The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace to you.

If you've never contacted Grace to you, we want to send you a free booklet by John titled

Defeating Discontentment. It gives you seven practical principles that will help you face setbacks and difficult circumstances and experience contentment even when life turns upside down.

Request to a free booklet titled Defeating Discontentment by writing to defeating at gty.org.

That's Defeating at gty.org.

This offer is good in North America and Europe through June 2024. And now unleashing

God's truth one verse at a time. Here is Grace to you Bible Teacher John MacArthur.

Obviously no one would anticipate going into ministry and ending up there for 55 years. As you heard that's very rare. The average pastoral

length is four years across this country and that means there are a lot that never last four years to make

that the average. So it's a very unusual thing to find a people who are that patient with one human being

that they would allow over half a century of ministry to be shared together.

So I understand the privilege, I understand the joy,

I understand the purposes that God had in unfolding the ministry here over these 55 years.

I never ever would have imagined anything like the ministry that the Lord has raised up.

I could think of a lot of things when I was young.

I still am always thinking about ways to minister, but Ephesians 320 was on my mind when I came

out of seminary, now and to him who was able to do exceeding abundantly above all you can

ask or think. And I meditated on that and thought how can the

Lord do beyond, exceedingly, abundantly beyond what I can ask or think when I can think of so many things.

Well, the Lord has far exceeded my wildest expectations for my life and my time here at Grace Church.

There are a lot of ways that the story of Grace Church could be chronicled.

I can look back over 55 years and follow the history of this Church by just following the development of my own family.

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