Needs

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Need is the topic we're gonna be talking about need I had the idea to do a teaching on this need
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Concept back in 2009 time frame But I kind of had it in mothballs and never developed it until this summer
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I did a gospel presentation for the BBS kids on this topic Afterward I was encouraged by one of our deacons wives to just Dave don't put it back in mothballs just yet Why don't you just think about maybe doing it for adult
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Sunday school, and so? Here we go you should have gotten a handout on the way in Cory's holding them up and Do not think that you need to fill out this whole thing okay, you're not going to be able to If you really want the whole thing you can ask me afterwards, and I will email you it all filled in with all my notes
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But it's really just for you to have a skeleton Kind of a structure of the different categories and things that I'm going to be going through So on the left side that's numbered 1 to 11
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So you know you might want to just write in the needs as we're hitting them 1 through 11 Maybe just some of your the things that you find most interesting just jot down, but don't try to fill it all in so a summary statement of This is our extensive everyday physical needs seem like They could be great regular reminders for us
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Christians regarding the truth of our spiritual neediness for our faith in Christ and We're focusing obviously today on it in a sanctification sense because you know
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I'm assuming Everyone or most everyone here is Christians But this physical needs
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Reminds us of spiritual needs just just remember back to Paul. What he hears from God. He says Your strength is made perfect in weakness and so there he's talking about strength spiritually is being made perfect in weakness
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Physically right he's asking God, and he says my grace is sufficient for you So we're very quick to remind ourselves.
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Oh, yeah, don't worry about what you'll eat. Don't worry about what you'll wear You're more important than the sparrows with that kind of stuff we're quick to remind that but wouldn't be even more important to remember our spiritual neediness and that God is the source of all our spiritual need and of course the
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Faith for justification Also has need Built into it doesn't it we typically use the formula knowledge
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Ascent trust as like the components of faith saving faith
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But that knowledge Has built into it that we need a
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Savior right and that ascent also We're agreeing that we need a
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Savior and the trust we're trusting a Savior Because we need him
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Right So basically don't don't raise your hand or jump in with comments at the beginning here
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I'm just going to kind of grind through this chart for us in the beginning And at the end you will have plenty of time to raise your hand and ask questions or share your thoughts
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Okay, so let's go through the chart number one
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These we're going to start with the what Cory and I have called the obvious ones Number one we need air right
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We're breathing constantly if we don't have it our status our physical status is we are suffocating right?
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most precious thing for our survival is air Many claim that if you don't have air you'll die in three minutes
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We need need air that bad So what's the spiritual parallel? Without God's Holy Spirit and God's saving regeneration by his spirit.
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We're doomed Romans 14 17 says the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking and I would say even air
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But righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit And I'm sure many here know that the the word in the
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Greek for the Holy Spirit is pneuma Where we get our idea of air things pneumatics?
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Titus 3 5 According to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the
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Holy Spirit pneuma Number two we need food
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We need to eat If we don't have it. We are hungry. We're starving
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Your body needs solid nutritional input to have energy to even stay alive just to go through life and do things, right?
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What's our spiritual status we are also spiritually hungry Jesus did that loaves and fishes miracle and of course he was doing that to show his power and to show how amazing he is but Isn't it possible that he was mostly doing that to show that he could fulfill our spiritual hunger
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By proving that he could miraculously fulfill physical hunger and then it's no coincidence that we're all in the same boat
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Right after he does that miracle in John 6. He says I am the bread of life
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He who comes to me shall never hunger Of course he's talking about spiritual hunger there
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Number three we need to drink Without it we are thirsty dehydration just for effect.
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I think I'll take a drink of water here your body needs hydration
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My wife Sharon and I saw Seinfeld last night He had a great bit where he was joking about how obsessed the fitness realm is about hydration
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Got to get hydrated make sure you're hydrated Otherwise, you'll become dehydrated if you wait till you're thirsty.
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You're too late But our body even is mostly water right and needs water to survive you'll die after even a few days if you don't drink some liquids
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And of course the spiritual status is we are also spiritually thirsty In that same
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John 6 bread of life passage. Jesus also says We'll never thirst if we have him and then in the very next chapter
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John 738. He says He who believes in me out of his heart will flow rivers of living water spiritual water
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Obviously if we have rivers of Refreshing spiritual water flowing out of us.
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We ourselves are then no longer spiritually thirsty, right? number four
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We need clothing We need a covering without it we are naked
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There's a built -in sense of shame isn't there? It's just Natural to feel ashamed if you don't have any clothes on isn't it?
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We can't even be outside Without clothing without getting burned sunburn or in the winter. I can't even imagine that in New England Going to a nudist colony in New England probably not gonna happen in winter but spiritually we should be
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Ashamed before God in our sinfulness how far short we fall from how holy and perfect He is we should be ashamed shouldn't we with all of our sin?
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Romans 4 7 blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered
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We need a covering first Peter 2 6 and many other places whoever believes in him
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Jesus will not be put to shame revelation 318
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Jesus talks about receiving from him white garments So that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen
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Of course, he's using spiritual symbolism of the perfect righteousness covering that he gives us number five we need
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Elimination now, this is one. We don't think about very often We need removal elimination removal of lots of things
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If we don't remove these things We're kind of dirty and nasty aren't we we take showers to clean dirt sweat body odors our body creates smelly waste gases solids and liquids and Excesses keep actively having to be cut off and thrown away in the trash from us.
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Don't they? And notice the parallel to our sin here.
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I thought this was interesting We sin with our thoughts and Hair keeps coming out of her head has to be cut off We sin with our hands and fingernails keep growing have to be cut off and thrown away and removed
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Same with our feet we go places. We probably shouldn't be going toenails have to be cut off our feelings and desires on the inside are kind of sinfully gross a lot of times aren't they and We know that lots of nastiness comes from in there, doesn't it?
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So these things kind of show how wow in every area of who we are and how we live we are sinful
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Having things which must be eliminated coming from all areas of our body Even in how we use our senses our precious five senses
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Have kind of some nastiness built in right symbolized with how bad we sometimes don't hear clearly
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And there's nasty little earwax in there we have to get rid of we don't see clearly we've got eye boogers, too
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And of course smelling we don't sinfully smell very often, but there's some regular boogers in there
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Our speech we oftentimes use our tongue right the tongue is a source of evil according to James And we've got pretty bad breath and teeth decay don't we?
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Get that mouthwash out There's a whole dentistry industry to remove the nastiness in our mouth, right
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And of course we've already talked about it But the nastiness we have is really all pointing to just our sinfulness in general
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And our sins what has to happen to them? They have to be removed from us
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Even our righteousness when we're trying to be righteous. What does Isaiah call it? He calls it filthy rags
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Usually we throw those out don't we we eliminate those filthy rags. Let's get him in the garage and get him in the garbage
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Hebrews 1 3 says Jesus purged our sins a Spiritual kind of flushing of our sins if you will first John 1 7 the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanses us from all sin spiritual shower
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First John 3 5 you know that Jesus was manifested to take away Our sins number six we need money
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Can I get an amen on that we need money We need to pay bills if we don't have it.
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We are in debt and Heating oil and gas the prices just keep going up don't they we need more money now
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If we don't heat our house in the winter where it's could be life -threatening And that costs money
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But there's so many things we need to buy a lot of times of course We don't need to buy a lot of things we buy but there is some things we need to buy and they all cost money
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We get bills that need to be paid The spiritual parallel here is that we are in debt spiritually we have a sin debt
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Perhaps you've heard that term for sin debt. We fall short of what we owe
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God We fall short of God's holy perfection requirement We need someone to help pay our sin debts and pay for our offenses and transgressions before a holy
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God In Matthew 18 in the what we call the parable of the unforgiving servant
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Jesus there takes the opportunity to sort of kind of quantify Our spiritual debt with a money analogy
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By talking about a servant who owes his master 10 ,000 talents in modern terminologies
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This would be the wages for working every single day of every single year for a hundred and sixty four thousand years
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That's Jesus's analogy of the spiritual debt of money spiritually that we owe
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God our master in heaven an unpayable debt Yet on the cross Jesus says what?
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It is finished The Greek word I believe to tell us die
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Which would back then would have been used to indicate that a debt has been paid in full
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Exactly what Jesus was doing on the cross paying our sin debt in full Jesus paid it all the song says and we badly need that payment that Jesus made number seven
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We need rest we need sleep We get tired without it we get super tired exhausted working way too hard At the end of every day.
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What do we do? We go to sleep. Why because we need it The longest any human being has been known to go without sleep is 11 days
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We get tired because we've got a lot of work to do and Corey made a great comment.
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He said notice how God Every single day forces us To be put in this super vulnerable state and At night we should be sleeping and resting right but we're a lot of times
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We're not a lot of times sinful activities are happening right at that time isn't that interesting right when we should be resting we're sinning and The spiritual parallel here is a little different.
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I think we we try to work to merit
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God's approval instead of resting We think we can please
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God by doing more wrong. I think we'd be good enough to qualify for heaven.
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I Think that might have been the whole point of the Sabbath Just to realize that we need to rest in God The verse from Hebrews is going to kind of say that Hebrews 3 1 3 and 4 10 all combined into one composite a promise remains of entering his rest and we who have believed
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Do enter that rest He who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works
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If you ask the average Non -christian religious person they're typically going to say yeah, you have to be a good person
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That's the way to heaven according to everybody else, but obviously not Jesus said in Matthew 11 28 to 29 come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest
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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me and you will find rest for your souls
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Couldn't be more clear right a Bear you come eat your face off Yeah number eight we need love
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We need companionship Without it we kind of have this empty feeling this alone or lonely
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Feeling that a relational and emotional side of us wants to find love
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We've got to find that special person who will love us for who we are and who we can love
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And until that happens we kind of feel this like gnawing emptiness feeling
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That wife or husband we're looking for To spend most of our time for the rest of our lives with us
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Two -thirds of the all -popular songs are written about this. So it's got to be kind of a need wouldn't you say?
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Spiritually our soul is empty Without I know it's cliche to say but it's true without God filling that God -shaped hole or void in us
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We long to be filled with Jesus our spiritual spouse Who is then literally?
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Always with us Matthew 28 20. He says so behold.
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I am with you always to the end of the age and Paul says to the believers in Corinth.
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I promised you as a pure bride to one husband Christ So he is our spiritual spouse
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Ephesians 3 17 and 19 Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you know the love of Christ and Be filled with all the fullness of God God is what we need to be filled with That's where the solution to our empty feelings come from is
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God filling us Ephesians 525 of course husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
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Number nine we need healing Without it we are sick diseased injured
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I Don't know about you guys, but the older I get I'm starting to realize this your body
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Just keeps breaking down and stops working fully or properly or doesn't kind of come back to where it was nicest as quickly or ever
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Brian Regan has a great bit on that. He's like I woke up, and I was like oh, yeah, that's right. I hurt I guess forever
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Sometimes we get diseases or cancer we need frequent healing of some kind it seems like and spiritually we are sick with one disease
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Sin Sin and selfishness plague us we have to realize that we are spiritually
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Injured so to speak you know Jesus uses the idea of blindness spiritual blindness.
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He says in John 9 1 If you were blind
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You would have no sin But because you he's talking to the Pharisees specifically because you say
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We see Your sins remain So you have to realize you're blind in order to see you have to realize that you're blind in order to be forgiven
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So spiritual blindness spiritual sickness of sin so why did Jesus in general go around doing these miraculous physical healings of course just like with the
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Loaves and fishes it was to prove that he was God to prove he was powerful But I think it was to kind of show that he's our spiritual healer.
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He's our Savior Spiritually just like he was saving people and healing them physically first Peter 2 24 he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds on the cross
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You have been healed There's a spiritual healing and ironically it happens by Jesus being wounded number 10.
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We need another life Without it. We are dying Nobody avoids death no one everyone's going to die some may live more than a hundred years like my grandmother did
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My friend from college He only lived to 46 At the last church.
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We were at a ten -year -old died of cancer. We don't know how many years we have This life will come to an end we need something more
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There's got to be something more and something better than this Spiritually we are also dead
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We are headed for a permanent spiritual death without Jesus Christ John 5 24
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Jesus said whoever hears my word and believes in him who sent me has Eternal life
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Well that sounds better he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life and of course
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He's talking spiritually Nobody who's talking to you was physically dead Romans 6 4 just as Christ was raised from the dead we too might walk in newness of life a new life
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Jesus says we should be born again another life Second Timothy 1 10 our
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Savior Christ Jesus abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel and The last one number 11 we need a place
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We need a home Without it. We are homeless wandering Lost the body needs shelter from the elements to survive.
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Can you imagine spending a winter without a home in? Massachusetts we would die Spiritually we're lost we're headed for eternal homelessness after we die
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Physically, but with Jesus our spiritual home is guaranteed and we will be in heaven with God forever
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Luke 15 24 the prodigal son story the father says to the recovered son he says
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For this my son was dead and he's alive again pointing to our last point that we need another life but then he says he was lost and now is found in John 14, of course
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John 14 2 2 2 3 and verse 23 together Jesus says in my father's house are many mansions
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I go to prepare a place for you If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home
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With him our home is not really a place. It's a person our true home is
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Christ God is our home And we need to make him our home so that takes us through the chart and I have some discussion questions, but I wanted to throw out just a general open -ended time of any thoughts or comments that people wanted to share and talk about from the needs chart and Concepts that we discussed there any thoughts before I throw out my prepared questions or The VBS kids thought that was hilarious
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Yeah, I think God providentially does that I'm trying to struggling to come up with the spiritual parallel of Needing to eliminate people
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I think that that's kind of a bad thing typically What's up, well, that's true, but that was a bad thing, right?
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Interesting, yeah, I think you know God We definitely have to roll with the punches as far as like God moving us around and you know
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Sharon's doing a study on the book friendish and that talks about kind of holding your your friends with open hands, right?
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God, they're not mine. They're gods and We can't cling to them and hold on to them
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We have to let them if they if God is moving them to other friendships, or I'm even moving them geographically
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We have to be open to that and try to be a blessing to them, right? Oh Okay.
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Yeah, that makes more sense. I get that now. Okay, it's pointing to that one self -existence
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Self -energizing whatever attribute I I'm failing the class now.
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What was the word? What was the attribute that one was? Sadie yeah, okay
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Mm -hmm. Yeah, it's a reminder of our lack of a sadie really constantly
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Any other thoughts? Yeah, I mean Jesus is he is the overcomer of sin and then he gives us his overcoming, you know
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So he's sort of a spiritual vaccine, I guess Feels weird saying that but even
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Yeah, what does the Bible say? It says we have the mind of Christ, right? So we have a mind even to draw upon That's other than the one that's feels fragile and breaking down, right?
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yeah, and that that's self -sufficiency that we always kind of like default back to is kind of why
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I Thought about this is like man I'm I'm really bad at like I'm talking about this and I made this chart, but I'm not good at this
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I'm not good at taking these physical needs and Constantly letting them remind me of my spiritual need that I think that just Speaks to our default sinful self -sufficiency, right that we just we can't help but go back to oh,
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I gotta do this, right? Yeah, I that was it.
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That was a little bit of a reach, but I think it I think it's kind of an emotional It like it it feels
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Non -spiritual, it's definitely invisible. It's not a physical need but it's it feels physical sometimes doesn't it like you kind of feel like you need to hug someone you need to You need that someone right so it doesn't it's not as physical or obvious as the other ones for sure
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Yeah, I would say we definitely need it I think if if love and companionship is not a physical need then truth is even a further
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Step away from physical Charlie There's that term psychosomatic, right like your mind over body court.
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I Need touch but don't touch me So maybe the
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Maybe there is a connection back to physical with truth, right? If we if we force if we force our kids and everybody to live in a realm where there is no truth
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Maybe that messes with our mind and then our mind is breaking down and then that affects us physically
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So maybe it kind of dominoes down to that let me throw out one of my discussion questions and you know, feel free to throw out any comment, but Typically we we tend to just with all these needs we tend to just overcome and ignore don't we we just sort of like Well, I gotta eat
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I gotta drink something, you know, just get through life, you know, we just kind of overcome and ignore so how can we
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Get to a place where we allow these needs and change gears to allow these physical needs to keep as Jonathan was saying
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I need you God I need you got how can we let that become a help to remind us of how much we need
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God as we go through life And is that even a reasonable goal to want to do that to want to allow these needs to do that thoughts on that?
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I don't have time to do that. I have a phone Yeah, totally true more more silent nothing time
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I think that's great to meditate on our neediness Wow So you're saying it's a it's sort of like Self -perpetuating if we think about Christ more then we realize we need
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Christ more and then we think about Christ. It's sort of circles Yeah, that's exactly what
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I'm saying is I'd like to do that I wish I was better at doing that And so maybe you know, maybe talking about this will help us do it more but you know
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Six months from now. Am I gonna be thinking about how much I need God just because I'm thirsty. I don't know
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I'd yeah some more time in the word, you know,
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Jesus said We need bread But we need every word of God that proceeds out of the mouth of every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God more
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Right. Yeah, one of the questions I had in here was about fasting you know that the
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Bible talks about that and I think that is sort of a way of Forcing ourselves to be needy to remember
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God's like in a very targeted specific way You know, so maybe
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That could help you, you know that helps us focus on a need more by letting like you were kind of saying let it go
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Let that need continue and see, you know, let it be, you know, if you keep fulfilling and ignoring
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Then it's never gonna remind us because it's always satisfied and I think that's the reason, you know We just take it for granted these needs because they're always satisfied, you know
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And spirit and Jesus is always there to satisfy us spiritually. But how often do we?
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Seek to be filled that way Yeah, I'm looking forward to heaven where those needs won't be a recurring reality, right?
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All right, so we're supposed to end at 950, right? Okay all right, so one of the things
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I did with the VBS kids and You know, maybe you would think it too cheesy or too charismatic or whatever but I ended
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I ended my talk with them by praying and I said what what position?
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Would somebody who needs a ton of things take? What beggar position would they take and so I think a beggar would pray like this a
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Beggar would ask for stuff like this So if you if you have good knees and you feel comfortable doing so would we would you be willing to close with me on?
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Our knees with open outstretched hands. I know those chairs in front of you, but All right
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God we come to you with nothing God.
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We need everything from you Our hands are empty. Our souls are empty without you, please
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God Fill us fill us with Christ fill us with your spirit
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Help us to realize our only home is with you make these physical needs remind us of how much we need you
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God help us to find strength in weakness Help us to rely on Christ more
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Rely on your spirit to change us from the inside out make us different with your power not ours