Divine Discipline - Part 2

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Reformed Theology (Part 3)

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I want to encourage you to take out your Bibles, turn with me back to the book of Hebrews.
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It's going to be in Hebrews chapter 12.
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Last week, we began looking at the subject of divine discipline, and I got about halfway through the message and realized it was going to become a two-parter.
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So this is where we are.
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I know some of you may not have been here last week.
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So I'll go ahead and give you the text that we're in.
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If everybody wants to open their Bibles, we're in Hebrews chapter 12.
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We're going to be looking at verses 7 through 11.
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And by way of introduction, I just want to sort of reiterate some of what we talked about last week.
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That way, we would all be on the same page, understanding what we've talked about so far.
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Ultimately, what we talked about last week was this.
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God uses difficulties, suffering, trials, and all kinds of other difficult things in our life to bring about our spiritual and faith maturity.
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He uses them the same way a good father uses discipline.
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Most of you know that what I mentioned last week, I believe 100 percent to be true.
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If a father doesn't discipline his children, if a parent doesn't discipline their children, then really there's no love being shown there because the Bible says the one who spares the rod hates his child, hates his son, because the responsibility of the parent is to discipline the children.
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If you don't, typically the reason is, is because and I've heard people say, well, I just can't bring myself to spank my child.
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I can't bring myself to discipline my child.
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Well, the reason why you can't bring yourself is because you love yourself more than the child, because you're so concerned about the fact that it's going to hurt you a little bit to spank them.
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It's going to make you feel bad to discipline them.
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And it's going to inconvenience you to have to follow through with the discipline.
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You're actually more concerned with how it affects you than how it affects them because discipline is necessary to grow up, to be a mature person, to be a mature individual, to be a mature adult requires discipline as a child.
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The Bible says foolishness is bound in the heart of a child.
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And the rod will surely take it away.
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I always love that phrase because it really hits to the core of it.
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It says really what's bound up in children is really foolish behavior.
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You know, what do you say about an adult who's acting foolish? You're acting like a kid.
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You're acting like a child.
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You're acting like a baby.
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You're not acting like a man or a woman or an adult.
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So we understand what the Bible means when it says foolishness is bound in the heart of a child.
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And we understand what it means when it says the rod is what takes it away.
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The discipline of the parent is what takes it away.
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It's what is necessary in bringing a child to maturity.
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And in the same way, we as spiritual beings, spiritual people, when we are born again into the family of God, we are born again as spiritual infants.
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No one is born again as a mature Christian.
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You are born again as an infant.
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And this is why sometimes it can be confusing because someone can be 75 years old and be born again at that point.
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They can go their whole lives as unregenerate folk.
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And then at 75, 80 years old, whatever, that very closely into their life, they become regenerate.
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God opens their heart.
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They believe the gospel.
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They are saved.
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And guess what? Spiritually, they are still infants.
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Now, they may have social maturity, they may have physical maturity, but spiritually, they've still got to be taught the rudimentary aspects of the faith.
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As such, a person can be very young, have received Christ at a very young age and grow to spiritual maturity with their physical maturity and be young in the world, but old in their faith.
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This is why when Paul was talking to Timothy, he said, do not allow them to despise your youth, but be an example in righteousness.
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And he was simply telling Timothy, you have since birth been taught by your grandmother and your mother, the Scriptures, and because you've been taught the Scriptures, you actually have a very mature faith for someone of your age.
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And as such, don't let people look down on your youth, but instead be an example to everyone in righteousness.
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Now, how does someone grow to that level of maturity? You go through that level of maturity through the process of divine discipline.
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God uses aspects in our life to cause us to lean on Him, to trust in Him, to pray to Him so that we will grow in our faith.
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That's what divine discipline is all about.
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And it's not fun.
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No one enjoys discipline.
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But every one of us right now, if I were to ask you when you were a child, would you have preferred your father just let you get away with everything or your mother get away with everything? You'd say, absolutely not.
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I'm glad Daddy and Mama got on to me.
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I'm glad they pointed me in the right way.
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I'm glad they took a switch to me.
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Maybe not every time, but sometimes.
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I'm glad they loved me enough to discipline me.
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Well, in the very same way, the writer of Hebrews is telling us we should learn to understand that when we are disciplined by God, it's the same love that a father loves his child with.
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God is loving us with at the same time.
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So that was what we talked about last week.
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And we started talking about the three ways God corrects us.
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The first one we talked about was corrective discipline.
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Corrective discipline is seen in the person of David.
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David sinned against God.
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God brought corrective discipline into his life to demonstrate to him his sin, not to condemn him, but to discipline him.
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This week, we're going to look at the next two types of discipline God gives us.
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But before we do that, let's stand and read the scripture together.
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So the scripture we're looking at today, again, and starting in verse seven, Hebrews 12, seven says it is for discipline that you have to endure.
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God is treating you as sons.
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For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
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Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.
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Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live for they disciplined us who for a short time or excuse me, for they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them.
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But he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness.
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For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.
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But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
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Father, as we seek to examine this text of scripture and seek to increase our understanding of it, we do pray, O Lord, first and foremost.
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That you would keep me from error as the preacher, as the mouthpiece.
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I pray, Lord, knowing that I am capable of error, I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from it.
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I pray that you would open the hearts of the people to understand the text and Lord God, not just understand it intellectually, but to apply it in all of our lives.
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We ask this in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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Most of us, again, are very familiar with corrective discipline, which was the focus of last week.
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Corrective discipline basically is this.
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If my child does something wrong in an attempt to ensure that he does not do that same thing wrong again, I will put something in his life that brings about some form of discomfort so that it discourages him from doing that in the future.
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If he runs out in traffic, I may spank his bottom to let him know, yes, you don't want to spank bottom again.
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And also to remind him that had I not caught him and pulled him back in from the road that he might have gotten hit by a car.
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I'm doing this not because I'm angry with him, but because I love him and I don't want him to do that again.
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That's corrective discipline.
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We all know this.
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We all use this as parents.
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Any parent or grandparent, you're familiar with corrective discipline.
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Well, there's two other types of discipline that we're going to talk about today.
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The first one for today is what is called preventative discipline, preventative discipline.
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This is another way which God disciplines us.
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Not just as God discipline us when we have done something wrong, but sometimes God disciplines us to keep us from doing wrong.
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It's very common in forestry that when small trees are cut away, some of the bigger trees also fall down as well.
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The reason is that the smaller trees shield the larger trees from nature's assaults.
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And as such, the larger trees never develop the strength to stand on their own.
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Well, the same thing can be said for people.
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If we are shielded from every possible hurt or suffering, when something finally does come to our lives that we have to deal with, we will be ill prepared to deal with it if we've never dealt with anything before.
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I've often made the joke about, you know, children, they have to deal with things incrementally as they get older, they deal with more serious things.
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But, you know, the first time your child ever gets a cut on his finger or a cut above the eye, that's the biggest thing in the world because he's never had it before.
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The first time he has a bloody nose, that's the biggest thing in the world because he's never dealt with it before.
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By the time you're my age, bloody nose, no big deal.
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You know, you've had many of them.
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You've been popped in the nose a few times.
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Hey, you know, you're going to live through it.
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The same thing is true with the way God deals with us.
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God allows us as his children to regularly undergo hardships to strengthen us because it is these little hardships that we deal with, these difficulties that we have to face that allow us to become more mature, more strong, so that when the day comes when we have to face the big trial, the big hardship, whatever it may be, we will be able to stand.
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Because if we didn't have those little things to deal with, we wouldn't be able to stand when the big things come.
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As an example, I'd like to cite the life of the Apostle Paul.
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Paul is, of course, one of my favorite characters in the New Testament outside of Jesus Christ.
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Of course, Paul has an interesting life, his story and all the things that go along with it.
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And Paul was a very humble and loving teacher.
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Most of us are familiar with what he wrote because he wrote the majority of the books in the New Testament, not the majority of the book, but the books themselves.
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If you number them, he has 13 of the New Testament books belong to him as far as the author is concerned.
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Well, the writer, the author is the Holy Spirit.
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Yet at the same time, even though Paul was this great teacher, this great person used by God, this this wonderful expositor, this wonderful person that God has used to explain and teach his people, Paul yet still had to deal with what God gave him that he called a thorn in his flesh.
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Everybody turn to 2nd Corinthians, hold your place in Hebrews because we're going to be back.
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But turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 and go with me to verse seven.
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Because I want to I really want to look at the words of Paul here, I want us to examine what he says in 2nd Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians chapter 12.
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He has just finished talking about the fact that when it comes to boasting, if there was anyone who could boast about their their faith, if there's anybody could boast about their their upbringing, it would be him because he had this tremendous Jewish pedigree.
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But yet at the same time, he can't boast in that.
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He boasts in Christ.
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But then he goes on to say that God has given him this tremendous difficulty, a thorn in the flesh that's supposed to keep him from conceit.
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Look at verse seven, it says, so to keep me from being conceited.
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Now, we all know what conceited means, right? Conceited means full of ourselves, egotistical, to be haughty or to be very self congratulatory.
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There's all kinds of phrases that you can use for for being conceited.
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And one of the things that I've often heard about the Apostle Paul, when I'm talking to my liberal friends, I use friends and, you know, it's hard to be friends for me with them.
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But when I have people that I know who are very liberal biblically and they want to talk about the Apostle Paul, there's two things they always say about the Apostle Paul.
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One, they say he was sexist, which is just outright foolishness.
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And two, they say he was conceited, that he was self congratulatory, that he was so impressed with himself.
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And they usually go on to make up some kind of form that Paul hijacked Christianity, made it Pauline theology and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Aside from all that, the very fact that they make the point that they believe Paul was conceited is interesting because here Paul is making the point that God actually places something in his life to keep that from happening.
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God has established for Paul a difficulty so that he would always have to go back to God for his strength, that Paul would never be able to consider that he himself was the one doing all this, that he would have to always rely on the fact that it wasn't coming from his gifts, like his talents, but that what he was doing was actually coming from God.
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So again, it goes on in the text.
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It says, so to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, what has he thought about that? Who other than Paul receives such great revelation about the person and lordship of Jesus Christ, the very sovereignty of God? It is Paul who writes to us the magnificent magnum opus, which we call the Book of Romans.
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He writes to us all of these wonderful things in Ephesians and Galatians about who Christ is and the salvation that comes by grace through faith and not of works.
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This wonderful revelation of God, certainly someone who received that kind of a revelation from God would have cause at least to say, hey, I must be somebody a little special.
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I must be somebody a little important.
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If God would take the most important revelations of history, more important than anything that's ever been shown to any man, if he would reveal that to me and use me as the conduit through which to send out his message.
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Certainly, Paul had the opportunity to maybe see himself as somewhat higher.
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As somewhat special, so he says, so to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh.
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Now, this phrase, a thorn was given me in the flesh simply means a difficulty was allowed to enter my life.
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It's not a physical thorn as if, you know, Paul is literally has something stabbing him in the side.
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I think we all know that, but I just want to make this point.
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We all have heard the phrase thorn in the flesh.
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I actually had a person tell me one time they were very excited to be my thorn in the flesh.
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I was like, well, thank you.
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That's wonderful.
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I appreciate it.
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Of course, that's sarcasm in case you're missing it, because nobody likes a thorn in the flesh.
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And you know exactly what it means when somebody says they're trying to be a thorn in your flesh.
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That means they're trying to be difficult.
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They're trying to harass you.
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They're trying to make your life harder than it has to be.
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Right.
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We know what it means.
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We understand the phrase.
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We understand how it's being used in this context.
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So when he says a thorn in the flesh was given to me and then he goes on to say a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited.
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Now, I've heard people say that they believe that the thorn in Paul's flesh was poor eyesight.
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I've heard people say that because of the situation on the road to Damascus, that after the situation on the road to Damascus, we do read in other parts of scripture that he had to use salve on his eyes and that that poor eyesight made it very difficult for him to write.
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You'll notice some of the books of the New Testament that bear his name weren't written by him, but were dictated by him.
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And someone else wrote him down, said difficulty with his eyesight.
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And some people think that it was that physical difficulty that Paul is talking about, which was the thorn in the flesh.
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I don't think the text bears that out.
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I wouldn't make an argument about it, but I would simply say this.
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He very specifically says that it was a person.
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He said a messenger of Satan.
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I don't think poor eyesight would be used.
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I don't think as a natural way of using language.
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I don't think anyone would designate poor eyesight as a messenger of Satan.
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It just doesn't seem to follow.
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But a person that makes your life difficult, number one, is really easy to consider that they would be a thorn in the flesh.
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And number two, to call them a messenger of Satan would be right on to think of a person who's creating difficulty in the life of Paul.
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Now, there are times in the life of Paul and the writings of Paul where he actually describes certain people.
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He name by name, Alexander the coppersmith is a person who done him wrong.
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Really, would you like to be that guy? How would you like to be Alexander the one guy who did Paul wrong? And hey, he decided to include your name in the book that was going to be read more than any book in history, that you're the guy who did him wrong.
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So one thing Paul was able to do, he was able to identify that there were certain folks out there that made his life difficult.
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There were certain folks out there who made his life more hard than it needed to be.
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So in this text, it seems to me at least when he's saying that I have this thorn in the flesh, this messenger of Satan, that the reason, you know, this person is very difficult, but the very reason that this person is here is they are keeping me from conceit.
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I want to give you an analogy to something today.
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I want to give you an analogy, maybe it'll help you follow.
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As a pastor, it is very easy.
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It is very easy to become a person of monologue.
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A person who only speaks and doesn't listen.
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And who is never willing to be corrected, like I know a lot of pastors that are like that, they become so fascinated with their position, they become so high up in their organization that they are the figurehead within the organization and they don't have any equals.
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They don't have any peers.
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They are the the head of that particular church or organization.
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And as such, they never allow for questioning of what they're saying or questioning of what they're doing.
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And in that, they become dangerous.
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We've seen this in some of the worst ministries in the world.
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Some of the worst, Arthur Binningham, a terribly dangerous person who calls himself a minister of the gospel.
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Joel Osteen, terribly dangerous, in my opinion, because he's not preaching the gospel, but he's got a 40,000 member people.
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Oprah Winfrey's come to sit in his church.
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But the truth of the matter is you have these guys who get so far, they have no equals, they have no peers, they have no thorn in the flesh.
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They have no one to call them to accountability.
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Now, for Paul, it was an unbeliever.
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It was a messenger of Satan that God was using to call him to an account.
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I've had that before.
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I've had people who were unbelievers that have forced me to have to answer questions.
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And, you know, at the time, I felt like I was being under an inquisition and I didn't necessarily like it, but I was stronger on the other side because I had to stand for what I believed.
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I had to stand for what I was teaching.
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And you know what? It wasn't just a captive audience who had to listen to what I had to say.
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And I think when Paul's talking about here, this messenger of Satan, this thorn in the flesh, I think he had a consistent person who was always calling him to task about what he was teaching and he had to continue to stand.
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This is why Paul, in my opinion, is so concerned with apologetics.
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You read through Romans, you read through Ephesians and you will see an apologetically minded pastor.
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He's constantly giving defense for what he's saying.
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This is what the Bible teaches.
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This is what the Old Testament scripture teaches.
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He's an apologist preacher.
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And I think it was because he had this person who was consistently digging into his side, consistently there as a thorn.
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And again, we see this and it says he asked to be given relief.
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It says three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.
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But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
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Again, sometimes we have things in our lives.
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And sometimes we have people in our lives and we wish they were not there.
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You can't say amen as Votibachan says, say ouch, because that's the truth.
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Sometimes there's folks that you wish would just leave you alone.
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But God may be using that person to bring your sanctification closer to where it needs to be.
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He may be using that person to prevent you from doing things you ought not to do, like become conceited or to become ungracious or to become a gossip or to become an unreasonable request or anything.
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All kinds of things that we can become and people are put into our lives by God to discipline us, to prevent us from going where our hearts would allow us.
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I think Paul was being honest.
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I think Paul was saying he could become conceited because notice he mentions conceit twice in that passage.
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He mentions conceit twice.
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He says, so to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
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He uses it twice.
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Because, very simply, he's making the point it would be easy for me to become conceited.
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But God has provided this prevention to keep that from happening.
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So we see God uses prevention.
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The last type of discipline, we've looked at the first two, we said God uses corrective discipline.
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God uses preventative discipline.
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The last one is God uses instructive discipline.
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What that means is this, sometimes discipline is not intended to correct us because we've done wrong.
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And sometimes discipline is not intended to keep us from doing wrong.
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Sometimes discipline is simply there to teach us something about God.
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Now, who in the world could I be using as an example of this? Well, how about Job? Job did nothing worthy of correction.
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Neither was Job on the way to do something worthy of correction.
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If you read the first chapter of the book of Job, God says, consider my servant Job.
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He's using Job as the example of faith because Satan has challenged God.
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And God says, look at Job.
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Here he is.
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He, among his contemporaries, there is no fault.
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Not meaning he was sinless, but that among the people around him, he was faithful.
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He trusted in God.
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He took care of his family.
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He was a man to be admired.
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He was a man of God.
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And God said, consider my servant Job.
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And then Satan says, well, you know what? If Job didn't have all those good things, if you hadn't given Job all the land, all the family, all the blessings, he would curse you.
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So God decides to allow suffering into the life of Job.
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And what did Job receive? Was he prevented from doing wrong? No, because he wasn't on the way to do wrong in the first place.
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Was he corrected from doing wrong? No, the text doesn't indicate that at all.
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But instead, Job received a lesson in the sovereignty of God.
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Because at the end of Job, Job chapter 42, verse five, he said, I had heard of you.
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This is Job speaking to God.
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He said, I had heard of you by the hearing of the ears.
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But now my eyes see you.
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I had heard of you.
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I knew you.
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I knew you in my mind.
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I knew you were there and I knew and I trusted you and I worshiped you.
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But now I know you.
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I know what some of you are thinking.
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Well, I hope I don't have to go through everything Job went through just to get closer to God.
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But you know what? Sometimes we do.
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Sometimes God instructs us through suffering.
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And it hurts and we don't like it.
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But once we've learned, we realize that God didn't do it because he hated us.
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God did it because he loves us.
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God disciplines in different ways for different reasons.
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But here's the thing to always remember about the discipline of the Lord.
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Discipline is not condemnation.
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For there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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We know we are not condemned by God, but God does bring about in our lives difficulties so that we will experience discipline and grow to maturity.
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And here's the thing.
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If you're an unbeliever, you don't receive discipline.
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You receive condemnation.
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And if you're a believer, you don't receive condemnation.
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You receive discipline.
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It's the same way that I deal with children in my neighborhood and my kids.
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If a boy next door comes over to my son's yard and they're playing basketball together and that boy does something wrong, I say, go to your mother.
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My son does something wrong.
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I spank his bottom.
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Because the other boy is not mine to condemn.
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He's not mine or not mine to discipline.
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But my son receives my discipline.
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This is why the text very, very eloquently says, if you are without discipline from God in which all and by all, it means all believers have received, you are not a child of God.
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Because God disciplines those whom he loves the same way a father and a mother disciplines their children out of love.
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In this respect, we have to learn then to actually appreciate our discipline.
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This is why the text goes on in verse eight to say or rather in verse nine, it says, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.
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Shall we not much more? That's an awkward argument means to build on itself.
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If we appreciated our father's discipline that raised us to being mature adults, shall we not much more be subject to the father's spirits and live? Shall we not much more be subject to God's discipline and understand that if our parents discipline brought us to maturity and it was good for us, so, too, will the discipline of God bring us to maturity and be for our best? Discipline is important.
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Discipline is necessary.
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And discipline is used by God to bring us to mature faith.
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We don't like it.
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As the verse 11 says, for the moment, all discipline seems painful.
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But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.
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Father, we thank you for what you have shown us in this text.
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We thank you, Lord, for what we still have yet to learn.
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And that we will learn, Lord, through your process of instruction and discipline and love to bring us to spiritual maturity.
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We thank you for this church family.
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We thank you that we love one another and that we are encouraged by our mutual faith in you.
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And we do pray, Lord, that we would encourage each other towards righteousness and stand beside each other when we face those times of difficulties which try our faith and cause us to call out to you for mercy.
31:33
Father, we love you.
31:34
We praise you.
31:35
We ask that now that you would keep us safe as we leave this place.
31:39
In Jesus' name, amen.