The Fight of Our Lives

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Amen.
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I want to begin the message tonight by reading from God's Word.
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I want to invite you to stay standing to give honor to God's Word, and then we'll pray.
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I'm going to be in Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 through 17.
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Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.
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Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
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For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
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Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand an evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.
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Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.
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In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.
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And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
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Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity that we have to hear your Word.
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I pray first and foremost, that as I preach your Word tonight, you would keep me from error, as I am certainly capable of preaching error.
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And I pray that you would protect me and the congregation from that.
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And I pray also Lord, that you would open up the hearts of the congregation to hear the truth.
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And Lord, with all these young people in this room, I want Lord, for the parents to have a listening ear tonight.
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As we consider the great challenge that we have in our day, in raising a generation that is growing up in a world that is in opposition to you at every turn.
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And what we can do to give them the right tools to battle what the world will bring.
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In Jesus name we pray and for his sake, Amen.
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Please be seated.
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I want you to know that I have intentionally not written a children's sermon tonight.
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It has somehow become a way that we do things in church, that when we talk to kids, we talk down to them.
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And we separate everything out and we don't deal with the whole church.
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We have this part of the church over here and that part of the church over there.
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Well tonight, I'm going to preach to everyone.
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But I do want to mention this.
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If you're a parent here tonight, if you're a mother or a father or even a grandmother or a grandfather, I want to direct your attention to what I'm going to say.
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Because the reality is, we fight as Christians a daily battle against what is known as the threefold enemy of the soul.
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The threefold enemy of the soul, I mentioned this on Sunday to the congregation.
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The threefold enemy of the soul is the flesh, the world and the devil.
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And the way that those operate is that the flesh tends to want what it wants.
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It tends to lust after the things of the flesh.
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The world wants to feed that.
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And the reason why the world wants to feed that is because there is a conspirator.
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You know, people ask me sometimes, am I a conspiracy theorist? Well, yeah, I am.
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Because I actually do believe there is a conspirator out there.
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I believe that the Bible is true when it says that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
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I believe that that's true.
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And I believe that his purpose in this world is to influence the culture so that the culture influences individuals and individuals would be influenced away from God and not toward Him.
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In fact, if I were to ask you right now, if you were to consider the culture in which we live, would you say that generally and by and large the culture pushes people towards God or away from Him? Yeah, it's not even a contest.
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There's no debate.
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There's no way we could...
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I mean, I could stand on this stage with anyone and have a debate on this issue and it would be a no-brainer.
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The world, the culture, everything pushes people away from the Gospel, away from the Scriptures and away from God.
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Children in schools are discouraged from prayer and Bible reading, but they're encouraged to blindly accept anything which is said by a quote-unquote scientist.
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You know? They don't believe the Bible, but please believe this man because he has a doctorate or he has some other degree which makes him an authority on all things.
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Christianity is defamed as radical, and yet Islam is apparently, according to a recent statement by a leader of our nation, is one of the founding roots of America.
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Traditional families, especially large families, are mocked, but alternative lifestyles are celebrated.
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It is, as Al Mohler has said, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, it is, as he has said, a massive moral revolution that we see going on.
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What was once lauded as virtuous is now considered heinous.
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And what was once not even spoken of because it was so heinous is now lauded as virtuous.
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We are truly where Isaiah told us we would be, and it is in a position of woe, because he did say, Woe unto those who call good evil and evil good.
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And that is where we are.
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And we are in a daily battle.
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And we're in a daily battle not just for ourselves.
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We're in a daily battle for our children.
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We are in a daily battle with a culture that wants to push our children away from God, away from church, and away from Scripture.
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The world is opposed to Christ, and as such, the world is opposed to us, as Jesus himself said in John 15, If the world hates you, know that it hated me.
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It hated me first.
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And that's the reality of where we are.
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And because we are fighting this battle, because we are daily dealing with an enemy, we need to know what we can do to not just stay in the fight, but to overcome and be victorious.
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What can we do to win this battle that is being waged? And thus we come to our text for the evening.
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Paul tells us that God has given us armor, tools for the battle.
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And he uses the soldier of his day, which would have been the Roman soldier, he uses the armor of the Roman soldier as the picture of the armor that God gives to us.
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And he breaks it into six things.
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He says there are six things that God has given to us to fight the battle.
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And tonight, I've actually broken those into four categories.
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I just want to give this to you.
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I know some of you like to take notes.
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You don't have to, but here are the four categories that we need.
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The things that we need to fight the battle for our very sanctity and holiness in this world that is fighting against it.
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We need one, protective gear.
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Two, we need a weapon.
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Three, we need something that holds it all together.
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And four, we need a reason to engage the enemy.
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That's the four things that I pull from these six pieces of armor.
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And I'm going to break that down for you because I'm not going in order.
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If I went in order, it would not follow my outline, so I'm going to go out of order.
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I'm going to have my outline to dictate the order we go in because we're going to first look at the protective component of the armor.
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Because often I hear this, you have five pieces of armor and then one weapon.
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Well, actually, if you break it, it can be broken down further because there's actually three pieces that are intended to be protective.
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First is the breastplate.
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It says it's the breastplate of righteousness.
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Now, why is it that the breastplate would be called the breastplate of righteousness? Well, the reason is simple.
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This is dealing specifically with our guilt.
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When we deal with sin, what is the first thing that we experience when we deal with sin? It is the issue of guilt.
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So many people feel like they can't come to Jesus because their sins are too great.
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I've talked to people who said, Jesus couldn't possibly save me.
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If you knew how bad I was, if you knew how much I have sinned in my life, if you knew how many things I had done, Jesus couldn't possibly save me.
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And you see, the problem is, number one, they understand not how powerful Christ's saving work is.
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But also they don't understand that Christ not only takes away our sin, but He takes away our guilt.
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He takes away the necessity of the heart brokenness that we have over sin.
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You see, when we come to Christ, we come with a broken heart.
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But the Bible says He takes out the heart of stone and He replaces it with a heart of flesh.
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He gives us a heart that beats for Him.
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He gives us a heart that is no longer a heart which is wretched and ugly, but it's a heart that has a desire to follow after Him.
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And He covers that with His righteousness.
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You see, this breastplate is not ours.
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It's not something that we do.
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We can't cover ourselves because the Bible says our righteousness is as filthy rags.
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But Christ covers us in His righteousness so that we need not ever again carry the burden of guilt.
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Romans chapter 8 and verse 1, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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The guilt is gone.
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It's paid for and we're covered in the righteousness of Christ and our heart is secured in Him.
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So that's the first piece of protective armor that we have.
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It's Christ who covers our heart.
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Number two, we have the helmet.
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The helmet is called the helmet of what? Anybody remember? Helmet of salvation, right? Why is it called the helmet of salvation? What's in your head? Your brain, right? Your mind.
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Now here's the thing that we need to remember.
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In the Bible, when the Bible talks about the heart, it's talking about our emotions.
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It's talking about our inner man.
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It's talking about our being.
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When it talks about our brain, it's talking about our intellect.
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And here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize.
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Salvation is an intellectual experience.
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A lot of people think it's just an emotional experience.
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I had a good feeling, so I got saved.
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I had a good experience, so I got saved.
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But let me tell you something.
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The way Jesus gets to the heart is through the brain.
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We hear, we understand, we believe, and then the emotion comes.
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It shouldn't be we have an emotion, and that's it.
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We hear, we understand, we believe, and the emotion comes.
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And our salvation is a matter of understanding first, before it ever is a matter of emotion.
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So, when we talk about the helmet, what is the helmet of salvation? It is telling us that when the devil tries to introduce doubt...
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Remember I said the breastplate is about guilt? The helmet is about doubt.
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Because one of the things that the devil wants to do in our lives is he wants us to live in perpetual doubt.
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Doubt about whether or not Jesus is Christ.
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Doubt about whether or not God is real.
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Doubt about whether or not we're saved.
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Doubt about whether or not we should go to church, or to the church we're in, or whether or not we should do this, or whether we should do that.
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The devil wants us to live in doubt, because when we live in doubt, we are not doing anything for Christ.
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Because we are unfruitful when we live that kind of life.
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So he says, put on the helmet that knows that you know what you know.
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And that is, Jesus Christ is the Lord of glory, and that you've bowed your knee to Him.
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And it is that confidence that comes by putting that helmet on, that helmet of the knowledge of salvation.
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There's one more piece of armor for protection, and it's the shield.
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Now, here's the thing.
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We made a lot of shields this week that are round, and some of them are in the shape of the...
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well, it's a shield shape.
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Can't think of it.
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We have round shields, and we have shield-shaped shields.
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But what we didn't do was actually construct a Roman soldier's shield, just because of the lack of the ability of cardboard.
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Because a Roman soldier's shield was as tall as he was, and as wide as he was, because it was something to sit down on the ground and stand behind, and they would put a whole line across it that they had a wall, and that wall produced protection for the entire fleet, the entire troop would have this wall of protection.
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And it was a big shield.
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And that's the idea.
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The Bible says the shield is the shield of faith.
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And it says that it quenches the darts of the evil one.
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Beloved kids, adults, everybody, there are people out there, and I don't say this to scare you, I don't say this to be some kind of fear monger, but I'm going to tell you the truth.
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There are people out there whose desire it is to punch holes in your belief.
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They're reasoned for, I can name a few, Richard Dawkins, Dan Barker, Christopher Hitchens, before he died.
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These are men whose entire lives were dedicated to simply walk along and poke holes in people's faith.
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Because these are men who live without God, and they want you to as well.
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I don't know, it must be a misery loves company kind of attitude.
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I've never understood why atheists have so much evangelistic zeal, but they do.
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I've seen more atheists hold up signs than I've ever seen Christians hold up signs.
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I've seen more atheists wear shirts than I've ever seen Christians wear shirts.
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You know, the reality is they're so confident in their atheism, they're so convicted about it, they want to share it with the world.
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And they're out there trying to poke holes.
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What is the thing that separates you from that onslaught? It is the faith.
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We talked about this the other night.
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Faith is the evidence of things unseen and the confidence of things hoped for.
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It's knowing that even though you've never seen God, and even though you've never heard His voice, and even though you've never held His hand, that He is there.
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And not only is He there, because that wouldn't be enough if God were just there, but that He's also active in this world.
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That's what faith is, and that's what extinguishes the darts of these men who try to poke holes in our belief.
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It's our faith in God.
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So those are our protective aspects.
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Now we talk about the weapon.
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We need a weapon.
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If we're going to go into battle, we need protective gear.
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We need our breastplate.
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We need our helmet.
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We need our shield.
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We also need our weapon.
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What is our weapon? What does that sword represent that you guys came out with tonight? What does it represent? He wants to say the Bible.
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The Word of God, right? The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God.
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How many of you remember when Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil? When Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, the devil would come to Him and say, if you are the Son of God, take these stones and turn them into bread.
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You're obviously hungry.
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You haven't eaten in 40 days.
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Take these stones and turn them into bread.
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What did Jesus say? As it is written, man shall not live by bread alone.
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Satan took Him to a high place, and he said, if you're the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, and the angels will surely catch you.
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And Jesus said, it is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test.
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Satan took Him up to a higher place.
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He said, do you see all these kingdoms? I will give them all to you.
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And Jesus said, he said, if you'll bow down and worship me, and Jesus said, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.
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What was Jesus' weapon against Satan? The Word of God.
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It is written.
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Jesus is God in the flesh.
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He could have said anything He wanted, but He appealed to the Bible.
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He said, this is my weapon to fight against the devil.
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Now, I've said we need protective gear.
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We've got it.
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We've got a breastplate.
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We've got a helmet.
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We've got a shield.
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I said we needed a weapon, right? We've got the sword, which is the Word of God.
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We also need something that holds it all together.
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What do I wear that holds everything together? A belt.
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See, there's two pieces of the armor that don't get a lot of attention, and that's why I put these last.
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Because we talk a lot about the shield, a lot about the breastplate, a lot about the helmet and the sword, but the two pieces that don't get a lot of attention are the belt and the shoes.
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But you see, do you know what a belt does? It holds your pants up.
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That's right.
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But what else does it do? It holds everything together.
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And what is it that the Bible says the belt represents in the soldier's armor? It represents truth.
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It says that you have everything held together by the belt of truth.
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One of the most beautiful things that we have as believers is we have the truth.
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And you know what? It's not a relativistic truth, because that's the way the world sees truth.
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You talk to somebody about truth, and they'll say, well, you've got your truth, and I've got my truth, and you do your thing with your truth, and I'll do my thing with my truth, and we're all going to different roads, and we're all going to the same way.
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That's wrong.
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Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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When He stood before Pontius Pilate, He said, I have come to bear testimony to the truth.
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And even Pilate 2,000 years ago looked at Him and mocked Him.
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Truth? What is truth? He mocked the idea of truth because even 2,000 years ago people were relativists.
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Even 2,000 years ago they didn't understand that there was an absolute, incontrovertible foundation for truth, and that foundation is God.
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And yet, that is what we stand on.
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And that's what holds everything together, is the truth.
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Finally, and this is where we'll end, finally it is the shoes, the way that King James reads, that we be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
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And I always loved that phrase from the King James English.
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That we go about shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.
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And to be shod means to have that shoes on your feet.
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The preparation of the gospel of peace.
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Beloved, here's the thing.
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We not only need something to protect us, we not only need something to battle with, we not only need something to hold everything together, we need something to fight for.
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We need a reason to go.
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Because you know what? Too many Christians don't engage the culture.
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Too many Christians stay in their many mausoleums.
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Well, maybe that's a bad word.
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They stay inside the church and they don't go out and engage the culture.
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We don't go out and we don't reach the culture with the gospel.
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And you know what? We cannot do that.
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The word I was looking for earlier, not mausoleum, I apologize for that, is the monks who live in the monastery.
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You know, during the time of Martin Luther, the great reformer, he was a monk and he lived in a monastery because that's what holy men did.
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Holy men went and lived with other holy men in a holy place and they hid from the world because they felt like that made them more holy.
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We can't do that.
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We have to reach the culture for Jesus Christ.
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We have to take the gospel out.
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Now, I'm not saying that that necessarily means that we have to engage every aspect of culture and be a part of everything.
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But what I am saying is this.
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We can't hide in the church either.
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We've got to share the gospel with the world.
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We've got to go out and engage people with the gospel.
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It has to happen.
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God has His people in every tribe, every tongue, in every nation.
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And we need to be the ones on the forefront of the fight sending missionaries.
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We need to be the ones going out and giving out gospel tracts.
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We need to be the ones going out and sharing Jesus.
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We need to be the ones who are not afraid when we're standing in line at the Hardee's or the McDonald's or whatever to tell somebody about Jesus Christ.
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Well, I can't tell them about Jesus.
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They're not my friend yet.
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Let me tell you something.
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Jesus didn't go around making friends.
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He went around sharing the gospel.
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So too must we.
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We have a battle to fight, but we have a reason to fight.
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The reason is the gospel.
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We've got to go and we've got to preach and we've got to tell the truth.
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That is our mission.
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We have been called ambassadors for Jesus Christ.
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And let me just end by saying this.
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The first place that we've got to go is we've got to go home.
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Now I don't mean we've got to go home tonight.
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I know you've got to go home.
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But the first place where the gospel needs to have first place is in our home.
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We need to be teaching these things diligently to our children.
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That's where we started this week, right? Remember at the very beginning on Sunday night, I opened up the Bible to Deuteronomy 6? Let's go back there to end this week.
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And let's open our Bibles to Deuteronomy 6.
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Because I want to remind you again, being shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, it's going to start with our kids.
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It's going to start with them.
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Because beloved, you've got a job to do.
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And it begins with your kids.
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Teaching your kids about Jesus.
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Teaching your kids about the Bible.
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That is not anyone else's job.
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That is your job.
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If you're a mother, if you're a father, that is fathers primarily.
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And mothers come alongside as the ones who complete the father in the household.
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But this is what it says in Deuteronomy 6.
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In verse 6 it says, And these words have I commanded you today, shall be on your heart.
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You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
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You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
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You shall write them on the doorposts of your house, and on your gates.
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Do you know what that's saying? That's saying that everywhere you go, laying down, getting up, going out and coming in, that what you have on your lips, that what you have with your children, is an understanding that the Word of God is preeminent in your home.
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The Word of God is preeminent in your life.
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The Word of God must be preeminent in your family.
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It must be.
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Because that's what God has called us to.
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So I encourage you.
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I encourage you, one, to take up the armor of God, to put it on, and don't take it off.
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By the way, when that verse in Ephesians 6 says, put on the armor of God, the verb tense in the Greek means put it on and don't take it off.
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It means at one time put it on and leave it on.
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Sleep with it on.
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Eat with it on.
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Don't take it off and put it on sometimes.
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As I was telling Adam tonight, I read an article about there was a minister overseas who was in a very dangerous area, and they told him to wear a bulletproof vest all the time because it was so dangerous.
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But he didn't like to wear it because it didn't go well with his suits.
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So one day he got tired of it, he took it off, and that was the day that he didn't go home.
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We have to keep our armor on all the time.
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And also, remember why it's on.
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Because we are in a battle for our sanctity and the sanctity of our kids.
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So let's stand together.
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We're going to pray and we're going to sing.
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And I want to pray specifically for all the fathers and mothers in the room.
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I want to pray for the children as well, but we're going to begin with the parents.
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Let's bow our heads.
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Father, I thank You for the Word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit, which is the one thing that You've told us is to be used for battle.
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I thank You for the gospel of peace, which is the reason why we go and we step out into the world and we engage the culture because of the gospel of peace.
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And I thank You, Lord, for the belt of truth, which holds everything together.
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And I thank You for the precious armor of the breastplate, the helmet and the shield, which protects us from the guilt that Satan tries to put in our heart, the doubt that he tries to put in our mind, and the holes that he tries to stab into our confidence in You.
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Give us, Lord, peace, strength, and a tenacity for the truth that we would go out into the world and share the gospel of Christ, that we would go into our homes and proclaim the gospel of Christ to our children, that we would have the gospel of Christ literally dripping from our lips everywhere we go.
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In Jesus' name and for His sake we pray, and I pray for every father in this room that you would minister to these families, to the father, and for every mother, that she would come alongside her husband and that she would minister to her family with her husband together, and that they would minister to their children.
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And I pray for every child.
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I pray that they have heard this week that everyone needs a Savior.
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Everyone is a sinner.
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And Jesus Christ is the only Savior that You have given to us, O Father.
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Let it be, O Lord, that that message of the gospel has been loud and clear this week.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.
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Continue standing and we'll sing together.