James 5:7-11 (Faithful While We Wait)

The Shepherd's Church

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Well, I would just begin by saying it is my distinct joy and pleasure to be able to open the Word up with you at this church.

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It's even sweeter joy to be opening it up with each and every single one of you because I believe that we are a church that genuinely wants to understand the

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Word of God, genuinely wants to love the Word of God and cling to the Word of God, and that fills my heart with so much joy.

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I will say this, there's no greater joy in ministry than being a pastor when a church is eagerly striving to live up to its mission, and our mission is to glorify

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God together through the preaching, singing, hearing, doing of His Word. Our mission is to have a Word -centered church where the

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Word is permeating every facet of our church, and I cannot tell you just how joyful it has been over the last two years to see men and women growing in the

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Word, hungry for the Word, desiring the Word, applying the Word, hearing the Word, going out into the world and doing the

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Word. My heart is so full. You know,

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I think this is an especially poignant point for me because, like I said to you earlier,

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I just got back from a conference in California with about 100 different pastors from mostly the

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West Coast, and the title of the conference was Devoted to Christ Church, and every message that we heard was about how do we love the church, how do we serve the church, how do we pray for the church, how do we care for the church, how do we build up the church that Christ Himself has promised to build.

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And as I was thinking about all of this, I was thinking that the end goal of the church is not ministry.

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The end goal of the church is not congregation and how big that is. The end goal of the church is not small groups.

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The end goal of the church is not even fellowship. The end goal of the church is that we would be a people that are faithful and set apart to God.

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I don't care if we have the hippest church. Even saying that means we're not very hip. I don't care if we have the biggest church.

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I don't care if we have the church that has the largest impact in this region. I don't care about any of that. What I care about is that we're faithful.

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That's what I want with all my heart. That's what keeps me up at night. That's what I want to, that's what I pray for and yearn for is that we would be a faithful church and that is what our world needs now more than ever is faithful churches.

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Churches that do not bow their knee to culture, but unapologetically bow their knee to Jesus Christ.

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Churches that love and proclaim the gospel. Churches that cling to His Word. Churches that share that Word with the world.

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With love, but with truth. I believe that this church is a church that's striving to do that.

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And it reminds me, we're in the month of October and when we get to October, I don't think about candy, I don't think about Halloween, I think about Martin Luther.

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504 years ago, this frumpy, grumpy German monk rang the bell of the

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Reformation on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. That's how you say it, it's not Wittenberg, just insider, give you a little insider baseball there.

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But he nailed his 95 grievances of the Catholic Church to the castle church in Wittenberg, sounding the call for the

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Reformation. Four years later, he's before kings and princes and the Pope and they're ready to kill him.

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Because this man dared to say that the Bible alone is the authority over the church. Not councils, not traditions, not any of that stuff.

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It's the Bible alone that's the authority over the Word of God. That's what we're saying at this church. But we're saying that because we're standing on the shoulders of giants who have come before us like Martin Luther.

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This is what Martin Luther said, but with the threat of being murdered, this is what he said.

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Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth.

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I love Luther. Unless I'm convinced by scripture and plain reason,

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I do not accept the authority of popes and councils for they have contradicted each other. My conscience is captive to the

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Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything. For to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.

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Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. Luther was captivated by a vision of the centrality of the

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Word of God, sola scriptura, the Word of God alone. Like I said, we stand on the shoulders of giants being here today, 500 years later, so that we can stand as people who love the

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Word of God and who will not be moved no matter if princes, lords, kings, presidents, epidemiologists, or anyone else try to push us around.

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We stand on the sufficiency of the Word of God and we will not bow under any consequences.

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I think of another example, the book of Esther. You have this woman who is catapulted into the castle of the most powerful man on earth.

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Her people, while she is in the castle, her people are outside under the threat of death. In a moment in their country's history that looked much bleaker than our current moment or any moment that we've ever went through as Americans.

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And her uncle comes to her and this is what he says. Do not think to yourself that in the king's presence that you will escape any more than all the other

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Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, a time such as this, relief and deliverance will arise for the

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Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. But who knows whether you have come to a kingdom for such a time as this.

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I love that line, it's one of my favorite lines. This is a woman who understood who

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God was. This is a woman who obeyed what her uncle was trying to share with her.

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This is a woman who stood faithful in a time where the whole rest of the country was falling apart.

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Her people were being threatened. And that's what we need today. We need churches like Luther and like Esther.

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Churches that will not be silent when it comes to the things of God. Churches that will boldly declare the truth in a truthless age.

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Churches that will shine the light of Jesus in a world that is filled with darkness. Churches that will cling to the life of Christ when the default mode of human nature is to cling to death.

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We need churches that understand that we have been raised up for a time such as this, and we've been raised up to be faithful to Christ, clinging to his word to declare it to the nations.

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And we need to understand that God doesn't need the shepherd's church, just like he didn't need Esther. God has invited us to participate in his story.

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God has given us a glorious message to tell. If we won't share it, someone else will.

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But praise God that we've been invited to share it. To take a stand for the truth of God. That's what

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America needs right now. America doesn't need more politics. America doesn't need more legislative, executive, judicial.

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America doesn't need that. America doesn't need more media. America doesn't need more spin. America doesn't need any of that.

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America needs Christians to be Christians. So loving that they will tell the truth no matter what.

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So convicted that they will tell the truth, even if it costs them everything. Churches like the apostle

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Paul talks about in Romans 1 .16, says,

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I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God to everyone who believes. We need churches that aren't ashamed of the gospel.

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We need churches that will proclaim that word. Because that word is what saves.

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It's not our programs. It's not our entertainment. That word is the efficacious word that saves people out of their sins.

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If you and I want to see revival, if we want to see salvations, if we want to see the church thriving in this country again, then we need faithful churches.

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We need churches that will proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. That are more sold out to him than anything else.

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We need men who will be more sold out to Jesus than anything else. Our world is attacking masculinity if you haven't noticed.

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We need men to be men, just like 1 Corinthians 16 said. We need men who act like men and who will proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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We need women who will proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and own that gospel more than anything else in their world.

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We need families and children and we need a church that will cling to the gospel of Jesus Christ more than anything else.

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Now today, I want us to press into that motivation, into that heart.

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I want us to press into what faithful church looks like through the lens of James chapter 5, verses 7 through 11.

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Now you may be asking yourself, why aren't we going back to the gospel of John? And it's a great question.

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After Derek and I were talking, thinking, praying about this, even into late hours of the night, it seemed like this message was the one that God wanted us to share.

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And with that, I want us to read James 5, 7 through 11. It says,

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Therefore, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it until it gets to the early and late rains.

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My whole punch knocked out that word. You too be patient, strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the

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Lord is near. Do not complain, brethren, against one another so that you yourselves may not be judged.

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Behold, the judge is standing right at the door. As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the

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Lord. We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the

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Lord's dealing that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. Let's pray.

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Lord, I pray today that when we think about what it means for this church, for our families, for our people, for ourselves, to be faithful, that,

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Lord, we would let the words of James chapter 5, 7, and 11 build into us an understanding of what it means to be faithful in a culture that's not, in a world that's not.

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Lord, would you let us see just very simple truths in this text that will help us know what it means to be faithful, faithful as we wait for you to come back and take us into eternity where we will live with you forever, where the curse will be lifted, where there will be no more pain.

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Lord, help us to be faithful while we wait, in Christ's name, amen. If you had to come up with a one -word summary to the book of James, you would say faithful.

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Faithful is essentially what the book of James is all about. It's a theme in the book, and James itself has been talking about this through various different lenses.

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Faithful in trials, in chapter 1. Faithful in temptations. Faithful in how we treat other believers.

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Faithful in the word. Faithful in our words that we share with other people. Faithful in our walk. Faithful in our wisdom.

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Faithful in our wealth. And now we come today to James chapter 5, where we're going to be talking about faithful while we wait.

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While we wait on the Lord Jesus Christ to return. While we're waiting, we have to be the church.

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And that's what we're going to talk about today. While we're waiting, we're not going to bury our head in the sand, and we're not going to stare at the clouds and do nothing.

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We're going to look at what the word of God says on how we are to be the church that is faithful while we wait.

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Now James uses very interesting language in this passage. Here's a few of the things that he says.

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He says, be patient until the coming of the Lord. He says, the coming of the Lord is near. He says, the judge is standing right at the door.

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And then he says, we count those blessed who endured. We're talking about the return of the Lord and how do we be patient while we wait.

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James is saying that a key element of faithfulness for the church is patience. A key litmus test on whether you are faithful is whether you are patient.

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How many of us struggle with that? You know, we hear people say, don't pray for patience.

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I actually hate that. You know, because there's this sort of, there's this sort of idea that if we pray for patience,

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God's going to pummel us with a lot of bad things to make us patient. Okay. Even if that were the case,

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I don't think God works in that sort of an exchange relationship where he's waiting in heaven. Oh, they prayed for patience. Oh. That would be weird.

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It'd be like Zeus. Like, we don't believe in Zeus. We believe in Yahweh who loves us and cares for us and accomplishes all things for our good.

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But so what if we prayed for patience and things got harder in our life to teach us how to be more like Jesus?

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That would be good. There's parts of our life that need to be cut out of us. There's parts of our life that need to be purged because we're selfish, sinful people who love ourselves more than we love

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God. Sometimes God uses trials and pains to purge us of ourselves so that we can be more like him.

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We can be more like him. Praise God. But we don't like it. We don't like being patient.

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But James is going to help us and teach us how to be so. And he's going to do it in a specific way.

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He's not just going to talk about patience in general. This is not a message on how to navigate traffic in Boston and how to be a better Christian on the road.

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Sure, that's important, but this is not what this message is about. This is patience while we wait for the return of Christ.

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This is a specific kind of patience that if we understand this, that it will help every aspect of our life and it will make us faithful people.

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So what I want us to do today is I want us to look at a couple of things. I want us to look at the background of what

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James is talking about in James chapter five. I want us to understand why James is talking about this, and I want us to understand three things that we need to rest in the truth of God, that we need to re

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I lost my word. We need to rebuild ourselves with the truth of God and we need to repent when we fall short of the truth of God.

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So let us look right now at the background of this passage, James chapter five. Now at this time in around the fifties is when

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James wrote, they're living at the dawning of two different ages of time. You and I don't really have an understanding of what that looks like because we don't live in that era.

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We live in the age of the church, the age of grace, the age of Christ covenant kingdom. We don't know what it looks like to live in a time period where the old

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Testament is still happening and the new Testament is dawning, but they were, they were living at the edge of two different eras.

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The temple, the sacrificial system, the priests, the Levites, the synagogues, all of that was still operating at the time that James is writing.

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And yet Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. He started his brand new kingdom that is going to go to all the nations of the earth.

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One kingdom, the old covenant kingdom is failing and falling and tanking and another kingdom is rising.

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They're living at the, at the confluence of these two kingdoms, the old kingdom and the new kingdom.

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They had one foot in one age and one foot in another. Now again, you and I don't know what that's like.

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There's no temple in Jerusalem. There's no sacrificial system. There's no priest. We don't know what it looks like to live in the overlap of those two ages.

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But when Jesus died in the early thirties, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, this began the new

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Testament era. And it also began the death of the old Testament era. And they were dealing with a lot of struggles in this unique 40 year window from AD 30 to AD 70.

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They were scattered all over the Roman empire and they had two great enemies at that time. The church itself did.

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The first enemy that they had was the Roman empire, the Roman empire, because they believed in Jesus Christ as the only

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God, as the only true son of God. The Romans looked at them as though they were atheist because the

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Romans said, you can believe in whatever God you want, but you have to believe in our gods too. And you especially have to believe in Caesar, who is what they believe, the son of God on earth.

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And they would say, Caesar is Lord. So when the Christians would say, no, no, no, Christ is

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Lord. They were making an entirely controversial statement that the

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Romans would have been angry about. The Romans would have persecuted them. And their persecutions were fierce in the first century.

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James is writing during the reign of Nero Caesar. His reputation precedes him, but I'll just share a couple of things that were happening to the

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Christians during that time period. Nero was a man who probably was insane just by sheer maniacal violence that he perpetrated.

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And after setting the city of Rome on fire because he wanted to build new, he wanted to build a new palace.

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People didn't like that very much, so he blamed the Christians. After he blamed the Christians as a punishment, he began setting them on fire in his gardens.

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He dipped them in wax. He set them on fire to light his gardens at night. That's the kind of man that we're talking about.

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Nero was the kind of man that threw Christians in the Colosseum to hungry lions and angry gladiators as the people brutishly watched and cheered and craved more and more of the

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Christians' blood. But they weren't just persecuted by the Romans.

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There's more that we could share, but they weren't just persecuted by the Romans. Christians were being hit on both sides.

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They were being attacked by Romans, but they were also being attacked by the Jews. The Jews thought that they were blasphemers because they believed that Jesus was the

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Son of God. They said, how can you possibly believe that this man named Jesus is the Son of God?

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So they hated them for that. They brought them under false charges. They brought them to the synagogues.

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They beat them in public. They murdered them. They stoned them. Mothers and fathers were turning against their own children because they had believed in Jesus.

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Riots were happening in the streets. Angry mobs were killing people in the alleyways. We can kind of understand what this is like if you go to Chicago on the weekend, but not quite as bad.

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The faithful disciples of Christ were being attacked on all sides. And they were asking questions.

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You know that they were asking questions. We put ourselves into their position and we say, what questions would we be asking if we were being attacked on every single side, every single front?

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You know that they were asking questions like, how long, Lord, are you going to allow this empty temple to stand when you are the true temple of God?

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How long are you going to allow these empty sacrifices to stand when you are the true lamb of God? How long are you going to allow these faithless priests to serve when you are the true high priest of your people?

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And how long, oh Lord, are you going to allow us to suffer when we're the ones following you, when we're the ones who love you?

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How long, oh Lord? James is going to give his people a very pastoral response.

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He's going to tell his people how to wait patiently for the coming of the Lord, even in the midst of the greatest trials that they've ever faced in their life.

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He's going to tell them to not be discouraged, to not give yourself over to fear, to be patient as you wait for the coming of the

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Lord because your redemption is coming. And these are not platitudes by James, he is going to root them in three theological truths that are going to help his people understand how they wait patiently for the

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Lord. Now, I have to give you one more piece of historical information just so you'll understand the dynamic that's happening here.

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Because in 70 AD, the two great enemies of the church, the

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Jews and the Romans, went to war with each other giving the Christians a temporary break, a temporary respite.

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The Romans were angry at the Jews because the Jews were constantly rebelling, constantly causing trouble in the region, and the

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Romans, after Nero committed suicide, sent their armies to Jerusalem and they slaughtered the

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Jewish people in AD 70. Their temple was burned to the ground. There was more than a million

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Jews that were lying dead in the city of Jerusalem. Now to put this in perspective, there were six million people that died in the

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Holocaust, but if you look at the percentages of the people who were alive, the Jewish people that were alive at the time, this was a worse slaughter of the

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Jewish people than even the Holocaust, as awful and as wretched as that was.

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Vultures surrounded the city, it was so bad, and then whatever people were left who were not killed were taken into slavery to the city of Rome.

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The Jewish people survived today because they were put on boats and taken to the city of Rome as slaves.

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All of their treasures, all of their temple artifacts, everything was packed up and taken to Rome.

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Now, I think that James has this in mind when he's talking to the Jewish people, or he's talking to his church,

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I think he has this near -term fulfillment in mind, because he says in verse 1 of chapter 5, come now you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you.

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The Jewish people, especially the high priests, were considered to be extremely wealthy people. The temple was the most glorious building in all of the ancient world, and many commentators believe

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James is prophesying about an event that's going to happen 10 to 15 years later. Many commentators believe

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James is prophesying about the downfall of Jerusalem here, to destroy the people who looked right dead in Pilate's eyes and said, we have no king but Caesar.

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The people who had abandoned their God, God was going to destroy. James 5 .3

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says it again, he says your gold and your silver have rusted, and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire.

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Again, many people believe that James is prophesying of the fiery destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 in this passage.

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It is in the last days, the last days of the Old Testament era, that you have stored up your treasure, but the point is that it will be destroyed.

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James 5 .4 says, behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your field and which has been withheld by you cries out against you, and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the

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Lord of the Sabbath. Like Abel in the Old Testament, whose blood cried out to the throne of God because he was murdered in his innocence, all of the sins of Israel have come up to the throne of God, and it says that the judge is ready to pronounce judgment.

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James 5 .5 says you've lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wants and pleasure.

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You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. In the waning hours of the

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Old Testament period, judgment was coming upon the Jewish people, and this is certainly a part of the context.

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This is certainly a part of what James is expecting here. James 5 .7

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says, therefore, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.

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James is telling people that your trial is about to be over, and this is, again, this is a near -term fulfillment.

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This is something that's going to happen in their lifetime that applies to them. He says, be patient, strengthen your hearts for the coming of the

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Lord is near. He's saying that there is some kind of event that's going to happen in their lifetime that's near to them that is going to give them freedom.

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He says in verse 9, behold, the judge is standing right at the door. You think about it, it's the same metaphor as it is today.

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When a judge goes back to deliberate on the case, and he's reviewing the material, and he's ready to pronounce his verdict, he stands up, he walks to the door, and he puts his hand on the door, and he opens the door, and he's going to give the pronouncement of judgment to the whole courtroom.

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That is what is happening here. The judge is standing up right at the door, ready to open the door, ready to pronounce judgment upon the

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Jewish people for their sins. And the greatest sin of all was killing God's one and only Son. It says in Matthew 23 that all of the judgment from Abel all the way to Zechariah was going to fall on that generation.

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So, James is picking up on these themes. But like we saw in Exodus today,

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Exodus 14, there's a contextual thing that's happening at the Red Sea, and then there's something that we can learn from that event.

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I think this is true in this passage as well. Because Christ has not fully and totally returned for His people.

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Christ came and pronounced judgment on the Jewish people, yes, but He has not come yet and brought

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His people into eternity. So, we are in the same position as the Jewish people. We are also waiting on the

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Lord to return. We are also living in a world that is not our home, that is broken, that is corrupted, that we look at and we're like, how long,

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Lord, are we going to remain? How many of you, especially in 2020 and 2021, have said, how many of you said, it feels like the end?

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It feels like things are getting worse. I can't wait for my Christ, my Jesus to return.

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How many of you said that? We cry out like they did. We long for the same things that they did.

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We want Jesus to return. And the passage is trying to get us to understand, how do we wait?

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Because if 2020 and 2021 has taught me anything, is that so many Christians right now are frustrated.

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So many Christians right now are discouraged. So many Christians right now are not experiencing patience when it comes to waiting for the

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Lord. They're experiencing exacerbation. And that is not the way that James is telling us, the church, that we ought to approach this.

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But how easy is it to fall into despair? How easy is it to fall into depression and anxiety?

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How easy is it to turn on the news and say, my gosh, how is this happening?

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How is it possible that this event, like, you know, we can list off a hundred different things.

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If you watch the news, you're probably depressed. I've recently almost entirely pulled back because I don't want to be depressed.

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And God's in control. So all of these things that are happening, all the musings of men, all of the machinations of sinful people that are trying to fight over this world, this world's not my home.

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This world's not going to give me joy, and God is in control. So therefore, how much investment should I put into something that's going to make me miserable?

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We long for the same things as they longed for. But as Christians, we have to live differently than the world.

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And James 5, 7 through 11 is going to teach us how to do that. Now, we can go through and talk about more in the setting.

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We are struggling with the same things they were. The world is attacking us. Religious people are attacking us as Christians who want to be about the

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Word of God. There's attacks coming from outside. There's attacks coming from inside. We're facing all the same things.

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But the questions that I want us to ask today is how do we wait with patience for the coming of Christ?

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How do we wait as people are faithful? What does it mean to wait faithfully? So let's turn now to this passage.

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The first thing that we're going to learn is that we need to rest in the truth. That's the first thing that we're going to learn.

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If we want to wait faithfully, then we need to rest in the truth. It says this, Therefore, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the

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Lord. Do you see what James is saying here? He's saying that you and I are supposed to rest in the truth that Christ is coming.

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That's not an uncertainty for us. We are to rest in that truth. True patience is not believing in platitudes.

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It's not believing in something that's not real. True patience arises in the soul that rests in the truth of Jesus Christ.

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And the truth that this passage is communicating is that He is going to return for His people.

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And the reason that that will cause us to be patient, the reason that will cause our hearts to be still is because those truths are better and more beautiful than anything that the world could ever throw at us.

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Yeah, we face hardships, but our God is good. We face struggles, but He loves us, and He's called us according to a good purpose.

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We groan, but God is greater. And when we know these things, life no longer looms over us and attacks us and paralyzes us.

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When we know that God is good, when we know that Christ is going to return, we have freedom. We can approach the world with joy.

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Life becomes much less complicated, right? It's like that song that we sing sometimes,

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Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

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What this passage is telling us is that if we will stop looking at the world, stop looking at the things that discourage us, and turn our eyes on Jesus Christ, then we will have a hope that never fails.

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The problem is that we don't do that. The problem is that we don't rest in the right things. We rest in everything but Christ.

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If we will orient our gaze to Him, we will have patience, and we will have peace, and we will have hope, and we will have joy.

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He's saying, Therefore, in light of all of these things that I've been telling you, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the

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Lord, because the Lord is coming back. So when life, relationships, fludemics, rioting, civil unrest, politics, or anything else is getting you discouraged, the point is to turn your eyes off of that and turn them to Christ, and rest on the truth that He's coming back.

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Don't sit in your fears. Don't sit in your fears. How easy is it to do that?

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How easy is it for us to just sit there and be miserable? You have to grab yourself by the collar and remind yourself that God Almighty is coming back for you.

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Don't rest in the discouragement. Don't rest in the anxiety. Rest in the truth of God, that He's not left you in your misery.

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He is coming back for you. He who began the good work is going to come back to complete it.

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The one who's ransomed you is not going to abandon you. The one who loves you is not going to leave you. The one who died for you is not deceiving you.

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You have to rest in the truth of Christ. When you get discouraged, you have to meet your broken heart with the truth of God, and that is what will heal you.

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Even though this world may be collapsing, we know the truth of Christ, and that truth will set us free day by day by day.

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The Bible says that heaven and earth will pass away, but His word will never pass away. That means that it is more likely for you to wake up tomorrow with the sun completely out of orbit than for a single promise of God to fail.

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Rest in that. Rest in that. Actively employ that thought on a daily basis.

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When you get discouraged, God loves me. When you're anxious, God's coming back.

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When the world looks too much for you, God's in control. Meet your fears. Meet your anxieties with the truth of God.

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Rest in this truth. And that's what James is teaching us. He gives us an example of a farmer.

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He says the farmer waits for precious produce of the soil, being patient about it until it gets to the early rains.

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The farmer doesn't plant the crops on Tuesday and then run out into the field on Wednesday and dig up the plant and say,

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I don't know why it's not growing yet. The farmer waits patiently because the farmer knows that the seed is going to break open.

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The seed is going to eventually grow and that a harvest is going to come for that. In the same way, we don't live moment by moment by moment.

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We live with a long view. We live as people of God who know that Christ, who went down into the grave, rose from the dead, is going to return, and we don't anxiously doubt that on a moment by moment basis, just like the farmer.

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We know that Jesus is our true farmer, that he planted us, and that because he died and resurrected us, now we have new life and our life will bear fruit.

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He's the true farmer of our soul. So what

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I want us to understand is the first thing that we need to do is we need to rest in the truth of God.

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If you learn how to do that, you will never have anxiety again. You will never have depression again.

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You will never be discouraged again. You will wait with patience if you learn how to rest in the truth of God.

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That's the first thing. The second thing is we need to reinforce ourselves with the truth of God.

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We need to reinforce. We don't only rest in the truth of God. We daily reinforce ourselves in the truth of God.

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Look at what James says in verse 8. You too be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the

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Lord is near. James is telling us not just to rest in the truth, that's right, but also reinforce it.

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Strengthen our hearts in the truth on a daily basis. Remind ourselves of the truth because the default mode of the human heart is decay.

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Forgetfulness. Think about it like this. If you've ever been to Rockport, there's this beautiful wall that separates the beach from the houses.

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I was privileged at one point to stay at one of these houses on Long Beach, not mine, someone who very generously let my family stay there.

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I noticed that this wall is so big and so massive and it protects the houses from erosion.

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It protects the houses from if a hurricane, God forbid, were to come up and try to take out these houses. But no one builds a wall like that and expects that that wall is never going to need repairs.

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You know, erosion happens. Cracks and fissures happen. Holes begin to break into this wall.

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So they build the wall to protect the houses, but they also understand that they have to reinforce it. They also realize that they have to have a budget so that they can pay to fix it because if they left that wall there for 100 years, it would be in nothing but dust and then the houses would no longer be protected.

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The idea is that we rest in the truth of Christ, but we also reinforce that truth whenever cracks and holes are breaking in on us so that we will be protected, so that we will be safe, so that we will be faithful.

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We don't wait for the storms in our lives to hit before we try to understand, what do I do? We rest in the truth of Christ and then we reinforce ourselves daily in that truth.

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We wake up in the morning. I know, I'm not a morning person. I would much rather be up at 2 o 'clock in the morning than 6 o 'clock in the morning.

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But wake up. Do whatever you've got to do to get yourself awake. Throw some coffee down your throat.

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Shower if you need to. Get that Bible open and reinforce yourself in the truth of the Word of God because satanic arrows, worldly arrows, and your own flesh is going to be fighting against you all day long.

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And if you are not reinforced, if your wall has cracks, if your wall has holes, you're not going to be protected.

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You have to not only rest in the truth as a one -time event, you have to reinforce the truth in your life on a daily basis.

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And for the person who will not do that, you will be susceptible to attacks and you can blame no one but yourself.

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And I don't say that in a hateful way. I say that to just encourage you. Get into the

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Word. Reinforce yourself with the truth of the Gospel because it is your only defense.

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Patience is resting in the superior truth of Christ and remembering to reinforce yourself with that truth every day until He returns.

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You may see cracks in your life today. You may see glaring holes where you do not have defenses anymore, where you've allowed sin or you've allowed something else to break you apart and the enemy has an open shot right at your heart because you haven't done the work of reinforcing that wall.

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My challenge to you is to rebuild the wall through being in the truth of God.

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Rest in the truth of God. If you're feeling abandoned, meet that silly fear with the truth that you could never be abandoned in Jesus Christ.

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If you're feeling anxious, meet that fear. And I don't mean to demean it and say that it's silly, but in light of who Jesus is, if you really understand who

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Jesus is, all these things are small things. Meet those fears with the truth about who

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Jesus Christ is and you'll wait patiently. You'll be faithful. You'll have joy.

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You won't be discouraged. That's what we need right now is men and women who understand who

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God is and who are not afraid to live with joy. Biblical patience naturally flows out of resting in the truth of God and reinforcing ourself in the truth of God.

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But this passage doesn't end there. Those are the two things that you should do.

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Rest in the truth. Reinforce yourself in the truth. But it also tells us about three ways that if you don't do that, this is what's gonna happen to you.

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The first is when we do not rest in the truth and we do not reinforce ourself in the truth, we will be given over to a spirit of complaining.

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Look at what James says. Do not complain, brothers. He says that because they were. Do not complain, brethren, against one another so that you yourselves may not be judged.

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Behold, the judge is standing right at the door. James is telling them not to complain because they have forgotten what it means to rest in the truth that Jesus is coming.

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And they've been given over to a spirit of complaining. Now, let's be honest. How many times have you said, oh,

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I can't believe what's going on right now. I can't believe Joe Biden or I can't believe Anthony Fauci or I can't believe the border wall or I can't believe this,

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I can't believe. And how many times have we been given ourselves over to complaining? Here's the diagnostic.

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If you are in a spirit of complaining, it's because you've not rested in the truth of Christ. It's because you've not reinforced yourself in the truth and you've given yourself over to complaining.

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It's easy to give ourselves over to despair. It's easy in a year like this where everything is crazy and it doesn't make sense.

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It's easy for us to complain instead of resting in the truth of who Christ is. Now, James talks about complaining, not just in a general sense, but also in a very specific sense.

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He's talking about an especially pernicious type of complaining that does more damage than anything else.

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Again, this is not just complaining that you can't get to work on time because somebody crashed in front of you.

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This is a type of complaining that tears apart the church.

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This is a type of complaining where Christians who are suffering under the pressures of Rome, suffering under the pressures of Israel, the

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Jews, who are giving themselves over to despair, and instead of turning their energies towards Christ and repenting and wanting to be in relationship with Him, they're attacking each other.

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They're causing themselves to magnify other people's offense and to minimize their own offenses.

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It's causing them to fuel cliques and factions and gossip, envy, strife, and disunity in the body of Christ.

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And I wish that I could say these things were something that they struggled with 2 ,000 years ago, but we struggle with them today.

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When we don't rest in the truth and we don't reinforce ourselves in the truth, we come to church as broken people and we do damage inside of the church by gossiping, lying, cheating, defaming someone's character, believing something wrongly without even asking them if it's true.

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All throughout my life, I've seen damage done inside the church. We don't need help, people. We don't.

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The world's attacking us. Religion and moralism is attacking the church.

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We don't need to help them by attacking each other. But if we don't rest in the truth, if we don't reinforce that truth, we will attack each other.

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You'll disagree with someone theologically or you'll disagree with a sermon, and you'll get angry and you'll go talk about it.

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Maybe you'll leave the church. Maybe you'll go to the church down the street, not actually doing the work of trying to rebuild relationships, which is what

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Christ tells us. He says, if your brothers sin, go to them. We don't do that anymore because we've not rested in the truth of Christ.

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We're acting out dysfunction, our own dysfunction, onto other people, and it's...

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We need to repent. If you have a personality conflict with someone in the church or maybe someone frustrates you, instead of going behind their back and talking about how much they annoy you or aggravate you, we have to repent.

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We need to love our brothers and sisters like Christ loves us, like love our neighbors as ourselves because God has loved us even while we were wretched sinners.

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Like Paul says earlier, he loved us even when we were the worst of sinners.

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Maybe you've heard a rumor about someone. I believe that it was true, and now you find yourself complaining about it to other people.

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We've got to repent. Whatever it is, Satan is behind every dissension, all disunity, every division that comes into the church of God, and we must combat these temptations with the truth of Christ because it's not only destructive to us, it's destructive to the church.

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The one place on earth that we were called not to be alone and to be supported and to be cared for in the body, in the family of grace, we must reinforce ourselves with the truth of the gospel and stop complaining and gossiping and tearing others down.

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We not only weaken ourselves, but we weaken the church. Like the wall that we were talking about earlier, complaining tears down our defenses and leaves us vulnerable to satanic attack.

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At such a time like this, when the world needs gospel more than ever, we, the church of Christ, must stick together.

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We must bear with one another's burdens, even though we're often the one who becomes the burden that everyone else needs to bear with, but we must bear with each other.

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We must show each other grace and be humble because the world needs to see the gospel, not dysfunction.

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They don't need us to look like the world. They are looking for us to show them Jesus. This is what

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Jesus has done for us. After a million, billion sins that we have perpetrated against our Lord, he still loved us without complaint.

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He marched up Calvary's hill and died for us and gave us that redemption that we did not deserve.

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And the people that we love inside the church are not going to deserve it either. But because Christ did that for us, we can do that for others.

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We don't need to complain about it. We don't need to be annoyed in our sensibilities. We need to hold fast to who

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Jesus is, cling to the truth, and then share that truth with others. That's the first symptom, is that we will complain.

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If we don't rest in the truth, if we don't reinforce the truth in our life, the wall will crack, and it will crack by the fissure of complaint.

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The second symptom is even worse. It's called bitterness.

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James says, as an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who, in the name of the

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Lord, who count those blessed who endured. The opposite of being blessed is cursed.

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The opposite of enduring is not enduring. You get this idea that if you are suffering for the sake of Christ with patience, which is what

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James is trying to teach us, then you will succeed. You'll be blessed. You will endure.

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But if you don't, your spirit of complaining will turn into bitterness, and it will do so quickly.

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Bitterness is like an oil spill in the middle of an ocean. It poisons everything that was once teeming with life.

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Bitterness is like a toxic waste dump poured in the middle of your backyard. Your trees don't grow.

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Your plants don't grow. Your flowers don't grow. Everything is dead, and it will wither everything in your life.

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Bitterness is a peculiar condition that magnifies our grievances and minimizes our

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God so that the person who is bitter is left in ongoing perpetual misery.

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Complaining is the crack in the wall, but if left unchecked, that crack will become a hole.

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That's what bitterness is. Bitterness is unchecked complaining.

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It's unchecked anger. It's unchecked unforgiveness. It's unchecked, unrepented sin that's now poisoned you and caused you to look like a toxic waste dump in your soul.

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It's harder to repent of bitterness, and many, many who are here today are carrying bitterness.

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There was something someone said to you 20 years ago that you're not able to get over or you're not able to repent from, and because you didn't repent, because you didn't give that over to Jesus and you let that cancer sit in you, it's festered in you, and it's become gangrenous in you, and now instead of just complaining about something bad that happened to you, now you are bitter.

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Maybe you sit at home and you watch the news and you complain and you complain and you go to work and you complain and you say, this is happening.

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That is happening. I can't deal with this. I don't like this country. I've seen it over and over and over in the

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American church where we get together and we sanctified, have these sort of complaint sessions, and eventually when we do not repent, do not confess the fact that we are living in bitterness, living in misery, we will eventually give ourselves over to bitterness.

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We will magnify our grievances and we will minimize our God and we will become bitter.

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But the truth is that God is still bigger than these things.

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God is bigger than the problems in this nation. God is bigger than the problems in our life. In an instant,

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God could heal everything. In an instant, He could breathe the winds of revival over this land and heal it all.

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In an instant, He could do that, and He's not doing that, and there's a reason that He's not doing that. God knows the reason.

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Our dilemma is whether we will believe that He's good, whether we believe that we can trust Him, whether we will believe that He is in control.

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If you refuse to believe what's true about God, you will slip into complaints and you will slip into bitterness, which leads to our final point, which is the worst place that you could be if you're a

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Christian, where you will not receive from the Lord. Now, I'm just going to say,

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I'm not saying and James is not saying that you're not a Christian. What I'm saying is, is that your hands are so white -knuckled and clasped in your own sin that you can't receive because your hands are not open.

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You've clung to your grievances, and you've said, you don't know what that felt like when they said that to me.

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I'll never forget that. I will never forgive them, and you've got your hand closed, and you've become bitter.

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And when God, who is merciful and full of compassion, look at what James says, you've heard of the endurance of Job, and you've seen the outcome of the

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Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. The Lord wants to give you His compassion.

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The Lord wants to give you His mercy. The Lord wants to give you the good things that He has for you. He wants to pour them out into your hands and give them freely and abundantly to you, but your hands are closed.

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You're hanging on to your complaints. You're hanging on to your bitterness. Instead of needing those things, instead of releasing those things, instead of laying those things down at the foot of the cross, you're clinging to them instead of Christ.

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And because of that, you won't receive from God.

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As we close out this message today, I want you to learn the secret, beloved.

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I want you to learn what it means to live your life with open hands. I want you to learn what it means to repent, because if you're not resting in the truth of Christ, you won't have joy and you won't wait patiently and you won't be faithful.

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And if you're not reinforcing yourself with these truths about God, these precious gems that God has given us in His word, if you're not reinforcing yourself with that, you will fall into complaint.

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You will fall into bitterness if you don't repent. And if you continue in that state, you will not receive from God.

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My challenge to you today is to repent. Open your hands.

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Give over whatever you are holding onto and give it to God. Lay it down at the cross.

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Open up your hands. Repent of your bitterness that you're holding against your spouse. Repent of the bitterness that you're holding against your mother or your father.

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Repent of the bitterness that you're holding from children who've left and who've walked away from the faith.

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Let go of the bitterness that you've been hanging onto and leave it at the cross.

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And if you've been given over to a spirit of complaining, if at work or at small group or in social settings, you find yourself complaining about things, about your life, about the state of the country, about your finances, about everything,

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I want you to repent. I want you to lay down your complaints and your bitterness and your close -handedness, and I want you to remember the truth of who

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Jesus Christ is. He's the one who came, and for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, and He despised its shame for you so that He could purge you of your wickedness and purge you of your bitterness and purge you of your complaining, hard -hearted nature that robs you of joy in Christ.

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He died to take away those cursed things so that you would be a blessing.

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Do not return back to the vomit like a dog. It says in Proverbs that the dog returns to his vomit, not the

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Christian. Repent. Don't go back to the cesspools of sin. Don't go back to the rivers of the world that make you miserable and make you frustrated and take from you and steal your joy.

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Run to Christ. Run to the river of life. Lay down the things that are robbing from you.

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Rest in the truth of who Christ is. Reinforce that truth that He is coming back.

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And repent when you fall short. Quickly repent so that you can rest in that truth again.

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And it's those three truths, resting, reinforcing, and repenting, that will cause your spiritual life to thrive and will cause you to be faithful while you wait on the

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Lord Jesus Christ to return. Let us pray. Father, I pray that we would be a people who rest in the truth of Christ, that we would be a people who repent when we fall short.

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And Lord, I pray that we would be a people who every day are reinforcing our life, our heart, our mind, our body, our soul with the truth of Christ.

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Lord, I pray that we would not be lazy when it comes to opening up the Word of God. Lord, I pray that we would not be, that we would not be weary of the

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Word of God. Lord, I pray that we would make time in our schedule, that we would set aside time to be with You in Your Word, and that every time we are tempted to complain, to be bitter, to give ourself over to sin, that we would reinforce those cracks in our character by the

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Word of Jesus Christ, that we would meet our deficiencies with truth, that we would meet our temptations with truth, that we would go to the

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Word and reinforce ourselves with truth. Holy Spirit, would

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You help us with this great work? Would You cause us, Jesus, to rest in You?

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Would You cause us, Holy Spirit, to work daily at reinforcing ourselves with truth?

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And God, would You help us repent when we fall short and restore to us the joy of our salvation?