Faithful Father, forgive your muddled mariners their trespasses; for we have been sailing around adrift in a sea of rights of our invention called secularism that do not allow us to understand whether we should turn left or right. Have mercy upon us; for we have lost our way. Inspire us to repent; so that we are motivated to start doing that which is totally right in Your sight.

Help us to turn from looking at ourselves to You; for our foolish neglect of employing Your wisdom has resulted in many of our dreams being in tatters. We really need Your help on this one. Help us hallowed Teacher to love and appreciate You more and more each day; for we long to know definitively and with complete confidence that the Author of Holy Bible will come into our lives powerfully and enrich our character. How precious You are to us, Our Daddy; for when adversity, like any shade of ill health, comes knocking heavily on the front door of Your wonderful gift and adventure called life, we understand all too clearly in whom we have put our hope and with whom our true joy is to be found.

Teach those amongst us who are currently unwise visitors to Satan's private clinic that waiting in his waiting room is as warming to the human heart as embracing an iceberg programmed by learned humanity to feel sorry for itself. If You can find any dissatisfied lovers of self-sufficiency there teach them also that the sinking sands that their feet are slipping down into can be escaped from if they send You, the inventor of sand, an SOS signal before their mouths are totally covered over. Fellow students, God's will is for us to repent. This will involve us resisting the Devil, Satan, and deciding to escape out of his waiting room. It will also involve us putting a halt to phoning or sending text messages to his nurses during working and recreational hours.

Occasional friends of the fresh air of faith, far too many of you are still sitting in Satan's stuffy waiting room waiting for treatment on sprained wrists due to your love affair of shaking hands with dodgy doctrines. The triumph of Jesus Christ at Calvary should warm our heart and remind us that God Himself desires to get us out of our fig leaf aprons in order to wed our heart in holy marriage to His Beloved Jesus Christ's written and eternal Word. Ladies and gentlemen I must point out to you that any faith you have in visiting Satan for relief from your ailments is not true biblical faith. True relief from your troublesome, strained wrist will only occur when you stop sitting around so trustingly in Satan's waiting room. Escape from your enemy whilst the door to freedom is still open.

The truth is that shaking hands with the doctrine of Christ can cure sprained or dislocated wrists. The speech of the heart that says I can handle hurts like a severely sprained wrist on my own without relying on anyone else but Satan or his staff will not help us to get a free breakfast, lunch, dinner or supper from God's table.

Fellow students, our mission involves exposing Satan's lie of self-sufficiency. It is time for those interested in finding out more about Jesus Christ to turn over the turf on Satan's lies and leave off digging and kicking about unproductively in his sand pit. Esteemed Teacher, holy righteous God, teach your terrestrial singers as we sail along in seas of secularism somewhat lost that singing for our supper at the feet of Your table is done successfully by totally and wholeheartedly trusting the teachings and finished, redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

Teach us that trusting Jesus Christ Our all-sufficient Saviour protects us from our proneness to dance about on stubborn, lawless self-sufficient legs. Cherished Father, we acknowledge that although our heart can recite words of self-exultation almost flawlessly on a moving boat our understanding of You is very flawed. Cherished companions, when adversity of any form comes knocking heavily on our front door hold resiliently onto your faith, hope and love for God Triune; for the exact story of God's beautiful plan for your life can't be told accurately by the sometimes stormy weather map of your face. Awesomely beautiful Creator and righteous Judge, we thank You for teaching us that the dreams that deserve our dream time are dreams You have already dreamt for us. We learn from studying Genesis 2 that Your dream job for us is working as a tiller. In the garden of Eden You gave Adam the task of guarding and tilling his own heart and that is our task too. Under Your watchful supervision and with Your glorious help we now know we will prosper in our labour.

Treasured, fellow gardeners we have all got full time work. Grab your spade and let's carry on digging up the rough soil and deep-rooted weeds left in God's garden. As we venture forth, with gladness of heart, on this exciting task we will soon grasp that we dig productively in God's garden of paradise (our very own heart), with His spade of faith, when we love His holy, healing Word. Cherished companions, I know that you love gardening but let us first go shopping together for biblical faith. The work of shopping for faith isn't easy and we will have to bend our back and stretch our soul in Holy Bible reading, in order to triumph and glorify God's delightful Name. Precious, treasured Lord God, many of us are holed up in the false belief of fighting for success at all costs. We live in a corrupt world that places too much emphasis on winning. Help us to see that achieving sporting, academic and work-related success at the expense of character development is faulty thinking. Help us see that no-one is a winner if they end up in Your eternal pit.

Limping neighbor you have allowed your ears to be tickled by untruth for too long. Year after year you have pasted on a false smile; so that your neighbor who acts no better than you will smile back. God's gift of a winning smile isn't won by doing this. Instead of anticipating going gaga over your own success you should anticipate going gaga over the success that God has offered you in Jesus Christ. There will be times when your progress is slow. Times of acute frustration will occur; so be ready to fight your way forward patiently for faith. Be mightily encouraged; for the hiddenness of Jesus Christ, mankind's best Friend, doesn't stay hidden forever. When we play hide-and-seek with Him fervently intent on glorifying His exalted Name above all names can He hide his holy words from our speech or his laughter from our heart or his healing from our toothache-plagued mouth if we plead plausibly for his merciful intervention?

Remember, lovers of truth, this affectionate generous-hearted Friend is the Son of God and God eternal. This Jesus Christ is the delight of heaven and He will not make us endure adversity or suffering beyond what we can bare. Lovers of truth, just as no-one need irresistibly be drawn to sinning, no-one also need holding onto the false belief that the supernatural Devil is a myth. Prideful gardeners for self glory, placing your life's savings in Satan's hands will not allow God to give you any interest on your savings.

Instead of investing unwisely it is time for us to gratefully get stuck into His daily breakfast of faith and as we glorify God's Name His delight will be to give us a deeper and more abiding commitment to Jesus Christ. Amen.