A Scientific Reason: Creation And The Bible

How do you think it all got started anyway? How did it all begin? “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Ever since the 1920s when Edwin Hubble, who graduated incidentally from the University of Chicago here, discovered and confirmed that the universe is constantly expanded (and when you think of that expansion, just imagine a balloon, and on the balloon take a marker, and draw some galaxies, and then blow the balloon up you’ll notice that the galaxies are not only going farther away from the center, but farther apart from each other; that’s the way the universe is), the conclusion that scientists came to is that indeed there was a moment in which the universe was (quote) created. But how do you think you handle that if you’re not a believer? 

Let me read from The Young Oxford Book of Astronomy that is used in secular schools as an astronomy textbook: “At the very beginning of the universe all matter and all radiation were concentrated into a tiny region of space, much smaller than the nucleus of a single atom. The theory that the universe has expanded from next to nothing into its current immensity relies on the assumption that the red shifts of galaxies are caused by motion away from us.”

Now catch this: “By the time the universe was about a millionth of a second old, much of the energy had been converted into protons. In the next milliseconds electrons formed, and these collided with protons to make neutrons. Neutrons survived only a thousand seconds as independent particles so the next few minutes were critical (exclamation point). During the first quarter of an hour the protons reacted with the neutrons, which were fast decaying, to make the nuclear helium atoms. In a race against time as the universe continued to cool and expand, the universe managed to…” Well, I won’t go on.

It all happened in a moment of time from next to nothing. Wow! What does the Tribune say? Yesterday’s Tribune? You know that the evolutionists had a conference here in Chicago last week? Joel Primack, professor of Physics at the University of California in Santa Cruz, pointed out one unresolved mystery right at the birth of the universe. “Physicists,” Primack said, “have recently realized that the basic forces of nature split off from one unified force for a few moments after the big bang more than 15 billion years ago. That splitting could have happened in many different ways, only a few of which would have resulted in an inhabitable planet such as the earth. Humans seem to have hit the jackpot in a cosmic Las Vegas,” Primack said, “leaving room for the possibility that some divine providence was responsible for our luck. I have to be impressed by all the coincidences,” he said. So we hit the jackpot. That’s how it all happened.

Edward Tryon, Professor of Physics at the University of New York, said years ago that he proposed that the universe created itself by a spontaneous action ex nihilo, that is, out of nothing. And he says, “This proposal variously struck people as preposterous, enchanting, or both. I would say, “Not enchanting, but preposterous yes!” Very preposterous! 

You know, I used to believe that if you could convince scientists that evolution was impossible, not just improbable but impossible, that they would change their views. Wouldn’t that be a natural assumption? If all the laws of science are against the fact that all matter, for example, disintegrates into randomness rather than complexity when left alone, unless it’s directed by a mind that never comes together in complexity, but always disintegrates; if you could point out, for example, that out of nothing, nothing can come; if you can show that intelligence is something that could not have arisen on its own, why then they would all decide to say, “Yes, indeed, evolution is false. It is contrary to science.” I used to think that until I read a book, and actually part of an article by Philip Johnson who has written an excellent book about this. And what he has shown is the reason we had… Have you ever wondered why it is that we see it so clearly that there has to be a God, and the evolutionists just don’t buy it? No matter what, scientific evidence is against evolution. Have you ever wondered why?

Listen to this evolutionist. He lets the cat out of the bag, and Johnson has written an entire book to prove this thesis, namely that the commitment of atheistic evolution is not, first of all, to science. It is, first of all, to their presupposition that only matter exists and there is no God.

Listen to this. An evolutionist, [Richard] Lewontin, is writing: “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of the constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance in the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories. We do this because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept the material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary. We are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation, and a set of concepts that produce material explanations no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.”

The eminent Kant scholar, Lewis Beck, used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured and miracles may happen. So we have allowed a divine foot in the door. It doesn’t matter whether it’s scientific or not.

Finally, we have an explanation.

You know, we live in a great marvelous time. If you are here today and you are a university student, you have advantages that many of us never had, because many books are being written to show that evolution is unscientific. You know, I used to say that to believe in evolution, to believe that it all came together in one big bang without a God to create or to observe or to direct, was about equivalent to believing that there was an explosion in a print factory, and the result was a Webster’s Dictionary. Well, you know, that at least is theoretically possible, though not actually possible. But many evolutionists used to say that the chances… I read one mathematician who said, “It’s one over ten with 43 zeros.” That was the chance, but it did happen. Nowadays, people are saying that it doesn’t even have that chance.    

You know, that would be another message, but people say, “Well, couldn’t chance do it?” No, chance can’t do it. Not a chance! Not a chance! Chance never has done anything. It’s never created anything. It’s never produced anything. People totally misunderstand chance. Chance has gotten all kinds of publicity that it has never, never deserved. Not a chance!

And you have books written today. For example, Behe has written a book, Darwin’s Black Box, in which he takes the presuppositions of Darwinism, and doesn’t only show that it’s improbable, but it is impossible. And so you live in an age when evolution is being discredited right and left.

Well, I have much better things to do today than to simply discredit evolution. As you know, this is another message in this series of Seven Reasons Why You Can Trust the Bible. And we come to the reason today—a scientific reason. What I want you to do is to look at Genesis 1, and I’m going to show you that Genesis 1 is really the basis for science and the basis for observation and the study of science, which Christians not only should be involved in, but many people think it is Christianity itself which opened the door to the whole scientific enterprise.

You need to understand that when God created, He must have had (if I could just use the word) some fun in doing it. “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” When God decided to create, He decided to go public. That’s why the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. It’s because God said, “I just want to show what I’m able to do.” And so what I decided to do is to snoop through some scientific journals and spend some time in encyclopedias during the last couple of weeks, and I ended up with much more material than I could ever share with you. If this sermon was the length of time I’d wanted it to be, it would be a lot longer than you hoped it would be, I can assure you. But what I’ve done is I’ve taken all of this information and I’ve concentrated it into one small molecule, and possibly what will happen is a big bang and suddenly it will all be there. (chuckles)

Alright, with that introduction, notice: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” I want to speak very briefly about this planet called the earth. You know, of course, that if you are driving a car and you’re going 60 miles an hour, you know that you are speeding, or you know that you are moving along because you look out the window and you see the trees and the objects whiz by you. My dear friend today, sitting in this church in calmness, we are actually rotating around the sun 66,000 miles an hour. The only problem is that the atmosphere… Well, it’s not a problem. We can thank God that the atmosphere and everything else is coming with us, because if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here discussing this particular interesting physical phenomenon.

So, we are rotating around the sun, and the earth makes its journey around the sun 595 million miles every single year. And scientists know exactly 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, 9.4 seconds. Wow! Then, in addition to that, you know that the world is spinning. It’s like a baseball that is being thrown. The ball is maybe going 90 miles an hour, but the ball is spinning while it’s going. And we are doing that, of course, at about a thousand miles an hour. We’ve all been on its axis–the earth is, and that’s every 23 hours and so many minutes and so many seconds.

Now the earth tilts in relationship to the sun at an angle of 23.5 degrees, and it’s because of that that we get all of our seasons. Notice what the Scripture says in verse 14 of Genesis 1: “Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven to separate the day and the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years, and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.’ And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.” 

He created the earth, and He created it, the Bible says, to be inhabited. And you look at these journals, and I tried to get up to speed on a few of these things, but you know, of course, that those of us who usually study other matters… I was amazed at how the authors would write in these journals all of the things that were needed for life, all of the chemicals, all of the water, the carbon, all the things that needed to come together. And then they say that “Really, this is not found. With any certainty can we find it any other place in the universe or know that it exists.” 

Parenthesis! Why all this excitement about that Martian rock that was found some time ago up in Antarctica? And the newspaper said, “This (quote) proves that there was life on other planets.” Now, if there is life on other planets, if God wanted to do that, you know, that’d be no big thing. It wouldn’t destroy my faith. But why this rush to judgment when other scientists now are saying that that Martian rock actually counts against the possibility of life on other planets now that they’ve had time to study it? Why this anxiety to believe it?

Paul Davies, who wrote a book entitled Are We Alone? said it very clearly. He said, “Many people cling to the belief that the origin of life required a divine act. But if life on earth is not unique, the case for the miraculous origin of life would be undermined.” And that’s why they are so insistent that surely if it just happened by chance on our planet, it should happen by chance somewhere else in the universe. The problem is not just any old planet will do, and not any old sun and moon will do either.

Let me say a few words about the moon, earth’s companion. The moon enjoys its journey (I’m sure it does) around the sun because it follows us all the time, as you know. Next to the earth the moon would be a tennis ball in comparison to a basketball. It’s much smaller. Two forces continually balance it. You have gravity, and the gravity wants to pull the moon toward us so that it would crash against the earth, but it is kept from doing that by its centrifugal force as it continues to travel around the earth.

Think of it this way. We’ve all taken a ball, haven’t we, and on it we put a string, and then we’ve twirled that ball. If you can think of the string as representing the gravity to hold it close to us, the centrifugal force wants that ball to go in a straight line to go off in the woods somewhere, but it is held there by gravity. And yet, as a result of that centrifugal force and gravity, working together, the moon always does its dance along with the earth, and stays as it orbits the sun in very, very predictable patterns.

Now, I read two articles entitled The Earth Without the Moon. What would happen if, you know, when all the big bang happened there was just no moon? The earth just spun off. Well, what the scientists tell us is that the degrees—23.3, which are responsible for our seasons, simply would not happen. The degrees would be changed, and that would tremendously alter life here on the earth. And not only that, the speed of the rotation of the earth would increase, because the moon slows it down to bring it to the point where we have those 24-hour days. In short, if I were to take some of the paragraphs and read them to you, you would see that most of the scientists seem to be saying that if there were no moon, there could be no life, not just because we wouldn’t have tides, but because the whole kilter of the earth would be out of sync with what is needed for what we know life to be.

By the way, when was the last time you thanked God for Jupiter? Have any of you thanked God for Jupiter recently? I know I haven’t thanked God for Jupiter recently at least. I don’t remember doing that. It is the largest planet in our solar system, and do you know what Jupiter does for us? Because of its huge gravity, it is much larger than the earth, and actually it spins with a great deal of power and force. Because of its gravity, all the comets (many of the comets) that would hit the earth are pulled off by Jupiter’s gravity. One of the articles said that the earth would constantly be pounded with comets were it not for Jupiter. So I thought, “Well, Lord, I’ve never done this before, but thank You for Jupiter. Thank You for Jupiter.”

What about the sun? The earth’s volume would fit into the sun about a million times. It’s 400 times further away than the moon, of course (93 million miles), and light hustles here. And by the way, let’s give light credit for hustling. You know, we may say, “Well, you know, light doesn’t go too fast. That’s why it takes so long (186,000 miles a second).” That’s about around the earth seven times or so every second. I think that that’s hustling. I really do.

And notice 8 minutes it takes it to come from the sun. And the light comes from its layer 300 miles thick, 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If it were closer, we would burn. If it were further away, we would freeze. Aren’t you glad that the sun isn’t like some of the other stars that are constantly fading in and out? They glow for a while and then over a period of maybe 200 days they begin to disappear and then they begin to come back. How would you like it if you woke up in the morning and the sun was fading away day by day; for 200 days it kept fading away? Even if it came to full strength later, it’d be too late for us. We’d all be frozen. But that sun is there every single day, even when we can’t see it. It is there with such consistency. Thank the Lord for the sun!

One of the articles said that .02 percent of the stars have some of the properties that the sun has that may be able to sustain life. And then there are others who say that there is no possibility that the other stars have actually the kinds of properties that the sun has to sustain life. Very, very special! Very, very unique!

So the sun, the moon and the earth do this dance all in relationship to themselves with such accuracy that scientists can predict with accuracy the exact day, the exact moment of an eclipse because it all runs… What does the Bible say in the book of Isaiah? “Who has created all these things; it brings out their host by number? Because he is great in power, not one fails.” And what he’s saying is: “God, You put all this together,” and the Scripture says He made the sun to rule by day, the moon to rule by night, and there it is.

I need to speak about the stars. This is almost amusing to me when it says in the last part of verse 16, “He made the stars also.” It’s just tossed in, just as if, “Well, you know, no big deal, but I just happened to make the stars also.” That was just… It took a word and it was done.

Stars! The sun is a star, but the next closest star is 250,000 times farther away than the sun. It takes light four years to get here, hustling at 186,000 miles a second. And then you begin to think of this fact. Four years for light to get here! I can’t even think about that. Two hundred and fifty thousand times farther away from the sun! My mind begins to boggle. And then you begin to think of the whole stellar universe, and the Milky Way with its hundred billion stars. And then you begin to think about a hundred light years, and a thousand light years, and a million light years, and then they tell us billions of light years, and the universe is 17 billion light years. And I’m saying, “You know, you’ve lost me somewhere there. You really lost me. I can’t take it in. What do you mean that the light takes 17 billion years to get here?” And I say, “You know, there’s some light leaving, and I might be dead by the time it gets here.” I mean, wow, 17 billion years!

Another parenthesis. By the way, God could have created the stars already shining. Some of those stars that were billions of light years away, they were already possibly shining upon the earth at the very moment of creation because, you see, when God created Adam, Adam didn’t… You know if you had met Adam an hour after he was created, you’d not say, “Oh Adam, you look exactly an hour old.” No, Adam was created full-blown.

If you had looked at the trees of the garden you wouldn’t say, “Well, you know, that tree strikes me as being one hour old.” No, God created it full-blown. He may have created the whole universe for man as He did, and He speeded up the process that they say takes billions of years, and He spoke the word and it all happened, and it was made inhabitable. And lo and behold, the stars are already shining. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

What do we say? What do scientists say? I don’t really have time but I need to read a line or two of what Einstein said: “The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. His religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it, all the systematic thinking and the acumen of human beings is utterly insignificant.”

I’ll skip Stephen Hawking except for a very short line from him: “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers (He’s speaking about the relationships) seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”

Fred Hoyle—I shall skip his quote entirely. 

Let me read from Robert Jastrow, an astronomer: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith and the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He is about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” 

Now look at Genesis 1:1. In that simple opening statement of the Bible, we have the foundation for all of science. Just look at it. 

In the beginning (time), 

God (personality) 

created (force)

[And by the way, gravity is frequently misunderstood, but force! God created. He spoke. And there it was with all of those laws and the precision with which the stars and the planets move.] 

the heavens (space) 

What lies beyond the 17 billion light years? They say they have no idea. It could go on for another 17. All that we know is from our standpoint there is no end to it.

and the earth (matter).

So you have all the elements of what comprises science. The question is what God is most likely to have been the creator of all of these things with their precision and their accuracy? Well, of course, first of all, we know that He has to be a God with tremendous power. Tremendous power because the universe is an effect which must be caused by a much greater cause! Now, God is greater than the universe that He created. He would not create something that was as big as He Himself is, but when you begin to think of the multitudes of stars, and they tell us that there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on the beaches of the world (the experts tell us), when you begin to think of this mind-boggling number and the immensity of the distance, and God is still beyond that, what a powerful God! And it says in Isaiah 40, “Because he is strong in power, not one fails.” Because He is strong in power!

Now, you have to understand, of course, that secondly, a God like that would have to be independent of the universe. He would have to be the cause of His own existence. Out of nothing, nothing comes. You say, “Well, if out of nothing, nothing comes, then how did God produce Himself?” (chuckles) Well, God didn’t produce Himself. Out of nothing, nothing comes. He said to Moses, “I am that I am.” The Scripture says in the book of Psalms, “From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God.” There was no beginning for God. There was no beginning, and as a result of that He is independent of the universe. You see, unless we come to an uncaused cause, we will never have a basis upon which anything could possibly exist, because out of nothing, nothing comes. 

Now you know, the God of the Bible is independent of the universe. He existed before He created the universe. What was God doing before He created the universe? Well, Calvin said at one time, somewhat sarcastically I hope, “He was creating a hell for people who ask such questions.” (laughter)

He has not seen fit to reveal to us what He was doing before He created the universe. Let us be glad that He did create the universe, and that we were known to God before the creation of the world, the Bible says, so that you are not a stranger to God. You were known and loved by God from before the foundation of the world. I’ve shown that to you in the Bible before. We don’t have time to do it this morning, but you remember that’s what it says: “From all eternity for as long as God existed.” And because God doesn’t learn anything, and He doesn’t come up with any new ideas, as a result of that you were in His mind and in His heart from all eternity for as long as He existed, which is from eternity past.

So it can’t be a pantheistic God that created everything. You know, the eastern religions with their pantheism, “Well, nature is God.” Well, I’m sorry. Nature isn’t God, and nature could not have produced nature. You need a God who is independent of the universe. He has to be a personal God—a personal God. That’s what kind of a God we have.

Now, here’s the miracle, folks. The God who spoke and it was created, and the One who said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, the one who one afternoon by the word of His mouth simply spoke and He made the stars also, that God, the Bible says, is the very God who not only can know us and longs to know us, but He actually dwells with us. He dwells with us!

Now, listen to this: “For thus says the high and the exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy, ‘I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and the lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

As you know, I believe very, very deeply that the Bible is the Word of God. If the Bible is not the Word of God, we have no hope of figuring out any kind of an ultimate question. None! We can figure out little trivial questions, but nothing ultimate, because unless God tells us what He is like, unless He tells us what He is up to, He remains a great mystery. He still is a mystery, even though He has spoken to us in a language that we can understand. He is well beyond that. The Scripture says that the secret things belong onto the Lord, our God, but the things which are revealed belong onto His people forever and ever. And He’s given to us a little slice of revelation, just enough so that we are intrigued and we want to know Him better, and we can come to know Him. But here the text says that this God… And I’m saying to myself, “Wait a moment. Is this the same God that is as the end of the universe, assuming that there is some kind of an end? Is this the same God who is billions of light years away who created the stars that are billions of light years away?” And so He is transcendent. He is out there, but He is also here and dwells not only with His people, but within his people, and regenerates His people.

Now listen! The very same creative act by which God created the worlds—the universe—is the same God who has to do a work in you in order for you to belong to Him. And it’s a creative work. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creation.” A new creation! “A new heart I will create within you.” When you accept Christ as your Savior, there is something within you that was not in you before, and it was created there by God.

Notice the parallels between the physical creation and the new creation. Both are done by God without any human involvement. When God spun the worlds into existence He didn’t say, “You know, it’s a tough job throwing these stars out there. I think that I should have some human beings who could at least give it some kind of a shove, or something.” Nope! He just did it alone. You say, “Well, when I was saved, though, you know I helped God because I believed.” Well, that’s true. He gave you the faith to believe, but the actual miracle within, the creation of the new nature, was wholly done by God, because only He can do it. And you didn’t even have a part in that miracle as far as just looking at it as a miracle is concerned. Both involve the Spirit and the Word. If we had time in Genesis we’d know that it says that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And what does it say? “We are born again of the Spirit,” and then the text says, “and the Word of God.” In 1 Peter you remember it says, “We are born by the imperishable word of God.” We have been begotten by both the Word and the Spirit working together in harmony. And finally, both are for the glory of God.

I’ve already told you that when God created the universe, and especially the stars, I just think He threw Himself a party. He just said, “I’m just going to show what I can do.” “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech. Night unto night utters knowledge.” In all the regions of the world, no matter where you are, you can go out at night and you can bask in the wonder and the glory and the awesome unbelievable power of God. We don’t see it here in Chicago so much where we have artificial light, but you know, back on the farm there were some advantages. You’d walk out at night and there were no lights (none) that were given off through electricity, and you just walked under the skies and stars, and you said to yourself, “I can’t believe it. It looks as if they are so close I could put some of them in my pocket. They’re just up there.” And you walk under that and you say, “You know, that’s my Father. That’s my God who created those. He is the one whom I call Abba Father. Daddy! He did it!” (applause)

So the heavens declare the glory of God, and why do you live? For one purpose! You say, “Oh, to be happy so that I can get a good retirement, so that I can die comfortably of cancer.” (laughter) “That’s why I live.” The glory of God!

Let me tell a true story. This Wednesday we had a meeting with some pastors here. There’s a pastor not too far from here whose house (about two or three weeks ago) totally burned in the middle of the night. The doorbell rang so he was able to get out. He had no idea who rang the doorbell. Was it an angel? Was it a human? They don’t know. But as they were getting out of the house after the doorbell woke them up, they had only a few minutes to get out. And sitting out there watching with his family as everything was going up in flames (the whole thing was burning) he said to his son who is a teenager, who has been well taught, by the way, “Son, what is the purpose of man? What is your purpose?” And he answered in the words of the creed: “To know God and to enjoy Him forever.” And then his father said to him, “Has anything changed now? Is anything any different?” Well, the answer is no. Not any different! 

You know, when you have a house you live for the glory of God. When the thing burns down, you live for the glory of God. What does it say regarding us as humans? “For Thy pleasure we are and we were created.” And that’s why we were created. It’s for the good pleasure of God, for the same reason that He spun the worlds into existence—to declare His glory. That’s why!

Now, the question is, and with this we do bring the plane to a landing at the airport… Think this through. The Bible says that the heavens are the work of God’s fingers and it was just, you know, a siesta in the afternoon. He just threw them up there. But it says that when He saved us, the Lord bared His holy arm. 

What is the greatest miracle? To spin the worlds in space or to save us? The Bible would say to save us. Do you know why? It’s because all of His attributes of love and mercy and truth and justice would have to be involved to save us, and none of those were required for the creation of the world. All that He needed was omnipotence—tremendous power. But when He saved us, love and truth and justice and mercy all came together, along with the power of God.

Some of us know the song (apparently not all do):

It took a miracle to put the stars in place.

It took a miracle to hang the world in space,

But when He saved my soul, cleansed and made me whole,

It took a miracle of love and grace.

Isn’t it wonderful that the same creative God, about which the Bible speaks…? And when I read this I say, “The Bible is not a book on science, to be sure.” Scientists have discovered many, many incredible wonderful things that are not at all mentioned in the Bible, but isn’t it wonderful to know that the God of the Bible, the foundation of science, is all here because He’s the creator? He’s the creator, and our responsibility is to revel in the fact that our Father is able to pull it off and do it so wondrously.

And then He says, “I want fellowship with you. I created you and I knew you, and when I save your soul, it’s a miracle.” Have you experienced that miracle—the miracle of God?

Let’s pray. 

Father, we want to thank You today for the greatness of Your book. We thank You that there is not a single statement in Your holy Word that contradicts science. We thank You, Father, for the exploration of space. We thank You for all that people have been able to do, the ability of putting a man on the moon, the ability to look into the heavens further and further, and we rejoice every time there’s a new telescope that tells us more. And we ask, Father, in the name of Christ, that as we think about that God, that we might know that in grace He gave us a book. And we pray that we might love the book, study the book, and be changed by it. For those who have never met God through Christ, we pray even today…

Yes, if you are here today and you don’t know Christ as Savior, you can say, “Lord Jesus, would You save me? Would You connect me in God the creator?” (“No man,” said Jesus, “comes to the Father but by me.”) You can pray that even where you are now. Cry out to God, and say, “Save me and grant me that new heart, that miracle that only You can do.”

Father, do that in the lives of many we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.