God chose, before He ever created the world, a people that He was going to save, that He was going to deliver, and wrote their names down in the Lamb's Book of Life from the foundation of the world. I've been preaching that or proclaiming that now for 55 years. I started out on that theme and I have never got over it. It's a wonderful truth. Think about this, that God chose you. And then think about this, why? It wasn't because you were better than anybody else. That's what makes it so awesome. I am awestruck that God would choose me. Oh, what a wonder that God chose me. Unmerited favor. Undeserved favor. You see, there are passages of Scripture that I quote so often to you, where God said in the book of Jeremiah, before I formed you in your mother's belly, I already loved you. I knew you. And ordained you. You're not living an accidental life. Sometimes it may seem that way, but you're not. I hear people say all the time, so-and-so fell on bad luck. That's an old Southern word for predestination, I guess. There's no such thing as luck. There's God, and I'm glad about that. Before I formed you in your mother's belly, I loved you according as He had chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world. We're bound to give thanks for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation. And he knew you were going to shoot up and maybe prostitutes and you guys and all of your craziness. Think about this. There are guys sitting in here that have been, well, in and out of prison. In fact, some of you heard the gospel in prison. That's how God brought you. He had to lock you up. Isn't that something? You thought it was the worst day of your life when the judge said five years. But God was at work. The message of the gospel totally shuts you up to giving God all the glory. That salvation is of the Lord, that He's the Alpha and the Omega and the beginning and the end. I have been justified without a cause. Isn't that an awesome statement? That is, there was no cause in you that caused God to love you. Think about how long you wandered. How you wandered. Just like crazy people. How long were you on drugs? Those of you who are churchy people, how long were you in church before you really came to see in regeneration power? The hound of heaven caught up with you. God sought you out of your lodibar, out of the place of no pastures, out of that wilderness. God sought you out, singled you out, and made you conscious of your sinnership. Some of you are sitting in here, and I know you're saying this, I should have been damned to the lowest hell. I was such a rubble rouser, so disobedient to my parents, so disrespectful, out in the world, and the Holy Spirit caught up with me. You see, that's why we say around here, something has to happen on the inside before anything happens on the outside. God does something on the inside that changes your wonder. I hope that you've come to this conclusion, that if there's Anything good comes out of you, God put it in you. And it comes out of that new nature, not your old fleshly nature, because in my flesh dwells no good thing.