know but for now we are going to be in John chapter 14 to start and I would like to pray for us before we uh get into his word. Will you pray with me?

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11 seconds

All right. Father God, we welcome the Holy Spirit in our midst. We welcome the Holy Spirit. We confess that we need the Holy Spirit every minute of every day.

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23 seconds

That we can't do this life without you, Lord. So, as we open up the scriptures, I pray that you would teach us from your

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30 seconds

word today. Um, help us to learn to appreciate and lean into the Holy Spirit more in our lives every day. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

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43 seconds

All right. If you are here for your first time at Impact, we welcome you.

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46 seconds

We're so glad you're here with us. And if you haven't already, if you could take this blue card out of your programs that you should have received one of

0:53

53 seconds

these on your way in and fill that out with your name, email, and phone number.

0:58

58 seconds

And what you're going to do is turn this blue card in at the blue tent. Uh on your way out, which is just outside the front doors when you leave the building

1:05

1 minute, 5 seconds

on the right, there's a blue tent. And we have a a goodie bag that has all kinds of goodies. It has chocolates,

1:12

1 minute, 12 seconds

coffee, and Chick-fil-A gift cards. And we even have thrown in an extra Chick-fil-A gave me an extra bonus

1:20

1 minute, 20 seconds

breakfast, free breakfast sandwich to put in these bags as well. So, you are doubly blessed today. U if you are visiting, please turn in that blue card

1:28

1 minute, 28 seconds

with your information. We just want to be able to follow up with you. Uh send you encouraging text messages, Bible verses that are encouraging, ask how we can pray for you, stuff like that. Okay?

1:38

1 minute, 38 seconds

So, uh go ahead and start filling that out if you haven't already. And there is a place to take notes on the back of your program. We highly encourage taking

1:46

1 minute, 46 seconds

notes. I believe that this stuff will actually help you in life. So, write it down. It's going to help you. Um, and then we'll get to our next steps. Uh,

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1 minute, 54 seconds

which is action steps that we take based on what we are what we learned today.

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1 minute, 59 seconds

So, get your pen out, get your Bibles out, and let's go. Uh, the Holy Spirit.

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2 minutes, 4 seconds

So, we we're in the middle of a series called Getting to Know and Love God.

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2 minutes, 9 seconds

Getting to know and love God. And we've looked at lots of different topics of how uh God as father provides for our spiritual needs. We looked one week at

2:18

2 minutes, 18 seconds

God as father provides for our physical needs. Uh today we're going to talk about how God because he is father and he loves us, he wanted to help us by

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2 minutes, 26 seconds

giving us the Holy Spirit. Does anybody appreciate the Holy Spirit this morning?

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2 minutes, 32 seconds

Okay. if you don't already, hopefully you will more by the time you leave because we need to uh appreciate uh and

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2 minutes, 39 seconds

be glad that Jesus gave us God gave us the Holy Spirit. Um what is he to us?

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2 minutes, 45 seconds

What does he do for us? That's what we're going to talk about today. So uh I have been a coach of uh some little

2:53

2 minutes, 53 seconds

league uh type teams over the years. one one time uh a church league a church soccer league kids ch church church

3:00

3 minutes

soccer league uh talked me into being a soccer coach for their league. And I was like, "Guys, I'm I'm telling you, I've never been a coach for soccer before. In

3:08

3 minutes, 8 seconds

fact, I've never even played soccer before. Are you sure you want me as a coach?" And they were like, "Oh, don't worry. It's not that hard. Yes, we want

3:16

3 minutes, 16 seconds

you." I'm like, "Man, you must be really desperate if you got a guy telling you he's never even played soccer and you're willing." Now, we actually did end up

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3 minutes, 24 seconds

winning that season, but only because we were blessed to have this girl who was awesome and she could score goals like nobody's business. That's the only

3:32

3 minutes, 32 seconds

reason we won. It wasn't because of my coaching. But one year, I was in living in Arkansas and I was helping a team

3:39

3 minutes, 39 seconds

that my oldest son Eric was on, uh, little league baseball team. And in Arkansas, how many of you know if you've ever been in the South that they have a

3:47

3 minutes, 47 seconds

thick southern accent? I mean, thick boy. It is thick. And uh these little boys who were playing baseball would

3:55

3 minutes, 55 seconds

come up with these chants that they would say to the other team. They would just do these chants at the other team and like how we're better than you.

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4 minutes, 3 seconds

We're going to beat you. Right. And they had this one that I still remember. It went like this. It went thunder thunder thunderation. We're the best team in the

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4 minutes, 12 seconds

nation. Lightning lightning lightning thunder. We're the best team 10 and under. And I always laugh at that last part.

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4 minutes, 20 seconds

I'm like, "Guys, it's 10. It's ten, not t i n." Ten and under. Um, but it was

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4 minutes, 28 seconds

Yeah, it's Yeah, it's it's one syllable, not two, right? 10. Okay. 10. Anyway, uh, it it was cute, though. And of course, the other team would hear that

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4 minutes, 36 seconds

chant and they would just melt in fear and be like, "We might as well give up now. They're the best team 10 and under." All right. Um, [laughter]

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4 minutes, 45 seconds

but how many of you experienced moments where you needed help in life? Anybody ever needed some help? Like maybe you

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4 minutes, 53 seconds

were like, you know, I could really use a coach, someone who could mentor me to help me through life. Like a wise person

5:00

5 minutes

that could give me some good advice. You ever needed advice? I know I have. Like maybe just a good friend, someone who would just be there for you and with you as you went through different things.

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5 minutes, 11 seconds

Someone to encourage you. Do anybody ever needed encouragement in life? I know we can never get I can never get enough encouragement. Never get too much

5:19

5 minutes, 19 seconds

encouragement or someone to just be a comforting presence. Like I just wish for someone to just sit with me and be

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5 minutes, 27 seconds

with me and just be a comforting presence. You ever wish for that? Guess what? We have someone who is actually wanting to be all of those things. All

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5 minutes, 35 seconds

of those things wrapped up in one. It's the Holy Spirit. We're going to learn about the Holy Spirit who wants to be all those things for you in your life.

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5 minutes, 44 seconds

So, we're going to be in John 14. If you haven't already, turned there in John 14. In John 13, Jesus tells his

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5 minutes, 52 seconds

disciples that he has spent like nearly every day with uh for three and a half years that he is leaving. And can you

6:00

6 minutes

imagine like your best friend, the one you love, the one you look up to, it tells you he's leaving. How would you feel? uh probably devastated like what wait what do you mean you're leaving?

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6 minutes, 11 seconds

And some of us have have dealt with loss in our life like maybe you've been through a divorce or death of someone close to you and you just you you know it must have been devastating to them.

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6 minutes, 22 seconds

Um the disciples hearts were broken when he announces this that he's leaving. And so in John 14 1-3 he tells them do not

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6 minutes, 32 seconds

let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. My father's house has many rooms. If that were not

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6 minutes, 41 seconds

so, would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will

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6 minutes, 48 seconds

come back and take you to be with me so that you also may be where I am. So

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6 minutes, 56 seconds

Jesus is like, I see you stressed. I see you troubled, but don't stress. I'm

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7 minutes, 3 seconds

going to prepare a place. And when they heard that in the first century, they would have known exactly what he was talking about. Going to prepare a place

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7 minutes, 12 seconds

was something that engaged couples. The man in the relationship before they got married would go and he would build a house or he would fix up a house and

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7 minutes, 21 seconds

prepare a place so that when they were married, they could he could take her back to the place that he prepared.

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7 minutes, 27 seconds

Right? So, it's like, don't worry, I'm leaving. I'm going to prepare a place, but guess what? I'm coming back. I'm going to come back someday. I'm not

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7 minutes, 35 seconds

going forever. I'm going to come back at the right time. I'm preparing a place.

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7 minutes, 41 seconds

Um so then in verses 15- 18, same chapter, verses 15- 18, Jesus says, "If

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7 minutes, 49 seconds

you love me, keep my commands and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate, another advocate to

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7 minutes, 58 seconds

help you and be with you forever." the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor

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8 minutes, 6 seconds

knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. So he's like, don't stress.

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8 minutes, 19 seconds

I'm sending another counselor. And those words when he says another counselor, he's he's saying like another one just

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8 minutes, 27 seconds

like me. Just as I've been with you and everything I do for you, I'm sending you another counselor. One just like me

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8 minutes, 34 seconds

that's going to be with you and he's going to help you. So that word for advocate uh or counselor, some translations say counselor, advocate, it

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8 minutes, 44 seconds

means [clears throat] one who is called alongside to help, encourage, exhort. So, if you could just

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8 minutes, 51 seconds

imagine a coach who is helping a marathon runner, okay, marathon, long distance, right? And imagine that coach

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8 minutes, 59 seconds

who is like, "Hey, you need to pick up your pace." You know, he's running alongside. He's like, "Hey, you need to pick up your pace. You're you're not going to keep up. You're not going to

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9 minutes, 6 seconds

finish." Or, "Hey, hey, now you're going too fast. You're going to burn yourself out, right? You're you're not going to last. You need to slow you actually need

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9 minutes, 14 seconds

to slow down your pace." Or, "Hey, perfect pace. You're doing great." Right? just someone who's going alongside encouraging and coaching and

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9 minutes, 24 seconds

and telling you what to do, right? Um, okay, let's go. So, if you read chapters

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9 minutes, 30 seconds

14 through 16, you see this word and this theme over and over and over again.

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9 minutes, 35 seconds

It's peace. Jesus was trying to comfort them with a message of peace. Peace. It

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9 minutes, 43 seconds

starts in chapter 14. We read in ver beginning of verse chapter 14 and it ends in chapter 16 with peace. You ever

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9 minutes, 51 seconds

gone through a a scary time in your life where you needed some peace? When we lived in Arkansas, uh I remember one

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9 minutes, 59 seconds

night something woke me up and my first thought it woke me up out of sleep and my first thought was there's an intruder

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10 minutes, 7 seconds

in the house. And so I grab my baseball bat that I keep next to my bed, my trusty baseball bat, and I start I go

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10 minutes, 14 seconds

from the the bedroom into the kitchen like this. I go around the door. I'm like, right. I'm like, how was that?

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10 minutes, 24 seconds

I'll do it again. Don't worry. I'll I'll do it again in just a minute. So I look around. There's nobody in the kitchen.

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10 minutes, 30 seconds

Okay. So I go into the next room, the living room. I turn around the corner.

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10 minutes, 33 seconds

I'm like, [laughter] and I go through the whole house, every room, just like that. Just like that with the hy and everything. No, I don't

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10 minutes, 42 seconds

remember if I said hya out loud, but I went through the whole house. No intruder. I'm like, okay, what what what

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10 minutes, 50 seconds

was that then? And all of a sudden, I see a flash of light through the window.

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10 minutes, 56 seconds

And I just stood there and I waited and I see another flash of light and another flash of light. I'm like, "Oh, there's a

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11 minutes, 4 seconds

storm. There's a storm going on, a thunderstorm." And then I realized that we had just adopted a dog named Ebie who apparently was afraid of thunderstorms.

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11 minutes, 16 seconds

And she started whimpering and I was like, "Oh, that's what woke me up." She was scared because of the storm. So when

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11 minutes, 23 seconds

Jesus announces that he's leaving, there's fear sets in, right? They're like, "Wait, what? We can't be without you, our fearless leader, our brother.

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11 minutes, 31 seconds

we we love you. Like, where are you going? So, what does he do? He brings a message of peace. He's like, don't worry. He I'm I'm going to send you

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11 minutes, 39 seconds

another counselor. He's going to be with you. In fact, he's going to live inside of you. How many of you know the Holy Spirit, if you're a believer, lives inside of you, which is mindblowing.

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11 minutes, 50 seconds

Like, he is literally with you wherever you go. This is amazing. Like, Jesus is just like, "Don't worry. Uh the father

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11 minutes, 58 seconds

will love you. You love me, and we'll love you back. The Father will love you.

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12 minutes, 2 seconds

I will love you. And the creator of the universe who made all this is going to be with you and in you. And it's going

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12 minutes, 9 seconds

to be okay. You can be at peace knowing that the spirit is with you.

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Verse 23. 14 verse 23.

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Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them. Isn't that amazing?

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The creator, the the God of the universe is going to make his home with us.

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12 minutes, 37 seconds

Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the

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12 minutes, 43 seconds

father who sent me. So if the God who created everything is going to give a part of himself, the Holy Spirit to live

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12 minutes, 51 seconds

inside you, what do we need to be afraid of? Like, are you stressed right now?

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12 minutes, 56 seconds

Are you afraid? Are you are you freaked out? We need to claim these promises and just say, "Hey, I've got the Holy Spirit

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13 minutes, 4 seconds

living inside me. I don't need to be afraid." Just just claim that promise like he is with me. It's going to be okay.

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13 minutes, 12 seconds

All right. Verse 25, right where we left off. All this I have spoken while still

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13 minutes, 19 seconds

with you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will do what? What's he going to

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13 minutes, 27 seconds

do? He's going to teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have

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13 minutes, 34 seconds

said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. There's that peace again. I do not give to you as the world

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13 minutes, 42 seconds

gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. So, what does what does the Holy Spirit do for

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13 minutes, 50 seconds

us? Now, we're in the section where you're taking notes. You're writing out what the Holy Spirit does for us. He

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13 minutes, 56 seconds

teaches us and reminds us. He teaches us and reminds us. I've had some good

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14 minutes, 5 seconds

teachers in my life. Have any of you ever had any good teachers? I has I had a professor. His name is Dr. Flavl

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14 minutes, 13 seconds

Jakeley. Can you be imagining being named Flavl Jakeley? That's a great name. Great name. Uh so we had a a

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14 minutes, 21 seconds

fellow one of my fellow students uh that was taking the class with me named Stephen Dodge and he was a very talented

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14 minutes, 28 seconds

artist and one day he drew Dr. Flavl Jly on the dry erase board before he got into class and right then just after he

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14 minutes, 37 seconds

finished Dr. Jakeley walked in and we were like oh no is he gonna be mad? like what what's he gonna what's he going to do? And he stood and he looked at it and

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14 minutes, 45 seconds

he goes, "That's pretty good."

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14 minutes, 47 seconds

[laughter]

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14 minutes, 48 seconds

He liked it. Um he drew Stephen drew another picture. This is when Flaval Flave was really popular and drew this big clock necklace and was like Dr.

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14 minutes, 57 seconds

Flavof Flave. Um it glad Dr. Jakeley didn't see that one. Um but anyway, uh I

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15 minutes, 5 seconds

had he was a really good teacher. He was a really good professor and uh one of the classes he taught me he taught me a couple different classes but one of the

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15 minutes, 13 seconds

classes was um we had three different levels of preaching classes and he taught the second level of preaching. So

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15 minutes, 20 seconds

preaching level number two and I remember he listened to one of my sermons and he took notes and then he came to me and he gave feedback and he said two things I want to tell you.

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15 minutes, 30 seconds

Number one, don't preach with your hands in your pocket. Keep your hands out of your pocket. You need to use your hands.

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15 minutes, 36 seconds

You need to use gestures. Don't preach with your hands in your pocket. He said, "Second, everyone has a filler word that they use when they are trying to figure

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15 minutes, 44 seconds

out what they're going to say yet next." And he said, "Your phrase is, you know, you know, you know, you know." He's

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15 minutes, 51 seconds

like, "Quit saying you know." Okay. It's very distracting. So, if you like my preaching today, you can thank Dr.

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15 minutes, 59 seconds

Jakeley for not holding my hands in my pockets and saying, "You know, you know, you know." He was good. I've had many great teachers, but there's no greater

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16 minutes, 8 seconds

teacher than the Holy Spirit. How many of you believe that he is the best teacher of all teachers? And he has

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16 minutes, 17 seconds

taught me many things in a very personal way. I don't know if you've ever had any moments where the Holy Spirit actually taught you something, some truth about

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16 minutes, 26 seconds

God's word or something, but I'll never forget the moment where uh I was struggling to get into a daily reading

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16 minutes, 34 seconds

of God's word habit. How many of you know good habits are hard to get going sometimes?

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16 minutes, 40 seconds

And I was having trouble with that. So, one time I went away to a cabin with my friend Ryan and we were doing some prayer and fasting at this cabin. And

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16 minutes, 49 seconds

the best I can describe it how the Holy Spirit was communicating with me is I I didn't hear a voice, but I was writing in a journal. I was taking notes and it

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16 minutes, 58 seconds

was like God was showing me what to write. That's the best I can describe it. And the note he had me write was,

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17 minutes, 5 seconds

"Cut off your cable and start getting up. Start getting up earlier in the morning."

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17 minutes, 12 seconds

So my bad habit is was still is I love watching TV late into the night. TV and

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17 minutes, 21 seconds

movies, that's my thing. Anybody else have that thing that they love to do? And what I was doing is I was staying up too late so that I didn't want to get up early in the morning to do my Bible reading.

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17 minutes, 32 seconds

Everybody tracking with me? That was the problem. And the Holy Spirit knew that was the problem. So the message was cut off your cable and start getting up earlier to do your devotions.

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17 minutes, 44 seconds

When I cut off my cable, that was like cutting off my hand. I was like, what do I do in life now? Like this is crazy.

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17 minutes, 51 seconds

But he knew what he was doing because when I cut off my cable, it was like, okay, nothing happening. Like I might as well go to bed. Yeah, that was the

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18 minutes

point. Like what I what am I going to do? There's no TV to watch. Go to bed.

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Oh yeah, that was the whole point. get to bed earlier so I can get up earlier.

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And it worked. It worked. We started getting up earlier in the morning and doing our devotion time. The time was there, but I had to work it into my schedule. But that was the Holy Spirit.

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18 minutes, 18 seconds

He taught me that. So the Holy Spirit teaches and what else does he do? He's going to remind us of the words that

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18 minutes, 25 seconds

Jesus said. Now for the disciples, think about this. This was very practical for their ministry. If they're going to teach people and spread the word of what

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18 minutes, 33 seconds

Jesus taught and what Jesus did, they're going to need reminded of what Jesus said and what Jesus did. Right?

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18 minutes, 39 seconds

Everybody tracking with me? So, it's very practical for them. And the Bible even tells us that they didn't even get the whole picture. It didn't come

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18 minutes, 46 seconds

together until the Holy Spirit was poured out on them. Then they got the whole picture and they could teach people. So, very practical for the

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18 minutes, 55 seconds

disciples. uh for us it's a practical how the Holy Spirit helps us how he helps me in this way he reminds us of

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19 minutes, 2 seconds

the words of Jesus is he will give me a Bible verse he'll remind me of a Bible verse the right verse in the right

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19 minutes, 9 seconds

moment that I need it so for example if I'm being tempted one of the verses that God will remind me of is greater is he

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19 minutes, 18 seconds

that is in me than he that is in the world what does that mean greater is the Holy Spirit who lives in

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19 minutes, 26 seconds

than the devil who roams around the world. Do we believe that church?

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19 minutes, 30 seconds

Do we believe the Holy Spirit in us is more powerful than the devil who's in the world?

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19 minutes, 35 seconds

And so I have had the Holy Spirit remind me of that verse in the middle of the temptation. Like you can overcome this because you have greater is he that is

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19 minutes, 43 seconds

in you. Uh, another one is when I'm going through a really bad storm in life and things just look really dark and I don't I can't see how things are going

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19 minutes, 51 seconds

to work out for any good, the Holy Spirit will remind me. And we know that God works all things for the good of

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19 minutes, 58 seconds

those who love him and are called according to his purpose. I've had the Holy Spirit remind me of that verse when I needed to hear that. I don't know how.

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20 minutes, 7 seconds

I can't see it, but somehow he's going to work all things for my good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. That's what the Holy Spirit

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20 minutes, 16 seconds

can do. Remind you of the words of Jesus. All right, let's look at chapter 15 going on over to 15. At the end of the

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20 minutes, 24 seconds

chapter, verse 26 and 27, the the last two verses of the chapter,

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uh, this Bible says, "The work of the Holy Spirit, chapter heading, the work of the Holy Spirit.

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20 minutes, 39 seconds

When the advocate comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he

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20 minutes, 47 seconds

will do what? Testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been

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20 minutes, 54 seconds

with me from the beginning. What does it mean to testify?

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20 minutes, 59 seconds

Help me out. What does it mean to testify? Tell your story.

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21 minutes, 3 seconds

Yeah. Tell tell witness. Be a witness to what happened, right? Tell a story of what happened. Tell the truth. They put

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21 minutes, 10 seconds

you on a stand and you testify. What did you see? So to the disciples, he says, "You're going to testify about me because you've been with me from the

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21 minutes, 18 seconds

beginning. You can tell people what you saw." And the Holy Spirit is also going to testify about who Jesus is and what

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21 minutes, 25 seconds

he has done. We move on chapter 16. So the spirit testifies in chapter 15.

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Chapter 16 verse 7.

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It starts off, but very truly I tell you, but very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away.

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21 minutes, 48 seconds

Unless I go away, the advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin.

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22 minutes

Some of your versions may use a convict.

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22 minutes, 2 seconds

The word he will convict the world about sin because people do not believe in me.

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22 minutes, 8 seconds

About righteousness because I am going to the father where you can see me no longer. and about judgment because the

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22 minutes, 15 seconds

prince of this world now stands condemned.

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22 minutes, 19 seconds

So what does the Holy Spirit do? What do we learn about what the Holy Spirit does from this? The spirit convicts us.

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22 minutes, 26 seconds

Convicts us about sin. He says it is to your advantage that I go. In order for the spirit to come, I must go.

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22 minutes, 37 seconds

You know, I've always thought, there's that phrase, you know, I've always thought that it would be much easier if I was right there with Jesus like the

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22 minutes, 46 seconds

disciples were. Have you ever thought that it would just be easier if I was there with the disciples like witnessing? I would just point to Jesus,

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22 minutes, 55 seconds

be like, "This is Jesus. There I witnessed. There he is right there." But then there would be the flip side of that, like I'm thinking a bad thought.

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23 minutes, 2 seconds

And Jesus is like, "I know what you're thinking." Oh, sorry, Jesus. Okay. Um, don't you

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23 minutes, 11 seconds

sometimes feel like it's your job to convict people of different things?

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23 minutes, 18 seconds

You ever thought, you ever felt like it was your job to convict people? You think, I'm just never going to get through to that person. Guess what? It's

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23 minutes, 26 seconds

not your job. It's the spirit's job to convict.

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23 minutes, 29 seconds

So, there, I just took all the pressure off you right there. It's not your job.

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23 minutes, 32 seconds

It's the Holy Spirit's job. Okay, let's finish out chapter 16, right where we left off, verse 12,

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where Jesus says,"I have much more to say to you. I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But

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23 minutes, 49 seconds

when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, what's he going to do? He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears.

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23 minutes, 59 seconds

And then he will do what? He will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.

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24 minutes, 12 seconds

All that belongs to the father is mine.

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24 minutes, 15 seconds

This is why I said the spirit will receive from me. What he will make known to you. So what does the spirit do? He

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24 minutes, 23 seconds

guides us into truth and he tells what is yet to come. tells what is yet to

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24 minutes, 30 seconds

come. You know who is not good at predicting the future? College analysts who predict what teams are going to win.

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24 minutes, 39 seconds

Like we we know I know this is going to hurt for me to say it, but the Buckeyes are out. Okay, they may have predicted at the beginning of the season that they

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were going to make the playoffs. Yeah, that's out. That's gone. But they're wrong about a lot of teams. Like they are not very good at predicting. But the

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Holy Spirit can tell us what is yet to come. You ever had a light bulb go off on your head about the scriptures? Some

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It's almost as if God put a light on the scriptures and gave you understanding in that moment. Anybody ever had that happen? That was the Holy Spirit. He

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guided you into truth. He led you to truth in God's word. I remember one time

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Andrea was uh we had read a section of the Bible about Jesus being the good shepherd and it says Jesus is the good

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shepherd and his true sheep know his voice.

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The true sheep know his voice. The Pharisees then want to kill Jesus. They start off trying to kill planning to kill Jesus. So it says Jesus retreated.

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He went away from where the Pharisees were. And then it says his disciples found out where he was and followed him.

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And Andrea says in that moment when they found out where he was and followed him, they were showing that they were his true sheep because they went and followed him. I'm like, that's right.

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That's right. That's the Holy Spirit who put those pieces together for her in God's word. He guides us into truth.

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So what was Jesus message to the disciples? What is Jesus message to us today? Don't stress. Don't stress. When

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you need corrected or adjusted, the spirit will convict us. When you are confused, the spirit can bring clarity and guide us into truth.

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When you are stressed, the spirit can bring peace and comfort. And by the way, have any of you ever experienced that

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where we call it the peace that passes all understanding where your life because of how it's going should be really stressful for whatever was going

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on. But God gave you a supernatural kind of peace in that moment. You should have felt stress, but God blessed you with a peace that passed all understanding.

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Anybody ever experienced that? Yeah.

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That's the Holy Spirit that gives you that peace. So don't stress. The Holy Spirit is with you believers, he is with

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you and he will help you. Is anybody thankful for the Holy Spirit this morning. We need the Holy Spirit in our lives.

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So, Father, uh we just uh pray to you right now. We come to you in the name of Jesus. Lord, I ask that wherever we are

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at with the Holy Spirit before we came in today, whether we believed in him or not, or if we believed in him, uh,

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wherever we came in with the Holy Spirit, that we would leave today believing in him more and leaning on him

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more than before we came in today. God, that we would come out of this place appreciating the Holy Spirit more than

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we did before we came in here. So, Father, please help us to be led by the Spirit this week. God, I know for

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myself, I can't live one minute of any day without the Spirit's help. I can't do life on my own, in my own power. If I

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try to live in my own power, I will fail. I already know this. I've experienced it enough to know I will fall and I will fail. But if I lean into

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you, if I lean into the Holy Spirit and try to be led by the spirit, I'm going to be okay. So, Father, help us to be

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led by you this week. Uh God, help us to call on the help of the Holy Spirit this week. Uh where we may forget to call on

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the Holy Spirit. Help us to remember this [music] week to call on the Holy Spirit's help. Thank you for loving us

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enough to give us this amazing gift. Can can church, can we just thank God for this amazing gift of the Holy Spirit

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right now? Can you just say thank you Jesus for the Holy Spirit? Thank you for this amazing gift. We're just thanking

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you for this amazing gift that you give us of a part of you, a part of yourself that you give us to live in us and be

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with us. We don't need to fear. We don't need to stress. We don't need to uh walk around confused. You will help us and we

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just thank you for that. So help us to learn to be led by the spirit more and more starting this week in Jesus name.

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And all God's people said, "Amen." Amen. I gave you some next steps that

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you can do. These are our goals that we're going to make this week to lean into the Holy Spirit more. We're going to do this. Maybe some of you want to

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pray five times this week, inviting the Holy Spirit to be a bigger part of your life. You realize today you've been neglecting the Holy Spirit. And so this

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week, God, pray. I'm going to pray five days this week. Help me to let the Holy Spirit be more a part of my life this week. Maybe some of you want to pray and

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ask if the Holy Spirit is trying to convict you of something, maybe of sin or something else. Lord, are you trying to convict me? Is the Holy Spirit trying to convict me of something this week?

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Maybe some of you want to start or continue the Bible reading plan. Maybe you want to jump in on the Bible reading plan. Maybe you got off track and you

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want to jump back in and sign up on the board in the back to say the Holy Spirit can't remind you of the scriptures if

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you don't know them. How many of you know that's true? He can't remind you if you're not in the word. You've got to be in the word for him to remind you. So,

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hey, I'm going to get back in the word this week and I'm going to be a part of this Bible reading plan. Maybe some of you want to meditate on John 14:27 this

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week and claim the promise, I receive your peace. Replace my fear with peace.

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That's you just want to focus on that this week and read [music] 14:27 and claim that I receive your peace. Replace

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my fear with peace. You can do one of those, all of those a combination, but I encourage you to make at least one goal

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based on the teaching today how you can put this into practice this week. Okay?

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All right. Uh this is our time of invitation. We invite you if you have any decisions that you want to make that that the Holy Spirit is leading you to

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make this week. Maybe it's being convicted of sin. Maybe it's you realize today I need I need to be calling on God

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in times of chaos for peace and I haven't been doing that and and you want to come to the back and you want to just say, Jeremy, will you pray for me um today for peace? I'm going through this.

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Will you pray for peace for me [music] today? Um, whatever the Holy Spirit is putting on your heart today, maybe it's taking those steps either towards Jesus

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for the first time or coming back to Jesus. Maybe you strayed away from him and today you're like, I need to take steps and come back to Jesus today. And

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if that's you, I would love to help you take those steps to come back to Jesus.

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Uh, whatever it is, I'm going to go to the back. The praise team is going to lead us in one last song. And if you need to come to the back for anything at

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all, whatever

Sync to video time

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Um, so go ahead and turn there and follow along with me as I read the scriptures. Um, I tell people, don't

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just take my word that this is what the Bible says. I want you following along and check me behind check behind me and make sure I'm teaching what this book

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says, okay? Uh, don't just take my word for it. Uh, when you get to heaven, uh, you're not going to be able to give this as an excuse to God and say, "Well, God,

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Pastor Jeremy said, so that's why I did He's going to be like, "No, I gave you the ability to read. Uh, you you know, there were plenty of Bibles around you

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could have read. Read for yourself." Okay? Read for yourself. Don't just take somebody's word. Read for yourself and make sure that God's word is being

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taught. Okay? Um, so the topic is prayer today. An unexpected approach to prayer.

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And I found this cute story that uh Andrea posted about our kids when they were little. Uh, she said, "I was

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working on the laundry and Elelliana decided she was ready for her nap. She was fussy and crying at my feet.

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Christian came in where we were and says, "It's okay, Eliana. Don't cry." She didn't stop crying. So, he put his

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hand on her head and said, "Dear God, please help Elwana stop crying in Jesus' name. Amen."

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And then he said, "Mommy, how come she didn't stop crying?" But we took it as a victory. Like this

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kid already knew to pray for people when they were hurting or crying. Um, while driving in Pennsylvania, a family caught

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up to an Amish carriage and the owner of the carriage obviously had a sense of humor because attached to the back of

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the carriage was a handprinted sign that said, "Energy efficient vehicle. Runs on oats and grass. Caution, do not step in

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exhaust." That's pretty clever. Thought that was pretty clever.

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What fuels our church? What keeps a fire lit under us so that we don't die

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spiritually? The early church was very much fueled by prayer. That was a key factor that kept the early church

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thriving and healthy spiritually. Um so prayer is one of those things we must have if we are going to be a healthy church. Amen.

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Amen.

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We need prayer. The power of prayer. So the Japanese introduced a tree to the world. is called a bonsai tree and it's

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measured in inches instead of feet like how they measure all other most other trees. It's not allowed to reach anywhere near its full growth potential,

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but instead grows in a stunted miniature form. And the reason it grows in a miniature stunted form is when it first

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stuck its head out of the ground, the the owner took it out of the soil, tied off its main tap routt and also some

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main branch feeder roots, and then replanted it back in the soil. By doing this, the grower deliberately stunted

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its growth by limiting its roots ability to reach out and get the full amount of nutrients uh from the soil for normal growth.

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What was done to the bonsai tree by its owner is what Satan tries to do to the believer if he can. He knows that if he

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can tie off our taproot of prayer, he will keep us stunted in our spiritual growth. But we don't want to let him do that. Amen, church.

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We don't want to let him do that. So, have you ever come across a statement in an article where they say something like

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this? The Chinese have known for years that wolfberries have the power of healing various sicknesses and diseases.

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Even the great Confucious himself was cured of such and such disease from using these berries. Right? So you read

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the statement and your first question is what in the world is a wolf berry?

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Right? Were you wondering that those are real things actually wolf berries. And then your next question might have been, okay, if that has healing powers, how do

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you use the wolf berries? Like, do you just eat them as is? Do you have to do something to the berries before you eat them? Do you like crush them up and make

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them into a cream and put them on your skin? Like, what do you do with these things? How do you use them to get the healing powers? Right? A and so you

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start digging in your research and you start getting back further and further to the closer to the time when those uh when people first started using those

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wolf berries to find out how to use them. Right? Everybody tracking with me so far? And then if you read an article, if you researched and found an article

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where Confucious actually says the instructions of how he used those, that would be a jackpot, right? you'd be like, "Yes, I found the original source

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and he's telling me how to do this." So, when I read about how the early church was healthy and growing and and growing

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spiritually, it makes me want to dig in deeper and find out what they were doing, right? And so, uh, I'm convinced

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that the key to their spiritual health health was their prayer life. The early church gathered together for prayer. So,

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lately, I've been reading a book on second century writings. It's called Early Christians Speak and it has it's

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like this this guy Dr. Everett Ferguson compiled all these early writings from the second century Christians and and put them into categories. So prayer is

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one of them. Um singing is one of them like all the things that Christians do.

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And so I thought it was really interesting because the idea is if you can go back to the second century of these writings, obviously we have the

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Bible in the first century, how they did things, but then if we have the second century writings of how they understood prayer and how they practiced, it gives

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us an even bigger fuller picture of how we can do prayer. Does that make sense?

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Okay. So I wanted to share I thought it was really interesting and I wanted to share some of what I found with you.

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Okay. So, frequency of prayer. And by the way, we have a place to take notes on the back of your programs here. Uh,

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and today is a is a good day to take notes because we're talking about how early Christians did prayer and how we

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can do prayer. Okay. So, the frequency of prayer, the early Christians would actually meet together daily

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uh together at the beginning of the day for prayer and instruction. Can you imagine if we met together daily before we went about our work or whatever we

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do? They would meet together daily for prayer and instruction. The second century Christian Hippolitist wrote

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about this saying they gathered together with the church and by praying you would then be able to avoid the evils of the day. That was the idea behind it. Okay.

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The posture of prayer. We're talking about what position your body is in when you pray. That's what we mean when we say posture. The posture for prayers at

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times might be kneeling or lying prostrate on the ground. Nevertheless, the characteristic Christian posture for

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prayer was standing with arms outstretched and slightly raised and the palms turned up to heaven. And we

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actually they actually have found pictures drawn on the walls of the catacombs. Uh and these are actual pictures that they found of how people

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would stand uh and their posture of prayer, which I thought was really cool.

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Um, and by the way, this answered a question for me that I had had for years about 1 Timothy 2:8 where it says,"I

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want men everywhere to lift holy hands in prayer." I always wondered, "What did that look like?" Because there's lots of ways you can lift your hands, right? Um

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Kurt actually sent me a prayer or a video about hand raising in churches. It was funny by Tim Hawkins, but I was like, "How did they do hand raising?"

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Well, there you go. We have pictures. We We don't have to wonder. Now we know how they would do lifting holy hands in prayer.

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So that was their posture. Okay.

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Um Tertullian a second century Christian talks about how you would use different postures depending on the situation.

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Kneeling was a sign of humility of humbling yourself. Standing was a sign of joy and boldness. I thought that was

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really interesting. Like depending on the situation, you would use different postures.

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Standing was the practice on the Lord's day on Sunday when they would get together for worship in honor of the resurrection. They would stand in honor

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of the resurrection because Jesus was risen, right? So they would stand. Makes sense. And stretching out the arms became a symbol of the cross for

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Christians. Isn't that cool? Like I never I never thought about I I would never have thought about putting my body in the sign of a cross. um in honor of

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the resurrection and Jesus um for Christians structure of prayers. How did they structure their prayers? Christian

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prayer was addressed commonly to God the father. So that who would they pray to?

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God the father. Prayers were also addressed through Christ since he is our mediator. according to 1 Timothy 2:5,

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for there is one God and one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus

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uh who gave himself as a ransom for all people. He was seen as the high priest who takes our requests to God. Makes sense, right? Participation.

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The people actively participated in the congregational prayers by their responses and acclamations.

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Not only would they say a congregational amen at the end of the prayers, but they would actually agree with what was being

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said throughout the prayer by saying amen, hallelujah, and different things like that. Like if you if the person praying said something you agreed with, you would say amen along with it, right?

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I agree, hallelujah. Uh they would participate. Uh they truly were praying as a group, right? Um which is different

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from how I grew up. I grew up in a church where when one person led a prayer for the whole church, everyone else was quiet. Like nobody said

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anything. And this showed me like, oh, there's there's a different way, you know, like people can actually participate. So you now have the

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freedom, the go-ahad if you agree with something that's being prayed, that's being said in a prayer, you can say amen, hallelujah, or whatever to agree

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with that. Okay? Right? You got you got my permission now. There you go. Thank you. you. Somebody got the message and

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did it right now. Amen. Um, speaking of group prayer, let's turn to Matthew 6.

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Uh, and we're actually going to start in verse five, but I want to focus in on the Lord's Prayer. But I'm going to start before and after where Jesus

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teaches the Lord's Prayer in verse five, like I said, page 787 in these Bibles if you're using the

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church Bibles where it says prayer. Matthew 6:5. And when you pray, do not be like the

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hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.

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Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and

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pray to your father who is unseen. Then your father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. By the way, I

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had somebody ask me one time, why do we do prayers out loud in front of a group in church when Jesus said to go in your

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closet and pray? And I think he was asking a legitimate question. Well, Jesus said to do it this way, so why are we praying in front of others? I said,

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that's a good question. There's a difference between individual prayer where you're praying by yourself and corporate prayer, group prayer, where

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they prayed as a church, right? So we when we're gathered together, that's called corporate prayer. We're praying together as a body of believers. Okay.

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Verse seven. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of

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their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Amen.

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Amen. This then is how you should pray.

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Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give

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us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we have been forgiven our also have forgiven our debtors. And lead

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us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. And how many of you notice there's a missing part? For thine

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is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. There's a reason that's not in there, but I'm not going

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to get into it right now. Okay. For if you forgive others people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not

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forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. Okay.

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The Lord's Prayer can be used as a model for corporate prayer for prayers for individual prayers. When people think of

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the Lord's Prayer, most of people think of it as a prayer for an individual. But notice that the prayer doesn't start off with my father in heaven, but how does it start off?

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Our father in heaven. And give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our

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sins. And uh lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil

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one. Yeah. By the way, there's a there's a really popular idea right now that you can be a Christian. You don't have to go to church. I think this right here shows

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that we are meant to be together and pray together. Our father who is in heaven, give us this day. It was meant

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to be prayed together as a group of believers. Amen. Amen.

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All right. Um, so again, I want to emphasize prayer is an act of worship, something we do together as a group. And

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in my research, I found that the Lord's prayer was not something that the early church recited word for word. I thought this was interesting. They didn't that

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wasn't their practice to recite it word for word. Not meaning that there's anything wrong with that. If you grew up in a church that said it together word for word, that's that's fine. There's

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nothing wrong with it. But that's not what the earliest Christians did. They would use it more like an outline and personalize it with their own requests

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and such. Um, and I want us today to do the same thing. I'm actually going to teach you a model for prayer that you

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can learn and you can use starting this week. So, you should have some pieces of paper that were in your rows. There's some extra I see on the front row. Uh if

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anyone needs to grab one, but grab a piece of paper and if you need a pen, there's some extra pens. Um but we are

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actually going to write our own prayer right now. So, I'm going to teach you

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each section. It's called the Acts model of prayer. ACS

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Acts. Okay. So the first section is adoration. In Acts, A stands for adoration or praise. Prayer is an expression of praise.

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The first three lines of the Lord's prayer can be understood as expressions of praise and adoration to God our heavenly father. Our father in heaven,

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hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So that is a praise to

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God. We also have 2 Corinthians. This should be on screen. 2 Corinthians uh 1:3

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where Paul the apostle was writing in 2 Corinthians. He started off in his prayer. Praise be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He starts off

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with praising God, the father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so

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that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. Right? So see everybody see how he starts off in his

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prayer praising God. And then if we turn over to Acts, the book of Acts, uh chapter 4,

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it's interesting. We have this uh Peter and John had just been flogged and told by the Jewish uh leaders to quit

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teaching in the name of Jesus. They flogged them. They whipped them and punished them. Said, "Quit teaching in the name of Jesus." Uh but they're not going to stop. They're going to keep

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teaching about Jesus. So, they had just gotten back from being flogged from being in jail and being flogged. Just got back with the believers.

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And it says on verse 23, chapter 4 23, on their release, Peter and John went back to their own people

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and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God.

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Sovereign Lord, they said, you made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. You spoke by the

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Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David. See how they start off praising God. And what did they praise God for?

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For being creator, for being the maker of everything in heaven and earth, right? He made the sky, the sea, and everything in it. So, uh, we want to

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start off with praise in our prayers. We praise God. I've done a lot of study in this. I've studied the prayers in the Bible. And we praise God for two things.

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Who he is or what he's done. Okay? Those are the things you praise God for. Who he is. Who is he? He's creator, right?

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He's maker. He's king. He's shepherd.

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He's father. All these things we've been studying over the last several weeks, right? We praise God for who he is. Or for what he's done. What's something

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God's done for us? All how about he sent his son to the earth to die for our sins on the cross, right? That would be

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something he's done. Um, so in this part, we're praising God for something he's done for everyone in general, not something he's done for you

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specifically. That's going to be a different section. Everybody with me?

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18 minutes, 26 seconds

That's going to come in the thanksgiving section. So, right now, we're just praising God for who he is in general, what he's done in general for lots of people. Okay.

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18 minutes, 36 seconds

Um, so go ahead and write down here's some examples of things you could praise God for. You can praise him for being creator. He made heaven and earth. Uh he's all powerful. He's all knowing.

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18 minutes, 48 seconds

He's everywhere. Some of you know those terms. Um you could praise him for being merciful. You sent your son to die for

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18 minutes, 55 seconds

us. Uh we could praise him for being perfect in holiness. He's without sin and yet he wants a relationship with us

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19 minutes, 3 seconds

even though we're sinners. Right? Any of those things. You could pick any of those things or one of your own. So go

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19 minutes, 10 seconds

ahead and write down your own praise to God for who he is, for what he's done.

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20 minutes, 4 seconds

All right. Next.

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20 minutes, 7 seconds

A lot of times when you start out this way praising God for how awesome and perfect he is, it makes you give you an awareness of how sinful we are, right?

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Like, wow, I'm praying to a perfect, holy God. That that makes me realize I'm a sinner and it leads naturally to the next one. See, confession of sin.

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20 minutes, 27 seconds

Confession of sin. Now, there are lots of examples throughout the Bible where uh people would stand and and pray for the whole group and they would confess.

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20 minutes, 38 seconds

Maybe some of you have even noticed this in our Bible readings like Ezra, Nehemiah, uh Daniel had a prayer. Uh

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20 minutes, 45 seconds

Solomon had a prayer where he stood before the people and he said,"Lord, we confess we are sinners. We we have

20:53

20 minutes, 53 seconds

sinned against you. We have not obeyed your ways." Have you have you seen that in the reading? Uh we have not obeyed your ways, God. We have sinned and

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21 minutes, 2 seconds

please forgive us. Um in the Lord's prayer, we see this in the statement.

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21 minutes, 7 seconds

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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21 minutes, 11 seconds

a little boy had been sent to his room because he had been bad and he came out after a little while and he said, "Mom,

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21 minutes, 19 seconds

mom, I just want to let you know that I said a prayer uh in my room." And she goes, "Oh, good. If you ask God to help you be good, he will help you with

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21 minutes, 27 seconds

that." And he goes, "Oh, I didn't ask God to help me be good. I asked him to help you put up with me."

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21 minutes, 36 seconds

Confession of sin. Um so one person who was an elder in a previous church that we are a part of his name is Daniel. Uh

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one thing I remember about Daniel is he would almost always if not every time it was most times he would pray if he prayed a group prayer he would always

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21 minutes, 53 seconds

say and Lord please forgive us of our sins uh and and forgive us and help us you know to to be more like Jesus or something like that. like if we were

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22 minutes, 2 seconds

praying for someone's healing, you know, for someone who was sick, for them to be made well, uh for God to heal them, he would he would always say, "And Lord,

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22 minutes, 9 seconds

please forgive us of our sins." And uh he didn't want any sins to stand in the way between us and God, you know, from doing God doing what he was going to do.

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22 minutes, 18 seconds

And I just appreciated that about him that he would always pray, "Forgive us of our sins." So go ahead. And at this

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22 minutes, 25 seconds

point, I want to say, keep your eyes on your own paper, okay? as we write down confession of sin. Uh keep your eyes on your own paper. We don't need to be

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22 minutes, 33 seconds

looking at what other people are confessing their sins. Okay? So, just pretend you're in in a cubicle, invisible cubicle, and uh uh go ahead

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22 minutes, 43 seconds

and just confess, you know, some things that you struggle with yourself.

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23 minutes, 44 seconds

All right. The third part of prayer is t thanksgiving.

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23 minutes, 48 seconds

So this is where you praise and thank God for things he's done for you individually. Right? Remember earlier I said praise section keep it more general

23:58

23 minutes, 58 seconds

what God's done for mankind. here. This is where you're going to write down things that you're thankful for. So, we don't actually see a section on

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24 minutes, 6 seconds

thanksgiving in the Lord's Prayer that we read earlier, but we do see it in many other places in the New Testament.

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24 minutes, 12 seconds

Colossians 4:2 says, "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful, and what?

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24 minutes, 20 seconds

Thankful." Yeah. And we're going to see it also in Philippians 4 6 and 7, which we're going to read in the supplication

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24 minutes, 27 seconds

section. Um, but we're supposed to be thankful where it says with pray with thanksgiving.

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24 minutes, 34 seconds

Dr. Howard Hendrickx tells of a time when he was a young man before he was married and he was aware that certain mothers had set their caps on him on

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24 minutes, 42 seconds

behalf of their daughters. One mother even said to him, "Howard, I just want you to know that I'm praying that you

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24 minutes, 50 seconds

will become my son-in-law one day." And then Dr. Hendrickx at this point always says in a very solemn voice. He says,

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24 minutes, 58 seconds

"Have you ever thanked God for unanswered prayer?" Like he didn't want to be paired up with that woman. Okay. Um I wonder if God put

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25 minutes, 8 seconds

it in the Bible that we should include thanksgiving in our prayers because so many times we come into prayer like a

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25 minutes, 15 seconds

woe is me attitude and we think of all these things are going wrong in our life, right? Is it just me? like I come into my prayer and just like man woe is

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25 minutes, 24 seconds

me and God this thing's going wrong and I'm this thing's a struggle in life and this but when you start writing out things you're thankful for all of a

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25 minutes, 33 seconds

sudden it's like you know what I'm actually really blessed I'm actually very very blessed and you know I had this bad attitude coming into prayer but

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now that I've named off these things that I'm thankful for I've had a turnaround in my attitude and and I'm thankful and I realize how blessed I am.

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25 minutes, 51 seconds

So go ahead and write down some things that you are thankful for. And in America, we should have a big list. We

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25 minutes, 59 seconds

should have many things that we have to be thankful for.

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26 minutes, 58 seconds

Okay. And then the S in Acts stands for supplication. And supplication is a a Bible word that just means to make

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27 minutes, 6 seconds

requests, to ask things of God. Um make petitions or requests. And we see this

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27 minutes, 13 seconds

in Philippians 4 6-7 where it says,"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with

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27 minutes, 22 seconds

thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard

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27 minutes, 30 seconds

your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." So when we pray, there's nothing wrong with making requests for ourselves. Um

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Jesus even taught in the Lord's prayer, right? Give us this day our daily bread.

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That's for yourself, right? Lead me not lead us not into temptation. That's for yourself. So there's nothing wrong with that. Um however, the Apostle Paul

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27 minutes, 51 seconds

reminds us that in our prayer life, we also need to be concerned about the welfare of other people, of others, right? How many of you know we don't

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need to be selfish in our prayers? We need to be concerned about others in our prayers as well. Amen.

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28 minutes, 6 seconds

All right. Got my amen section over here. I'm count I'm counting on you guys. Um, all right. So, again, the

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28 minutes, 14 seconds

author of this book that I that uh studied the prayers of the early Christians, he noticed that they would often pray for the needs of their fellow

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Christians. So, they would remember, you know, what are my fellow Christians going through? And they would also pray for those who needed to be converted to

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Christianity, those who they called it converted to the truth. Clement of Alexandria has a prayer for the

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28 minutes, 38 seconds

conversion of our neighbors. He would pray for the conversion of his neighbors. All right? So, write down

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supplications, requests. You can pray for yourself, for your fellow Christians, fellow believers, and for those you know who don't know Jesus yet.

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This one might take a little longer, so I'll give you a little extra time.

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All right. Good. Okay. Pray for that person driving too fast.

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Okay. Um so now guess what? We have a prayer that we are literally going to pray right now. Um and you can pray

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silently. You can pray in a whisper. Um, but all you got to do is, okay, you're going to pray, you're going to say,

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"Dear heavenly father, then you're going to do your adoration, you're going to do your confession, you're going to do your thanksgiving, you're going to do your supplication, and then you're going to

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31 minutes, 1 second

end it in Jesus name we pray. Amen." Everybody got that format? Dear heavenly father, do all your acts.

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31 minutes, 9 seconds

In Jesus name we pray. Amen. So, we're we're going to pray right now. So, yeah, I'm going to give you time. Um, so we'll

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have a quiet time and uh go ahead and pray for

0:00

0 seconds

All right. Uh let's get into our message this morning. We've been doing a series getting to know and love God. And we've been spending a lot of time as uh

0:09

9 seconds

learning about God as father. I don't know if you've noticed that, but like every week it's been God as father. He's our father. And because he's our father,

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17 seconds

he wants to provide for our spiritual needs. He wants to provide for our physical needs. We talked about last week uh father, father, father. This

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25 seconds

week we're going to look at more of God as shepherd, which is also another good uh description of God that I like that I

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33 seconds

love actually. So, a Sunday school teacher uh decided to have her uh young children memorize one of the most famous passages in the Bible, the 23rd Psalm.

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44 seconds

Anybody know what the 23rd Psalm is? And so, she gave them four weeks to work on memorizing and then they were going to get up and present it to the

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52 seconds

congregation, to the church. And this guy, this little boy, God bless, bless him, he just couldn't get it down. He just tried to tried as hard as he could,

1:00

1 minute

but he struggled to even get past the first line. And so the day came when they were going to get up and they made a line and they were going to present

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1 minute, 8 seconds

and they memorized scripture and little Ricky was so nervous [clears throat] and finally it was his turn and he got up there and he just said, "The Lord is my

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1 minute, 16 seconds

shepherd and that's all I need to know." You know, there's a lot of truth to that. Like that's all I need to know.

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1 minute, 22 seconds

Are you my shepherd? And that's all I need to know. What a great truth uh that we can hold on to. So I I really want to

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1 minute, 31 seconds

encourage you to take notes. So we have a place on the back of your programs here. We give you a pen so that you can take notes. This would be a great day to

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1 minute, 39 seconds

take notes. These things are going to help you in your life. You're going to want to write these things down um because it's all about how to tell God's

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1 minute, 46 seconds

will for your life and where he's leading you. Um, Romans 12:2 says, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of

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1 minute, 54 seconds

this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds." And here's the key part for today. "Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will

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2 minutes, 3 seconds

is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. You want to know how to tell God's

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2 minutes, 10 seconds

will for your life." Um, I know I've had many life decisions that I was making that I wanted to know very badly, God,

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2 minutes, 19 seconds

where are you leading me? What do you want me to do in this situation? Have you ever had that happen? Different life situations and you're like, Lord, just

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2 minutes, 26 seconds

show me where to go. Like, I really want you to lead me on this so I can do the right thing and just lead down a good path, right? I don't want to go down a

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2 minutes, 35 seconds

bad path and and bad things happen. So, please lead me. How do we know what God's will is? Uh, and I want to clarify, I'm not talking about

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2 minutes, 43 seconds

discerning God's will on things he has already spoken of in his word. Like there's many things that he's already

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2 minutes, 50 seconds

told us exactly what to do in different situations. I'm not talking about that.

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Like maybe maybe you've had a moment like do does God want me to uh serve in the church and be a part of the serve team? Yes, he's already spoken on that.

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3 minutes, 4 seconds

Um, so if your talent is uh singing, then maybe you want to use that on the praise team and use your your gifts and

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3 minutes, 12 seconds

talents on the praise team. If your talent is if you're not talented at singing, then we'd appreciate if you don't volunteer [laughter]

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and your neighbor did something that made you mad and you're thinking about going and punching his lights out and setting his house on fire.

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3 minutes, 36 seconds

Well, the Bible has already spoken on that that we're not supposed to take revenge. God bless her. We're not supposed to take revenge. So, don't do

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that. That would be bad. Don't punch yourself out. Yes.

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Okay. Um so, you need to check God's word first before wondering, you know, has God already spoken on that thing

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3 minutes, 55 seconds

before you move forward. Um, but we're talking about today knowing God's will when it comes to specific life

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4 minutes, 1 second

situations that the Bible hasn't written about. For example, I can't find in this book, I haven't found it. I've read it cover to cover. I can't find a page that

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4 minutes, 10 seconds

tells me that maps out my life exactly what I should do at different stage in my life. There's no page that says for Jeremy Richard Harour, born in

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4 minutes, 18 seconds

Rochester, Pennsylvania in June 24th, 1978. Here's what you do in 2019. when you start a new church called impact.

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4 minutes, 27 seconds

[laughter]

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4 minutes, 28 seconds

That wasn't in there. That wasn't in there. Right. For that, I had to discern God's will in a different way. Y'all tracking with me,

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4 minutes, 35 seconds

right? There wasn't that page that told me exactly what to do. So, I had to do some prayer. We had to do some prayer together. Like, what kind of what

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4 minutes, 43 seconds

college should I go to or should I go to college? Should I go to trade school or something else? Um like how do I know which job to take? How do I know which

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4 minutes, 52 seconds

person to marry? should not I get married? Maybe God doesn't want me to get married. Um like you know which how do I know which house I should buy?

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5 minutes

Should I buy this house or that house?

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5 minutes, 2 seconds

Or should we just not buy a house right now and just rent for now? Like those types of decisions. You ever dealt with those types of decisions before? How do

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we discern God's will in those life circumstances?

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So, uh if you're taking notes, the first thing you want to do is you want to pray. I know that may seem obvious, but if you want answers to life's questions,

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5 minutes, 24 seconds

then we need to ask God the questions, right? If you want answers, we've got to stop and ask God. So, in the Bible, in

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5 minutes, 32 seconds

the New Testament, there's actually 20 different times where we are told to ask God. And the word ask and prayer are

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5 minutes, 40 seconds

used interchangeably, right? To ask God means to pray, right? We ask through prayer. Um, so ask him a question.

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5 minutes, 48 seconds

[clears throat] be specific with it and expect an answer. Expect an answer, right? Be specific. I was I was told

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5 minutes, 55 seconds

that by a pastor friend of mine because I was trying to discern God's will and he's like, "Be specific. Be as specific as you can. Ask God a very specific

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6 minutes, 4 seconds

question and expect an answer." James 5-6 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom,

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6 minutes, 11 seconds

he should do what?" He should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault. and it will be given to him. He's going to give you the wisdom.

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But when he asks, he must believe and not what?

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Doubt. Don't doubt when you ask. Believe he's going to give you the answer.

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Because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.

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6 minutes, 32 seconds

All right. This one goes closely related to fasting. Fasting this means most of the time in the Bible means going without eating for a period of time

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6 minutes, 41 seconds

because you're trying to seek God's will about a certain situation. In Acts 13, it was while they were worshiping the

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6 minutes, 48 seconds

Lord and fasting that the Holy Spirit told them that it was going to be Paul. Saul and Barnabas, Saul, we came home.

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6 minutes, 56 seconds

Saul and Barnabas that they were the ones to be set apart to go do missionary work that happened while they were

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7 minutes, 2 seconds

worshiping the Lord and fasting and fasting. So fasting is a way of showing God you're serious about wanting an answer as well as showing him you are

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humbling yourself before him. Saying, "God, I I just need your help. I'm asking for help. I'm humbling myself." And I believe God rewards humility and answers us.

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7 minutes, 23 seconds

All right. Another thing you might want to do is ask others to pray and or fast with you. Ask others. If you're serious about wanting an answer from God, get

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others in on this. Right. So in Daniel chapter 2, Daniel was asking his friends to plead to God for him in this certain

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situation. So it was an interesting situation. King Nebuchadnezz Nebuchadnezzar uh is like I had a dream and I want

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7 minutes, 48 seconds

somebody to tell me the dream I had and the interpretation. And so he brings these uh astrologers and musicians

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7 minutes, 56 seconds

together and says, "Tell me, I want you to tell me what dream I had and the interpretation of that." that and they're like, "Well, just tell us the dream and we'll tell you the

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8 minutes, 3 seconds

interpretation." And he's like, "No, I want you to tell me what I dreamed last night.

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I want you to tell me the dream and the interpretation." They're like, "This is impossible." Right? And it's like those psychic hotlines, you know, I always

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thought as a kid, if those were real, then you should be able to call them up and they answer and say, "Hello, Jeremy Harker. I know that you're calling today

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8 minutes, 24 seconds

about you're wanting to know the answer to this, and here's the answer." Right?

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8 minutes, 27 seconds

They should already know who's calling and what the question is. Um I don't think they're real. Okay, that's true.

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8 minutes, 32 seconds

I'm just putting that out there. But anyway, um so the king is like, I want you to tell me the dream and [laughter] the interpretation. And then he says,

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"And if you don't, I'm going to cut you into pieces and I'm going to burn your houses." So Daniel hears this and he's like, "I

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8 minutes, 48 seconds

don't want that to happen to his people." Like, so all right friends, he talked to his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and away we go. [laughter] Yeah. Right?

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8 minutes, 57 seconds

And he said, "Guys, plead to God with me. Will you pray and fast with me so that God will give me this dream of that

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9 minutes, 5 seconds

the king had?" And so they prayed and they fasted. And guess what happened?

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God gave the dream and the interpretation, gave it to the king, and it passed and it was right and these

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9 minutes, 15 seconds

people didn't get to pieces, right? So, but notice how he asked his friends like, "I need you to do some serious

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9 minutes, 22 seconds

praying and fasting with me for this situation, right? Uh, if you're trying to seek God's will for something, show

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9 minutes, 29 seconds

him you're serious by getting others to help you with the prayer and fasting. By the way, I'm always willing to pray and fast with any of you. If you have a

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9 minutes, 37 seconds

situation you want me to pray on behalf with you, I'm I'm more than willing and and fasting. I'll do that with you." All

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9 minutes, 45 seconds

right. So, let's talk about the ways God can answer. There's lots of ways God can answer your prayer. We're just going to go over a few of them. All right. If

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9 minutes, 54 seconds

you're taking notes, the first one is read God's word. Read God's word. So, King David wrote, "Your word is a lamp

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10 minutes, 4 seconds

to my feet and a light to my path." And what does that mean? God's word can show us can light up the path that we

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10 minutes, 11 seconds

need to take. Right now, a lot of people they hear that and they go, "Well, I know that God's word will show us like I think that means that it will show us

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10 minutes, 19 seconds

how to live for God, like what's right and what's wrong and show us the path how to live." That it's true. It does do that. But is it possible that God could

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10 minutes, 28 seconds

use his word to us to reveal an answer of some life situation we're seeking? Like, has God done that for any of you?

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Has God used his word to actually show you the answer to what you needed to do in life? Anybody? That ever happened?

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Some of you? Yeah. Yeah, that's happened to me. Um, we were our very first ministry, me and Andrea were at Hebrew Springs Christian Church in Arkansas.

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10 minutes, 54 seconds

And I was there for like three or four years, somewhere in there. And I just kind of had this feeling like, I don't know if this is working here with us at

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11 minutes, 2 seconds

this church. I don't know if this is the right fit. Like just things I don't know. I just felt a discomfort with where we were at. And so I started

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11 minutes, 10 seconds

praying and u one day I was praying for like 30 minutes. I kept praying the same prayer, taking my friend's advice, be

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specific with God, right? And I said, "God, should we stay or should we go?" And I and I wanted to know I wanted to

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11 minutes, 24 seconds

be in God's will. Like whatever his will is. I might have felt like I wanted to leave and move on and go somewhere else, but I didn't want to do that if that

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11 minutes, 33 seconds

wasn't God's will. Is everybody with me on that? Like I wanted to stay in God's will, not just my own will, in God's will. So I'm like, God, should I stay?

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Should I go? And I would ask that and then I would stop and pause and listen.

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Should I stay or should I go? Pause and listen. And uh and then eventually I about 30 minutes I open up my Bible and

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11 minutes, 54 seconds

I was just doing the next uh where where I was at where I left off in the book of Judges. I was just doing my daily reading and it was just what was next in

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12 minutes, 3 seconds

my reading. And there was a story with Deborah and she told a guy named Barack go exclamation point. And I was praying,

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12 minutes, 12 seconds

should I stay or should I go? Should I stay or should I go? When I read that go exclamation point, I was like, I think I just got my answer. Like I think he said

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I said stay or go and he said no exclamation point. And so we felt like God was releasing us from that ministry

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12 minutes, 28 seconds

that we could go look to other ministries. Um, so I I believe God answered me in that moment. And it's

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funny because um I don't know if Phil remembers this, but when we did the rooted group and we were going through the devotions and it was it was a

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similar type of lesson as this as ways to hear God's answers, how God leads us.

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12 minutes, 49 seconds

And we both said the same thing in class one night. We were like number one should have been read God's word.

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12 minutes, 55 seconds

Remember that? It's like why wasn't that number one? It was like all these other things and then God's word. No. Number one way we seek God's will is read his word.

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13 minutes, 6 seconds

Okay. Um that's how God answered us.

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13 minutes, 9 seconds

Okay. So if you I want to make this point. I think it's important to point out if we're going to expect an answer to God then we've got to stay connected to God in prayer and in the mind. Right?

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We can't expect God to answer if we're not staying in tune with him through prayer and the word. Does that make sense?

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Okay. So, if you want an answer, keep those channels open. Stay connected to God. All right. The next one, if you're taking notes, write this down. Put a

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fleece out. Put a fleece out. So, in Judges chapter 6, Gideon said to God, "If you will save Israel by my hand, as

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13 minutes, 43 seconds

you have promised, look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there's dew only on the fleece, and all

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13 minutes, 51 seconds

the ground it is dry, then I will know you will save Israel by my hand. As you said, he's talking about a battle, but

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God was asking Gideon to lead the people into battle. And that is what happened.

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14 minutes, 4 seconds

Gideon rose early the next day. He squeezed the fleece and rung out the dew a bowl full of water. Then Gideon said

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14 minutes, 11 seconds

to God, "Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece. This time

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14 minutes, 18 seconds

make the fleece dry and the ground covered with dew." That night God did so. Only the fleece was dried. All the

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14 minutes, 26 seconds

ground was covered with dew now. That may seem like a really random test and it is kind of random. Right? So what was

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the point of it? I think the point of it was Gideon was asking God to do something that only God could do.

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It's like if this thing if this fleece is wet and all the ground right by it right around it is dry, that's got to be of God, right? And then he switched it

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and reversed it again. Like the only way that fleece can be dry and all the ground right up wet while it's sitting

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on the ground is if dotted. So you create a fleece that basically says this is I know that only God could do this

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and that's how I got my answer. Does that make sense?

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Okay. So ask something if you're going to put a fleece out there, make it something only God could do. All right. Uh the next one is circumstances.

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Another thing that God can answer through is life circumstances.

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So the church after Hebrew Springs Christian Church uh to lead us to Christ View Christian Church, we asked God to

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15 minutes, 30 seconds

close all the doors and and just leave the one open where he wanted us to be.

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15 minutes, 35 seconds

And so you guys know how it goes. You put out applications and you you uh get interviews going and literally all the other churches that we apply to close

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down. Like this one says, "Nope, we hired somebody else." Nope. This one the position was filled, right? Nope. This one, you know, closed, closed, closed,

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15 minutes, 52 seconds

closed. And literally only one door stayed open, and that was Christ Church in South Asia, Mississippi. So, it was

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15 minutes, 59 seconds

obvious God did exactly what we asked him to do. Close all the doors except the one you want us to go to. And he did. It was really cool. um when

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something just doesn't seem to work out, if nothing's working out. In Acts 16:7, it says when they came to the border of

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16 minutes, 16 seconds

Mya and they tried to enter Bethnia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. Okay, so I don't know exactly how

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16 minutes, 25 seconds

that looked like for them, what that looked like. The the spirit of Jesus wouldn't let them get into uh this this new territory trying to take uh the good

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16 minutes, 34 seconds

news of Jesus out. I don't know if like uh they were trying to get through customs and they wouldn't pass, you know, or like, "Yeah, [clears throat]

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show us your passport." And they're like, "All of our passports have gone missing." I'm like, "We don't," you know, or they were planning to cross over a river on a certain bridge and it

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16 minutes, 51 seconds

was flooded. Like they just try kept trying to get into uh Mya in Bethnia, but they couldn't get in, right? And so

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17 minutes

they're like, "Okay, I guess the spirit of Jesus doesn't want us to go to that region." And he redirected them somewhere else.

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I had a professor who was a twin and his brother, his twin brother was a missionary in China for years. And my

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17 minutes, 17 seconds

professor wanted to be a missionary. And he told us in class that he had applied, he had put in applications and he tried

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17 minutes, 24 seconds

to raise money. And he tried time and time again to go to China to be a missionary. And he either either he couldn't raise the money or he couldn't

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get this together. like all these different ways and different times he tried and it just wasn't working out.

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17 minutes, 38 seconds

And he concluded, I guess God doesn't want me to be a missionary to China, right? It just wasn't working. Um, so he

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became a professor. I'm glad he did because he was a good professor.

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But when when things just don't seem to be working, maybe it's God blocking you, stopping you from doing that because it's not where he wants you to go.

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All right. So, I'm going to tell you one of the biggest keys. You guys want to know the big key to this whole thing? Tell us. Yes.

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All right. The key is patience. Patience. You're going to have to have patience. If you're seeking God's will,

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it's going to take a lot of patience on our part. The Bible says, "Wait patiently." Psalm 37:7 says, "Be still

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in the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act." Okay. How many of you know God doesn't always work in our time?

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Yep. Come on, somebody say amen. Amen.

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You know, God does not always work in our timing.

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He has his own timing, which for me never seems to match up with my timing.

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I want I want I'm a microwave culture, right? I want the answer and I want it now. Just put it in the microwave and give it give me the answer right now.

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God doesn't do that. It's in his time and in his way. So, I'm not bragging by any means, but back to that example with

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uh in Hebrew Springs. Um, so the how it went was I had that feeling of like just didn't feel right me being here anymore,

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but I wanted to be in God's will. So, I prayed for a good few months. Didn't get a clear answer whether he would release

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me or not. And so, I let it go for a few months. I was like, "All right, [laughter] I'm going to quit praying about this for a few," you know, and I

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19 minutes, 23 seconds

just waited. Then that feeling came back and I started praying again. And I prayed for that for a few months before

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19 minutes, 31 seconds

I finally got that go. That that whole process probably took about a year. I wasn't going to go unless I felt like

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19 minutes, 39 seconds

God was releasing me and that was his will. And it took a while. We had to be patient.

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Now, that was one time I did it right in life. Okay? But some, you know, I've told you plenty of other stories where I

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19 minutes, 53 seconds

did it the wrong way. Like the dog breeding business. Some of you remember we decided to buy a dog. We were going to breed it old English bulldogs and like nothing about that worked out.

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Nothing. It was just this huge waste of time and energy and everything else. You know why?

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You know why? Because something we decided to do. That wasn't something God told us to do.

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That wasn't We didn't seek him be like, "God, should we give the dog this and that?" We just did it. We just saw dollar signs. [cough] You know, we're going to make all these

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puppies and sell them. And we saw a dollar signs. It wasn't thousand.

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Yeah. And then you don't have the vet bills. The money up front for the vet bills.

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I wish I could tell you. I always did these things the right way. Some a lot of this I'm telling you out of my mistakes that I made doing it the wrong

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way. All right. Beware. Answers can be subjective. That's right.

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Answers can be subjective. So, some people are leerary of seeking God's will and looking for answers because they

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say, "Well, answers could be so subjective. Like, how do you really know that was God um telling you to do that

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21 minutes

and not just some coincidence?" And you know what? That's a valid point. That's actually a valid point. You do need to be careful. You may think you get an

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answer from God and it really wasn't sometimes because we really want the answer to be a certain thing. We feel

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like God said to go ahead and do that thing, but it really wasn't. It was really just us wanting it to happen so

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bad that we we felt, "Oh, yeah. All these signs came together. Yeah, that's what God wants me to do." But really, it wasn't a sign at all and we jumped into

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a bad situation. All right, I need three volunteers. Three volunteers who will come up and stick their hand in this

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water. Come on. I've lost I've lost my thermometer. I got to retrieve my thermometer here.

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I need three volunteers.

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Three volunteers to come up and tell me what the temperature what you think the temperature of this water is. All right, we got one.

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I need I got two. I need one more. Thank you.

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I want you to put your finger or hand in the water and tell me what temperature you think that water is.

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No, no. All right. What's your best guess?

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Temperature. Wash your head. There you go. All right.

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78 78 76 76 Are we doing this prices right now or

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[laughter]

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the closest without going over or just the closest? What do you say the closest?

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And what do you believe? What do you Okay, we got 276. Is it 174?

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78. Oh, 78. We got a 78. All right, let's see who is the closest.

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We have a handy dandy water thermometer and it is 84°.

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Wow, that's too warm. 78°. All right, congratulations.

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You win. Winner winner chicken dinner winner. All right, thank you volunteers.

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So your reward is your reward is I'll put in a good word to go.

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All right. Okay. So here's the point.

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Why did I do this? Because sometimes we like to get in our feelings and we get subjective. and we say, "Well, you know,

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I really want things to go this way." And so, I'm going to I'm going to look for signs that just confirm that what I already want, right?

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Um instead of seeking God's word and seeking and praying and saying, "What does God actually say?" And so, um you know, we we don't have to be subjective.

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You know, when we were just guessing, that was subjective, right? But we actually have an objective way to know the truth, don't we? We we have a

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thermometer that tells us the exact temperature forward, right? We don't have to guess. And a lot of times in life, we we get into our feelings and we

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get subjective and we just really want something, so we try to go with that.

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But when in actuality, God has already said in his word, in his objective word of truth, what he wants us to do. All

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right, is everybody tracking with me? We need to go here first. Um, we have to check all answers, all so-called answers that we think we got against God's word.

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Second Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is what?

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God breathed." And is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. Do you believe that these words on these pages were God breathed?

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That God was behind these words and this is God's word and not just man's word, some person. Do you believe this is God's word?

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Okay.

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So, we need to check God's word because God's word is truth. Psalm 119:43 says, "Never take your word of truth from my

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mouth, for I have put my hope in your laws." John 17:17 says, "Sanctify them

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by your truth. Your word is truth." God's word is truth. If God's word is

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truth, then everything else is Say it with Say it with If God's word is truth, then everything else is false. Right.

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Thank you. Was that good?

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Good job, buddy. My 11year-old My 11year-old got it. So, [laughter] good job, buddy. If if God's word is true, then everything else is false. If God's

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word is true, then your feelings might be false, right? And and we have to be so careful.

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Um, if you think God has told you something and it doesn't match up with what he said in his word, then God didn't tell you that.

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Listen, if you don't get anything else from what I say today, get this.

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God is never going to tell you one thing that contradicts what he's already said in his word.

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God is never going to tell you something that goes against what he's already spoken in his word. Did everybody get

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that this morning? If you think you heard something and then you go read up on that subject in the Bible and that's not what he said, then you heard wrong.

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That wasn't that wasn't God. That was yourself or some other source, right?

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Maybe that was the devil trying to tell you, you know, something was you should do something. Um, I was trying to help a couple one time that was having trouble

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in their marriage and um, it was a young adults, both of them, young adults, young couple, and they were going

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26 minutes, 58 seconds

through some trouble and I knew that it was getting worse. And I called the the guy up on the phone one day and I said, "Hey, um, like where are you at with

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this? Where where you at so far?" And he goes, "Man, I I think I'm leaning towards a divorce. I'm on a divorce." So

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I I said, "Man, can I read some Bible, some scriptures to you about what God says about divorce?" And so I started

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reading these different scriptures and um God is not for divorce. He He takes it very seriously. He takes marriage very seriously. And I said, you know,

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reading these verses, reading these verses, and and finally he stopped me and he goes, "Jeremy, I've already

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prayed about this and God already told me he wants me to be happy." And so I'm going ahead and getting the

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divorce. And I was like, with all due respect, God didn't tell you that. And you know how I know that? Because God

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didn't say that in his word, right? God didn't give he gave in one place that I know of a reason for a divorce. And it wasn't your personal happiness, right?

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He didn't say, "Well, I really take marriage seriously and I'm really not for divorce, but your happiness is what matters the most. So, you know, don't do

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it." No, that's not what he said, right? And so, we need to take it seriously. So, I was able to say to him with confidence, but I didn't tell you that. You may

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think you heard that, but I already know what he said in his word about that. So, let's do some next steps. I could go

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through more examples. Um, we could talk about dating.

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One thing God has said is that we're not supposed to, if you're a Christian, you're not supposed to date and marry people who are not Christians. Bible

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calls it meaning unequally yolked. We're not supposed to be yolked together with unbelievers. Um, and I say that because

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Lacy told me one time there was a lady who became a Christian. she was a new believer and she said nobody ever taught her that

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and and she went and got herself into a bad situation. And so I said, "You know what? I'm going to teach that from God's word." Um the Bible says if you're a

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Christian, you're supposed to date and marry Christians and not be unequally known. And so if you're praying about, hey, should I marry this person or not?

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Well, if they don't meet that criteria, then God's already answered that. He's already told us.

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So this week, here's some next steps that I want you to consider. Number one, consider praying and fasting about a big

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decision. All right? If you've got on your plate right now a big decision and you're wondering what God would have you

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to do, maybe some of you want to do praying and fasting about it, this big decision. And if that's you, you check that off and say, "That's going to be my

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goal this week. I'm going to do that." Maybe some of you want to think of a type of fleece [clears throat] that you

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could put out to make a decision like we talked about with the the fleece and the the ground around it being dry.

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Maybe you want to think of a type of fleece you could put out to God and say, "Help me make this decision. If this happens, then I know it's of you." Maybe

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some of you want to make a strong commitment to the Bible reading plan this week. Okay. What did we talk about earlier? We can't expect God to answer

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us if we're not in tune with him. if we're not staying connected to him through prayer and the word, right? We can't expect an answer if we're not

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staying connected. So maybe some of you either if you're already doing the Bible reading plan, you just want to make a stronger commitment. Okay, I'm going to really do it. I'm going to finish this.

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Uh I'm not going to drop off and and finish it up. Maybe some of you, if you didn't know about it, you want to start doing the Bible reading plan. You can

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start week seven with us and pick up one of those sheets that's hanging on the wall and dive in with us.

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And then the last one is Google search Bible verses about whatever topic. Maybe it's marriage, you know, about um job

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situations. What does the Bible say about jobs that I should take or um whatever whatever the topic is, search

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Bible verses about that topic and make sure your answer lines up with the word of God. Amen.

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Right? some you want to do that this week and make sure we're not getting into the subjective but we're staying in the

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objective truth of God's word. All right. And so I hope this lesson has been helpful. Has this been helpful in any way?

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Okay. Seeking God's will. I hope you know I hope this will help you to start seeking God's will and then look for

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answers. How to look for answers once you start seeking God's will. I really hope you will seek God's will. The main

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thing is don't just go through life just doing your decisions. Whatever you think is best, right? We need to pause. And and did some of you notice this in the

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Bible reading where Nehemiah, he was talking to the king about rebuilding the the walls in Jerusalem. And did you

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notice I put this out as one of my hear drills before answering the king? It says he stopped and he prayed and then

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he gave his answer to the king. And I love that that he didn't just give his answer. He stopped. He prayed and he

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said, "I want these words to be God's will." Right? What God would have me to say. And I love that. That's that we all need to learn from that. Before we say

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something, we stop. Before we do something, we stop. We pray. Uh because it's when, like I said, it's when we

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went off and made our own decisions in our life that it went to disaster.

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Right? But when we stop and we ask God, things go a lot better. God is our shepherd.

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He loves you and he wants to lead you. I believe that with all my heart. He loves us and he wants to lead us to the things

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that will be good for us and he wants to lead us away from the things that will be harmful to us. Do you believe that this morning?

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I believe because he loves us, he wants to lead [music] us to what will be good.

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But we have to stop and we have to pray and we have to ask and we have to look for his leading before we take steps.

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[music] He knows what's best for you and he wants the best out for your life. Will you let it?

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Now I want to end with this. It is not God's will. It is not God's will for

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anyone to perish. meaning God doesn't want anyone to die apart from knowing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

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And so if you're here this morning and you want to know Jesus and you want to have that relationship with him and you want to take steps towards being

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forgiven of your sins and making Jesus the king of your life, we want to help you do that because it is not God's will

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for anyone to perish and die apart from Jesus, apart from God. He wants you to be in heaven with him. He doesn't want

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you going to hell. He wants you to be in heaven with him when you leave this earth. And so if you need help with next

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steps of getting on that path with Jesus, we would love to help lead you on that. So what's going to

Sync to video time

the night and smoking the meats.

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[applause]

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So, we do have smoked pulled pork and smoked chicken sandwiches. So, we have both pork and chicken today. So, I hope

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you can stay with us and enjoy that together. All right. So, as we get started uh this morning, what is the

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most awkward gift that you've ever gotten? Have you ever gotten an awkward gift? Like maybe you got a gag gift.

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Anybody ever get a gag gift? Like, okay, this can't be real. This has got to be a joke, right? Some kind of gag gift. Um,

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so I got a gift uh one time or I had a gift idea. So I grew up in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area and if you

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grow up anywhere around Pittsburgh, you have to be a Steelers fan. It's like you don't even have a choice. U so I'm a Steelers fan and I had the idea one time

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of Go Steelers. I had the idea one time of making toilet paper that had the Baltimore Ravens logo on it. And I

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thought that was just a genius idea. So, I Google searched it. Turns out somebody thought of that before I did. It's already it's already been done. I

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thought that would be an amazing gag gift uh to give to somebody. One time I had an awkward gift being given to me by

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1 minute, 12 seconds

my my grandma. So, our family was going down to Disney and uh we were stopping at my grandparents house who live in

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Pittsburgh uh Pittsburgh area before we went down to Orlando and my grandma called me into the room uh in the dining

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1 minute, 27 seconds

room and I was sitting across from her at the table and she had a $50 bill and she said, "Jeremy, I want to give you

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this $50 for your trip to Disney." So, what did I do as a 10-year-old kid? I reach my out my hand and I'm trying to

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take the $50 bill from her, right? And she's not letting go and it's like this weird tugofwar and I'm like, "What is going on right now?" And she said,

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1 minute, 50 seconds

"Well, I'm not giving it straight to you. I'm giving it to your parents, but it's for you." And I was like, "Oh, well, that was confusing." Like, "Okay,

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thank you, grandma, but like she said this, I'm giving this to you." And I took it and then she didn't give it. So, I was like, "Oh, this is kind of strange." But, so we had a little

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awkward moment. But why did my grandma want to give me that $50? Tell me.

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You know why?

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Cuz she loves me, right? And she gave one of those to each of us three kids, by the way, not just me. Uh but because she loves her grandkids. And when you

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love your grandkids or kids, you want to give them good gifts, right? So today we're talking about how God as father

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provides for our needs. He loves He's a father. He loves to give us good gifts.

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Uh before I get into that message, yeah, go ahead and keep it put it back on that slide with the uh the kids praying. So I

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we do something here at impact where we talk about a bless moment. So bless is about trying to reach those who don't

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know Jesus because we believe that every person on this earth has a soul and that soul is going to go on to live forever

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in one of two places. There's only two choices. What are they? Heaven or hell. And we don't want anyone to go to hell. God doesn't want anyone to go to hell.

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That's what his word says. He wants them to go to heaven and be with him. And so, because God cares about people, we need to care about people if we're believers.

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Amen. And so, one of the things that we teach is bless, which is a way of building relationships with people. But today, I just I saw this on Facebook two

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days ago, and it's this group of fifth grade boys who pray every day together before their meal at lunch at the

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school. And I just thought that was really cool because what are they doing?

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We call this in Bible terms letting our light shine, right? And if we're going to lead others to Jesus, we've got to let our light

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shine. They've got to see something different in us. They've got to see something that gets their attention.

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It's like, hey, what are they doing? Oh, they're praying. Oh, you know, so I just, you know, I don't even know these boys. I don't even know what school it is or where it is, but I just saw that

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it was like Butler Springs something school. And I just thought I'm going to take a picture. I'm going to show that to our people as a positive example of

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letting your light shine. Fifth grade boys and they're letting their light shine at school. So, uh, let's get back to our message about our father who

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loves to give us good gifts. Um, because God loves us, he wants to help us. If you're like me, you've probably

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gone through a time in your life where you've struggled financially. Has anybody else like me gone through a time of your life where you struggled

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financially? And maybe you, like me, started praying to God. And you're like, "God, I'm struggling right now. I need

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your help." And it didn't seem like an answer was coming, right? And so you started to wonder, maybe like me, you've wondered this, like, "Is God even

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4 minutes, 45 seconds

hearing my prayers?" Have you wondered that? Like, is God even listening? Does God even care about me and taking care

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4 minutes, 52 seconds

of my needs? Cuz I'm calling out to him, and it doesn't seem like he's doing anything. And so, you start to wonder

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these thoughts. Um, but here's here's a question. If he's our father, does a good father always give their kids

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5 minutes, 7 seconds

exactly what they ask for or exactly what they want?

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5 minutes, 11 seconds

No. And guess what? He's our heavenly father. He doesn't always work in our ways or in our time. Uh, as well, when

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5 minutes, 19 seconds

God says he will provide for our needs, does he put any conditions on that? Does he put on any conditions? So, we're going to talk about a principle that I

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5 minutes, 27 seconds

actually got from a pastor named Rick Warren. He says with every promise there's a premise with every promise that God gives there's a premise or a

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5 minutes, 36 seconds

condition right yes he made this promise but is there we need to look was there a condition on that promise that we have to do our part that we have to do

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something so we'll look at that today we're going to be in Matthew chapter 6 Matthew chapter 6 and there are some church Bibles that look like this uh in

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front of the underneath you and in the chairs in front of you and Matthew chapter 6:2, which is page 787 in these,

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6 minutes, 2 seconds

if you want to use one of these Bibles, 787.

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6 minutes, 7 seconds

But we're going to read together in Matthew chapter 6. And before we read that, I wanted to define some words

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6 minutes, 15 seconds

because we could read some of these words and be like, I don't know what that means. And so, you don't get the full meaning of it, right? [snorts] Uh, I wanted to define some words. When

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6 minutes, 23 seconds

Jesus uses the word pagan, he's using it as a non-believer in God. Um, pagans actually practice their own religion.

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6 minutes, 32 seconds

But, uh, as far as Jesus is using it, he's saying even when the pagans do this, he's talking about people who don't follow Jesus. They're not

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6 minutes, 39 seconds

believers in Jesus in in God that we believe in. Uh, Solomon, Solomon was one of the wisest, wealthiest kings in

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6 minutes, 49 seconds

Israel's history. Okay? Okay. So, when we come across Solomon, you'll know that that's what that's talking about. God's kingdom. What does God's kingdom mean?

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6 minutes, 58 seconds

It is the realm in which God reigns and works. And we should have a slide that has these uh terms on there. God's

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7 minutes, 6 seconds

kingdom is the realm in which God reigns or andor doing work that builds God's kingdom. Doing work that builds God's

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7 minutes, 15 seconds

kingdom. And then righteousness. When Jesus says that we need to be about living righteous lives, that means right

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7 minutes, 24 seconds

living. So there's another word for righteous that means right in relationship with God. But in this uh passage that we're going to read, it means right living. So living for God.

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7 minutes, 35 seconds

Living for God. Okay. So we're going to read this and we're going to look for the question, what do we learn about God from Matthew 6, from the words of Jesus 6:25-34.

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7 minutes, 47 seconds

And then we're going to go on to chapter 7 and read some there. Follow along with me. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry

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7 minutes, 55 seconds

about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and

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8 minutes, 3 seconds

the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sew or reap or store away in barns. And yet

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8 minutes, 13 seconds

your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? And what's the answer to that? Are who's

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8 minutes, 21 seconds

more valuable in God's eyes? Birds or humans? Humans. He made us in the image of God.

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8 minutes, 27 seconds

He's like, you're more valuable than they are. So if he feeds the birds, he's going to feed you. That's his point. Can any of you uh by worrying add a single

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8 minutes, 36 seconds

hour to your life? What's the answer to that?

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8 minutes, 39 seconds

Nope. Worry never added an hour onto my life. In fact, it takes it off. That's right. It takes hours off of your life.

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8 minutes, 46 seconds

It does the opposite. And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or

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8 minutes, 54 seconds

spin. They don't work. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is

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9 minutes, 2 seconds

how God clothe the grass of the field, which is here today and to tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith?

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9 minutes, 13 seconds

So do not worry saying, "What shall we eat or what shall we drink? What shall we wear?" Don't you know we got barbecue waiting us in the basement right now as [laughter] we speak?

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9 minutes, 25 seconds

Sorry, side note, I got distracted. For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly father knows you need them.

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9 minutes, 35 seconds

But seek first his what? kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will

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9 minutes, 42 seconds

be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has

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9 minutes, 51 seconds

enough trouble of its own. How many of you know that's true?

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9 minutes, 54 seconds

Let's just take it one day at a time, right? Each day has enough trouble of its own.

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9 minutes, 59 seconds

Let's go to seven. Chapter 7 and then verse seven. Ask, seek, knock.

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10 minutes, 6 seconds

Ask. Jesus still Jesus speaking. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be

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10 minutes, 12 seconds

what? Open to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds and the one who knocks the door will be

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open. Which of you here's a question. If your son asks for bread would give him a stone.

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I mean no good father would do that, right? That would just be mean.

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10 minutes, 31 seconds

Or if if he asked for a fish, we'll give him a snake. That'd be really weird and really mean. No, we wouldn't do that. If

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you then know, even though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father

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in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him. So in everything, do to others

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what you would have them do to you. For this sums up the law and the prophets.

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11 minutes

All right. So, what do we learn about God? He is a father, right? How many times did it say about your heavenly father and your father will do this and

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your father knows what you need before you ask? Our God is our heavenly father, right? We learn that. And then what else

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11 minutes, 16 seconds

do we learn about him? He provides. He provides for the birds of the air, for the grass, the flowers of the field, and

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us, you know, he makes the point because hey, look, God takes care of the birds of the air. He takes care of the flowers of the field. He's going to take care of us as well. That was his whole point.

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11 minutes, 33 seconds

Um, he gives good gifts. We read that in chapter 7. We love to give good gifts to our children. He loves to give good

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gifts to his children. And then, and he does it why? Because he cares for us. He

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cares for you. Yeah. Good fathers love to give their children good gifts. So,

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uh, this is about 10 years ago. I was looking for a new used car and I was I found this beautiful Toyota Corolla uh

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off an individual. They had it listed on Facebook Marketplace and I went to see and uh I went down to drive to see the

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car and this thing was in immaculate just perfect condition, right? The the motor was clean and in good condition.

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12 minutes, 15 seconds

The inside, the cloth, the seats were in perfect condition. I mean, I was like, "Did you even drive this thing? It's got 80,000 miles on it, but it doesn't even

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look like you drove it. Like, it's perfect. And so I I was happy to pay full asking price. I didn't haggle with them at all. I gave them full asking price. It was such great condition.

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Drove it home. Uh fast forward a few months later and uh my teenage son had started driving. And one day I decided to let him drive himself to school.

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Yeah. And he took a bad left turn. It was it was the wrong left turn. He should not have taken it in front of a bunch of traffic. And somebody nailed into him. Tony, you're a car guy, right?

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12 minutes, 59 seconds

Listen to this. Just got sideswiped, right? And just they total the insurance company totaled the car out. And I was

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just like, "No, this beautiful car that I found. Are you kidding me? It's totaled. Like, you got to be kidding me. There's got to be a

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way to fix it." Nope. They totaled it out. So, I had to look for a new car.

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13 minutes, 20 seconds

So, um, then I made a deal with my son, Eric. I said, "All right, here's the deal. You save up as much as you can and we will match you half and go in on a

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13 minutes, 29 seconds

car with you." Right? We made that deal with him. So, we finally found this car.

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13 minutes, 33 seconds

It was in Little Rock. We lived in Memphis, so it was like a two over a two-hour drive. Made the drive, got the car. It was in good condition. So,

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bought it, drove it back, and uh I was happy to match him on that car, um the money, and I was happy to drive to

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Little Rock. Why? because he's my son and as a father, I want my son to have good things. Now, I also got him that

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13 minutes, 59 seconds

car because I said, "If you get in a wreck again, you're not going to wreck my car this time. You going to wreck your own car, son." So, I had a little

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14 minutes, 8 seconds

ulterior motives there, but um but we want our kids to have good things, right? That's the nature of being a

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parent. A good parent wants their kids to have good things. So, what do we learn from this? God is our provider. We

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14 minutes, 22 seconds

sang a song about it. Gyra, which means God is our provider, right? And and we believe that and we trust in that. We

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14 minutes, 30 seconds

say, "Yes, God is provider. He's our father. He wants to provide for our needs. He's a good father." So, back to that question I started off with at the

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beginning. Why then does it seem like there are times where God's not providing? Right? We send up that prayer. We're like, "God, I need your

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help. Where where is he? Like, he doesn't seem to be doing anything." I want to give some possible reasons

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because God is provider. That's what we just read. But why are why does it look like sometimes he's not doing he's not

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providing? Well, number one, if you're taking notes, like I said, on the back of your program, there's a space for notes. Number one is, are you trusting

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15 minutes, 8 seconds

in God to provide or are you relying on yourself? Because here's what the Bible teaches.

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God wants us to completely depend on him for everything. Uh the Bible says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding.

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In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." So he wants us to lean on him

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15 minutes, 34 seconds

completely. And that's hard to do as humans to learn how to lean totally on God because we want to do it ourselves, right? We we want to make it happen

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ourselves but the Bible say no put it in his hands and trust in him. So I want to teach you about this principle that God

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is our source. Okay. One very important concept we must understand as Christians is that God is our source. If you want

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15 minutes, 58 seconds

God to bless you financially, you must remain focused on the truth that he is the source of your finances and he is

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16 minutes, 5 seconds

the one who supplies your needs. What does that mean? It means I'm not looking to an employer for my security. I'm not looking to my savings for my security.

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I'm not looking to anyone or anything else but God to supply my needs. So, we can illustrate it this way. When you go

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to the faucet and you turn that faucet and water comes out, I don't actually believe the water is coming from the

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16 minutes, 30 seconds

faucet itself. No, I know that there's a reservoir of water somewhere a distance away that it's being pulled from and

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coming into. Right? It doesn't actually come from the faucet. Is everybody with me?

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Right? The source is somewhere else. And in the same way, the income that God wants to give you may come through a job or through something else, but the

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16 minutes, 50 seconds

source is God. If you trust in a bank account, that bank account can be taken away. If you trust in your savings, you

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16 minutes, 58 seconds

can lose your savings. The only true security you can have is when you put your trust in God. He is the only one and true source of your finances. This

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17 minutes, 7 seconds

means you don't have to worry about which faucet God uses to supply your needs. In a sense, he says, "If I turn off one faucet, I can just as easily

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17 minutes, 16 seconds

turn on another." Right? If you lose one job, I can give you another. I am your source, not your job. I am your source,

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not your bank account. Does that make sense? Yes.

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17 minutes, 27 seconds

God is our source. And that's what we've got to learn. And we got to learn to trust him as our source. Uh George

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17 minutes, 34 seconds

Mueller was a guy who uh built orphanages and God provided for him in miraculous supernatural ways and he documented it very well. It's just

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17 minutes, 43 seconds

amazing. If you ever want to Google search George Mueller and the orphanages, he has story after story after story where God would provide for

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them in miraculous ways. Um along with this point is sometimes we don't have because we haven't asked. In one part in

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the Bible in James it says you have not because you've asked not. You don't have because you haven't asked. And then it

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actually goes on to say, "And when you ask, you ask with the wrong motives." We'll talk about that more later, but sometimes we don't have because we haven't asked. Have you specifically

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actually prayed and asked God to help you? Leaning into him, trusting him for your needs. We have to ask.

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18 minutes, 22 seconds

When I was in fourth grade, I lived in this uh subdivision and uh our school wanted us to go out and sell candy bars.

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And my dad being the consmate salesman that he is, pushes me out the door and is like, "You you need to go out there and you need to go door todoor and sell

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candy bars." I'm like, "I'm bad, dad. I don't want to." Right? So, pretty soon down the street, I run into this neighborhood kid and he was one of these

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kind of annoying kids. Kind of like a Dennis the menace kind of kids. You know what I'm talking about? Like, you know, he kind of got on everybody's nerves.

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And this kid comes up to me. He's like, "What you doing?" I'm like, "I'm selling candy bars." He's like, "You want me to help you?" And I was like, "Sure."

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18 minutes, 59 seconds

because I'm thinking in my head, I don't want to ask. I didn't want to ask in the first place. People want to buy can. I'll let him do the asking, right? Sure.

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19 minutes, 6 seconds

Come on along with me. So, we go a few houses down and we come to this bend, this place where the street takes a bend. And um there's these two ladies

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sitting at the end of the driveway in lawn chairs. They're just chitchatting away at the end of this driveway. So,

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19 minutes, 22 seconds

the neighborhood kid uh he goes up to me, he says, "Want to buy some candy bars?" And they're like, "Oh, no, thank you.

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19 minutes, 28 seconds

We're good. No, thank you." Okay. So, we go on and we go down to the end of the street and we're coming back on our way back and here's these ladies in the

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19 minutes, 37 seconds

lounge chairs buying candy bars off of this girl. And I was like, "So, we go up after the girl leaves and we go up and

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we say, "Hey, wait a minute. We asked you if you want to buy candy bars. You said no, but now you're buying from these girls, this girl." And she said,

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"Well, when you came up, you just said, "Want to buy some candy bars?" But when she came up, she said, "Hello, ma'am.

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Yes, I am selling candy bars. My name is so and so, and I'm selling candy bars to raise money for my school. Would you like to buy some?" She see she was

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polite. And so, we bought from her. I was like, "Oh, all right. You're you're done helping me, bud. Like, get out of

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here, scadaddle. I I'll handle it from here." But we have to ask if we want God to provide. I know it goes without saying, like, it should be obvious, but

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sometimes you have to ask. Have you actually asked and petitioned God for that? All right. Number two, if you're

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taking notes, God will meet your needs, not your greeds. God has promised to meet your needs, not your greeds. So in

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the Bible in Philippians 4:19, it says, "And my God will meet all of your needs according to his glorious riches in

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Christ Jesus." What did go God promise to meet there? Needs. My God will meet all your needs, not all your greeds. He didn't promise to buy you a Lamborghini.

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20 minutes, 56 seconds

Okay? Uh he didn't promise that. He said your needs. Remember what we read with the words of Jesus? He said, what was he talking about? He said food and

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21 minutes, 4 seconds

clothing. Right? That's what he promised to give us is our needs. Our food, our clothing. Why do you worry about what you will wear? God will provide those

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21 minutes, 13 seconds

things. God will provide your needs, not your greeds. So if you're looking for more than your needs, God didn't promise

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21 minutes, 20 seconds

to do that. Uh, number three, and this is closely related to number two, is don't blame God for mismanaging your

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21 minutes, 29 seconds

money. So, I've seen this happen where like people want to get angry with God or be frustrated with God and blame him.

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21 minutes, 36 seconds

And he's looking down. He's like, "Okay, I I provided a job for you, right?

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21 minutes, 41 seconds

You're getting a pay. I gave you the ability to work that job. You got a paycheck, but then what you did with the paycheck is out of my hands, right? like

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I can't force you to to manage your money a certain way. You know, if you went out and frivolously wasted money here and there, that's not God's fault.

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21 minutes, 59 seconds

And we don't need to blame God for things that aren't his fault, right? You with me?

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22 minutes, 5 seconds

Um, and maybe some of you are like me and Andrea. You know, we we at one point were not good at managing our money and

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22 minutes, 12 seconds

we hadn't taken Dave Ramsey's financial peace university class yet. Um, but so we were kind of all over the place with

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22 minutes, 20 seconds

our money. If you had asked us where all of our money was going before we took that class and made a budget, we couldn't have told you. We we really

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22 minutes, 28 seconds

couldn't have told you where all our money cuz we didn't know. We hadn't sat down and put pence pen to paper, right?

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22 minutes, 34 seconds

We hadn't actually looked at where. And I'll tell you, when we started looking and tracking like Dave Ramsey teaches you to save all your receipts and we

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22 minutes, 42 seconds

started looking where all our money was going, we couldn't believe it. We were like, we spent how much going out to eat last month? I mean, it was the hundreds

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22 minutes, 49 seconds

of dollars. It was in the hundreds of We really were shocked. We were like, there's no way we got Look at this again. Add that up again. We spent $500

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22 minutes, 58 seconds

going out to eat. Like, oh, well, there's where our money's going.

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23 minutes, 1 second

[laughter] Like, duh. You know, you want to get mad at God and be like, well, where you don't provide for us? Well, you're spending $500 going out to eat, you know. And that was a long time ago.

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23 minutes, 10 seconds

So, inflation would be like $1,000 a month now, you know. Um, but it's not God's fault is the point. Um, when I

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23 minutes, 19 seconds

went uh training for to be a manager at McDonald's, uh, I they sent us off to Hamburger University. Yes, that's a real

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23 minutes, 26 seconds

place. So, we were in Memphis. They sent us to Nashville, Tennessee to go to Hamburger University to get our degree in hamburgerology. I wish I was making

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23 minutes, 35 seconds

that up, but I'm not. And they gave us a company car. They gave us a company gas card so we didn't have to worry about

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23 minutes, 42 seconds

gas getting there and back. And they gave us spending money to pay for our meals for the week while we were there.

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23 minutes, 49 seconds

So they gave us this money on the first night that we went we we landed in Nashville. This one guy named Jamie went

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23 minutes, 56 seconds

out went to a certain type of club. I'll just leave it at that. And spent all of his money in the first night. So he

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24 minutes, 5 seconds

comes back kind of crying the blues the next day like you know kind of begging, oh wo is me. Uh guys, I spent all my money. Can you help me with some food?

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24 minutes, 14 seconds

Like could you buy my meal? You know what I did with my money? I went out the first day and I went to a grocery store and I bought stuff to make sandwiches.

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24 minutes, 24 seconds

My goal was to have money left over to take home with me, which I did. I came home with money. This bozo goes and spends all his money the first night.

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24 minutes, 33 seconds

So, he's crying the blues. I said, 'N no, I'm not going to give you money. I'm not going to pay for your meal out to eat. I said, 'Here's what I will do because I do feel somewhat sorry for

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24 minutes, 42 seconds

you. Not much, but somewhat. Is you can come into my hotel room and you can make s a sandwich out of my sandwich stuff.

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24 minutes, 48 seconds

I'll I'll do that for you. But like I just do that to say like we were given the same money, but how we spent it was different. And sometimes I think God is

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24 minutes, 57 seconds

up in heaven going, you know, I gave you the job. I gave you the the ability to work the job, but how you spent it, what you did with it, that that was yours.

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25 minutes, 5 seconds

That was out of my hands, right? So, don't blame God for your mismanaging of money. By the way, one of your next steps is take the Dave Ramsey Financial

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25 minutes, 14 seconds

Peace University class. It'll change your life. It changed me and Andrea's life. We got our money under control.

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25 minutes, 20 seconds

Uh, and we've been since we did that class. How many years ago? 10 plus years ago. Um, but you can Google search and

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25 minutes, 27 seconds

I'll bet you anything if you Google search financial peace university classes in Columbus, you'll find about four or five churches that are offering

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25 minutes, 35 seconds

it right now. And you can go take that class and get your money under control.

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25 minutes, 41 seconds

Um, so number four, let's go on to number four. God blesses those who are trying to build his kingdom, not their

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25 minutes, 49 seconds

own. God blesses those who are trying to build his kingdom. Did you catch what Jesus said? He said, "So seek first his

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25 minutes, 58 seconds

kingdom and his righteousness, and then all these things will be given to you as well." Did you notice that

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26 minutes, 4 seconds

order? First, you seek first his kingdom, his righteousness. You be about building God's kingdom, advancing God's

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26 minutes, 12 seconds

kingdom, uh which is working, you know, doing serving in a way that benefits God's kingdom, helping other people,

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26 minutes, 19 seconds

right? if if it's about building his kingdom and making God's name famous. Uh if you're try just trying to build your own little kingdom and you know get what

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26 minutes, 28 seconds

you want and get your house on a hill and you know your your Corvette or whatever you know like uh like if that's

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26 minutes, 35 seconds

all your motives are God's not really interested in helping you build your own kingdom but he is he will bless those

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26 minutes, 42 seconds

who are willing who are trying to advance his kingdom and make his name famous. It's it's a question of motives.

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26 minutes, 50 seconds

So I mentioned James earlier where the famous where most of us know you have not because you've asked not. Right? You

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26 minutes, 58 seconds

have not because you've asked not. But it goes on. It says and when you ask, you ask with wrong motives so that you

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27 minutes, 5 seconds

may spend what you get on your pleasures. He's saying you just want more for yourself to like live it live it up. Live the high life yourself.

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27 minutes, 15 seconds

God's not interested in helping with that. Like he's not against us enjoying life and having fun. I'm not saying that. But if it's just to build your own kingdom and spend what you get on your

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27 minutes, 24 seconds

own pleasures, God hasn't promised to bless that. And so are we trying to build his kingdom? Why do you want more

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27 minutes, 32 seconds

money, more possessions? Is it so that you can help others? So you can be a blessing, you can be blessed to bless others. Or is it just bless me Lord,

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27 minutes, 41 seconds

bless me Lord, bless me Lord. Right? if it's just all about you, he hasn't promised to bless that. Uh there's a guy there's a pastor named Francis Chan. I

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27 minutes, 50 seconds

love this guy. He's just got a great heart and and he tells a couple stories.

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27 minutes, 54 seconds

Uh one one story is he wrote a book called Crazy Love and his publisher before it was even released said, "Hey,

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28 minutes, 2 seconds

early testing says this book is going to do very well. You're going to be a very rich man." He heard that and he was

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28 minutes, 9 seconds

like, "Whoa, okay. Um here's what we're going to do. I'm going to write up papers to sign off all the prophets to

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28 minutes, 16 seconds

go to building an orphanage in Africa. I don't want any of that. And he signed off his rights to all the prophets. And

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there's an orphanage you can go to to this right now and see that his pro proceeds from the book went to build that. He didn't want any part of that.

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Um he also uh his their church has uh done many serving things. So they they serve the community frequently. And uh

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one of the stories he tells is they were going to feed a certain amount of people on a certain day. They were going to do this outreach and have a bunch of people show up at their church building and

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feed a bunch of people. So the time was coming. They were collecting and buying things, but they still up to the day of before had no meat to cook to feed the

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people. Um they didn't have a Phil's famous barbecue apparently. Um you know, they didn't have that ready. And so they're all praying like uh the pastor

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and the elders of the church are praying like, "Lord, we need we need meat. We're going to feed these people. We're trying to do your work. Like would you help

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us?" That night, Trader Joe's calls them and says, "Uh, pastor, all of our freezers are broken down right now. We

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got a bunch of meat that's going to go bad. We need to find something. Could you use it?" Are you kidding me? Okay, Lord. Yes, we could use the meat. Thank you very much.

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We're actually doing a serving event the next day, you know. So, God provided all the meat. Okay, that's cool. They fed the people. The next year, they do the

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same thing. They say, "On a certain day, we're going to feed all the people." Same thing. No meat. Trader Joe's calls again and says, "Our freezers have

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broken down. Could you use some meat?" I'm not making this up. Like, two years in a row, and God provides the meat. Why

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was God blessing Francis Chan and that church? because they were trying to serve and help others,

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right? It wasn't all about me, me me, bless me, bless me, Lord, bless me. No, it was like bless us so that we can bless others, right? We're trying to do

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your work. We're trying to feed people in your name. Everybody see the difference? Okay. All right. So, uh, next steps.

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Let's go to our next step. So, at Impact, we like to encourage people.

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Don't just hear God's word, put it into practice. So, we like to give these next steps so we can put it in action this

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week. What can you do this week? You can do one of these, all of these, accommodation, whatever. The first one says, "Every time you catch yourself

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worrying about finances this week, give it over to God and ask him to help you not to worry." All right, that'd be a

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good thing. Maybe some of you are like, "Yep, that's me. I need to do that." Check that off. Sign up for Financial Peace University. I told you, do a

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Google search, put in your zip code, and you'll find four or five churches around here that you can go, and it'll change your life. It'll help you get your money under control.

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Number three, make a list of things you buy that you don't need. Figure out what to cut out. I guarantee you, we all we

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all have things we buy that we don't really need. You know, I really like my NFL subscription. It's it's $7.99 a

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month. Not too much, but that's not really a need, right? If I had to, I would cut it out. I would I would go

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crying to Andrea. Please don't make me cut it out. I really like I get to see my Steelers play every Sunday.

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[laughter]

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Number four. Number four, take steps towards building God's kingdom. Serve in the church. Serve someone in need this

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week. Maybe you serve at Heart Food Pantry. They do a lot of great work in the community feeding people. Be a part of it. Build his kingdom, not your own.

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All right, let me pray for us. Father God,

Sync to video time

But it should be used as that. Like we want to try to be here in person as much as possible and be with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Uh it's great we have

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8 seconds

technology as a backup plan, but let's use it as that as a backup plan. Um so I love when my son calls me uh my adult

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son. You know, it's it's just special because uh when they grow up and they go out on their own, they don't have to call you, right? Like they they really

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don't. They they could go weeks and not call you or you not call them. Um, but when they call you, it's just special, right? And I remember uh one time Eric

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called me and he was working as a manager at Domino's Pizza and this customer came in. He said, this customer came in that and he wanted a certain

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special uh that they didn't have at Eric's store. And this customer was all upset like, well, why don't you have it at this store? And you know, all that

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figures that's my life and blah blah blah my life and you know, Domino's won't cooperate with me and this happens. And Eric said to him, he said,

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"Well, I'm sorry that the world doesn't revolve around your problems." I was like, "You said that to him?" Yeah.

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Okay. Well, that's pretty bold. Uh, another time he was calling me about advice on looking for an apartment in

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Memphis, Tennessee. And I said, "Eric, for the love of God and everything that is sacred, do not get a place to live in

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the city limits of Memphis. Please, whatever you do, anywhere else, not there. Uh, I lived there back in the 90s and even back in the 90s, it has ranked

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in the top 10 cities of crime in America since I lived there in the 90s and it still is like it's just like please

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don't live in Memphis city limits if at all possible. Um, but I love I I truly love as a father when my son when any of my children really uh ask me advice.

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Like, have you felt that as parents?

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Like, do you feel honored? Like, hey, it's cool. They actually think I have some value, valuable opinions and advice and they're calling to ask me about that

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and I feel honored. As we continue our series on God as father, we're going to look at how God helps us. And have you

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ever wondered, like, be honest, have you ever wondered if God is even working in the middle of difficult situations?

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Like, is God doing anything? Like, where is he? Does does he just sit there watching? Is he the one inflicting the pain? Or is he wanting to jump in and

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help us? Does he see what we're going through and he wants to help us? If God is father, is he approachable? You know, some fathers aren't approachable. Is God

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as father approachable? Like, does he want us coming to him when we're in trouble?

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So, we're going to look at different passages. We're going to be turning to a lot of different uh uh sections in the Bible, passages in the Bible today, and

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we're look to the answers of two questions. What is God or Jesus like? And what does God or Jesus do for us?

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So, we're going to be in Romans chapter 8 first. We're going to do a lot of turning today. Romans chapter 8 and verse 28.

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So, you can go ahead and turn in there.

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And we do have some uh church Bibles that look like this underneath the chairs in front of you if you want to use one of these. And if you're using

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that Bible, then Romans 8:28 is on page 917.

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So that would be like a shortcut so you can get there uh easier. But we're asking these we're looking for the answer to these two questions. What is God or Jesus like from these passages?

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And what does God or Jesus do for us? So in Romans 28

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we read this statement and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose.

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So when we're going through difficult circumstances, you can write that in your notes. When we're going through difficult circumstances, we read, what do we learn about God? What does he do?

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He works all things for the good of those who love him. Right? He works all things for the good of those who love

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him. What does that mean? Like let's try to put that in our own words. How would you describe that? Maybe something like

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this. When we go when we go through bad things, God can take those bad things and reshape them and make something good

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come out of it. Is that fair? Is that is that good? Like does that work? God can take bad things and he can somehow work

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and turn it into good things. He can make good things come out of that bad.

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Right? God is able to get really creative and think of ways to work bad situations for our good. Amen. Anybody believe that this morning?

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And Joseph from the Old Testament is a great example of that. Right? So what happened to Joseph? Uh his brothers uh hated him and sold him into slavery. But

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long story short, he ends up through all these difficult circumstances. He becomes second in command in Egypt, only

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second to the Pharaoh, the king himself, right? God was able to take and and he actually put those put that into words,

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Joseph did to his brothers. He said, "What you meant for harm, God intended for good." Right? He literally he he was

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paraphrasing Romans 8:28. What you meant for harm, I had to go through all these bad things, but God intended for good. and worked it into a good situation.

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Um, but here's the thing, you know, we we God can do that for each and every one of us. Do we believe that? Okay, do we believe that? But here's the thing.

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We have to ask and we have to trust. We have to trust that he will do that for us. Let me ask you this. Is there any

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situation where you could see being glad that you got mauled by a bull?

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Do you think there's any circumstance where you think you could be glad that you were mauled by a bull? Well, for a 25-year-old Paige King of Reading, uh

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the the article read, "We brought her to the emergency room after she got mauled by a bull and did a CT scan of her and the doctor noticed a lump on her neck.

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It turns out King was in the early stages of thyroid cancer and they were able to able to catch it early and treat

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it and now she's fine. She could actually say she's glad. She can look back. She wasn't glad when it happened,

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right? But she can look back and say, "Yeah, I'm glad that happened so they could find that cancer and treat it." Do

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you believe that God is working in the midst of your difficult situations?

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And do you believe that God can take a bad situation and work something good out of it? All right. Uh, how about First Corinthians 10:13?

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1 Corinthians 10:13.

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So, we're going to go back in our Bibles from Romans.

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It's going to be after that, pretty soon after that. 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

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And I know this verse means something really special to someone in this room.

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Maybe she could tell you her story someday. 1 Corinthians 10:13.

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What do we learn about who God is? you know what he's like or what God does.

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From 1 Corinthians 10:13, it says, "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.

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And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also

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provide a way out so that you can endure it or stand up under it." What do we learn about God? What is he like? God is

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faithful. Right? When we are being tempted to sin, you can write in your notes that God is faithful. I think I

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have the wrong that should be say God is faithful.

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Um and uh what else? He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.

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Now, I know that might seem like in the moment you're like, "Okay, I don't know about you. I've had some moments where I'm like I I'm feeling like I'm being

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tempted more than what I can handle right now. Have you ever had that moment? Like I feel like But God's promise is it's not more than you can

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bear. You can overcome this and he will and that's the next part. Um he will provide a way out so that we can stand

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up under it. We need to believe this this morning that there is a way out.

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When we are tempted, God is going to make a way out of that temptation. Okay. Um, so my dad uh grew up in Pittsburgh.

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I was born in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, but my dad grew up there and lived there for a lot of his life and he lived next door to his

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grandparents to Grandma and Grandpa Richards and he had his he was a teenager. He had his driver's license

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and in Pittsburgh it's a very hilly area and every almost every driveway is a hill either up or down, you know. So

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they had one of those driveways that went down, you know, when you parked.

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And when it was wintertime, if if there was snow in the driveway, it was hard to back it out and get out of the driveway,

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right? So one day my dad as a teenager is trying to back out and he's doing the tire spinning and he goes back into place and tire spinning and he goes

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back, you know, he can't get out. So he goes and he knocks on the door and he says, "Grandpa Richards, can you help me get out? I can't get my car out of the

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driveway." So, Grandpa Richards gets in the car. He's like, "Yep, get in the passenger seat. I'll be in the driver.

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I'll be in the driver's seat." And he puts it in reverse and on the first try backs it right out. Right. And he looks at my dad as a teenager. He goes, "Yep,

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you just weren't holding your mouth right.

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Anybody ever tell you that you weren't holding your mouth right?" I'm like, "What does that saying even mean?" Like, I'll hold your mouth right. You're

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backing up. Um Elelliana when she was like two years old got a bead stuck in her nose and Andrea took her right away

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to the doctor and the doctor said to them said it's really good that you didn't try to get this bead out yourself

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because if you had we would have had to do surgery because a lot of times when people try to dig it out they push it further back in. Right? He's like, "It's

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good you didn't do anything and you just came to the doctor and let me get you out of that situation." [snorts]

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So God promises whenever you're tempted, there is a way out. He's going to make a way out, right? So let's pretend there's

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a fire. You wake up and you're in a house and it's on fire. And you try the door and that first door doesn't work.

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And so you go to door number two and it's blocked. And you try to go through the windows, but things have fallen and blocked the windows. You can't get out

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the window. And so the only way out is you're going to either have to kick a hole through the wall into the next room or you're going have to like punch a

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hole in the ceiling and go through the ceiling or something, right? Like you got to do something. And a lot of times we pray and we say, "God, get me out of

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this temptation." And we don't see a way out. But there is a way out, but we're just not willing to kick a hole through the wall. You see what I'm saying? Like you got to be willing to do whatever.

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There is a way out. That's God's promise. There is a way out, but you got to be willing to kick a hole through the wall or go through the ceiling and take

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that other way out. Um, I heard a guy uh talking one time and he was talking about how whenever he was tempted uh

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like if a pretty pretty lady was walking by and he was tempted by lust, he would look at his watch. He would look at his watch and somebody asked him like,

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"Well, why why do you look at your watch? Why don't you just look away?" And he's like, "Cuz if I look away, there might be another pretty lady." Like, I look at my watch. I look at my

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watch. Here's the thing. God can provide a way out, but we have to call on God and ask him to provide a way out of the

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situation. What did Joseph do when he was tempted by Pterer's wife when she was trying to seduce him? You remember what he what he did to get out of the temptation?

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He ran. Run Forest, run.

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He started booking it. He's like, I just got to run. I got to flee. I got to get out of here. I can't even be in this. Like, I just got to get out of this.

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literally get out of this room, out of this house, and I just got to run. Okay?

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When it comes to temptation, we got to stay prayed up. We got to stay in the word. We got to stay spiritually strong so that when temptation hits, we can

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resist it because we're staying spiritually strong. And then when we are tempted, we got to kick a hole in the wall. We got to call on the name of

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Jesus. We got to phone a friend. We got to turn on some praise music, right? We got to leave the situation. Get out of the room. Get out of the building. Get

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into a new place. Do you believe that God can provide a way out of our temptation this morning? You believe that? [clears throat]

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All right. Before our next point, we need to define a Bible term and that term is high priest. High priest. So in

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the Old Testament, God had a system in place of priests and priests acted as a goeteen between people and God. and he

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they would perform duties on behalf of the people. So God had the people set up a temporary structure called the tabernacle. That's a picture of a

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representation of the tabernacle in the sections. Uh later uh the the tabernacle was divided into sections. There was the

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holy place and then the back section where the ark of the covenant was was the most holy place and that was a special place. Eventually, the

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tabernacle that was temporary will get replaced by a permanent structure called the temple, but it had the same setup.

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[clears throat] Um, and in between the the holy place and the most holy place in the back room where the ark of the covenant was, that's where the presence

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of God dwelled was at the ark of the covenant in that room. And there was a curtain or a veil that divided the two

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rooms. And there only one person could go into that most holy place one time a year. He had to be the high priest. And

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he would go in once a year and he would offer the blood of the sacrifice on behalf of the people so they would be

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forgiven of their sins. So access to God in the Old Testament was very limited.

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Only one person, only one day a year. I'd say that's pretty limited, right?

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Access to the presence of God. When Jesus died on the cross, it says the curtain in the temple was torn in half

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from top to bottom. And the Bible tells us, the book of Hebrews makes it clear that the curtain being torn was symbolic

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of access to God being opened up to all of God's people, which is a really cool thing. Because we have Jesus as our high

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priest, we can approach God in prayer anytime we want to. Is anybody thankful and excited about that? We can approach God any time in prayer that we want to.

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Any time of the day. It could be three in the morning. Um here's what Hebrews 10:19 through 20 says. Therefore,

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brothers, since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened

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up for us through the curtain that is his body. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, that's

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Jesus. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart. We can now draw near to

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God. We have a father who wants us to come to him whenever we need help. Isn't that good? Isn't that good? We have a father who wants us to come to him when

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we need help. This will be important background information to keep in mind as we read Hebrews 4 today. So, we're

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going back further back into the Bible, uh, almost to the back of the book of Hebrews,

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and it's after Timothy and Titus, Phileiman, and then we have Hebrews 4, and we're going to read Hebrews 4:14-16.

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And the context of the book of Hebrews was this was kind of later um, after

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Jesus. And what was happening is people were being persecuted for just for being Christians, just for believing in Jesus.

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They were going through these horrible torturous persecutions like um you know just going into detail it says some

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people were sawed in two, some people were burned at the stake like horrible like persecutions, right? And because of

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that a lot of people were jumping ship on Christianity. They're like I don't want any part of this. I'm I don't I can't I don't like this persecution that's happening to me or or my family.

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And so they were bailing on Christianity. So the writer of Hebrews wrote this letter to say, don't jump ship. Stay firm to the faith. What you

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believed at first is true and and hang in there. Right? Hang in there. So with that in mind, Hebrews 4:14-16.

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Therefore, since we have a great high priest who ascended into heaven, Jesus the son of God, let us hold firmly to

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the faith we profess. Don't give up on the faith. Hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high

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priest who is unable to sympathize or empathize with our weaknesses. But we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet he did not sin.

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Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

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So when we go when we need help in general, if you're taking notes, when we need help in general, either with holding on to our faith, temptation to

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sin, or other things. Okay, here's what we have. We have a Jesus who has gone through the heavens. That means ascended into heaven.

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He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because he has been tempted in every way just as we have. Yet, and

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this is a big yet, Jesus was without sin. Jesus was tempted like we are, but

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he never gave into the temptation and sinned. Okay? And I I really like to point that out because George Bara did a

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a poll and he pulled teenagers who had grown up in the church. Okay? They had a whole life, you know, childhood of

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learning about God through Bible study and Sunday school. And they were asked this question. Did Jesus ever sin? More than 50% said yes. And it's like no.

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Like no. Jesus never sinned. He's the only human who ever walked this earth that never sinned. That's why he was able to be the perfect sacrifice on the cross for us.

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Right? That's the whole point is that he never sinned. So just any of you uh Sunday school teachers, you know,

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children's church, just make sure the kids get that that Jesus never sinned.

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He's the only one who ever walked this earth and never sinned. All right.

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God, we learn from this. God has a throne of grace, which is an interesting phrase to describe it. A throne of grace

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that we can approach with confidence and he will give us mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. That's good

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stuff right there, church. I don't know if you know that. That's really good stuff. He will we can approach his throne of grace and he will give us mercy and grace. What does that mean?

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Well, remember a couple weeks ago we went over the definition of mercy and grace. If you have a really good memory, you remember the Greek word for uh mercy

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is elios and it means kindness or concern expressed for someone in need.

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Compassion that takes action. Remember that. And it even gave the good Samaritan as an example that he had mercy on the guy who was beaten up and

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robbed and left for dead. Right? He took mercy. He had kindness expressed in action. compassion that took action. So

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God has that for us. He has compassion that takes action and then grace is an unearned gift or undeserved favor. Or another way it's translated is help.

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He's he's giving us grace. He's going to help us. So God wants to show you kindness and compassion in your time of

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need. God wants to give you grace, undeserved help in any kind of situation, temptation, the strength to

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go on when you don't feel like you can go on any longer. He can give you that.

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The strength to stand up for Jesus in the face of persecution.

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The strength to stand up for Jesus in the face of persecution. We don't fully appreciate that one because in America, we have the freedom of religion. We can

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worship God freely. we don't have to worry about the police coming in and arresting us because we're here worshiping God, right? But in other countries, they do. Uh for example, in

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Africa, uh there's many Muslim dominated countries where Christians are being persecuted and church buildings being

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set on fire. And I heard a speaker in person named Saddank Johnson and he told

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us this story uh that he was captured and they were going to tie his hands behind his back until it touches his

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neck. Just think about that's pain. Um the commander was so mad he was going to kill Shidank and and so Shidank says to

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the commander, "Commander, can I have five minutes to talk to you?" The commander says, "You're dead anyway, so

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go ahead and talk." He said, 'If I die today, that's okay. I will go to be with Jesus in heaven. If you die, you have

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nowhere to go. He said, "You need to make Jesus your personal savior. Jesus loves you. He cares for you." The

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commander says, "Untie him. He is crazy in the head." Okay, so they let him go.

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Three months later, the commander comes to find him. And the commander said, 'N no one ever talked to me that way, the way you did. I want you to be my friend.

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Later, the commander became a Christian.

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He was baptized in the river and two of his sons became Christians. All because

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Saddon Johnson was God. Where where did that strength come from to stand up like that and speak those words? Where did that come from? Came from God. God gave

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him the ability to have that courage and speak those words in that moment, right?

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And and God took something and worked it good out of it. So living to please God, how does this apply to our lives today?

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In order to get the help from God, you have to ask. I know that may seem common sense like duh, but I want to say it. I

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want to make a point about this. In order to get the help from God, you have to ask. You have to ask God for help.

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You have to humble yourself to God and other believers. 1 Peter 5 5-7 says,

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"All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another." So like put humility on like you put on

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clothing. Put clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because watch this statement. God opposes the

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proud but shows favor to the who? to the humble.

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And then it says, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your what?" on him.

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Yeah. Cast all your anxiety on him because why? He cares for you. He cares for you. That's a powerful scripture.

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God wants you to cast your anxieties and your burdens and your cares on him because he cares for you. That's good

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news, church. That's good news. That's the kind of father he is. We're we're getting to know God, what he's like. He wants you to give your anxieties over to

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him. God wants to help you. But you have to be willing to drop your pride and ask for help. And some of us have trouble

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with that sometimes, right? Like, does anybody ever struggle with your pride getting in the way of asking for help?

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I do. I do. Right? We don't want we don't want to ask for help. I I'll figure it out myself. I can do it myself. But the reality is we can't we

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can't do life without God and without one another. That's what the the word of God says. So applying this to our lives,

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24 minutes, 28 seconds

what do you need to do differently now that you have read these passages today?

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24 minutes, 33 seconds

Do you need to change some of your beliefs about God? Like maybe some of you came in and thought, "God doesn't care about my troubles and my

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difficulties I go through." And now you're changing like, okay, the Bible says he does care. He is listening. He does care. Do you need to trust God's

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character more? That's a hard one, right? Every day we're learning to trust God more and more and more. Can I trust

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this God that we believe in? Do you need to start believing that God can and wants to help?

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Here's a question. Would you worry less knowing that God is on your side and wants to help? Did you hear that question?

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We should worry less, right? We should like, oh, God's going to take care of it. He said, I can cast my anxieties on

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him. He's going to take care. We should worry less. But that's another part of our growing in faith, right? Is that we we learn to trust more and worry less.

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Do you need to humble yourself and ask for his help more often?

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And so, we have what we call our next steps.

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And we encourage you to take at least one of these next steps. You can do all of them if you want, but just check off any one of these on the back page of

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your program that you want to make a goal to do this week. Maybe some of you want to spend some time praying, asking

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25 minutes, 56 seconds

God to help you trust him that he will work all things to the good. That'd be a good prayer. Lord, you said you would

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work things all all things to the good of those who love him. I love you. Please work this bad situation for good.

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I'm trusting that you'll do that. Maybe you want to make that your prayer, your focus. Some of you may want to write a list of your biggest temptations. Write

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down and then write down different ways you could get out of your temptation, right? What's the kicking the hole in the wall? What's the way out? Write a

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list of your temptations and then write what are the ways out that I could take some steps um to getting out of those temptations. A third one, ask someone to

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26 minutes, 35 seconds

be your accountability partner or be part of and or be part of disciplehip groups which we ask each other accountability questions. Guys, I am

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convinced 100% I believe 100% that you are not going to make changes in in your life with certain things unless you ask

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26 minutes, 51 seconds

someone to hold you accountable. It's just the way life works, right? So, I'm getting ready to put out a post that I

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really, really need to stay on my eating plan that I've not been doing. I'm going to put a Facebook post. I'm going to make it public and you're going to see

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it this week. Please, if you see me eating something that is not on this plan, I want you to point it out to me like, "Hey, you said you weren't eating

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sweets, so what are you doing with those pancakes and syrup?" You know, like, "You said you weren't doing carbs. What are you doing eating mashed ters?" you

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know, but I want people to hold me accountable because I know I I can't do it. I haven't done it on my own. So, I'm going to ask other people to hold me

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accountable. Um, and then the last one is pray this week specifically going into the throne of grace, asking for

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mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. I think that's a great prayer to pray. Like, it's literally right out of the scripture that we just read that

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God said we can approach his throne of grace. So, all right, God, this is going to be my focus during my prayers this week. God, I'm approaching your throne

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of grace with confidence, and I am asking you to give me mercy and grace to help me in my time of need, whatever that thing is that you're going through.

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Right? Maybe some of you want to practice praying that prayer this week.

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As I said earlier, Jesus was tempted in every way, yet was without sin. Jesus

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never sinned. And because he never sinned, he was able to be the perfect sacrifice on the cross for our sins. And

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the crazy thing is, guys, Jesus is the only one who never sinned. He's the only one who didn't deserve punishment for

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his sin or consequence for his sin. But he was willing to step in because he loved us and take that punishment that

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should have been ours. And he died in our place. Is every anyone grateful for that this morning?

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He took the punishment that should have been ours. We're the ones who sinned, not him. But because he wanted to make a

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way that we could be forgiven of our sins and made right with God, he was willing to die on the cross for our

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sins. So the invitation today is if you have not put your faith in Jesus, if you

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have not taken steps towards becoming a Christian, um you can do that this morning. We're our band is going to lead us in one last song. Uh, and during this

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song, you have an opportunity. I'm going to go to the back of the room and you can come see me and say, "Hey, what do I need to do?" Uh, I wanna I want to take

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steps towards being forgiven of my sins and becoming a Christian. What do I need to do? And I'll [snorts] I'll help lead you through those next steps of faith,

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of repenting of our sins, which means changing our ways, uh, changing how we live, um, confessing Jesus with our

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mouth that we believe that Jesus is the son of God. um being baptized. Uh and then we we we get in the word and we

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pray and we grow spiritually. So, I'm just going to find out where you're at on those steps and help you take whatever your next step is. Um maybe you

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want to rededicate your life to Jesus and say, "Hey, I I did those steps when I was a kid, but I got off track and I want to get back on track." Uh if you're

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going through difficult situations, u you just want somebody to pray for you, I would love to pray for you. In fact, I'm going to pray for all of us right

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now. But then if you want a special prayer um during the song, you can come to the back. Father God, you have taught

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us who you are and that you are a father who wants to help us. You love us and you want to help us. And so God, we are

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approaching, we collectively, all of us right now in this room, we are approaching your throne of grace with confidence because you said we could.

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You said we could. we could come into your throne room of grace and that we could ask for mercy and grace to help us

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in our time of need. So God, I don't know what everybody's going through in this room, but you do. And God, I'm just

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31 minutes

praying on behalf of all the people that whatever situations that we are going through, whether it's just uh temptation

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or um just a really rough time in life, bad things happening uh or marital struggles or financial struggles or or

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whatever it is. God, you know, we are coming to your throne of grace and we are asking by your mercy and grace, by the blood of Jesus, for you to give us

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mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. God, would you meet us where we are with whatever we're going through?

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And would you open up ways out of our situation? Would you have compassion on us that takes action out of your mercy

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that you would help us? Would you give us grace, undeserved help in this way, whatever that way is, Lord, we are

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asking for that. And we are thanking you in advance for how you are going to help us. And God, we are going to give you the praise. We're going to give you the

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praise and we're going to give you the glory. And we're going to tell other people how you helped us and point to the God who is a father who loves us and

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wants to help us. So God, help us to trust in your timing. Uh maybe it's it's not going to be an answer right away,

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but we're going to trust that you're going to take the bad things and you're going to work them to the good in your ways and in your time. God, help us to

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trust you. Help us to plant our feet firmly in that promise of your word.

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God, that you are going to work this situation for our good. We love you, God, and we thank you for helping us

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with our situations today. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

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All right, I'm going to the back. If you need to see me for anything at all, now is the time. Let's stand during this

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song and make your way to the back if you need to.

the message today. If you are watching online, if you could just put in the comments section where you're watching from, we would appreciate it so we know

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7 seconds

who's with us there. All right. Uh we are going to be in Luke chapter 15. If you want to turn there and we do have

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14 seconds

some of these church Bibles underneath the seats in front of you if you want to use one of these. Luke 15 is on page 848

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22 seconds

in these Bibles. Uh so if you want to turn there and just get ready. Um, so my wife Andrea, when she was a kid, she

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30 seconds

shared a bedroom and a bunk bed with her special needs sister, Alex. And Alex was nonverbal.

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39 seconds

Uh, couldn't communicate really uh very very much. She if she did, it was through signing. She knew a little bit

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of sign language. Uh, but uh anyway, they were sharing a room as kids. And one day, Andrea had the top bunk. And

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54 seconds

one day, Andrea decided to write her name, Andrea, on the wall. And her dad comes in, she's like, "Andrea, why did

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1 minute, 3 seconds

you write your name on the wall?" Uh, and she goes, "It wasn't me. It was Alex." Okay, Alex is special needs, doesn't

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1 minute, 12 seconds

know how to write, can't climb ladders, right? And even if she could write, why would she write Andrea's name instead of

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There's just several funny things to me about that story.

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Yeah, nice try, Andrea. Her dad was not too happy about that. So, what is your picture of God the Father? God the

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Father. Like, do you have a picture of an angry, judgmental God? Maybe you grew up going to a church that preached a lot

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1 minute, 40 seconds

of fire and brimstone preaching and and so you had this view of God that was like, you know, he's an angry God and he's just like waiting for you to step a

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1 minute, 48 seconds

toe out of line so he can smite you so he can punish you. Like, is that your picture? And so you go around tiptoeing, trying to do good things, hoping that

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1 minute, 57 seconds

he's happy with you. Um, but it's kind of a nervous relationship with him. Uh, do you have a picture of a cruel God that must hate you? Like some of you,

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2 minutes, 5 seconds

maybe you look at your life and you go like, okay, if he's a loving God, then why is he letting these things happen to me? Like maybe he's a cruel God that is

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2 minutes, 15 seconds

just not mean, you know, like um do you have a picture of God that only loves people who are good, but he can't love

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people like me because I've messed up a lot. I've made a lot of mistakes. Like, you know, I'll bet he doesn't love me.

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Uh or maybe you like Philip Yansy, an author who said he believed in a God who forgives, yes, but reluctantly and only

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after making the penitent squirm. He imagined God as a distant thundering figure who prefers fear and respect to

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love. So I'm here to tell you today that none of these pictures of God are right.

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None of them. And thanks to some parables that Jesus told, we know what kind of God that we serve, we have. Um

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your view of God matters. And when you get a proper view of who God is, the God of the Bible, it could change everything

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3 minutes, 7 seconds

for you. And I believe that God is more than anything a lovesick father who loves you deeply. Loves you deeply. If

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you haven't already, turn to Luke chapter 15. So I've read this parable many times.

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Many, many times. It's the parable of the prodigal son. And maybe some of you have read that lots of times also. And I

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3 minutes, 30 seconds

I always had this certain view of that parable until I read a book called What's So Amazing About Grace by Philip Yansy. And it really changed my approach

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to this parable. Uh and I hope that today you will see this story in a new light too before you leave here. All

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right. Luke chapter 15 starting in verse one says, "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to

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hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them." Then Jesus told them this parable.

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Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the 99 in the open country and go after

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the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he

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calls his friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me. I have found my lost sheep." I tell you that in the

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same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not

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need to repent. Or suppose a woman has 10 silver coins and loses one. Doesn't

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4 minutes, 45 seconds

she light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends

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and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me. I have found my lost coin. In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the

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5 minutes, 2 seconds

angels of God over one sinner who repents, who changes his ways.

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Jesus continued, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, "Father, give me my share of

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5 minutes, 15 seconds

the estate of my inheritance." So, he divided the property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got

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5 minutes, 23 seconds

together all he had, set off for a distant country, and there squandered his wealth in wild living.

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After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went

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and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his

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stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

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That's pretty bad. You're pretty hungry if you're looking at pig food thinking it looks good.

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When he came to his senses, he said, "How many of my father's hired servants have food to spare? And here I am

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starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy

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to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants." So he got up and went to his father. And I just

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imagine him practicing that speech on his way back to his father. Like, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of

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your hired servants. Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

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I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. That's what I imagine.

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6 minutes, 40 seconds

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son,

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threw his arms around him, and kissed him. The son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called

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6 minutes, 55 seconds

your son. I But the father said to his servants, "Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring

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the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate for this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He

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was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate.

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So who is the father in this story? Who is what is Jesus really teaching us about? Who is the father?

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It's God, right? And who are the the sons? It's us. Yeah. So, a missionary in

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7 minutes, 33 seconds

Lebanon once read this parable to a group of villagers who lived in a culture very similar to the one Jesus would have been teaching this to. And they had never heard this story before.

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And he asked them, "What is your response now that you've heard this story and two details from this story out to them?" Okay, very similar

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7 minutes, 52 seconds

culture. They said, "First, by claiming his inheritance early, the son was saying to his father, I wish you were

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7 minutes, 59 seconds

dead." That's really what he was saying by saying, "Give me my share of the inheritance. I wouldn't care if you were dead." The villagers could not imagine a

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8 minutes, 7 seconds

patriarch taking such an insult or agreeing to the son's demands. That's part of the story I've always wrestled with. Like, if I were the father, I

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8 minutes, 15 seconds

wouldn't have given it to him. Like, I would have been like, "No, I'm not dead yet." Like, what are you talking about?

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8 minutes, 21 seconds

Second, they noticed the father ran to greet his longlost son. In the Middle East, a man of stature walks with slow

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8 minutes, 28 seconds

and stately dignity. He never does he run. In Jesus story, the father runs.

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And Jesus audience no doubt would have gasped at that detail. Why did God run?

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8 minutes, 40 seconds

We'll answer that in a little bit. So we have the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost son. All right,

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8 minutes, 50 seconds

let's look at this chart here. In the first story, we have a sheep is lost. A search is conducted, the sheep is found

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8 minutes, 59 seconds

and we have celebration. Right? In the second story, we have a coin is lost, a search is conducted, the coin is found, and what did they do? Celebrate.

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9 minutes, 12 seconds

The third story is a little different.

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The son runs away. We have the son's inner search, searching within himself.

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9 minutes, 19 seconds

The father's horizon search, watching the horizon, looking for his son. The

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9 minutes, 24 seconds

sun returns and they celebrate. Yeah. I wonder what Jesus' point was in telling

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9 minutes, 31 seconds

these three stories. For so long, I thought it was a story just to teach us that no matter how far away from God we got, no matter how bad we've been, we can always come back and be forgiven.

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9 minutes, 42 seconds

And that is one of the points of the story. But like I told you in the beginning, I read a book called What's So Amazing About Grace? And it has

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9 minutes, 50 seconds

changed what I think Jesus main point of the story was. I think Jesus was telling this story to teach us who God is and who God loves. Who God is. Who God is.

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That's what we're going to focus on today.

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10 minutes, 6 seconds

When you look at these three stories, parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, there's one thing that's different about the third story, isn't there? There's there's a

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human involved. And and humans are different than inanimate objects like coins or and they're different from

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10 minutes, 23 seconds

animals, right? Um when you go out to look for a sheep and you find it, you hoist it on your shoulders and carry it back, that sheep doesn't really have

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10 minutes, 31 seconds

much of a choice if it's going back with you or not, does it? And when you find a coin and you put it in your pocket, that coin didn't really have a choice whether it was going back in your pocket or not.

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10 minutes, 42 seconds

But with us, we do have a choice as humans, don't we? What do we call that choice, by the way? Free will.

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Yeah. Free will, right? God does the search in the sense that he's always watching and waiting to see when we come

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back. But whether we do come back or not is up to us. He doesn't force his will upon us. And I think the reason he

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doesn't force his will upon us is because he wants us to truly love him. And that wouldn't be actual true love.

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loving him. If he forced us to be with him, would it? Right? What's that saying? If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it's yours. If it

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doesn't come back, it was never yours to begin with. Right? Because we understand that that love means you choose. I wouldn't want to be with a God who

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forced me to be with him. And and that's the the first main point that I want to make is God is a father who loves us so much that he gave us free will.

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Now, I've made a lot of dumb mistakes with that free will. Anybody else willing to raise your hand and say, "I've made a lot of dumb mistakes using

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that free will God gave us, but I'm thankful that he gave it to us because what's the alternative? We would just be like puppets on a string, right? Not

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having a choice like he just forces us to to be with him and and you know, um like that's not really a choice. I'm so

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glad we don't have a God who just takes us over and controls us. I'm so glad we have a God that respects us enough that he leaves the choice up to us.

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Another thing I think we learn from this is a we have a father who loves us and wants a relationship with us. He loves

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us and he wants to be with us. Like I said, I believe this story was told to straighten out people's understanding of

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12 minutes, 28 seconds

God the Father. It's true, the story is about a son who was lost and found. But these three stories in a row, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, all emphasize the finders's joy, right?

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12 minutes, 41 seconds

Each one ends with the finder celebrating and having joy over their lost thing. Uh, have you ever found

12:48

12 minutes, 48 seconds

something that you thought was lost for good? Like you had given up on it, like, "Yep, I guess I'm never going to see." And then you found it again and you're

12:56

12 minutes, 56 seconds

like, "Man, how cool is that?" So, when I was in college, I had a CD that I bought. Um, I love Christian music and I

13:04

13 minutes, 4 seconds

bought a CD by the group Reliant K. Uh, and I I played that thing. You know, when you first get a CD, you play it

13:11

13 minutes, 11 seconds

over and over again. You learn every song and I'm like, man, I love it. These are all good songs. And then you kind of get tired of it. You're like, okay, now

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13 minutes, 18 seconds

I've played it to death. And so, you put it away, right? And so couple three months go by and I'm like, you know, I

13:26

13 minutes, 26 seconds

think I'm ready to pull that CD back out and listen to it again. And and so I went to look for it in the CD case and it was gone. I'm like, man, where' my CD

13:35

13 minutes, 35 seconds

go? So I'm like, maybe I put it back in the wrong CD case. So I'm looking through all my other cases and like I can't find it. I'm really sad because I

13:42

13 minutes, 42 seconds

love the CD. I'm like, well, I guess it's lost. I guess it's just gone. I lost it. So, fast forward a couple three

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13 minutes, 51 seconds

more months and I'm sitting there hanging out with my friend Stephen Gentleman and I go uh and we're having this conversation and Stephen just

14:00

14 minutes

happens to mention that his dad really likes the band Reliant K. And I'm like, "Me too. I love the band Reliant K. As a

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14 minutes, 7 seconds

matter of fact, I had the CD, the latest CD that they put out, but I lost it and I'm really disappointed. Like, I'm really sad about it." And he goes, "What

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14 minutes, 16 seconds

did the CD look like?" I said, 'Well, it's blue. It has this little white bird on it. He goes, "Hang on a second." And he goes and he gets his CD wallet out.

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14 minutes, 25 seconds

And he flips through it. He's like, "Is this your CD?" I'm like, "Yes, that's it." He's like, "You let me borrow it and I forgot to give it back." I'm like,

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14 minutes, 34 seconds

"Oh, man. Awesome. I got it back." Like, now some of you may not think that that's like, "What's the big deal? It's a CD, right?" And some of you are like,

14:42

14 minutes, 42 seconds

"What's a CD?" Yeah, I know. um like kind of obsolete now, but to you it

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14 minutes, 50 seconds

might not seem like a big deal, but Christian music is my hobby. Like that's what I love. You know, I collect Christian music. And the other thing is

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14 minutes, 58 seconds

I was a college student. I paid 15 bucks for that CD and $15 is a chunk of change to a college student. So, I was really

15:07

15 minutes, 7 seconds

glad to have my CD back. Truly, I was truly happy.

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15 minutes, 12 seconds

Now, it's a great moment when you find something that you consider lost forever. And of course, I know that a CD is nothing compared to a person, right?

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15 minutes, 21 seconds

I can't imagine how great it would feel for a parent to get a phone call from the FBI saying that their daughter who was kidnapped six months ago has been

15:30

15 minutes, 30 seconds

found at last alive, right? How good would that feel? or uh uh for a wife to get a visit from the army with a spokesman apologizing about the mixup.

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15 minutes, 40 seconds

Her husband had not been aboard the wrecked helicopter after all. Oh man, great. You know, when Jesus tells this

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15 minutes, 47 seconds

story, he's trying to tell us just how much it means to God to have a relationship with us. Jesus is basically

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15 minutes, 55 seconds

saying, "Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? When one of these two-legged humans pays attention to me?

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16 minutes, 1 second

It feels like I just reclaimed my most valuable possession that I had deemed lost forever. Right? To God, it's like

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16 minutes, 8 seconds

the discovery of a lifetime. That's how much you mean to him. That's how much we mean to him. Again, the Lebanese culture

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16 minutes, 17 seconds

was shocked that the father ran. The father didn't care about the cultural norms or what others might have thought about him in that moment. He simply saw

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16 minutes, 26 seconds

one of his children returning to him and he was ecstatic. Right? He was so happy he ran. Jesus is trying to tell us how

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16 minutes, 36 seconds

God feels about you. When you change from not caring about God to wanting to have a relationship with him, he's

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16 minutes, 43 seconds

ecstatic. When you get off track with your relationship and decide to return back to God, he is overjoyed. It means the world to him.

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16 minutes, 53 seconds

And then we learn he is a father who loves us and is willing to forgive. He loves us and he's willing to forgive.

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17 minutes, 3 seconds

So, I know for some people saying that God is like a father, that he's a father, um that doesn't go well for some people because some people are like

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17 minutes, 10 seconds

they've had a bad experience with their father and they're like, if God is anything like my father on earth, I don't want anything to do with him.

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17 minutes, 17 seconds

Right? And I think it's good to point out here at this point that even though God is a father, he's unlike any earthly father that we've ever known. All right?

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17 minutes, 27 seconds

He is. Earthly fathers make mistakes.

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17 minutes, 29 seconds

God does not. God is perfect and he loves us with a perfect kind of love.

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17 minutes, 35 seconds

When you look at the story of the prodical son, it really is such a different type of situation. Like imagine what the son must have looked like. Okay, it says he's been starving.

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17 minutes, 45 seconds

So I imagine that he's like skin and bones, like not healthy looking, right?

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17 minutes, 49 seconds

Is that what you imagine? And then you know he had to smell bad. like he's been caring for pigs for the last few months,

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17 minutes, 56 seconds

right? And not only that, but he's been traveling for who knows how many days on his way back to see his father, walking out in the hot sun. I imagine he stunk to the high heavens. But you know what?

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18 minutes, 6 seconds

That didn't stop the father from running to his son and hugging him and giving him a kiss like he didn't care about any

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18 minutes, 13 seconds

of that stuff. He just loves the son and is happy to have him back. Right? Most fathers after their son pulled a stunt

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18 minutes, 21 seconds

like that, they're going to demand that that you know, saying that the he wish his father were dead would make sure their son apologized long and hard

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18 minutes, 30 seconds

before he even thought about forgiving his son, right? Like there's but in the story of the prodal, the father doesn't

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18 minutes, 37 seconds

even let him finish his apology. Did you notice that? He didn't even get to finish the full speech that he had prepared before he's calling out for a

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18 minutes, 45 seconds

party, right? There's no long lecture where the father says, "I hope you've learned your lesson, right?" No, he's

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18 minutes, 52 seconds

just calling for a party. Like, it's party time. And he says, "For this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He

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18 minutes, 59 seconds

was lost and now he is found." What an amazing heavenly father we have. Amen.

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19 minutes, 7 seconds

Who do we show the most grace to? Who are we the most forgiving towards? I know for me it's family. Like I'm the

19:16

19 minutes, 16 seconds

most forgiving and more specifically my kids. We are very forgiving of our children. Like I'm pretty forgiving towards my siblings and my wife and my

19:24

19 minutes, 24 seconds

parents, but I'm the most gracious and give the most grace and forgiving to my kids. Like another kid does something

19:32

19 minutes, 32 seconds

annoying and we think, "Man, that kid is crazy." Our kid does the same annoying thing and we say, "Oh, he's so silly.

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19 minutes, 39 seconds

He's so silly." Right? Another kid comes up to you with a snotty nose and we immediately are like, "Go see your parents. Have them wipe your snotty

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19 minutes, 46 seconds

nose." Your kid walks up with a snotty nose and you're like, "Oh, come here, honey. Let me get that for you." Right.

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19 minutes, 52 seconds

Um, a regular occurrence in the Harper household in 2016. Josiah would wake me up out of a dead sleep and say, "Daddy,

20:01

20 minutes, 1 second

daddy, I have a poopy diaper." I'm like, and so I would go in zombie mode and, you know, wake up wake up as little as I

20:09

20 minutes, 9 seconds

had to to change the diaper and then, all right, go back to sleep. You know, I was willing to do it cuz he's my kid. If any of you shows up at my house and

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20 minutes, 17 seconds

wakes me up and says you have a poopy diaper, I'm not going to be happy with you. It's not going to go well. Josiah has broken actually two TVs when he was

20:25

20 minutes, 25 seconds

little, when he was a toddler. I remember seeing him do I saw him do one of these. He took a broom handle and he whacked that thing right in the middle

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20 minutes, 33 seconds

of the screen and just spiderweb crack immediately all across. It was ruined.

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20 minutes, 38 seconds

I'm not holding grudges against Josiah to this day. I promise you I'm not. Um but if I let some adult borrow my TV and

20:45

20 minutes, 45 seconds

you bring it back with spiderweb cracks, I'm not going to be happy. Right?

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20 minutes, 49 seconds

Because we're very forgiving towards our children, aren't we? We're very gracious towards him. God loves us like a parent.

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20 minutes, 56 seconds

All you have to do to understand God is put yourself in the position of a parent. Like, think about when one of your kids, you find out one of your kids messed up. Maybe you're frustrated.

21:06

21 minutes, 6 seconds

Maybe you're even a little angry at first when you first find out what they did. You know, maybe you're disappointed. But eventually, you let it

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21 minutes, 14 seconds

go and and you say you forgive them. You let it go. You move on. Right? This is the picture of God with the nation of Israel like all throughout the Bible.

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21 minutes, 21 seconds

like they're just going out and disobeying him like over and they're messing up over and over and over again.

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21 minutes, 28 seconds

But God just can't give up on them. Like he loves them too much. He can't give up on them. He just can't. He loves them

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21 minutes, 35 seconds

too much. And that's us. God has an unconditional love that is willing to forgive and take back even the worst of

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21 minutes, 43 seconds

sinners. Even the worst. No matter what you've done, God is willing to give you a second chance. No wonder they call it

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21 minutes, 51 seconds

amazing grace because it really is amazing.

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21 minutes, 56 seconds

God chose the Apostle Paul, someone who had killed Christians to be his main spokesman. And God did this so that Paul

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22 minutes, 4 seconds

could be an example of his amazing grace. 1 Timothy 1:15-16.

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22 minutes, 11 seconds

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of

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22 minutes, 19 seconds

whom I am the worst. Paul was writing this. He called himself the worst of sinners. But for that very reason I was

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22 minutes, 26 seconds

shown mercy so that in me the worst of sinners, Christ might display his immense patience. Everyone say patience.

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22 minutes, 35 seconds

He did this so that Christ might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and

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22 minutes, 42 seconds

receive eternal life. Man, God is so patient with us. How many of you know that's true? God is so patient with us

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22 minutes, 52 seconds

because he loves us so much. He's so patient with us. Like if I were God, I would have given up on me a long time ago. I would have I would be like, "This

22:59

22 minutes, 59 seconds

bozo, he's never going to get his act together. Like, forget it." But God is so patient. Thank God he's so patient and he didn't give up on me and he

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23 minutes, 8 seconds

doesn't give up on you, right? And he's willing to take you back. So, one of the points of the prodal is without a doubt

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23 minutes, 14 seconds

that a person can never be too bad to be forgiven. Too bad of a sinner to be forgiven. But we can't miss the powerful

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23 minutes, 22 seconds

point in this story about the amazing kind of God we have. A lovesick father.

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23 minutes, 28 seconds

a father who loves us enough that he gives us free will and he lets us choose to go our own way even if he knows that that's going to lead to not good things.

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23 minutes, 38 seconds

Right? But he wants us to come back because we choose to come back to him.

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23 minutes, 42 seconds

He's a father who loves us and wants a relationship with him. He's a father who loves us so much he is willing to forgive us.

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23 minutes, 51 seconds

And we can hardly imagine a father like this because they're so rare. Like does that kind of father even exist on this earth? I don't know. We can hardly

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23 minutes, 59 seconds

imagine a father who would take a son back after all he did to him. He loves you so much. There's nothing you can do that can't be forgiven as long as

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24 minutes, 8 seconds

there's true repentance. Like willing to change your ways in your heart. In fact, the only thing stopping you from forgiveness is yourself. It's not God.

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24 minutes, 19 seconds

He's standing there with his arms wide open waiting for you to come back. It's us who are who need to turn make the turn and come back to him. So the

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24 minutes, 28 seconds

question is will you turn to him? Will you? That's the question. What do you think church after hearing this today?

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24 minutes, 37 seconds

Is he the kind of God that you could love?

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24 minutes, 40 seconds

Like are you getting to know and love God more because of today? Like I hope you are. I hope that he's such you you

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24 minutes, 48 seconds

just come away from this saying, "Man, he's he's an amazing God. I do want to be with that father. I want to love him.

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24 minutes, 54 seconds

I want to spend the rest of my life with him. And like I said, he's he's standing there waiting with his arms wide open saying, "I'm ready when you are. It's

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25 minutes, 3 seconds

it's you. I'm just waiting on you. I'm ready for you to come back." Um you know, sometimes we uh we make the

25:12

25 minutes, 12 seconds

decision to follow Jesus and and then we do and then we're we're going to church and we and we're trying to live for God.

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25 minutes, 18 seconds

We're reading our Bibles and we're praying, but then we stray away from God. Like maybe that's happened to some of you. That happened to me. I did that

25:26

25 minutes, 26 seconds

for eight years. And this is what I love is no matter how many steps you take away from God, the step to take to come

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25 minutes, 33 seconds

back to him is just one step. It's just one step. Doesn't matter how far away you you walked away. It's just one step

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25 minutes, 40 seconds

to turn back and say, "Okay, I've been going the wrong direction and I'm ready to come back to him now." So, we invite you this morning. It's actually God's

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25 minutes, 48 seconds

invitation. He invites you to come to him maybe for the first time and say, "Okay, I I like what I'm hearing and

25:56

25 minutes, 56 seconds

learning about this this heavenly father and I want to be with him. I want that relationship with him." Maybe you want to take those steps for the first time

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26 minutes, 3 seconds

this morning. Maybe you want to come back to him. Maybe you want to say, "Okay, I I've strayed. I've gotten away from him and I'm ready to take those

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26 minutes, 11 seconds

steps back to the father." uh we would love to help you do that. So, here's what's going to happen. The band is going to play one last song. And if

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26 minutes, 20 seconds

during this song, that's you and you want to take steps to following Jesus or coming back to God, I'm going to go to the back of the room. I'm going to be in

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26 minutes, 27 seconds

the back. And if you want to take those steps, just come to the back of the room and say, "Hey, I'm ready. I'm ready to do this." Uh maybe some of you you you

26:36

26 minutes, 36 seconds

had a really rough week and you just need some prayer.

If you are visiting uh if you're watching online, if you could just uh put the name uh and the city where you're watching from in the comment

0:08

8 seconds

section, we would appreciate that. All right. So, uh for our sharing our faith moment, uh the we have what we call our

0:16

16 seconds

bless. So, bless is stands for begin with prayer. Listen, if we could throw that back up there, please. The bless screen. Uh bless stands for begin with

0:25

25 seconds

prayer. listen, eat, serve, and share your story. And all of this is a way of

0:34

34 seconds

building a relationship with people who are far from God so that we can try to lead them to God. Because how many of

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41 seconds

you know this that God cares about each and every person? Okay? Every person not only has a body, but has a soul. And

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50 seconds

that soul is going to live on forever in one of two places. There's only two choices, heaven and hell. And God wants every person, his desires that every

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59 seconds

person would be with him in heaven, right? And so because God cares about people's souls, we need to care about

1:07

1 minute, 7 seconds

people's souls. Amen. Anybody know that's true this morning? Um and so this is a method of building a relationship.

1:15

1 minute, 15 seconds

It's steps. You start with praying for people. You listen to people, share their story. You eat with them. You have coffee with them. You look for ways to

1:23

1 minute, 23 seconds

serve them. And then the last one is you share God's the story of how God changed your life. And that's like the the cap

1:30

1 minute, 30 seconds

of them all. And this morning I just want to brag on my son a little bit because uh Christian uh some of you know

1:37

1 minute, 37 seconds

has been working at Culver's and he uh told me about like a third person that he's invited to church that says they're going to be here. Now we we never know.

1:47

1 minute, 47 seconds

Okay, we'll know when they actually get here then we know, okay, they came. But they say at least at this point they're saying they're going to be here. He said

1:54

1 minute, 54 seconds

he's invited more people than that. But he's he's invited three people that have said they're going to come on a certain Sunday. And I said, "Man, you ought to

2:03

2 minutes, 3 seconds

just consider Culver's like your mission field." He's like, "I do. It is my mission field." I'm like, "That's awesome. Good job, buddy." So, uh, he is

2:12

2 minutes, 12 seconds

just getting to know and build relationships. And one of the things he said is they're starting to see that I'm a hard worker and I I I care about my

2:19

2 minutes, 19 seconds

job. And so, you know, they they're starting to respect me more. And so, I'm I'm really now I see they respect me.

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2 minutes, 26 seconds

I'm starting to invite them. So, he has considered his job his mission field.

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2 minutes, 30 seconds

And that's exactly what we try to teach people at Impact. So, uh good job, Christian. Keep up the good work.

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2 minutes, 37 seconds

[applause]

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2 minutes, 38 seconds

Keep inviting people to church. And uh I I wanted to look and make sure none of those people were here this morning like so that they weren't like embarrassed

2:46

2 minutes, 46 seconds

and like man he's pointing me out. Um but anyway uh that's what we're about.

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2 minutes, 52 seconds

We're about blessing people trying to lead them to a relationship with Jesus and God uses us to do that. All right.

3:00

3 minutes

Uh just a reminder, bring a uh bring a friend to the family funday which is October 18th. Uh we'll talk more about that later, but uh that would be a way

3:08

3 minutes, 8 seconds

that would be something you could invite people to as a good day like when we're having a special event after church. Uh we're going to be playing some games.

3:15

3 minutes, 15 seconds

We're be playing video games. We're going to be playing card games and board games downstairs. And so uh bring a

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3 minutes, 22 seconds

friend October 18th um is is a way you could share your faith. All right. Uh a man asked his wife what she would like

3:29

3 minutes, 29 seconds

for his birthday, her birthday, and she said, "I'd love to be six again." And so on the morning of her birthday, he got her up bright and early and off

3:37

3 minutes, 37 seconds

they went to the local theme park. What a day. He put her on every ride in the park. The death slide, the screaming

3:44

3 minutes, 44 seconds

loop, the wall of fear, everything there was. Wow. Five hours later, she staggered out of the theme park, her

3:51

3 minutes, 51 seconds

head reeling in her stomach upside down, and right to McDonald's they went, where he ordered her a Big Mac, a superersized fries, and a large chocolate milkshake.

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4 minutes, 1 second

What a day. Then it was off to a movie, the latest Star Wars Epic, with hot dogs, popcorn, Pepsi, and M&M's. What a

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4 minutes, 10 seconds

fabulous adventure. Finally, she wobbled home with her husband and collapsed into bed. He leaned over and lovingly asked

4:18

4 minutes, 18 seconds

her, "Well, dear, what was it like being six again?" One eye open, she goes, "You idiot. I meant my dress size."

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4 minutes, 27 seconds

[laughter]

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4 minutes, 29 seconds

And the moral of the story is if a woman speaks and the man is actually listening, they'll still get it wrong.

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4 minutes, 39 seconds

[laughter]

4:39

4 minutes, 39 seconds

Oh man. So men try to show how they feel about their significant others. Parents

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4 minutes, 47 seconds

try to show how they care about their children. My dad, one of the stories my dad will tell me is, uh, I was a special

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4 minutes, 55 seconds

baby in in the three of the children they had because when when my mom had me, um, my mom immediately got this

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5 minutes, 2 seconds

really bad sickness and my dad will tell tell me about this and say, "So, I had to take care of you. I had to take care of you when you were a newborn baby and

5:10

5 minutes, 10 seconds

I had to change your green poopy diapers." I'm like, "Thanks, Dad. That's great. Good to know you love me. That

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5 minutes, 18 seconds

nothing shows love like changing a dirty diaper. Amen. All right. So, [laughter] parents that love their children are

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5 minutes, 25 seconds

willing to do most anything for their kids. And today, we're going to talk about God's attitude towards us, towards

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5 minutes, 33 seconds

us humans. And I'm telling you, this is going to blow your minds. You're going to just love this. When we look at the Greek word for mercy, Elios, and realize

5:42

5 minutes, 42 seconds

what that what mercy really means. When we look at the Greek word for grace, caris, and we learn what that how that

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5 minutes, 49 seconds

actually describes God's attitude towards us, it's going to blow your mind what an amazing God he is.

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5 minutes, 56 seconds

So, I'm so glad you're here to get a fuller appreciation for who God is and what he's like and what he does for us.

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6 minutes, 3 seconds

He's a gracious, merciful God. So, in order to appreciate what God does for us, we need to understand certain words

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6 minutes, 11 seconds

and the way the Bible uses them. By the way, this would be a great day to take notes. We have on the back of your programs here, a place to take notes.

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6 minutes, 19 seconds

This would be a great day because I'm going to give you lots of good material here. Uh, so we're going to look at different words and how they're used in

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6 minutes, 26 seconds

the Bible and what it teaches us about God this morning. So, I looked up these words in my Greek dictionary. It's called a lexicon.

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6 minutes, 34 seconds

And I was surprised by some of these definitions. I was like, "Hey, this one's a little different than what I remember hearing growing up." And by the

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6 minutes, 42 seconds

way, I think it's actually cooler what I what what I'm learning and I wanted to share that with you. So the Greek word

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6 minutes, 49 seconds

for mercy is Elios. Elios and um what it means the definition this is of God

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6 minutes, 58 seconds

towards humans. Mercy used as of God towards humans. It means kindness or concern expressed for someone in need.

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7 minutes, 8 seconds

Compassion that takes action. And the example the the Bible verse that it quoted uh another place where it's used

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7 minutes, 16 seconds

is the story of the good Samaritan in Luke 10 where Jesus tells a story of this man who was beaten up, robbed and

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7 minutes, 23 seconds

left for dead. And finally this Samaritan comes along and you remember what it says? The Samaritan took pity on

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7 minutes, 31 seconds

the man, right? He took pity on him in his condition and he helped him. And then later Jesus asked the teacher of

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7 minutes, 39 seconds

the law that he was telling the story to. He said, "Which man was a neighbor to the other?" And he said, "The one who

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7 minutes, 45 seconds

had mercy on the man." Remember? And so he he had kindness, compassion that took

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7 minutes, 53 seconds

action on the man, right? Kindness or compassion that took action. And that is how God's that's God's attitude towards

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8 minutes, 2 seconds

us. He has compassion on us and then he takes action out of that compassion. That's a cool thing. Then we have grace.

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8 minutes, 10 seconds

The Greek word for grace is caris. And it had actually two a two-part definition. Part one was a generous

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8 minutes, 19 seconds

attitude towards someone gives a gift to help to show favor or good will to someone voluntarily. And when I read

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8 minutes, 27 seconds

that, it just jumped off the page. You mean to tell me that when the Bible uses that God is gracious, that's what it means. that he has a generous attitude

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8 minutes, 36 seconds

towards us and wants to help us. I just thought that was so cool. I'm like, I got to share this with the church. Um,

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8 minutes, 44 seconds

so this is God's attitude. Uh, and then the second definition was an unearned gift or undeserved favor. Most of us have probably heard that one. So this word is used of us on the receiving end.

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8 minutes, 56 seconds

Grace [snorts] to us is to receive help, to receive a gift or receive divine favor that we did nothing to deserve.

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9 minutes, 5 seconds

All right, so both of those are cool.

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9 minutes, 7 seconds

Um, but I love that it described God's generous attitude towards us, wanting to help. And then we have the word for forgiveness, which is the Greek word ame. That's kind of fun to say, right?

9:19

9 minutes, 19 seconds

Ame just kind of rolls off the tongue.

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9 minutes, 21 seconds

It means to release from legal or moral obligation or consequence to cancel, to

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9 minutes, 28 seconds

pardon, to forgive. So part A of that is it literally is the word means to cancel a debt. To pardon someone from you don't

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9 minutes, 37 seconds

have to pay me back anymore. I cancel that debt from you. Or part B is to release someone from the consequence or

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guilt of wrongdoing. So basically, I'm not holding that against you anymore, right? I release you. I'm not holding that thing. I forgive you. Interesting

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to me that it's usually both cancelelling a debt and forgiving someone, not holding them that thing against them anymore. So, get this.

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Watch this. I put all these pieces together. Mercy and grace are often used in connection with forgiveness and salvation.

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Mercy and grace are about God's attitude. And because of his attitude towards us, he is willing to forgive or

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give salvation is the action. So these two are the attitude. These two are the actions. Because he is gracious and

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compassionate, he is willing to forgive and save. I thought that was really cool. And then we have the word for

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atonement. Maybe you've heard that word atonement or atoning sacrifice. So that's from a Greek word hilsterion.

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And it means to have a barrier removed that alienates you from God and to regain good will from God to be at peace

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with God. In our case, sin is the barrier that alienates us from God that gets makes this separation between us

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and God. Um and so when Bible when the Bible says Jesus is our atoning sacrifice, it's saying that Jesus death

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on the cross was the means that allows us to have this barrier of sin removed. and we can be made right with God.

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That's what the atonement means. So, and what makes Christianity special is that the means to make us right with God was

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given by as a gift by God himself. He's the one who gave us that gift, the the atoning sacrifice. So, when we summarize

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11 minutes, 27 seconds

all these, God is compassionate towards our situation and shows kindness. God is generous towards us wanting to help. God

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has a forgiving attitude towards us. Do you like what kind of God he is this morning? Ain't that cool? Like, is

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this the kind of God you could see yourself loving because of who he is and how he is? All right. So, now that we have this

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understanding, let's look up some Bible passages about what God does for us.

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What God does for us. Turn to Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. And we do have some of these Bibles uh

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underneath the chairs in front of you if you need one. Uh, Ephesians 2 in these Bibles is on page 947.

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So, that'll give you a head start. Feel free to use one of those Bibles. And by the way, we actually have Bibles we can give you after the service if you need a

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Bible. We have free Bibles that we uh would love to give you. But go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter 2

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[clears throat]

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and we're going to look at three passages of scripture and find the answers to two questions in each passage. Okay? So the two questions that

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we're looking for the answers to is what is God or Jesus like and what does God or Jesus do for us? What is he like?

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What does he do? Okay. John 3:16. Maybe you've heard this one. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only

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son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Anybody ever heard that verse before?

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Okay. Seen it held up at a basketball game. John 3:16 [clears throat] and then we have 1 John 4:8-10.

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Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his

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one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love.

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Not that we loved God, but he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. There's one of our words.

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So, what do we learn from these verses?

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God loves us. For God so loved the world. He loves us. He loves you. If you didn't know that this morning, now you know. God loves you. For God so loved

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the world. God is love. Not only does he love, he actually is love. That is his

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essence. That is his nature. He showed his love by sending Jesus into the world. And then God is a provider. He

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provided the atoning sacrifice we needed to remove the sin barrier. Right? Okay.

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Now we get into Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1-10 which says you can follow along with me.

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As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of the world and the ruler of the

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kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

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All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desire and

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thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because

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of his great love for us, God who is rich in what? Mercy made us alive with

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Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been what?

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Saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. in order that in

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the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his what?

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Yeah, incompar I love that phrase, incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in

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Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves. It is the gift of

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God, not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork. We're going to come back to that word later.

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We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

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Good stuff in there. What do we learn about God from this? God is very loving, compassionate, and generous. Loving,

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compassionate, and generous. Notice the adjectives. God is full of love, rich in mercy.

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the incomparable riches of his grace. If God had a bank account with mercy and grace in it, it'd be full to the brim.

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His account would be totally full. He is full of rich in mercy, full of kindness, full of mercy. Right? God is loving. God loves you and wants you to be with him.

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Do you know that this morning?

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He loves you and wants you to be with him. Look at the lengths God went to to make a way for you to be with him. He

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went to great lengths. He sent his son as an atoning sacrifice. God is compassionate from rich in mercy. God

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saw our troubled condition and he reached out to help. Right? And God is generous, which means, as we learn

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today, God is uh gracious, which means generous, right? God is generous and wants to help us. Uh my oldest son Eric

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um this was some years ago when he was in high school uh made the all state band in Mississippi on saxophone. So

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it's like the you know the allstar team of football but for band right he made the out of the whole state of Mississippi he made the all state band

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and uh the Lions are the sponsor and what that means is they go and compete in different places in the world. So Lions International Lions Club

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international is all over the world. So this particular year when he made the band, he was going to go to a competition in Germany and it was this

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awesome trip when they told us about it, what all they were going to do and we were so proud and so happy for him and then we got the price tag and it was four grand $4,000.

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Uh this was like what 10 years ago?

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4,000 still 4,000 still a lot of money but it's even more like that was a lot of money back then. We're like, "How are we gonna We'd love for you to go, but

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18 minutes

how are we going to get him there?" Like, "How are we going to get this money?" And so I went back to my roots.

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I remembered from my childhood, I used to rake leaves. I raked a bunch of leaves. I made some money raking leaves.

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But I said, "Eric, are you willing to do whatever it takes to get to Germany?" And he said, "Yeah, I'm willing." I said, "Are you willing to rake leaves?"

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He said, "Yeah, I'll do whatever. I want to go. I I'll do whatever." I said, "Good. I'm glad to hear you say that.

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So, I made up some flyers that we gave out in the neighborhood for for raking leaves and I called ourselves the fall

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guys. The fall guys. And my phrase that I put on the flyer was back aching. Let us do the raking. I thought that was

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pretty good. That was pretty clever. So, we handed those flyers out in the neighborhood. Now, here's the catch,

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okay? It wasn't just for him to get uh raking leaves jobs. I was going to help him. I was willing. So, uh we got this

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19 minutes

one job and this guy had this huge backyard just full of leaves. I'm like, "Wow, you got enough leaves. We'll never clean up all these leaves." But, um so I

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pitched in. I'm raking leaves and I I have to tell you, it was a little humbling experience. You know, one thing to rake leaves as a kid, it's another to

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do it as a grown adult. I'm like, I'm raking leave so my kid can go to Germany. Okay. You know, like um but I

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was willing to do that. Why? Because I love my kid and I want good things for him. And so I was willing to pitch in

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and do whatever with him. And I think that's a good picture of our heavenly father, of God, that he loves us. He He

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was willing to do whatever so that we could be made right with him, right? He wanted to take care of our spiritual

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needs. He wanted to provide for us spiritually.

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Understand that God is like a father who loves his child so much. He wants to be with his children providing for his

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children. So how can you tell God is loving, compassionate, and generous.

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Just look at his actions. Just look at what he did. You can tell, right? So next point, God provides for our

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spiritual needs. That's your next note to write down. God provides for our spiritual needs. So, we've looked at

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John 3:16, 1 John 4:8-10, Ephesians 2 1-10, and now we're going to look at Titus 3 5-7.

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Look what God provides for us according to Titus 3.

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He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously.

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Notice there's that word again describing God. He's a generous God. He poured out his spirit on us generously

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through Jesus Christ our savior so that having been justified by his grace, we might become hes of eternal life. What does an heir mean?

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Means we have an inheritance. Right?

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He's preparing an inheritance having the hope of eternal life. So putting all these things together we've studied today. What does God provide? He

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provided the gift of salvation. He provided the atoning sacrifice to remove the barrier. God provides the Holy

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Spirit to help us in life. God provides the ability to be washed clean and free from the guilt of our sins. Is anybody thankful for that this morning?

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We get to be washed clean, free of the guilt of our sins. God provides an inheritance. He's preparing an inheritance for us that he's going to

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give us. And God provides hope. That's a lot of good stuff, isn't it, church?

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That's a lot of good stuff. He is a father who loves us and wants to provide for us specifically today for our

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spiritual needs. We're going to look in a future lesson about how God provides for our physical needs. But today the focus is God provides for our spiritual

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needs. God loved us so much he would go to extraordinary measures to save us from spiritual sickness.

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God is proud of you. Do you know that this morning? God is proud of you. And you might be saying, "Okay, where are you getting that?" I told you when we

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read Ephesians 2:es 1-10, there was a certain word in verse 10 where it said, "You are God's handiwork." And I told

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you I was going to come back to that to make this point. God is proud of you. As I was preparing this this message, I just had to put this point in there

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because I felt like there are several people who need to hear this. If you are in Christ, if you are part of God's family, you've taken steps to follow

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Jesus, God is proud of you. God is proud of you. You are God's workmanship. So that word where we read, you are God's

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handiwork. That comes from a Greek word poa where we get our word poem. Okay?

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You know how you work hard creating a poem, right? We are God's masterpiece is another way it's translated. We are

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God's handiwork. We are God's workmanship. We are God's poem that he worked on and when he sits back, he's

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proud of it, right? Like you don't feel like you do anything right. You don't feel special, but the Bible says just for making the decision to follow Jesus,

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God is proud of you. Just for being born again into his family, he is proud of you. Kind of like when you have a baby

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and you look at that newborn baby and you're just filled with pride, aren't you? You're filled with pride. And that baby hasn't even done anything to do

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being proud of yet, right? It's just it just is. It's just the baby is just there. And by virtue of it being your

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child, you're just filled with pride, right? And in the same way, God is proud of us. Uh um funny that I'm going back to another

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story about a Christian. When he was about 10 years old, he was on a soccer team in Groveport for that one season and uh they always put him on defender.

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And I would work with Christian uh what defender means. I would say, "Okay, what defender means is when the offense when the other team is coming at you this way

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with the ball, okay, your job is to kick it away from him and get it kicking back going the other way, right? So when they

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come up to you and and he would he would get in there and it was probably the seventh or eighth game of the season. So he had gotten better and uh here comes

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the other team with the ball and he would get in there and he would kick kick kick kick kick kick and he kicked it away and got it going the other way, right? And then they come back again.

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Here they come again. He would get in there and he would kick kick kick kick kick kick it out away from him. Get it going the other way. And he did that several times and I was like, "Yeah,

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yes. That's what I taught him to do." Right. So when the game was over, I don't even remember if we won or lost that game. I didn't care because all I

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wanted to do was go over and grab Christian and I hoisted him up on my shoulders. I said, "Great job, buddy.

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That was an awesome job. I'm so proud of you. Good job, man. You did it." Like, I was just so proud in that moment. And

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you need to know if you are in Christ, God is proud of you. You are God's handiwork. You are God's masterpiece.

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You are God's workmanship. You are God's poem, right? You are God. You are beautiful to God. You are valuable. You

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are an expression of God himself. You need to know that this morning. Are you hearing this, church? Are you getting this message?

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Last last point. God is active in the world and is interested in you. You are.

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He is active in the world and he is interested in you. So some people have this picture of God who is far removed

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from us, right? It's it's actually called deism. Um so also known as god of the top. So do you guys how many of you

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remember the wooden tops that you would tie a string around the top and you'd put it on a flat surface and you would pull the string and what would the top do?

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Spin.

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26 minutes

It would spin. And some people have a view of God like that. That they think that God was just the God who created

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the world and got it spinning. But then he's hands off and he's not involved in the lives of humans. He doesn't care. He

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just got it all going, but he's not actually involved in the lives of humans today. And you know what what I really

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believe this generation dies to hear from us is they are dying to hear that there is a God who is interested in

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them. What they've heard for so long, I'm afraid, is that God is this high and removed being that's far from us. And

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we're trying to stack up rocks to get to him, and we're trying to pile up prayers to get to him, and we're trying to put together worship services to get to God.

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What picture do you have of your situation with God? I'm drowning. I'm drowning. And I push my hand above the

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surface and I grab the hand of God and he pulls me up. Try this one from the Apostle Paul that we read out of Ephesians 2 today. You are dead in your

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transgressions and sins. You are floating below the water and you have ceased to struggle. You are dead spiritually.

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And the hand is not one saying, "Come on, reach up. Reach up. Grab my hand and I'll grab you." But a hand that shoots down into the water and grabs your hand

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and pulls you up out of the water and says, "Would you like life?" Amen. And you might say, "Well, wait a minute. Don't I have a choice?" Yes, you

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do. You can let go. You can say, "No thanks. Drop me back. Not interested." But God decided before you were even

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born that he was interested in you and that he wanted you to be saved. And he wants everyone to have that opportunity.

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He's a God who's interested in you. And the people of this world need to know that.

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I want to ask you this morning, what do you think now that we've studied what God is like? Do you have a better appreciation for who he is? Like, are you saying, "Man, he is an amazing God.

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He is a good God. He's the kind of God that I want to get to know more." Right?

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I want to I want to grow deeper into my relationship with that kind of God because he is good. He is rich in mercy.

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He is full of compassion. He He is full of love. He loves you and he wants a relationship with you. And I hope my

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hope every Sunday is that anyone who steps their foot inside this building um has a relationship with Jesus already.

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And that if you don't that you would want a relationship with God before you leave, that is my hope. So if you are in

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this room and you don't have a relationship with God yet, uh he offers this opportunity. We have this time, impact has this time where we offer, we

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call it our song of decision or song of invitation where we invite you into a relationship with God, but it's really

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his invitation. It's not really our invitation. It's his. This is God's love letter telling you he loves you and

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wants a relationship with you. That's the message of this book. He loves you and wants a relationship with you. He wants to walk with you. He wants to walk

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with you in daily life together. And so if you would like that u we want to offer you this opportunity. So what's going to happen is the band is going to

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lead us in one more song. And if during this song you are saying yes I I want that. I I want to take steps. I want to

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learn what my steps are so I can start a relationship with Jesus. I'm going to go to the back of the room. And so if

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that's you walk to the back and just let me know that. Just say yeah I I want to know more. What what steps do I need to

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take? And maybe your next step is to start by believing in Jesus. That he is the son of God who died on the cross for

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29 minutes, 51 seconds

our sins. Maybe you already believe that, but your next step is I need to repent of my sins. I need to turn away

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29 minutes, 58 seconds

from living for myself and I need to live for God and how he calls me to live. Um maybe you you're you've already

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done that, but your next step is you need to be baptized.

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[crying]

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So, we uh at Impact, we actually have a baptistry behind us and it actually has a timer that heats it up every Sunday

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morning. It starts early in the morning and starts heating up so that by this time of the service, it's ready. It's

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warm and ready for you. So, maybe you've been putting that off and maybe today is the day that you say, you know what, I'm not going to put it off anymore. I want

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to go ahead and be baptized. I'm going to do it today. Right? Maybe that's you.

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Um, maybe you need to rededicate your life to God. Maybe you've done those things before when you were younger, but you strayed away from God and you say,

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"Man, I've been away from God and I need to get back right with him." And one of the things I love about God is the kind of God we serve that we learn about today is he's willing to take you back.

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Even if you strayed away and you turned your back on him, if today you decide, I'm turning back to him, he's willing to take you back because he is rich in

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mercy and he is full of love and he is willing to be gracious towards you and let you come back. That's the kind of

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God he is. So, uh, if that's you and you need to come back and just rededicate your life to God, if you

today. Uh if you are watching online, if you could post in the comments the town or the city that you're watching from today, we would appreciate that so that

0:08

8 seconds

we know who is with us online. And we do have a place to take notes on the back of your program. There's uh some things

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16 seconds

called next steps that we'll get to in a little while that they're action steps that tie in with our message today. And so I'll mention those later, but we do

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25 seconds

give you a pen and a a place to take notes. and um you so you can do that.

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32 seconds

All right, let's go ahead and turn to First John. First John. So that's at the back of your Bibles. There's actually a

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40 seconds

place uh there's a there's a the Gospel of John, which is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John is the Gospel of John, but

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47 seconds

you want to go to the back almost to the back of your Bibles to the letter of First John. There's first, second, and

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54 seconds

third John. It's after um first and second Peter. So if you see those and we do have some of these

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1 minute, 2 seconds

Bibles underneath the chairs in front of you that if you need one uh just grab one of those so that you can follow along. But we're going to be in First

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1 minute, 11 seconds

John and then we're going to go to Romans chapter 5. First John chapter 3 and then Romans chapter 5. So you can

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1 minute, 19 seconds

look that one up and hold your spot, okay? As we get ready for the message today, as I said earlier, my prayer is

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1 minute, 27 seconds

that we would know God's love today more than we did before we came in. That we would just be hit with God's love. That

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we would be overwhelmed and gratitude gratitude for God's love today. Um so that is my prayer in Jesus name. All

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1 minute, 42 seconds

right. Uh so every girl dreams of the day when her significant other will uh propose to her and that proposal night

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1 minute, 51 seconds

is something she dreams of and she wants to be perfect and all this stuff, right?

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1 minute, 55 seconds

And so I me knowing that I wanted to make it perfect. I wanted to make it special for Andrea. And so I had this whole plan, this whole thing planned

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2 minutes, 4 seconds

out. Uh the first step of that was I wanted to take her to Benihana's restaurant. How many of you have ever been to Benihana's? You know they grill

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2 minutes, 11 seconds

right in front of you. They chop it up right in front of you. You know, you're sitting right as an audience member, front row seat to them cooking your

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2 minutes, 18 seconds

food. And so I took her to Little Rock where I knew there was a Benihana inside of this certain hotel. And so we get

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2 minutes, 27 seconds

there, we walk in the doors and I'm like, "Wait, these are normal tables.

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These are just regular tables. Where's where's the grills? Like where's And I turned to Andrea. I said, "Um, I I plan to take you to Benihana's and this

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2 minutes, 40 seconds

obviously is not that. Um, what do you want to do?" And she's like, "Well, let's see what this restaurant is and maybe it'll be good." And we found out

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2 minutes, 48 seconds

it was Riverfront Steakhouse. She said, "I love steak. Let's let's just try this place." I said, "Okay." It was the best

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2 minutes, 55 seconds

steak we've ever had to this day in my life. It was amazing. We got fillet minion. It was amazing. Um, so then, uh,

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3 minutes, 4 seconds

I I had this plan to take her to a musical. Her her family has grown up watching musicals, the classics. And, uh, I was going to take her to this

3:12

3 minutes, 12 seconds

musical called The King and I. That's where we were going after supper. And, uh, before we even left out of town for

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3 minutes, 19 seconds

Little Rock, I had bought this $5 gift card to Burger King. And I gave it to her before we left town. And she's like,

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3 minutes, 26 seconds

"Um, okay. Thank you. Why are you giving me a $5 gift card to Burger King?" I'm like, "It'll make more sense later.

3:33

3 minutes, 33 seconds

It'll make sense. Just just just just wait." Right? So, go to uh the restaurant and now we're going to uh the

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3 minutes, 41 seconds

king and I and I had written this poem that was supposed to give her all these clues to what we were doing for the night, you know, to the musical. So, I'm

3:49

3 minutes, 49 seconds

like, "Here you go. I wrote you a poem." So, she reads through it and I was like, "Do you know where we're going?" And she's like, "No, I don't have a clue."

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3 minutes, 58 seconds

And I was like, "Well, think about the Burger King gift card and now this poem.

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4 minutes, 4 seconds

Uh, put the clues together." And I was like, "Read it again. Read read the poem again." So, she reads again. She's like, "Yeah, I I still have no clue." I'm

4:12

4 minutes, 12 seconds

like, "We're going to see the musical The King and I. Get it? The King and I." And she reads through it again and she's

4:20

4 minutes, 20 seconds

like, "That's not what it's about. Like, you didn't you didn't give very good clues." And I was like, "I didn't? are

4:28

4 minutes, 28 seconds

you sure? She's like, "Yeah, I've seen it before. That's not what it's about." I'm like, "Oh, man. I really goofed here." So, I took her to the wrong

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4 minutes, 35 seconds

restaurant. Uh, and then I gave bad clues to the musical. But do you know when I proposed to her, she still said

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4 minutes, 43 seconds

yes. Isn't that amazing? That's that's love, right? Like overlooking the mistakes because of love. Um, it it was

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4 minutes, 53 seconds

still a great night. We had a good night, an enjoyable time. So today she she knew I loved her and made the

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5 minutes

effort. Today we're we're continuing a series called Get to Know and Love God.

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5 minutes, 6 seconds

Getting to know and love God. And that is my hope over these few weeks is that we will get to know God, who he is, what

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5 minutes, 12 seconds

he's like, what his character is. And that we will as we get to know who God is and all the things he does for us, we

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5 minutes, 20 seconds

will get to love God. That is my hope that all of us will come to know and love God for who he is. So speaking of

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5 minutes, 30 seconds

love and speaking of your picture of God, what is your picture of God? You know, a lot of people misunderstand God

5:37

5 minutes, 37 seconds

um based on either false things they've heard or false assumptions they made themselves. They don't really have a

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5 minutes, 44 seconds

good picture of God. But I want to tell you that God is a loving father that loves us with a perfect kind of love. In

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5 minutes, 52 seconds

fact, he loves us with a different kind of love than anybody else loves us with.

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5 minutes, 57 seconds

And we're going to look at those words for love. So, would you like to get to know God better with me this morning?

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6 minutes, 5 seconds

Would you like to get to know him? Okay.

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6 minutes, 7 seconds

And would you like to know how God's love is different from the world's love?

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6 minutes, 12 seconds

All right. Let's dive in together. Let's dive in. All right. So we have 1 John chapter 3. We're going to see four words

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6 minutes, 20 seconds

that describe God's love. In 1 John 3 verse one, it says, "See what great love

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6 minutes, 27 seconds

the father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God." So he's writing to Christians, to

6:35

6 minutes, 35 seconds

believers. He says that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are. The reason the world does not

6:43

6 minutes, 43 seconds

know us is it did not know him. Dear friends, now that we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet

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6 minutes, 50 seconds

been made known, but we will know when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. How many

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6 minutes, 59 seconds

of you know Jesus is coming back someday?

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7 minutes, 3 seconds

Yeah, that's a good thing for for us who are believers. That is a good thing.

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7 minutes, 7 seconds

Some are even saying they're seeing the increase in birthing pains as the Bible talks about increasing in these things

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7 minutes, 15 seconds

we're going to see in the world that that we're getting closer to his return.

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7 minutes, 18 seconds

I don't know if that's true or not, but I know I'm ready and I'm ready for him to return. I want to see him face to

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7 minutes, 25 seconds

face. Um, so what what are some things we learn? If you're taking notes, what are some things we learn about God's

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7 minutes, 32 seconds

love? The first point is God's love is a free love. So in 1 John 3:1 in the King

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7 minutes, 40 seconds

James, it says, "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed unto us." Bestowed. It's free. It's bestowed. It's

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7 minutes, 49 seconds

given as a gift like we get at Christmas time, right? We love to get gifts and that gift, we didn't have to pay for it,

7:57

7 minutes, 57 seconds

right? Somebody else paid for it and then gave it to us. It's free to us and God's love is free. We can't earn it. We can't merit it. We can't work for it.

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8 minutes, 6 seconds

It's free.

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8 minutes, 8 seconds

So in Ephesians 2:es 8-9, it says, "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of

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8 minutes, 16 seconds

yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. God

8:24

8 minutes, 24 seconds

gives us his grace as a gift." And that's actually what the word grace means. If you want to write that down, grace actually means grace equals gift.

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8 minutes, 34 seconds

So God gives it to us as a gift. It's free. But here's the problem. A lot of people still feel like they're trying to earn God's love. So under point number

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8 minutes, 43 seconds

one, earning God's love is a church tradition concept. A church tradition concept. Most Christians think and act

8:52

8 minutes, 52 seconds

like they can somehow work themselves into a loving relationship with God.

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8 minutes, 57 seconds

like by how many times they go to church, how many acts of benevolence they do, how many how much they read their Bible, how many committees they

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9 minutes, 5 seconds

serve on in the church. They think all that is going to like work their way into a loving relationship with God. Um

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9 minutes, 12 seconds

that God gives us his love in proportion to how much we do for him, but that's not how it works. So sin can separate us

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9 minutes, 21 seconds

from everlasting life with God, but not his love. Like when a kid misbehaves, we might be disappointed in what they did,

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9 minutes, 30 seconds

but that doesn't mean we stopped loving them, right? Those of you who are parents, you you get that we're not happy with what they did, but that didn't make us stop loving them because

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9 minutes, 39 seconds

of what they did. Um Romans 8:38 is an amazing verse in the Bible. It says, "For I am convinced that neither death

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9 minutes, 46 seconds

nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,

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9 minutes, 53 seconds

nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

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10 minutes, 1 second

If you like that, say, "Amen." Amen. That is good stuff. That is good stuff.

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10 minutes, 6 seconds

And then part B under this is earning God's love is a worldly concept. It's a concept of in the world that we hear

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10 minutes, 15 seconds

about. Oh, the worldly message is you're going to have to earn my love. In fact, maybe some of you are even thinking of some songs that had those words like

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10 minutes, 24 seconds

you're going to have to earn my love, baby. Right? You're going to have to work for my love. Um, that's a worldly mindset. Many of us were brought up,

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10 minutes, 33 seconds

maybe even raised in a family like this where love was based on our performance, how we acted, what we did. So why are we

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10 minutes, 42 seconds

shocked to discover that most Christians as adults are still trying to earn their heavenly father's love through performance,

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10 minutes, 50 seconds

right? Through works. That's how they were brought up. God's love is bestowed, given even lavished on us free. Isn't

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10 minutes, 59 seconds

that good news? That's good news that the love of God is given to us freely from Calvar's cross. So God's love is a free love.

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11 minutes, 9 seconds

Second, in your notes, God love God's love is an adoptive love. Is an adoptive love.

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11 minutes, 17 seconds

That we should be called what? Children of God. Behold what manner of love the

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11 minutes, 24 seconds

father has given unto us that we should be called children of God. God adopts us into his heavenly family and we are his

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11 minutes, 32 seconds

spiritual children. So about three years ago, we adopted Blue the cat. And uh

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11 minutes, 40 seconds

Blue So Elelliana really wanted a cat and I told my oldest son, Eric, who's an adult who had moved out of the house. I said I told him that we have a new pet

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11 minutes, 49 seconds

in our family. We have a cat. And he was shocked. He was like, "Really, Dad? You let a cat in the house?" And I was like,

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11 minutes, 56 seconds

"Yeah, I did." So listen, it's not that I'm anti-at. It's just that our family was always pro dogs. We were a dog

12:04

12 minutes, 4 seconds

family, right? Yes, dogs are awesome. I love dogs. Uh I don't have anything against cats. I just love dogs. But and

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12 minutes, 11 seconds

actually I'm allergic to cats. I'm allergic. I always have been since I was a little kid. And so like I that's another reason we haven't got cats. Uh

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12 minutes, 20 seconds

and so because I knew Elelliana wanted a cat, I actually started taking allergy medicine ahead of when we got the cat for like a week before we got the cat. I

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12 minutes, 29 seconds

started taking the medicine to try to hit it, you know, prevent it on the front end. So, why did I agree to this?

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12 minutes, 35 seconds

I'm allergic to cats. Well, cuz my daughter wanted one really badly. Uh, she was actually searching every day on petfinder.com

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12 minutes, 44 seconds

looking for a cat every day looking at different cats. Uh, she was actually looking for a hypoallergenic cat for me

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12 minutes, 52 seconds

and she found one. It was almost her birthday and this is what she wanted. So, do you think that cat will be loved?

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13 minutes

Do you think that cat is loved?

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13 minutes, 2 seconds

Yes, that cat is loved. Um, did it do anything to deserve being adopted? No, not really. It's not like Elelliana

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13 minutes, 11 seconds

lined up a bunch of cats and said, "Okay, now do a bunch of cat tricks and the one who does the best tricks, you know, and Blue was the one who did the back flips and and whatever." It didn't

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13 minutes, 20 seconds

earn getting adopted, right? We just adopted it out of out of love. How do we get adopted into God's family? Galatians

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13 minutes, 29 seconds

3:26 and 27 says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For

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13 minutes, 37 seconds

all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." And so, it's a combination of faith and

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13 minutes, 45 seconds

baptism. Uh, by the way, if you haven't been baptized, that's actually the first next step is to check that first box

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13 minutes, 53 seconds

that says on the back, if you haven't been baptized, set up a Bible study with Jeremy, that's me, for baptism. And there's the number you can text me at

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14 minutes

and say, "Hey, I'd like to do a Bible study. What do I need to do to be baptized?" Okay, so God's love is a free love. God's love is an adoptive love.

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14 minutes, 12 seconds

And then third, God's love is a misunderstood love. It's a misunderstood.

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14 minutes, 18 seconds

In 1 John 3, we read, "The reason the world does not know us is they did not know God." They they don't understand.

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14 minutes, 26 seconds

They misunderstand. All right. So, if you haven't already, turn to Romans chapter 5, and we're going to look at verses 6 through8. Romans 5. If you're

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14 minutes, 35 seconds

using this Bible right here, the church Bibles, it's page 914.

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14 minutes, 42 seconds

That'll give you a head start. But God's love is a misunderstood love. Those of you who've been coming to

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14 minutes, 48 seconds

Impact for a while, you know that I say this often that the New Testament in the Bible was originally written in the Greek language, in the first century

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14 minutes, 57 seconds

Greek language. And they actually had four different words for the word love.

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15 minutes, 2 seconds

Four different words in Greek that gets translated love, which is different to us because in English we just have love.

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15 minutes, 9 seconds

Like that's it. And we use it in funny ways. is like I'll say I love my wife and I'll also say I love tacos. Like we

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15 minutes, 18 seconds

use that same word for both of those things. Are you kidding me? Like no, there should be different words for I love tacos versus I love my wife, right?

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15 minutes, 27 seconds

But but we just have the one word my wife says. Right.

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15 minutes, 32 seconds

Um so in the Greek we have the Greek word felos or as a verb it's fileto. I fileto

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15 minutes, 42 seconds

you. I love you. Um, and it means warm affection for someone. The word is sometimes translated like as in a close friendship or love as in a relationship.

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15 minutes, 53 seconds

And felos is reciprocal. Since they love you, you love them back, right? They scratch your back, I'll scratch yours

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16 minutes, 1 second

kind of deal. In this case, the person is loving the lovable. They're loving a lovable person that loves them back. All right. The next one is stoay. Stoay.

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16 minutes, 13 seconds

This is family love. So this love is out of obligation. I love you because I have to love you because you're family.

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16 minutes, 20 seconds

Right? I don't always like my sister, but I love my sister. All right. I don't always like my kids. Wait, did I say that out loud?

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16 minutes, 30 seconds

I don't always like my kids in certain moments, but I always love my kids, right? Um, and so that's that's the the

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16 minutes, 38 seconds

essence of stoay. We we're supposed to love because they're family. And then we have aeros, which is where we get the word erotic from. And as you can guess,

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16 minutes, 47 seconds

this is a lustful, selfserving kind of love. Self-serving. This kind of love only cares about what I get out of the

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16 minutes, 54 seconds

deal. All three of these are natural types of love. Then there's agape love.

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17 minutes, 1 second

Agape love is unnatural. This kind of love isn't mentioned in classic Greek writings. It's only mentioned in revealed religion like in the Bible.

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17 minutes, 11 seconds

This concept, this word agape love, agape love is not self-s serving, not just loving the lovable, not just

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17 minutes, 20 seconds

because you're family, I have to love you. It's loving those who don't love you back. It's loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you.

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17 minutes, 28 seconds

That's Jesus in Matthew 5:44. Guess what word he used when he said love your enemies? Agape. It's an unnatural kind

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17 minutes, 36 seconds

of love. Even loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. So on that note, let's read Romans 5 6-8

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17 minutes, 46 seconds

where it says, you see, at just the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

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17 minutes, 56 seconds

The ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare

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18 minutes, 3 seconds

to die. But God demonstrates his own love for this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

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18 minutes, 13 seconds

So imagine you go to a farmers market and you want to buy a dozen eggs, right?

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18 minutes, 17 seconds

And and the righteous person, the one who does what is right, sells you a dozen eggs. He gives you exactly 12 eggs, right? The good person actually

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18 minutes, 26 seconds

throws in a couple extra, gives you 14 eggs. The sinner though, the sinner cheats you out of eggs and only gives

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18 minutes, 34 seconds

you 10. Now, the Apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is saying here, which one of those would you be more

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18 minutes, 42 seconds

likely to be willing to die for? The good person, right? The one who gave you the 14 eggs. Not definitely not the sinner. But what does the scripture say?

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18 minutes, 52 seconds

It says that God demonstrated his love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He died for

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19 minutes

the sinners, for the ungodly, right? And that's us. He died for us while we were sinners. It's an unnatural love. Natural love like felos loves those who love us.

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19 minutes, 13 seconds

Felos loves the lovable. But God goes beyond the natural. He has a kind of love that is unnatural. He has agape

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19 minutes, 21 seconds

love. God's love is a misunderstood love because worldly love is conditional love. And maybe you've heard some of

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19 minutes, 28 seconds

these. Have you ever heard something like this? Well, I'll love you if or I'll love you when I'll love you as long as you are this way, but if you ever

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19 minutes, 37 seconds

change from being that way, I'm not going to love you anymore. Right?

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19 minutes, 41 seconds

Strings attached. I grew up with a younger sister and she always read those 17 magazines or those types of magazines. You know what I'm talking

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19 minutes, 49 seconds

about? Remember those? And I remember in one of those magazines she was reading, there was a test to see if your

19:56

19 minutes, 56 seconds

boyfriend really loves you. And there were all these questions you were supposed to ask your boyfriend. And one of the questions was, true story, it

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20 minutes, 4 seconds

was, "If I turned green with purple polka dots, would you still love me?" Like, really? That's the question? Like

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20 minutes, 12 seconds

that's what you're going with? Something that's never actually going to happen.

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20 minutes, 15 seconds

But somehow that would test him and tell if he really loved you like unconditionally.

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20 minutes, 21 seconds

Um, if you change your love for me, I'll change my love for you. I'll love people I know, but I won't love people I don't

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20 minutes, 30 seconds

know. Right? Like we think about missions. People go on mission trips and they become missionaries. Why? To tell

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20 minutes, 37 seconds

people they don't even know about the love of God and about Jesus. They go, they will love even people they don't know. That's a love that's from God.

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20 minutes, 46 seconds

Worldly love has a lot of strings attached. But God's agape love loves everyone just because he created every individual. And his heart's desire is

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20 minutes, 55 seconds

that he wants to spend eternity with all the people he created. He loves each one. He wants them to be in heaven with him. That's agape love. God can still

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21 minutes, 4 seconds

love you and me no matter what. Because for God to love is an act of his will.

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21 minutes, 11 seconds

That's what Christian love is. A misunderstood love. It's a selfless other person centered kind of love.

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21 minutes, 18 seconds

There was a prison inmate who a prison ministry had gone in and was telling people the good news of Jesus that God loves them and wants them to be saved.

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21 minutes, 27 seconds

And uh this this person was explaining to this inmate how uh Jesus uh took the wrap for them. You know, he was using

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21 minutes, 34 seconds

language that they would understand that even though Jesus never sinned, he was willing to die for our sins even though we were the ones who sinned. Right? And

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21 minutes, 43 seconds

this inmate says, "Well, that's not fair. That why why should he have to take the wrap for me?" And the guy

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21 minutes, 51 seconds

presenting it said, "Well, it's not fair. It's love, right? It's love." Trying to get our minds wrapped around this.

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22 minutes, 1 second

And so, we have these next steps.

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22 minutes, 4 seconds

One of them is the next one. Number two is look up Bible verses about God's love and spend time thanking God for his love

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22 minutes, 12 seconds

for you. So nowadays you can literally just Google search Bible verses about God's love, right? You can just look

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22 minutes, 20 seconds

those up, take those in, read them, and just be like, "Man, God, thank you for your love for me." Okay. Uh some of you

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22 minutes, 29 seconds

might want to do this one. Listen to songs about God's love. Again, Google.

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22 minutes, 34 seconds

You can Google search songs about the love of God and there are Spotify playlists and you can just go out there and just say, "I want to listen to all

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22 minutes, 43 seconds

songs about God's love." And just do that this week and and be reminded of his love. Some of you may want to

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22 minutes, 51 seconds

memorize Romans 8:38, which I read earlier, or 1 John 3 1-2, and just memorize those verses about God's love.

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23 minutes, 2 seconds

All right. Last, God's love is a transforming love, a transforming kind

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23 minutes, 9 seconds

of love. For Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all. Talking about Jesus, and

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23 minutes, 17 seconds

therefore all died. And he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who

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23 minutes, 26 seconds

died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once

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23 minutes, 34 seconds

regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in

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23 minutes, 40 seconds

Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone. The new is here. How many

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23 minutes, 47 seconds

of you know what that means? That God can make us into a new person. Has he done that for any of you? Has he changed

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23 minutes, 55 seconds

you into a new person? I know he's done that for me. I'm a totally different person. God has totally changed my life

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24 minutes, 2 seconds

through his love. Transforming. It's a transforming kind of love. The love of Jesus transformed Simon to Peter the

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24 minutes, 10 seconds

rock. From a fisher of fish to a fisher of men. He transformed James and John known as the sons of thunder to the

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24 minutes, 18 seconds

martyr James who dies with his mouth shut and the peaceful beloved John. He transformed a five-time divorced

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24 minutes, 26 seconds

adulterer to the area evangelist spreading God's news all over the place.

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24 minutes, 30 seconds

He transformed a man possessed with a legion of demons into a good newser evangelist to the 10 cities. God's love

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24 minutes, 38 seconds

is a transforming love. And he's transformed me and he's transformed many of us in this room. Through his love, we

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24 minutes, 47 seconds

become a different person. So this morning, let God's love help you to admit your sinfulness. Admit you're a

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24 minutes, 55 seconds

sinner. Let God's love help you to listen with your heart to the good news of Jesus, your savior. Let your the love

25:03

25 minutes, 3 seconds

of God help you believe in Jesus, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Let God's love help you to repent of your

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25 minutes, 10 seconds

sins, to change your ways. Let God's love help you to say with your mouth that Jesus is your savior and make him

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25 minutes, 17 seconds

the Lord of your life. Let God's love help you submit to and identify with the good news in New Testament baptism. And

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25 minutes, 26 seconds

then let the love of God help you to live a holy life for him.

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25 minutes, 33 seconds

Guys, those I just laid out a pathway to taking steps towards living for God. Um, and I don't know which one of those, if

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25 minutes, 42 seconds

any of those spoke to you like, "Yeah, I need to do that." We're actually going to give you an opportunity. Uh, we're going to do a song and we're going to

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25 minutes, 49 seconds

give you an opportunity to respond to God's love in those ways that I just mentioned. Um, I'm actually going to go to the back of the room and if any of

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25 minutes, 58 seconds

you want to come to me and say, "That's me." Like, you were talking about me. I need to do those things. I need to take

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26 minutes, 5 seconds

those steps towards following God. um come see me in the back of the room. Uh maybe some of you, you've done all those

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26 minutes, 12 seconds

steps and you're on the last one, which is let the love of God help you live a holy life for him. And how many of you

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26 minutes, 20 seconds

know that we are we we never fully arrive, but we are constantly trying to grow to become more like Jesus. How many of you know that's true? It's a never-

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26 minutes, 29 seconds

ending journey, but we're always letting the love of God motivate us and inspire us to become more like Jesus. Every

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26 minutes, 37 seconds

single day, we open up our hearts to him and we say, "God, it's a new day. Show me how I can become more like Jesus.

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26 minutes, 44 seconds

Shower me with your love." How many of you know that one of the things that we need to do is we let God's love come into us, but then we let God's love flow

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26 minutes, 52 seconds

out of us to others to show them the love of God so that they can see this love of God in action so that they can

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27 minutes

want that life with God, that relationship with God.

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27 minutes, 5 seconds

But I know I know that I know that I know this morning that there's somebody in this room, maybe a few somebody's who

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27 minutes, 13 seconds

just struggle to accept God's love for them for whatever reason. You've got a mental barrier like, "Well, I've just

27:21

27 minutes, 21 seconds

I've just done too many bad things. I've been too bad of a person. I've done one thing that was just so bad. There's no

27:28

27 minutes, 28 seconds

way that God could ever love me." Like, it's just there's just no way. Do you have that barrier in your mind? I am

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27 minutes, 36 seconds

praying and hoping that this morning you will accept God's love. He does love you. That's what we just learned from

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27 minutes, 43 seconds

the Bible. Right? Did you hear that message? Did you hear that God loves you this morning? And I hope that some of

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27 minutes, 50 seconds

you will finally let that barrier be broken down and let God's love come in this morning and accept God's love for

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27 minutes, 58 seconds

you. God does love you. Do you believe that this morning? Do you accept that God does love you? I hope you do accept that.

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28 minutes, 9 seconds

So, whatever God is doing in your heart, as the band leads us in one more song, if you feel the need to respond, if God

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28 minutes, 16 seconds

is tugging your heart to do something, to take action and respond to this message, come see me in the back of the room. Let's all stand as we sing this

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28 minutes, 25 seconds

last song. And if you need to respond,