heard a word like neuroplasticity, that’s all right. You can check out and come back in a minute or two and I promise we’ll loop this around for you.

Neuroplasticity essentially means that our brains are plastic, not like water bottle plastic, but they’re moldable and changeable, and they’re different. In particular, one of the areas where this has a lot of significance consequences is when the neuroscientists say, “Neurons that fire together wire together.” I’m not smart enough to know what that means, but, essentially, my understanding of it is this:

In our brain, in our mind, in our heart, when we engage in a particular activity that has a particular response, whether it's a reward or a consequence, our brain creates a link between that activity and that response that might not have existed before. Then, when we do that activity again and got the same response again, there's a stronger connection in our mind. Then we do it again it's stronger and stronger and stronger every single time we engage in this particular activity and we get this particular response.

When we stop engaging in that activity or stop getting that response that connection in our mind it begins to erode to wither away until there's not much of a connection if any at all that remains. This is significant to our sexuality.

It’s like this: If you've ever been off-roading, especially when it's been a little bit rainy and wet, and the roads are a bit muddy—and you go in your truck. You drive down a particular path, because you don't really have an option, because there are these these tire trenches where so many vehicles have driven back and forth over this very specific route in the road. Every time someone drives over it, the trenches get deeper and deeper, to the point where the only option that you have is to drive the exact same turns that everyone else has made before you on this road. Eventually, someone says, “You know what? I don't like that route because it's too muddy…” or, “…because there's a big rock (or something like that), so I’ve got to change course a little bit.”

So someone goes off to the side a little bit for the first time and they clear a path through the brush with their tire tracks. The next person follows them, and over and over again until, now you have new tracks going in a different direction. Ss that's happening, these old tracks are beginning to erode and wash away.

This is what happens in our mind. How does this apply to our sexuality? We could apply this to almost any situation in our sexuality, but let's talk about maybe a pornography addiction. When you sit down and you look at a screen with pornographic images, you’re doing an activity that is connecting in your mind with a particular response, with the emotions and the chemicals and the feelings that were intended for intimacy and sexual pleasure. Your mind connects those two things and you start to build this connection to this screen. Then something unique happens with pornography that doesn't happen in a real relationship, where there is this novelty in pornography. There's something different sometimes, you know. Once or twice a minute, or at multiple times a second, you're flipping through different images, seeing different people in different acts. Your brain and your mind and your heart start to associate sexuality with novelty, with something different.

This is one of the many reasons why pornography is so destructive. We hit this point where, in order to be sexually aroused, in order to feel a sense of intimacy, I need novelty. I need different. And most people won’t tell you in person, but they'll say it on an anonymous survey— people who have a pornography addiction will admit that they are now looking at things that they found morally reprehensible when they first started their addiction. Why? Because they need more. They need different. They need new. They need something they've never seen before. One of the problems with that is that no spouse will ever be able to provide the amount of sexual novelty that the internet can. No one person can ever provide that.

So the results are that in many marriages where someone is struggling from a pornography addiction, there's a lack of intimacy. Why? Because the tracks are so deep and they're so entrenched in this direction, that they can no longer go in another this direction. They

can't get out of that rut. Some people find themselves physically incapable of responding to their spouse because their spouse is not a cellphone screen.

But there's good news, because this is actually a mechanism that God put inside of us, that God wired in our brain. The original intention of this mechanism was not for sexual immorality, but it was for sexual fidelity, was for a spouse. So in a marriage where there's not infidelity, and in a marriage where there's not a pornography addiction, what happens is, those tire tracks that are so much bad news over there, they're really good news over here. Because every time you go to your spouse for intimacy and sexual connection, those tracks get deeper and deeper, to the point where it actually becomes very easy to connect with your spouse, where you could almost let go of the steering wheel for a little bit and you would find yourself in an intimate place with your spouse. Now is it possible to take a sharp turn to the right or to the left and to jump out of those tracks, to find yourself someplace you ought not to be.

Yeah. Absolutely. Is that temptation always going to be there? Yeah. Absolutely. When Jesus defeated the power of sin, it wasn’t temptation he defeated. The power of sin is death, not temptation, but when we choose to say, “I'm going to abandon the immorality and I'm going to focus in on my spouse, whether I have a spouse or not, whether I ever even intend to have a spouse, I'm going to focus in on sexual purity, on fleeing immorality and letting Jesus wash me.”

What happens is, these tracks over here towards the immorality begin to erode and wash away to the point where there's just really not much of a road over there at all. This is the power of Jesus this, the hope that we have in him. Sexual purity is not only something that can be maintained. It is also something that can be obtained. Sexual purity comes when we get out of the mud and we come to Jesus and we let him get us clean.

I imagine that there are a few of you in the room—and by a few, I would say probably the majority—that have felt or currently feel filthy. You see your sexual brokenness and you say, “Oh, I wish that I could be one of those few people who was never compelled to get in the mud I wish that I had had the self-control, but I've proven to myself and to Jesus over and over again, that I love the mud too much to ever be pure.” You're not without hope.

Maybe you say, “I tried to get myself clean. I tried to scrape off the mud, but I'm just a four-year-old and I don’t know what I'm doing and I'm still filthy.” You're not without hope.

The gospel applies, not just in eternity but also today. Maybe your marriage feels like it's crumbling because you keep going back to the mud. you're not without hope no if ands or buts about it come to Jesus come to the side of the house where his blood is flowing through that

hose and he will wash away every single stain. You will be pure like you never knew you were before. You will be innocent like a child. He will wash away those tracks of immorality in your mind and in your heart and in your spirit. You will begin to form new ones that are pure and holy and right and clean. That’s the way sexual purity works for the rest of us.

I'm going to ask you to just close your eyes for just a minute and just have a conversation with Jesus. Because I know that hearing this is very different from receiving it. I know that receiving it is very different from living it. If you feel like you have been stained, if you feel like you have been dirty your whole life, I want you to just talk to Jesus and say, “Jesus, would you wash me? Would you help me to see how clean you've made me? Jesus, would you help me get out of the mud? Jesus, I want to come into the house I want to be a part of your family again.”

As we sing this next song, I know it might be embarrassing, but the truth is, it's like we said, most of us in the room will feel dirty. As we sing this next song, if you feel like you've been

in the mud or maybe you've been running around the backyard still covered in mud and you’re not sure what to do, trying to get yourself clean but it's been failing; if you feel like you need to take a step, maybe it's a step you'll have to take over and over and over again, but if you feel like you need to do something to say, “Jesus, would you come and get me cleaner?” I'd ask you to just abandon your shame. Jesus isn't interested in your shame. He's interested in your

glory, in your purity. Just abandon your shame. Leave it in your seat and then come up and bow down before the Lord as we worship Him. In your heart say, “Jesus, this is me getting out of the mud. Can this be you washing me, getting me clean?”

And if you want, there's going to be people up here to pray for you, and if you want to just kind of have a time alone between you and Jesus, that's all right. You can get on the ground and just worship Him and ask him to clean you. He's doing it and he's good at it. He will not leave a drop of mud on you.

Jesus, we come to you and we worship you. We ask that you would cleanse us. We ask that you would make us holy and pure. Jesus, I pray for sexual purity over this entire church, that you would cleanse the marriages, Lord—those marriage beds would become undefiled, Lord. That you would cleanse our hearts—that you would wash us with your blood of the mud that has stained us—that those of us who no longer have the option of maintaining sexual purity, that we can obtain it through you, and then maintain it from there. Our hope is in you, Jesus.

Make us pure again.

Scripture marked NLT is taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.