Ordinary Christianity (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father in heaven, we just thank you this morning for the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus as we think of Salvation from your wrath salvation from our sin

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Lord the sure promise of heaven all the things that you have done for us Lord. We come here to worship you this morning

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To praise you this morning to study About you this morning that we might

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Praise you all the more Lord. I pray that you would bless our time this morning as we talk about Ordinary Christianity as we talk about the lives we ought to be living each and every day father bless each one here

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We pray in Jesus name. Amen well, I thought We started ordinary

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Last week and I and I thought I might just read you Something from your hymnal to sort of start us off this morning one of my favorite hymns in 425 and I'm just going to read the the portion of The chorus that Michael Horton refers to And he says this is from in the garden.

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He says and the joy We share talking about Jesus and the writer of this hymn and the joy we share as we tarry there

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None other has ever known We read that again, I'll get your comments and the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known

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What do you think about that? Probably false.

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Why is that? What's that Yeah, I like how you free that phrase that the understatement

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The the joy that the father the spirit and and the son Join, you know when they're joined together and they're having fellowship the joy that they have together might be a little bit better than the joy that you have with Jesus in the garden,

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I Don't know why it's a garden anyway, why isn't it wasn't the song in the desert in the

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Good point. Okay, it's unique now. Here's the question Is it unique Okay, so our relationship with Jesus in the sense that we have particular needs and weaknesses and Things going on in our lives that are unique, right?

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Okay, let me let me put it to you this way is your relationship and I don't

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Just mean you but Carol is is your relationship with your own particular children unique?

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Yes Okay Do you and again,

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I'm not just singling out Carol for those of you have kids Do you look at some and you just think you know what as a parent to a child you think you know what?

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I really like this one better than all the rest of them My relationship with this one is really unique and special the other ones

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Not so much Tracy I think is thinking that right now. She's thinking she's thinking

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Josh is here Caleb Austin Now all three of them were smiling but two of them are starting to stand up I don't know what the deal

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So I we may think you know from our perspective that our relationship is unique with Jesus and I think in some respects

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We might be right But I think overall if we think about it, what's Jesus relationship to us?

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Is it unique? I guess you know and Let's see what's the term

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I'm looking for in a psychological sense and that you know We are sorry for even using that word, but but we have our own unique situation and and all that But ultimately isn't any difference.

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I Don't think I don't think so If this is true and the joy we sherry and we that we sherry

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If you're yeah, and the joy we share as we Terry there none other has ever known is that true?

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Well, I'm just gonna go out on a limb and I'm gonna say that's probably Not true, and and I'll say

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I'll tell you why subjectively Which is the word word word? Dancing around here subjectively it is from my perspective my

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Relationship with Jesus may be different in the sense that you know, he meets these that nobody else can meet

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Okay But is he uniquely my Savior No, is there a unique joy as the songwriter says that I have that no one else has because of Jesus I I Don't really know that and I really doubt that I I would like to think that most believers when they think about the

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Lord they think I'm in love with him I'm in debt to him.

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I Owe everything to him. I don't think that should be unique to me And if it is unique to me, if I'm the only one who feels that way then maybe

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I'm the only Christian, right? I mean seriously Our relationship is unique, but it's categorically it should be the same

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I don't know, but you know, I do we know anything unique about this guy see

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Austin Miles, I think he spent a couple years in the NBA, but I Just made that up I Don't know

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I mean what has always bothered me I mean, I know this is a familiar song Janet and I were talking about the way in and she said well

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Maybe it's because you know, it's the favorite hymn with some of our grandparents. I I don't know but you know,

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I've always Disliked the subjectivity of this and you know, in fact,

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I mean we sing in a funerals and stuff like that and I'm I Don't get it but I'll have to say if you if you just read this him it practically 425 and practically screams of subjectivity and really there isn't a whole lot of doctrine here

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You know and some doctrine I just would vehemently disagree and he walks with me and he talks with me

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I I Don't know that doesn't sound like New Testament times

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But the point that he makes Horton makes in the book and here's the point not to argue the merits of this

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Song which if you want to argue the merits of it, feel free. I Wish you well

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The point is people like to think that There is a unique Sense in which they have a relationship with Jesus that is

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Personal that is their own and I suppose on some level that's true. But the overall biblical picture is

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Jesus loves his own each in the same way. We wouldn't hear him say, you know Jesus would never say and some of you

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I really really like and some of you died just kind of tolerate We wouldn't see that but we started talking about this idea of ordinary and I think it's it's important because It goes against every trend in fact, oh, well,

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I don't want to skip ahead I Think it's just important for us to realize, you know

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I talked a little bit about some famous Christians who you know died or were martyred or spent their lives in the service of Christ and And I think it's important to think about this that Well, let's go go to 1st

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Corinthians been thinking about this passage, so we might as well just Go to it, you know, we tend to think that there's there's some really

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Uber Christians some super Christians and And it's probably true that there are some who just give all and they are amazing

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But let's just start Well, let's start at verse 18 1st

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Corinthians chapter 1. Sorry, I Forget that you guys can't hear what

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I'm thinking For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing

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But to us who are being saved it is the power of God for it is written.

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I Will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning. I will thwart

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Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not

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God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know

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God through wisdom It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe

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For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom But we preach

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Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles But to those who are called both

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Jews and Gentiles Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men

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For consider your calling brothers Not Many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many were powerful not many of were of noble birth

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But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise

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God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong God chose what is low and despised in the world even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are

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So that no human being might boast in the presence of God and Because of him you are in Christ Jesus and who became to us wisdom from God Righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that it is as it is written

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Let no one who boasts boast in the Lord and I was

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I was contemplating this in light of Jonathan Edwards son -in -law anyway

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It'll come to me. We're talking about him last week and just no Guess again.

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I feel like Alex Trebek No incorrect in the form of yeah

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Brainerd. Thank you in the form of question Who is

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Robert Brainerd is correct ding ding ding ding daily double I God uses

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The simple things God uses the foolish things and you know what? it's like I Think it was well.

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I know who it was the great theologian Bob Dylan who said It was made famous by Jimi Hendrix another famous theologian

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All I have is an old guitar three chords in the truth, right? What do you mean by that, you know, all

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I have is the same old same old and when we come to people all we have is This the

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Bible well, why don't you argue with something else, you know, your reasoning is circular. Why don't you give us something else?

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All I have is an old book Three chords in the truth.

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This is all I have. I It wasn't because they were great men or Great women it's because they were faithful women.

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They were faithful men so we started talking about this last week and I want to talk about And I'm sure we'll be talking more about this contentment being content with life and this really is as we're talking about ordinary

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What does it mean to be ordinary? Is it okay to be ordinary? I think it's okay to be ordinary as long as ordinary means what?

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biblical Obedience I follow the Word of God when we think about What and what

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I'm what I'm trying to stress in ordinary Christianity is Do what the Bible calls you to do?

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When you do that You know then you worry about other things and and how long are you going to be struggling to do?

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What is ordinary what is commanded of you? I expect it might be for the rest of your life

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Now Michael Horton defines being content with life as accepting the circumstances in which

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God's Providence has placed me What's that mean if you are content?

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Accepting the circumstances in which God's providence has placed you How does that how would that change your life if you could just say you know what

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I am content with where God has placed How would that impact you daily for some of you currently would have no impact at all

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Brian Okay, the Lord gives the Lord takes blessed be the name of the Lord I'm fine with where I am.

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I'm fine with the way things are and some people may say well wait a minute that's the idol of Comfort yeah, you're just content.

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You're you're not going to push yourself I don't think that's what

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I'm talking about. What's it? What's the difference between maybe the idol of comfort and Biblical contentment

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Okay, no worry Okay, gratitude

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Charlie Okay, so maybe a more even keel approach to life knowing even that difficult circumstances are what?

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Brought to us by the Lord and so we need not be discontent Certainly we could try to change them or try to overcome them or whatnot, but there's a contentment

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There's a peace that comes through that now the idol of comfort you know people just You know

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I some people have this idea, what's that? What's the American dream? I watch this these commercials

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Not a big fan of a ARP, but I see these commercials this woman walking through the woods strangely

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She's on her own, and she never mentions any family. I mean. She's like I Don't know she probably looks like she's 55

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Hey watch that She looks like she's about 55, and she's walking through the woods, and she's just kind of going

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You know I have a lot of light to live. I have life to live. I have a lot of plans Apparently again, no husband.

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No kids. No grandkids, but she's got a lot to live for and it's all about her But I just I just think you know

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She just lays it out, and she's content, and I think well, that's nice But there's no

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God in her life. There's no God in this commercial certainly But I mean it's this idea that she has all of her

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Worldly comforts and so she's fine. She's got all of her financial ducks in a row and so she's fine

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That's not what we're talking about We're talking about being satisfied in whatever situation you find yourself

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And Let's talk about a little bit about the ebbs and flows

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We'll we'll talk more about this ebbs and flows of life. Have you ever been involved in some kind of? Movements Christian or otherwise to radically change your life

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You know did you ever think I'm you know join one of these health plans where you're gonna lose 150 pounds in two weeks or?

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something you know and I I Mean you know just just crazy.

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Have you ever done anything like that? You ever done anything kind of well? You know let's hit.

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Maybe a little closer home anybody ever part of the promise keepers movement the promise breakers movement

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I You know a bunch of guys went, and I think it was in the LA Coliseum It was really big when

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I was you know when I first got saved a bunch of guys went, and I didn't go I don't know if I was working or if I was just too

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You know Too smart III which I seriously doubt because I was just a brand -new

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Christian But all these guys got out of it You know got out of this thing and they were like okay now We need five people or whatever the magic number was five people in our group, and we only have four so let's rope

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Steven So we got the you know seven promises of a promise

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Breaker or whatever the book was and we met together after we read the first chapter And I'll never forget we just sitting around well, what'd you get out of the book, and we're all looking around I Didn't get anything.

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Did you get anything? Here's is the point we get involved in these movements.

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Why? Why was promise keepers ever prompt you know prominence? Why why did anybody go for it in the first place?

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Russ That is a good point That is a good point, and this is a time for true confession, so thank you

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No, that is it that is an excellent point, and I would say a valid bit of wisdom But the point of promise keepers was this

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They looked at the evangelical church and the Catholic Church and Mormons everybody else got it eventually got involved in it, too

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But they looked at the evangelical church, and what do they see? What's that?

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Men not doing their jobs They said you know somebody in Colorado. I think said you know we got to do something about this

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We got to come up with something. We've had to stir these men to love and good works And you know this ordinary stuff of studying the

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Bible. That's not working So let's get a bunch of men into a Coliseum. Let's put eighty ninety thousand men together

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We'll sing a bunch of songs You know we'll have some stuff that they can do and then they'll get together, and they'll make these promises

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They'll break these promises and won't that be great I? Mean where's promise to keepers now, but man

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I have to tell you the guys came out of that meeting And they were in fuego if there would have been social media back in those days

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It would have been the trending topic promise keepers promise keepers promise keepers Because there's a realization in the men to that what they weren't doing their job

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So here comes you know some people identify the problem the men say yes, that's right We need to change something and so let's all do something special Let's change things.

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Let's have a mountaintop moment And the point of this book this ordinary book is let's just do what we're supposed to do

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Let's just do the work of being a Christian. Which is what? Study the word get together for fellowship.

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Let's just do all these kind of things and see what the Lord will do Now I want to read something this may or may not be true.

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I don't know, but I've got on the internet So I think it is true Struck home because it's from Camden, Maine Longtime acquaintances confirmed to reporters this week that local man

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Michael husmer an Unambitious 29 year old loser who leads an enjoyable and fulfilling life still lives in his hometown and has no desire to leave

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Claiming that the aimless slouch has never resided more than two hours from his parents and still hangs out with friends from high school sources close to husmer reported that the man who has meaningful lasting personal relationships and a healthy work -life balance is

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An unmotivated washout who's perfectly comfortable being a nobody for the rest of his life

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One of his friends says I've known Mike my whole life, and he's a good guy But it's pretty pathetic that he's still living on the same street.

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He grew up on and experiencing a deep sense of personal satisfaction Yeah, he's

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As soon as Mike same same friend as soon as my graduated from college He moved back home and started working at a local insurance firm now

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He's nearly 30 years old living in the exact same town He was born in working at the same small -time job and is extremely contented in all aspects of his home and professional lives

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It's really sad According to relatives who moved thousands of miles away and are currently alienated from much of the family

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Husmer has never once taken a major professional or financial risk choosing instead to coast through life by putting considerable time and effort into his rewarding marriage

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Playing an active role in his two children's lives and being sincerely thankful for what he has in this world

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His cousin says I'm just glad I got out of there and didn't end up like Mike This person is an attorney at a large law firm who hasn't seen her cousin

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For nearly six years the last thing I'd want to do is to have a loving family nearby feel a sense of pleasure when reflecting on my life and Be the big failure that everyone runs into when they visit home once a year for the holidays

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Just look at that loser with his contented grin and positive outlook day in and day out

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The poor guy doesn't even know how bad he has it But that really kind of does reflect what the world says

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I can't believe you just have a regular job a regular family and you know, you're content with that What do you know live in New York City for a while get robbed?

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You know pay $4 ,000 a month for a 200 foot square foot apartment, you know live large rack up massive debts

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Buy a car that you can't afford Come on There's something wrong.

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The world says with what being ordinary being regular

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Now let's just talk about church for a minute It's interesting to me some of the new churches that are moving into our area

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And if you go and you watch some of their messages online, it's also interesting and some of you may have received flyers in the mail

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What are some of the some of the words that they use to kind of? advertise their church

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Gary Next level Look you've been going for a while, but why don't you take your relationship with God to the next level?

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What other words? Vibrance all welcome

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My favorite one is you know, because it quotes a rock band come as you are, you know I just think just wear what whatever you roll out of bed with that's fine

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Some of the other words I see our community You know talking about vibrant we're a vibrant community

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Love And we're anything one church says we're anything but you know a traditional church

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We want you to be comfortable Your kids are going to love they're gonna ask you to come back for our children's programs

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Your teens are gonna love our music That's what we say we say, you know, you'll come for the preaching but your kids will ask you to come back

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So they can sing those hymns Now what does that kind of messaging say about?

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Evangelicalism at large What does it tell us about the direction of the church?

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The Bible is not enough What's that Self help.

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I mean it's really become Many churches have become Kind of places where the goal is to improve your life right not to worship the

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Lord other thoughts about that. I would say that the church has in many ways become like The world it just reflects the what the world says is important I mean you'll go to a lot of churches and they sound like you've just picked the business

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Books off the shelf and start reading That's what happens when you do a survey of the community ask them what they want in the church, so it's exactly right

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Now He asked this and I like this let's look at first Thessalonians chapter 4 verses 9 to 12 and if somebody would read that when they get there and The next topic we're gonna talk about is an anonymous life.

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I Mean when you go to these kind of churches, the goal isn't to be anonymous. It's become known To go in there and you know, they want to make supposedly they want to make you the star but the idea

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Presented in the in the church. Yeah, it's kind of counterintuitive or in the Bible is counterintuitive to what we might hear today the idea of an animosity kind of first Thessalonians chapter 4 verses 9 to 12 who has that Gary Okay, and just zeroing in on verse 11 here for a minute in the

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ESV it says and to aspire to live quietly It's kind of an odd Phrasing there

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Hendrickson says this he says Three admonitions that are followed by instruction with reference to the second coming

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Important to think this is in a reference to the second coming. He says some people had become restless

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Paul now urges that this restlessness be turned into the proper channel with that admirable ability to express himself paradoxically which again and again becomes evident in his epistles

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Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to become all stirred up About being quiet About living calmly

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Let the restless one he kind of translates it let the restless one be ambitious about attaining this goal of living calmly

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That verb they're living calmly Or I'm sorry about striving primarily means to love and then

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Also to be ambitious to aspire to strive after And he says glorying in the doctrine of Christ's return is proper awaiting this blessed coming as natural for the genuine believer

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But being so excited about it that one becomes arrogant thinking that he alone has discovered the light

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So that as a result one begins to meddle in the affairs of other people Particularly with the affairs of leaders in the church is all wrong

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Hence to the admonition the second one is added to be engaged in your own affairs

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But he says, you know be strive after a quiet life an anonymous life

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Don't don't raise a ruckus And when I think about how our world has changed over the last 10 years when you think about social media and This idea of anonymity what a social media really do

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Go ahead It allows you to be internet famous, I mean, what do people want on Facebook and on Twitter?

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mentions like shares and Followers, I mean, you know friends are one thing, but you really want people to follow you, right?

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So, you know on Twitter I have 11 million followers. Well, that must mean you're really important Or maybe not

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Yeah, or be that's wouldn't it be nice of the people who had the most followers on Twitter Where the people had the most wise things to say

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You know just filled, you know, wouldn't be great about molar had, you know The most followers on Twitter, but that's you know, that's just not gonna happen

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People want to know what you know, Beyonce has to say or Donald Trump has to say or whomever

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Yeah Yeah, if you think that this life is all of all that there is then you want the spotlight to shine on you

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And what it really says too is we're discontent as Americans and as a world

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I think this world is discontent with its place in the world We want to live vicariously through other people.

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So we follow very intelligent people on Twitter Twitter Get all the wisdom just suck all the marrow out of their life, you know, everything that's good and rights and pure, right?

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Sure But we also want people to follow us so that we'll be famous why because it's not enough that we just quietly go about doing

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What we're called to do. We want people to notice what we're doing and The worst thing that can happen to you is to be forgotten to be an asterisk to be a footnote.

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Yeah, Charlie And how's that company doing now

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Charlie, how is your company doing? Yeah, well, there you go, yeah

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Charlie says there's a company now to run your Facebook page after you die But you know that that this idea of faith of fearing to leave a legacy fearing to change the world

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I I Do think that is a major thing, you know people

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Colleges, you know change the world there. Well, if that's your goal in life right How many people as they lay on?

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Their deathbed about to close their eyes are gonna think well at least I changed the world not very many people are gonna say that right

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So then what if you fail to change the world your life is a failure a waste

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I Mean I can remember being a kid. I Was a little different some of you say that hasn't changed.

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I was a little different. I used to love to read Encyclopedia articles, but not just regular encyclopedia articles because we had an encyclopedia in the house

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I used to go and I would look at like world maps throughout history And you know so I would see like Alexander the

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Great and how much of the world he conquered Napoleon and how much of the world he conquered and stuff like that and I'm going that'd be pretty cool

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I Think I'd like that. Yeah Which is why I'm here

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But if you don't change the world, then you've wasted your life some people would say And we're gonna talk about how we go about changing the world

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I want us to change the world but we don't change the world from Let's put it this way from the top down We Change the world right around us

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We change the world from the bottom up we change the world by our own lives by the impact that we have on I'm getting email see this a professional tip always turn your iPhone off We change the world not by radical

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Changes to the world we change the world by Through our family through other means by serving in the church

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I mean how many how many people you know, let's just say you teach Sunday school I mean, let's just think about West Blackstone for a minute

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You know how many over the years how many lives can West and Steph impact? Quite a few

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You know now What if they never served at all? Well, then a lot less they'd impact you impact the world by impacting lives and And It's not about being famous.

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It's about doing what you do faithfully about serving well Now I have to just say a one more thing about anonymity

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Price of this before but it's something to think about. I mean I was reading this week, you know that people give their

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Their kids. Well, this is an old Charlie's post, but they give their kids Internet accessible devices that you know age eight or nine or ten or twelve or whatever and I think maybe this is even from last year.

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He says don't give your kids porn for Christmas and I'm like, it's a good point What are you doing?

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What are you thinking? But cyber bullying all the cyber access and all that stuff

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Why does it happen, you know, why do kids pick on kids why do people Because they always have

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I mean I was thinking about it when I was in elementary school we had this kid who

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He had really bad asthma. I mean if he started running he you know, he would just start coughing and and everything and he also had a

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Deformity in his back. So what he had I mean, it wasn't like You know the hunchback of Notre Dame, but it but it was it was pretty pronounced.

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It was visible So he didn't really often play, you know the games that we did

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So he would referee or he would umpire or something like that. I Really wasn't the best sports

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In fact, you know just an insight we had we had They would never do anything like this now in school, but we in the sixth grade we had we divided up into Schoolwide teams where we got to pick our teams and we played

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Softball and we played Basketball and we had this big competition and everybody on my team

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Got an A Except for me and I was the team captain I got a

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C and There were these comments about you know, what a terrible sport I was but getting back to Dennis Dennis was this referee and he made some bad calls.

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And so I and I think other kids, you know just started Berating him, you know giving him a really hard time

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And to me it seemed reasonable a reasonable thing to do because I was pretty terrible kid Dennis started crying and You know, some of the other kids just left and I remember thinking

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No, not as 55 year old Steve, but as probably 12 year old Steve thinking That was pretty lousy

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I'm a pretty bad guy. So so in my own way I was like then trying to make it up to him and we became good friends, but I Just you know thinking about it now.

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I'm just like that was really terrible But that was probably pretty small potatoes what kids do now to each other

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Why is that? Why is it so much easier for our kids to pick on each other now? And it gets back to this thing of anonymity

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And you say well, how so, you know, your name is usually associated with what you do. Well, sometimes it is

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It's not face -to -face if Because now I don't have the sense.

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I don't watch, you know, Dennis dissolve into tears and think I did that. I'm a horrible person

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Right. I just get the joy of you know, sending off the scud and I don't I don't ever see the results

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I don't have to face the results. It's all anonymous And I think our world has become substantially meaner

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Yes Whoa, I will pardon that phrase

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Yeah again my comment on you know, she just talks about how it goes how it you know

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Really spreads like wildfire because that's what gossip and nastiness does right? And so now my comment has

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You know 200 likes all the kids at school think I'm really the boss why because I Took that person and I just body slammed them and they're never gonna recover from that Yep spreads like wildfire.

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I mean faster than ever Russ what? Do you ever well, yeah, there are

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I mean do you know what I find and Interesting is there is a built -in and I know you're gonna find this hard to believe there's a built -in restraints on Me on Facebook or Twitter or anything else?

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And what is that? Yeah, if I wouldn't say it in person,

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I wouldn't I shouldn't say it online, but I think even more for me. It's just like I Just can't be

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I I have to think Okay, I'm representing Christ. I'm even you know a

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Pastor I think you know, I need to I need to read this carefully and make sure this is what I want to say and I and I say that with some kind of Shame because that should be the way we look at it.

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No matter what right? Is this really how I want to represent Christ? Is this really what I want to say?

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I Had somebody friend me to hear not too long ago And somebody that I worked with years ago and the guys retired and moved to Utah And he's not a

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Mormon But you know he Posted something one day.

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In fact, he's a virulent Catholic he posted something one day and I sort of responded, you know, it was basically about Protestants and Catholics and I responded and he just you know got nasty and I just thought you know

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It's not like I ever was friends with this guy anyway So I'm just like, you know, I we went back and forth a couple times and I just thought

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I don't need this Done with it But what I what

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I try to do What what I was gonna say though what I like instead of you know,

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I mean, I think I could probably You know get into the sarcasm business and get a bunch of followers and a bunch of likes and stuff like that That wouldn't be very godly that wouldn't be the way

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I should be thinking and I what I've noticed though Do you ever notice what post that you post that get the most likes?

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My my the the post that I post that get the most likes and stuff like that are are my grandkids

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That's fine, that's I have no problem with that this is good as a matter of fact

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But I think there's a you know, just to kind of get back to this. I think there's a big difference between insulting someone over the

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Internet's and Insulting someone face -to -face there are things that are said and it's just shocking to me the things that are said over the

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Internet Where you know, nobody would say that to your face. Nobody would do that Because even if even if they wanted to I think the response would cause them to probably apologize but there's just a real indecency about the

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Internet and about the way we interact because it there's a buffer between our personal kind of empathy and our response and our

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I mean, I think most people have some degree of empathy if you don't then that's another issue, but Just just the compassion.

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There's a natural level and we just don't like to hurt people Most of us don't like to hurt people

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But the idea just getting back to anonymous this idea that we should not want to be superstar

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Christians We should want to be faithful Christians Faithful and you know, what is what does the

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Bible say if you are faithful in? Little things Then we'll get more and Some of us don't want anymore and that's fine.

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But I say just be let's just be faithful Michael Horton wrote this and we'll need to close here.

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He says we've taken the ordinary and Made it extraordinary and The ordinary has lost its own charm

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We're no longer satisfied with the ordinary life I think you know Here's the problem is that many people if they could attain the

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American Dream which they you know Two kids in a car and a house and all that which most of us could if we really set our mind to it

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It's not enough people are not satisfied they always want more There is a a built -in dissatisfaction a longing for The next level but we are to be

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Striving after a quiet life Striving after dare

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I say anonymity It's not a godless Anonymity, but is a

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Christ filled anonymity just silently quietly Doing the right things and not expecting glory plot its

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Let's just be faithful father Thank you for our time this morning to look at this topic father,

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I just pray that you would Encourage us all To faithfully exercise our gifts to benefit one another to build up the body of Christ Lord as we'll talk about even in our homes

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To set about practices and Just exude

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Faithfulness toward you in our daily lives to impact our children and thereby our children's children father the ordinary things that you have called us to Faithfulness in reading your word in studying your word in Loving one another serving one another praying for one another bearing one another's burdens all these things

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These are ultimately Father the ways that you have given us To grow

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But to love one another to show the love of Christ to the lost and dying world

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Father we would pray that you would Again undergird us for this task that you would bless each one here.