I Love You Guys - Have A Great Weekend!

All right, well, it's the weekend and I wanted to just say this,

I love you guys. I absolutely just want you to know that I love you guys so much.

I wanted to leave you with positivity going into the weekend. You know, the church gets drug through the mud constantly.

And we expect it from pagans, right? Like we understand that if we're going to walk with the

Lord and we're going to do the things that the Lord commands us to do, you know, we understand that's going to leave us at odds with pagans.

You know, people that want to just engage in immorality. People that want to indulge their flesh in a variety of different ways.

And that works itself out in so many different ways. We understand that from Romans 1.

We understand that just from the scripture, we see people indulging their flesh. And we also understand that from our own walks with the

Lord because we understand that even though we're forgiven, even though we have the Holy Spirit of God within us, we're working every day to put to death the deeds of the flesh.

And so we're well acquainted with that whole fight. And so of course someone that's not trying to do that, someone that's given over to the flesh and not trying to fight in war against the flesh and all that kind of thing, of course they're going to hate the church.

They're going to hate Christ. I mean, they hate Christ. Of course they're going to hate Christ's people. They're going to hate

Christ's body. And they're going to say, oh, they're all hypocrites. You see, look at these hypocrites. And they're going to say that.

We understand that. We expect to get hate from pagans. And there's nothing unusual about it.

If you're a believer and you're not expecting that pagans are going to try to shut down your churches every chance they get, every crisis that happens they're going to try to shut down your church.

If you're not expecting that at this point, you really need to take a good look in the mirror and embrace reality because that is reality.

They'll use any excuse, even a mild pandemic. They'll use a mild pandemic to shut down your church.

Even as the strip clubs are open, the mosques are open, all the rest of it, the marijuana dispensaries are open.

It doesn't take much to give the pagans an excuse to try to shut down the worship of the

Lord that they hate with all they have. But the reality is that we know as believers that it's not just the pagans that drag the church through the mud as well.

It's also people that profess Christ. It's become fashionable to talk about how traumatic it is to be an evangelical, to talk about how awful evangelicals are, and, you know,

I had the worst time, and they said this to me, and then that didn't affirm me, so whatever.

It's become very fashionable in a variety of different circumstances. Now I focus, of course, on the woke church, of course.

I focus on the issues of race, and it's become very fashionable for rich white people.

And minorities to say, well, the church is just so horrible.

They're like responsible for all of the racial trauma that we have in our society. But it's not just race, it's gender, it's other things, you know what

I mean? And it's become very fashionable for people who profess Christ, or at least at one point profess

Christ, to drag the church through the mud. And what I want you to understand is that when they do that, it's

God that they're attacking. And this is the truth. People that are raging against God, when the nations rage, they know that there's nothing they can do.

God is so far up there. He is so far above us that they have no hope of even touching his foot.

If they wanted to fight God, they couldn't even touch him. They couldn't even look at him, much less attack him.

So they understand that intuitively. So what they do instead, they do the next best thing. They attack his body, the church.

They attack you and I. So that's the thing. We need to understand that that happens in a variety of different ways, in a variety of different contexts.

And what I want you to know, and what I want you to really go into the weekend feeling, is that you understand sometimes there are criticisms of you.

Yeah, we are sometimes fairly hypocritical and stuff like that. We're not perfect. Yes, the body of Christ, Christ makes us perfect, but us as individuals and us together, we don't do things perfectly, right?

We don't agree the way we ought. We don't engage the way we ought. We're gonna have missteps, and we're gonna make mistakes, and we ought to be in a situation where we're secure enough in the grace of Jesus Christ that we can admit to our mistakes and turn from them and change them and do better next time and stuff like that.

But even if we don't, we understand that we're still covered by that amazing grace from the

Lord Jesus Christ. Like, when you understand that grace, you can look at the body of Christ. You can look at your brothers and your sisters in the

Lord, and you can understand that, though we're not perfect, that there's no people that I would rather be my people than the

Church of God. There's just no question about that, and I feel that way as much as I can muster within me.

And sometimes when I don't feel that way, I need to go to the Scripture. I need to go to the sure words of God to remind me of that, that it's like these are the people that God loves.

These are the people that Christ gave his life for. He thought that they were, for whatever reason, we don't know why this is, he thought for whatever reason that they were valuable enough to give his life for, the

God of the universe, the God that created the heavens and the earth and the firmament and all this. Like, we understand, and it's like, how could

I not see the value in those people? Guys, the Church of God, like,

I have a lot of harsh words to say for some people sometimes. And I know that's the caricature, like, all

I have is harsh words. No, that's not true. It's not flamethrower all the time with me, you know what

I mean? And I want to have a balance there, of course. That's the reality.

But the reality is this, look, guys. I hope that the Canadian Christians rise up and get that guy

James Coates' back and open up their church and worship the Lord on Sunday the way they're supposed to do.

I hope that happens. But if it doesn't, I'm not going to drag the

Church of God through the mud. We're not perfect, and we're not going to get everything right.

We should be striving for that, but we're not going to do it. But I just want you to know, though, we're not perfect, but I love you guys.

And I hope you feel the same way for the Church of God as well. There's no people on planet

Earth that I would prefer to be my people more than the Church of God. And, you know, we might fight sometimes.

We might have words with each other and stuff like that. I've got words for my own biological brother sometimes, you know what

I mean? We haven't done it recently, but we used to get in some knock -down, drag -out fights.

But we loved each other, and we knew that we had each other's back. Brothers, I got your back, and I hope you have mine.

And I love you guys. You're not perfect. I don't expect you to be perfect. And I hope you don't expect me to be perfect as well.

But I love you guys, and I just want you to know that everyone who watches this channel, everyone who's supported me, everyone who's commented, everyone who's disagreed with me, but was willing to hear me out and stuff like that, and even if you weren't, even if you just wanted to disagree with me and send me a hate message on YouTube or whatever,

I love you guys. It's just that simple. And that's really all there is to it.

I mean, the grace of God be with you. But I will say this, and it's not just a love fest here on this channel, you know what

I mean? It's not just a love fest, because we also have to consider what the Word of God itself says when it comes to people that reject the name of Christ, people that have no love for the

Lord. What does it say in 1 Corinthians 16? It says,

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed.

And so it's like, you know, this is not just like a peanut butter, you know, everyone's the same, oh, it's just all good feelings.

No, no, no. Like, listen, I love God's people, and I love my enemy in a different way than I love

God's people. There's just no question about that. I'm going to treat my enemy according to the law of God, but God's people, it's different.

But any man, if they don't love Christ, let them be accursed. And that doesn't give me any pleasure to say, because I was that man for a very long time.

And, you know, God had mercy upon me. I'm the worst sinner that I know about.

I know very well the depths of my depravity before I came to Christ, and I know my battles with sin right now.

And so this is not from a position of like, I'm better than you and this kind of thing.

But I know that in Christ, the church of God, though we might not be better than you in and of ourselves, we understand that we're better off because we are covered by the

Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross. I hope that that is you.

I really do. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. I hope you have a great weekend, and God willing, we will see you on Monday.