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How dear and precious is the Lord!
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Isn't He so wonderful?
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And I tell you, to think...
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right now, I could be in hell.
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And God would not have to apologize to me.
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I could be there.
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I could be cut off from mercy.
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I could be lost forever.
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I could be ready to be resurrected
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and stand before the Great White Throne
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and to be cast into the eternal lake of fire.
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And to think that God had mercy upon me
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and saved me and brought me into a
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relationship with His Son,
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the Lord Jesus Christ,
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and has introduced me to peace
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that I never had in the world,
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never could find,
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a joy that is truly at times
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inexpressible.
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And life through the Scripture,
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understanding,
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God telling me and teaching me
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and showing me the riches and
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the treasures of what my life is about
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and what the life of others is about
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and where things are going.
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To have these things to be given to you
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and to know that you haven't paid for them,
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you haven't earned them,
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you haven't worked for them,
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they've just been given to you.
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All because He paid the price
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for this gift to be given to you.
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And I'll tell you again, how can we not be
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passionate about this?
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How can we not be giving ourselves
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completely to Him?
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How can we not be just
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caught up every day in the glories of this.
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Let's walk with God.
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Let us strive unto death fighting against sin,
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and turning our backs upon the world.
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Because what else is there?
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For us who are called?
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What else could we do?
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Let us follow on the know the Lord.
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And this is the wonderful thing...
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I'm thankful for the promises in the Scripture
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that the Lord is not going to finish
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until we one day rise
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in the complete likeness of Jesus Christ.
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I can't imagine what this will be.
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It's really hard to think about it.
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But one day, all the attributes -
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I'm not talking about the deity attributes,
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but I'm talking about holy attributes
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of our Lord Jesus Christ,
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one day in body, soul and spirit
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it's going to be duplicated in us
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and we're going to rise one day
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and we're not even going to be
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able to think a bad thought.
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There will be no temptation,
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and if there was temptation,
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it'd be like a tick on the back 40,
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it wouldn't matter to us.
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What I'm saying is, thank God for
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the inexpressible and glorious joys
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there are in the present life
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of knowing Jesus,
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and the treasures and the wealth
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and the riches and the glory that is to be yet
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revealed to us who are children of God.
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Beloved, I tell you again,
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how wonderful God is!
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How loving He is!
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And let us spend our days from now on
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praising Him, honoring Him, thanking Him,
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serving Him, living for Him,
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doing all we can for His glory.
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Seeking Him.
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And the wonderful thing is
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the provisions are there on our side.
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We're not going to be short-changed when
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it comes to having the grace, the Spirit,
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the Word, the help that we'll need
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to make it to the end.
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Amen.
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So let us press on, beloved.
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My mom and dad,
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my grandfather was a Baptist pastor,
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my dad was a deacon in a Baptist church.
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I was raised to know the Gospel.
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And from an early age,
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I can remember when I first began
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to realize I was lost.
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I was six years old.
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I came under conviction.
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My mother had given me strict orders.
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I had a new BB gun.
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And she said, "You can shoot the sparrows out there,
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but don't shoot any red bird."
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Well, I was out in the backyard,
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and I can remember so clearly
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a red bird lit in a cedar tree behind our house.
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And I raised my BB gun.
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My mama told me not to shoot this bird.
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But it was too big a target and too tempting.
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And I shot that bird.
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I said, well, I can't hit him anyway.
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But anyway, I shot the bird dead.
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He fell out of the tree.
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And when that bird fell out of the tree,
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I felt like God in heaven was looking down upon me,
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and I felt right then immediately
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a sense of sin and lostness.
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I had done wrong.
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I had sinned.
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Disobeyed my parents.
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I knew that not obeying
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my mother and father was a sin.
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And from that point on, I labored
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under conviction.
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Really strong conviction.
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And again, being taken to church...
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I have a somewhat complicated testimony.
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But my first entrance into the life of faith
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was when I was 11 years old.
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In what Southern Baptists used to call
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Vacation Bible School,
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As I said I had been under conviction,
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and even in that week, the Lord
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had been dealing with me.
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The pastor had been preaching some very simple
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and very strong sermons to young people
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about salvation.
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And I remember, the night before I was saved,
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I remember I got in bed
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and I was thinking somehow this little prayer I'd heard,
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"Now I lay me down to sleep,
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I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
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and if I die before I wake..."
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And I got to thinking about
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"if I die before I wake"
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I'll go to hell.
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I'm lost.
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I remember knowing I was lost,
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just feeling under condemnation.
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But I went back to church the next day
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and to Bible school and this was back in
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an Arminian church where they gave an invitation.
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And the Lord was dealing with me,
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and the pastor said any one of you children
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would like to receive Christ as your Savior?
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Would anyone like to turn to the Lord today?
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And I can remember this,
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I turned to a friend of mine beside me,
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I told him, I said,
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"If you'll go, I'll go."
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And he said, (shook his head no)
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And I said I'm going to go
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whether you go or not.
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But anyway, I can remember this.
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I had to come to the Lord.
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I moved toward Christ.
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It was a simple repentance and a simple faith.
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And I was opening my life to the Lord.
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I can remember this.
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It was somewhere between the
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first and second step,
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the Lord gave me peace
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that my sins were forgiven.
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In a Southern Baptist church,
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I was not discipled very well.
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And I'm not blaming the church,
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but I didn't grow much.
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The concept is you get saved,
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now what else is there?
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But I came to learn that salvation
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is not just a one-time step.
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It's not just a one-time decision.
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It's a daily decision.
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And it's a lifelong commitment,
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a daily commitment to lay down our lives
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and to seek the Lord
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and yield to Him.
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And like I said, during my teenage years
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I drifted... the Lord never would let me go.
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In fact, I can give you testimony
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of how the Lord chastened me.
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I got some good spankings.
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Heavy spankings from the Lord
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when I was away, out of fellowship.
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And let me tell you
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whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.
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And scourges every son whom He receives.
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If you're not obedient as a Christian,
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not doing what you ought to be doing,
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God's rod will be upon you some way.
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And His spankings hurt.
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And they're effective.
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And the Lord spanked me back into line.
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Praise the Lord!
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Amen.