Walking with God

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Bill Smith; Micah 6:8 Walking with God

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Good morning.
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That was kind of weak. Good morning. It's my privilege to share the
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Word of God today. And before I do that, I'd like to share something else with you briefly.
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Many of you know that I serve at Youth for Christ. It's been my privilege to serve in that ministry for the last 34 years, working with at -risk teens.
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In fact, I was at the juvenile home this morning, bringing God's Word to the young people there before I came here.
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So that's one of the ways I get to do that. But I wanted to tell you and invite you to this thing that we're doing called
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Be the Story. And this year, Recast Church is going to be one of the hosts for that.
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Last year with COVID, we did the whole thing virtually. Normally, for years, we've been doing them in the
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Radisson Plaza. We'll have 400, 450 people come out.
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And it's all about supporting the youth as far as bringing the gospel to some really lost, struggling young people that Youth for Christ is reaching out to.
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So this event, this Be the Story, will help us to be able to continue to do that.
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And so it's going to be on May 6th, and it's from 8 until 9 in the morning. We're always done exactly on time, so we won't hold you captive if you come.
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These are on the welcome table, so if you want to read more about it and think about coming, we'd love to have a good representation from Recast.
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So what we're doing this year to keep things spread out, you know, because we're still being careful with COVID, we're doing it in six different locations.
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And one of those locations is here in Mattawan, and it's all going to be simulcasted.
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We're going to have teens sharing their testimonies, their stories, and just, you know, helping you learn more about the ministry of Youth for Christ.
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So please check that out. We'd love to have you come. There's no cost to it.
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There's a breakfast involved, but it is a fundraiser to help us continue to reach out to the young people with good news of Christ.
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Amen? Amen. All right, please let me pray, and then we'll get into God's holy word this morning.
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Heavenly Father, just thank you that we can gather here in Jesus' name, and that you are present with us, and that you love us more than we'll know this side of heaven anyway.
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Lord, our view of your love is pretty limited. I pray that we could grow in a deeper understanding of your amazing love and grace.
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And Lord, I pray that you would speak to us through your holy word today. I pray as a result of looking at your word, we would want to walk closer with you,
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Lord, that we would want to seek you more, that I just pray that your
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Holy Spirit will be our teacher this morning. And thank you for the treasure of your word today in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Amen. So in 1978, when
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I came to Christ, somebody gave me a gift, and it was my name,
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William Smith, in calligraphy. Kind of cool. They made it out themselves, and then it had the meaning of what my name was.
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And then there was a verse on it, and they told me it was a life verse. Well, you know, I didn't know what a life verse was, but I thought, okay, that's cool.
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And I loved the way it was written, and I looked at the verse, and I want to share that verse with you because it has become a life verse for me.
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It's a very beautiful word and invitation from our God. Look at Micah chapter 6, verse 8.
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Micah 6, 8. It says,
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He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your
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God? What really stuck out to me when I read that was that phrase, walk humbly with your
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God. And I really liked the sound of that. Like, I could actually walk with God?
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Now, I don't know about you, but I like to take walks. And, in fact, the guy that led me to Christ in 1978, all through high school,
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John and I and some of my friends, we would just go off walking in the woods, man.
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We'd go exploring. We'd walk the trails. We'd go out to elegant forests. We'd just find something pretty in the country, big wooded area.
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We'd pull over, and we'd just go exploring, walking together in God's beautiful nature.
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And now, I love to take walks with my wife. You know, just her and I, side by side.
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It's a beautiful time just to be together. Well, I was intrigued by this walking with God, and this morning,
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I want to explore in God's Word what this means and how we can do it.
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Now, this Hebrew word for walk, it's translated well.
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It's yalak. That's the Hebrew word, and it literally means to walk. And God is like, come and walk with me.
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I like that. When someone asks you to go for a walk, does that mean more than just walking?
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I think it does, doesn't it? Sometimes it means, hey, let's just get away from everything else and spend some time together.
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Taking a walk is a great way to get to know someone, isn't it? I mean, you're just walking together, and for some reason, the conversation just seems to flow more naturally, maybe than just sitting or talking on the phone.
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There's just something about walking side by side. Now, someone might come up, maybe like your boss or something, and say, hey, let's take a walk.
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Maybe that might worry you a little bit, but it might mean that I have something really important I want to share with you, right?
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Well, walking together represents fellowshipping in the same path, fellowshipping together.
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In Bible times, walking was the main mode of transportation. I mean, most people walked where they went, and back in those days, in most cases, you did not want to walk by yourself.
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It just wasn't that safe, and so you wanted someone there. Numbers was good.
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Well, in Micah 6 .8, the Father is saying, as you walk through life, walk with me.
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Let me be your close companion. I like that.
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I do want to walk closely with God. I know I have a long ways to go. Walk with me in close friendship and communion.
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Let's do this together. I would like to look at a few examples in the
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Word of God of people who walked with God, and I want to go all the way back to the beginning, to the
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Garden of Eden. Turn with me to Genesis 3 .8. We're going to spend a little bit of time in Genesis looking at a few examples of people who walked with God.
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Now, we're going to pick up this story kind of at a sad point because Adam and Eve had been living in paradise.
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God had created them, put them in this beautiful place, but we know the sad story.
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The serpent came and tempt them. They ate the forbidden fruit, which ruined everything, and at this point, they're literally hiding from God, but there's something really interesting in verse 8 that I want you to see.
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It says, Notice that it says that they heard the sound of the
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Lord God walking in the garden in the garden. What this implies is that every day,
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God would come to the garden and would meet with them and that they would walk together, and they would learn of who their
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Heavenly Father was, and they would spend time in fellowship with Him. What a sweet time that must have been.
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You know, we don't know, you know, was there some kind of visual representation of the
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Lord at that point, but it's obvious that God came to meet with them.
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Well, sin disrupted this in a big way, and sin is a big problem when it comes to our walk with God, but thankfully,
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Jesus made a way for us to be free from that. Now, when we flip forward a little farther to Genesis chapter 5, go ahead and turn there, we find this genealogy of Adam and Eve's descendants, and, you know, let's start out in verse 1, and this is the book of the generations of Adam.
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When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, He created them.
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He blessed them and named them man, and they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image, and he named him
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Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters.
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Thus, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.
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Now, as you continue to read through this genealogy, basically, it names the person, it says that they had children, and then they died.
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For generation after generation, that's the way it went, until you come to Enoch, and something's different here with Enoch.
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Look at, let's pick it up in verse 18, and Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered
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Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.
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Thus, all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered
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Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years, and had other sons and daughters.
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Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
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Isn't that interesting? Here's a pause in the genealogy to point out something that was different about this
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Enoch. Now, from the text, it's obvious that he didn't always walk with God, because look at in verse 21, when
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Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah, and Enoch walked with God after he fathered
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Methuselah. Almost like something to do with the birth of a son caused him to begin to walk with God.
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Now, I thought a little bit about that. It could have been a number of things that had caused him to begin walking with God.
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You know, maybe it was a direct call of God, Enoch, I want you to walk closer with me.
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But it seems to be tied with the birth of his son, and I wonder if it was a difficult delivery, and maybe things were going so badly that Enoch thought that he was going to lose his wife and his unborn baby, which happened sadly.
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And maybe he cried out to God for deliverance, for his child to be born safely, and his wife to be protected through childbirth.
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And the saving hand of God came upon his wife, and that baby boy was born healthy and well, and his wife made it through it.
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Maybe something happened that caused him to go into a deeper relationship with God.
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For sure, a decision had been made on Enoch's part. And walking with God, that's the first thing
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I want you to notice, is that it it takes a decision. You know, you can refuse.
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If someone asks you to go for a walk, you don't have to go with them, do you? You say, no, no, thank you.
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I really don't want to walk with you. Well, that might be a little rude, but I'm like, oh, I'm just too tired today.
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But there was a decision made, and for the next 300 years, it says
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Methuselah walked with God. For many of us,
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I'm guessing that it could be said they believe in God.
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But for how many of us could it be said he walks with God? She walks with God?
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Not everyone who believes has that walk, right?
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In fact, you know, sadly, many people who profess Christ, they don't show it in their lives at all.
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Oh, I pray that we show it in our lives. One day,
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Enoch, this is interesting, Enoch was walking so closely with the Father, and the fellowship was so sweet that the
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Father must have said, Enoch, why don't you just walk the rest of the way home with me?
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Why don't you just come home with me now? Look at verse 24.
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Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
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For God took him. Now, in Hebrews 11 .5, we have a little more insight into this.
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And this is what it says in Hebrews 11 .5, by faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.
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And he was not found because God had taken him. Now, before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased
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God. He pleased God, he had that close walk. And, you know, not too many of us will experience something like that.
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I think maybe more than ever, we're thinking about the rapture. John has been preaching, you know, from Matthew about the end times.
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And, you know, my daughter shared a dream with me, Cheryl and I, about the rapture that she had.
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And she said we all were floating up into the clouds. And I was like, you know, that sounds really sweet.
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Well, Enoch actually experienced that with God. Yeah, it's interesting the place that Enoch is given in Scripture.
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We're not given a lot of details about his life, are we? We aren't told of, you know, the accomplishments that he made for God.
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We aren't told that he was a great preacher or anything like that. But we are told that he walked with God.
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Is this telling us that this was his greatest accomplishment? Walking with God.
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Think of what flowed out of that kind of relationship. Did God use
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Enoch in his lifetime as he walked with God? Absolutely. When you come into that close, right relationship with the
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Father, it begins to make a difference. This honored the
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Father. And this is what is really noteworthy in a person's life. It definitely had an impact on his great -grandson
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Noah. Let's look at Noah now. Let's go to Genesis 6 -5.
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I kind of want to set the scene of what's going on here before we look at Enoch.
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Genesis 6 -5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
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These were some bad times that Enoch was living in. You know,
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I hear people complain about the times that we live in and how bad things are.
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And yes, things are bad. And wow, this human race is in trouble. But you know what?
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It's been like that since the Garden of Eden. In fact, things had gotten so bad that God was about to do something drastic.
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And we pick up Noah. Look at verses 9 and 10. These are the generations of Noah.
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Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
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There it is. Just like his great -grandfather, Enoch walked with God.
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Perhaps he learned that from his great -grandfather. Noah had a close relationship with God.
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And because of this, God revealed to Noah what he was about to bring upon the earth.
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He warned him that a flood was coming and that he was to build this big ship. And God helped him build that bad rascal.
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That was quite an undertaking. And God saved Noah and his family. And I believe he would have saved anyone who would have had faith to get on that boat with Noah before that door was shut.
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Noah walked with God. Third example, look at Genesis 17 .1.
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We're going to look at Abram just for a minute. Well, I say Abram because that's what he's called in 17 .1
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by Abraham. At this point, Abraham had been called of God to leave his birth land and to go to a place that God would show him and that God was going to make a new nation out of Abraham.
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A nation that would worship the true God. And at this point in Abraham's life,
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God comes to him. Look at verse 1. And Abram was 99 years old.
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The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.
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I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.
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God was calling Abraham to a deeper walk. I think he's calling all of us to a deeper walk.
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I don't want to stay in the same place in my relationship with the Lord. I want to go deeper.
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I want it to grow. I want to know more of who he is. I want to learn more and more how to please him.
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And oh man, I sure do fail. But I do want to walk with the
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Lord. And God is calling Abraham, Abraham, I want you to to come into this deeper walk.
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He says, walk before me. Well, that's an interesting way to put it.
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But this word before in the Hebrew is paunim. And it literally means the face.
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In fact, it's translated 390 times by the word face in the
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Old Testament. It's translated 776 times with the word presence.
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So it becomes clear that God is calling Abraham to walk in his presence.
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He was calling Abraham to live his life facing God, to live in his company and in his fellowship.
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He said, walk before me and be blameless. This word, this word blameless has two meanings.
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The first meaning is to be whole in the sense of completeness, to become whole in the sense of completeness.
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Well, that's a journey, isn't it? We all are hopefully growing in maturity.
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But it's as we learn to connect with God and as we learn to walk with God that we begin to experience true wellness and completeness.
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This is not something I muster up on my own. This good health, so to speak, inner health.
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This is a work of God. And it comes living in connection with him and in his spirit.
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The other way that this word is translated, this word blameless is translated to be spotless, undefiled and upright.
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God was calling Abraham to rightness with him, into a right relationship.
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That's where righteousness comes from. Again, righteousness is a work of God in us.
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It's as I get my heart right with him that I become right. Oh boy,
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I learned early on in my marriage and I learned early on as a parent that if my heart wasn't right with the father, man,
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I wasn't right as a husband. I wasn't right as a parent. I learned that.
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What an important lesson that was. But as we connect, we begin to walk uprightly.
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Well, Abraham obeyed this call from God for a deeper walk.
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And as a result of this, he will be forever called the friend of God. It says that three times in the
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Bible. It refers to Abraham as the friend of God. Wouldn't you love to be referred to in that way as the friend of God?
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Like, wow, he really wants to have friendship with me. James chapter 2, verse 23.
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In the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness and he was called the friend of God.
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There it is. The friend of God. This is the kind of relationship our
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Lord and Savior wants with each one of us. It doesn't matter if you're five or if you're, you know, 90.
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He wants us to develop this friendship. He loves you right now with a perfect love.
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He loves you with his entire being, but he wants you to grow in a deeper understanding of his love and grow in a deeper connection with him.
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Well, from these verses and these examples, we begin to get an understanding of what it means to walk with God.
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Number one, it means to live facing him. To live in his presence, keeping our eyes on him.
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Well, of course, we can't see him with our physical eye, can we? But we can live in the understanding that he is the ever -present one, that his spirit surrounds you wherever you're at.
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Number two, it means spending time with him, meeting with him and living in constant companionship with him.
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Number three, it means friendship with God, living in a right relationship with someone.
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You can't be friends with someone unless you have a right relationship, right? That's the beauty of forgiveness.
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And God is willing. He forgives us time and time again, doesn't he? He's very forgiving, very merciful.
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It means walking with him throughout your day and throughout the journey of your life.
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Not just saying your prayers in the morning and maybe a prayer at lunch and a prayer over your dinner and a prayer at bedtime.
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That's a good start. But it means seeking communion with him throughout the day, being mindful of who he is.
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We find this in the New Testament. We find
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Jesus inviting us to this. Many times he said to those who were seeking him, follow me.
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Matthew 9, 9. And Jesus passed from there and he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, follow me.
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And he arose and followed him. This word follow is used 92 times in the
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New Testament. And it comes from it is a combination of two
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Greek words. And the first part comes from the word for road.
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And then the second part means to be with. And it means to be in the same path with, to be in the same way.
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It means to accompany, especially as a disciple.
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God's call is clear, isn't it? He's calling us to walk with him.
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And I am confident that many of you are seeking to do that.
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And let's keep seeking and let's keep growing in this. Well, having seen these examples and what a beautiful way of life this could be, you know, in a person's life.
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I'd like to just give a few practical steps that as I study this kind of spoke to me.
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And the first one, number one, we begin our walk with God each day by getting our heart right with him, spending time with him in his word and in prayer.
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So first thing in the morning we got, we need to get our heart right, right? Okay. Sometimes we wake up on the wrong side of the bed.
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We wake up, we're kind of grumpy. Maybe we don't want to even face our day.
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That's the importance of getting alone and spending time with the Lord. Look at first John one, one through three with me on this.
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First John one, one through three. This is a beautiful explanation of why we are given the word of God.
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First John one, one through three, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.
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And the life was manifested and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.
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John is saying what we have seen, what we have heard of the true word, we put it down in writing.
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Is that not true of the whole word of God that it's a revelation of our creator
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God, of our father, of our Lord, of our savior? Well, here's the point.
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Verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you so that you may have fellowship with us.
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And indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.
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He says this word has been given so that you may have fellowship with the father and with his son.
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And this word fellowship is a cool word. It means partnership. It means joint participation, sharing together an actual living relationship.
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First Corinthians 16, 6, 17 says this, but he was joined to the
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Lord becomes one in spirit with him. As we're joined to him, as we connect, as we take that time to meet with him, it says we become one in spirit.
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Now we're ready to walk with God throughout our day because we've gotten our heart right with him.
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Number two, we walk with him by obeying first Thessalonians 5, 17, three simple beautiful words.
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You should be able to memorize this right now if you haven't already. Pray without ceasing.
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Pray without ceasing, right? Is that simple or what? Not so simple to live by, but that's how close
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God wants us to be with him. He doesn't weary of us coming or talking to him.
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He wants to hear from you. I love the book, The Practice of the
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Presence of God. If you've never read that little book, it's really worth checking out. It was written by a lay brother who served in a monastery in the 1600s and he was known for his walk with God.
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And he said this, he said, we should establish ourselves in a sense of God's presence by continually conversing with him.
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We establish ourselves in a sense of God's presence by continually conversing with him.
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Well, to be able to connect with God on this deep level, we need to learn how to, also how to pray inwardly.
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And you know, I pray out loud all the time in my car. I'm always talking out loud to God.
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But we can't always talk out loud to God, can we? But you can talk inwardly to God anywhere you're at, in a classroom, at work, wherever you are.
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You can speak to him in your heart. And that's something that we need to, I think we need to work on developing, is this inner prayer.
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Psalm 139 .2 says, you discern my thoughts. God knows them.
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Verse four, even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all together.
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In Matthew 12, 36 and 37, Jesus was warning us to be careful about your speech, because you're going to have to give an account for your words.
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What this implies is that God is hearing every word that you speak.
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And if you intentionally are seeking him and calling on his name, he will definitely, you will have his attention.
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Number three, we walk with God by recognizing that he is always intimately present with us.
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That he is always intimately present with us. Brother Lawrence also said this, we need only to recognize that God is intimately present with us to address ourselves to him at any moment.
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I make it my business only to persevere in his holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention and in general fond regard for God, which
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I may call an actual presence of God, or to speak better, a habitual, silent, secret communion of the soul with God.
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A habitual, secret, silent communion of the soul with God, that we can commune with God.
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In fact, you know what the New Testament teaches. If you're a believer, born again, you are a temple of God.
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You're a temple of the Holy Spirit. He lives in you. He's fully aware.
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He knows. And he's calling us to this deeper walk.
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You know, I have to remind myself of promises like what Jesus said, behold,
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I am with you always, even to the end of the age. One of my favorite verses was in Hebrews.
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And God promises in Hebrews 13 .5, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
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Isn't that a good word right there? He's not going to leave us. We mess up, he's still there.
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We can get it right with him again. And then fourthly, we walk with God by acknowledging him in all our ways.
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First verse I ever memorized, Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. Trust in the
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Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths.
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Well, this word acknowledge in all your ways, and that word ways means all your paths in all that you do.
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It says acknowledge him. And this word acknowledge in the
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Hebrew is yada. And it means to know. In fact, in many places in the
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Bible, that's how it's translated. To know, K -N -O -W. To know intimately.
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In fact, Job 1914 translates this word acknowledge in an interesting way.
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Listen to how it goes. My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me.
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That same Hebrew word is in that verse. It's close friends.
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That's how it's translated. It's the word yada, to know. And he says my close friends.
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It's translated close friends here. Could it be translated in all your ways, be close friends with him?
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I don't know. I like it. And then the second meaning is to ascertain by seeing.
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And that's where the word acknowledge comes in. So to acknowledge someone is to recognize that they're there, right?
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Okay, people ignore us all the time. You can walk into a room and nobody sometimes will say hi or anything.
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But when you're acknowledged, someone looks at you and they speak to you, right? And so this is a good translation.
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In all your ways, acknowledge. In all your ways, recognize that he is there and speak to him.
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David said this. He said, I set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand,
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I shall not be moved. Psalm 16, 8. Speaking of Moses in Hebrews 11, 25, it says, by faith he left
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Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.
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I love that. He endured by seeing him who is invisible.
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He got his eyes on the Lord. He learned to walk with him and live by faith and to believe the promises, knowing that God is the ever -present one.
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Isn't that beautiful? This walking with God. Let's strive to do it.
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So in closing, I hope that this stirred something up in you.
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I hope that you have been aspiring to walk with God. And I hope that this challenges you to go deeper in that walk.
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And just by way of application, I just put down four things and really they kind of go with the last four points.
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Number one, seek him daily. Meet with him daily. Make sure you get your heart right with him and keep it right on a daily basis.
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Number two, memorize and seek to practice 1 Thessalonians 5, 17.
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Pray without ceasing. Number three, recognize that he is always present. Oh man, there's some powerful scripture that testify that God is the ever -present one.
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And then number four, acknowledge him in all your ways. Know him and stay in close fellowship.
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Well, Jesus died on the cross to make that kind of a relationship possible. And here at Recast, we celebrate communion every week and the communion tables are at the back.
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And as we think about communion, think about the sacrifice that Jesus made.
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The night that he was betrayed and arrested, he took that bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you.
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Take and eat it. And then he took the cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you.
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And so we invite you, if you're a believer in Jesus, to go to the tables, get your communion, bring it back to your seat and just quietly thank the
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Lord and talk to him about it and partake there in your seats. And yeah.
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So with that, let me pray and then we'll partake of communion.
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Father, just thank you that you love us so much that you say, walk with me, my child.
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I want you to walk with me. I want you to be closer with me. And I thank you,
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Lord, what you did to make that possible at the cross through your shed blood. That that's how much you love us,
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Lord. And as we take this cracker and think about your broken body and this juice and think about your shed blood,
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Lord, thank you that there is complete forgiveness that no matter how much we've messed up, we can be completely forgiven and clean this morning through your sacrifice.
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And Lord, we couldn't walk with you if that was not the case. And so we just thank you so much for your love and thank you for your call to us.
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Walk with me. Lord, we love you. And thank you so much for loving us today.