Biblical Masculinity | What It Takes To Be A Man with Pastor Luke Pierson and Pastor Zack Morgan

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All right. Well, thank you guys for the opportunity to share with you tonight.

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And Wade asked me last week if I'd be able to share something. And Pastor Zach and I have actually been working on a little tag team thing.

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We've done it once for our men's group on biblical manhood. And Wade thought you guys would enjoy that.

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So I'm going to go first, and then Pastor Zach's going to come up, and hopefully it blesses you guys.

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But I literally also just got off an airplane, and my sinuses feel like they're going to explode.

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So forgive me if I have to drink a lot of water. But if you guys have been following us at all, back in September, Pastor Jeff and I got to go.

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We were granted the opportunity to meet with about 30 Navy SEALs in an undisclosed location.

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And it was a really, really cool opportunity that God blessed us with. But these weren't just regular, any old

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Navy SEALs. These Navy SEALs were Christ -loving Navy SEALs that swore an oath of the

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Constitution. The reason we met with them was because they were refusing, they still have refused, to take the mandated cookies from Uncle Sam.

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And I'm not going to get into that too much, but just to lay the foundation here, that we were able to meet with them.

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We were going there with the intention of encouraging them, from a pastoral perspective, to stay strong and to fight.

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And Pastor Jeff will tell you, we left just completely blessed and inspired by these guys.

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Because again, not only are they the greatest warriors our nation, really the world's ever seen, they love

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Jesus. And they are Christians first. And so to see their love for Christ and to see their willingness to stand for truth was just really inspiring to us.

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But since then, we've kind of dove headlong into Navy SEAL culture.

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And there's a lot of things we've been able to glean from them that have blessed us and our ministries.

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I'm going to talk a little bit about that, and then I'm going to have Pastor Zach come up. So there's really two things, and then

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I'm going to get into some scripture as well. But there's two things we've kind of taken from them. And if you go and Google Navy SEAL sayings or mantras and stuff, there's a whole slew of them.

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But there's two that we've really taken from them. And I mean it when I say this. When Pastor Zach gets up here, he can verify.

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This year's been rough for us, especially the first three months of 22. And we'd be just having a down day, or we had people pass away, it was just rough.

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And Zach and I would just look at each other and be like, stay hard. And that's been what's helped carry us through.

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So again, two things. There's one thing they say is get hard and stay hard. We've kind of grabbed onto the second half of it.

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But first you got to get there, you got to be hard, you got to be resolute. But if we're having a down day, we're struggling, we're just like, hey man, stay hard.

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And we're like, you're right, stay hard. And then the other thing was, there's a saying they have that goes, the only easy day was yesterday.

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And we've kind of adopted that as well. So you're having a rough day, like well yesterday was easy, yesterday was the easy day.

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Like man up, stay hard, deal with the day. And so those have been the two things that we've taken from them, and that we've been trying to instill in our men at Apologia.

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And there's been times where we've counseled men that are going through marital strife or whatever, and they're kind of being a little whiny, and they're down, and we're like, hey man, stay hard.

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It's worked, it's been awesome. But there's two, I don't want to just throw that out, there's some biblical principles, obviously, behind some of that.

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And so two verses I want to mention. The first one is

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Proverbs 24. And so anybody that knows us, we're in abortion now, and I'm sure you guys use the same verses here, it's

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Proverbs 24, 11 through 12. Rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

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If you say, behold, we did not know this, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay men according to his work?

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But the verse I want to talk about is the one before that. And verse 10.

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And that's often overlooked, but that's been a key verse for us. And it says, if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

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And that's kind of what biblical manhood, it has to start there. If you can't handle adversity, if you're gonna faint when it gets tough, then it shows that your strength is small.

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And so we want strong biblical men who aren't gonna faint in the day of adversity. And one thing that's been, really since COVID, I'm sure everyone here would acknowledge this, is we're seeing a lack of strong men in the church.

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And you're seeing just that our North American church culture is almost crumbling before us.

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It's because there's no men to lead, no strong men that aren't going to faint. They are literally fainting in the day of adversity, just kind of like giving in and giving up.

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And then the next verse is 1 Corinthians 16, 12.

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It says, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. And so what does it mean to act like men?

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I mean, if you look at here in this context, it's be watchful, so you're always ready. Stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

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Again, it's not fainting in the day of adversity, it's being strong when the going gets tough.

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And so those are the two verses, we've kind of teamed up with the things we've kind of pulled from the seals.

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And so there's a couple of things here. I've been making some notes here, but pastors actually be a lot more structured than I am here.

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But one thing that I think when people, especially like the culture thinks of, any more like, well, men are just macho.

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And like when I hear the word macho, I think of like macho man Randy Savage, right? Like being a biblical man isn't snapping into a

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Slim Jim, right? So like there's a side of that word, like this machoness like is a bad thing, it could get you into trouble.

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But I think we often overlook like Christ as an example of what a biblical man was.

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This is a man that was strong. He worked with his hands, he built things, he bled, he sweat, he cried.

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And when he had the most adverse time of his life, he didn't faint, he showed that his strength wasn't small.

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And so like, I think we need to look more to Christ just from that side of things, not just as Jesus is love, we hear that all the time.

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Like, not that he wasn't, but like, our culture has taken that like he only was that aspect and they forget about the rest of it.

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And so, sorry, I bumped my notes here. So one thing that, a quote

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I've taken from Pastor Toby Sumter in Moscow, Idaho, is he said that we as Christians should reject all invitations to victimhood because we have the perfect victim and we're never truly innocent.

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And so again, just looking at Christ as an example of what a godly biblical man should be and then seeing him as the truly perfect victim, he never claimed the victimhood.

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And I think what's undermining biblical manhood is this idea of victimhood.

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And again, that's something we've, I know this year we've really had to hammer home with some of our men is, especially like in marital conflict and stuff like that, they're just, their immediate response to conflict is to play the victim.

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It's her fault, it's his fault, it's God's fault. And part of being a strong biblical man is don't take that invitation to be a victim.

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Again, because Christ was the perfect victim and I can promise you, if you're gonna play the victim card, like I said in that quote, you're not truly innocent.

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Somewhere in there, you're also wrong in this. And so that's been part of that idea of what we've been pointing to in raising up men.

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And there was one more thing I was gonna mention and I lost it, sorry.

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Oh yeah, there it is. Okay, so one other thing that's, why

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I was thinking a lot about this week is I'm preparing to teach a chapter from Rusty Thomas's book on abolition and abortion.

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And I picked a chapter on governments. And so I'm sure you guys have been listening to Wade Fathers.

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There's basically four God -ordained governments, self, family, church, and civil.

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And the point Rusty was making was that we can't end abortion in the civil realm if we're not having good self -government.

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And it starts with men. It starts in the home. It starts in the pulpit. Men have to have good self -government and then it goes to the family.

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You're not gonna have good family government if the father and the husband has bad self -government. And you're not gonna have good church government if you don't have good family governments, so forth and so on.

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And then the civil realm has no chance whatsoever unless it's God's miracle, right? If we don't, but it has to go back to that self -government.

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And so again, part of being a biblical man is having good self -government, governing ourselves in a way that would honor

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Christ in a way that doesn't faint in the day of adversity, in a way that is strong, that is faithful, and is watchful.

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And there's all kinds of examples we can look at in scripture on a different day.

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But that's kind of, I wanted to lay the groundwork there. And that's just to kind of let you guys know this is where we're coming from.

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This is what Zach and I have been trying to teach to our men. And then he's gonna come up now and he's got some notes.

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And so it might be noisy here for a second because we gotta switch mics, so hold on a second. Testing, can you hear me?

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This little head contraption's kind of weird. Hey guys, thanks so much for having us come.

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It's crazy, just go back a year, Pastor Wade, from this point. All that God has done in a year.

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Like you guys are seriously breaking records when it comes to like churches that, like so established in the richness of your fellowship, baptisms, people being saved out of cults.

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I mean, this is amazing. God's in this thing. So we're super pleased. I think

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I can speak on behalf of all the elders when as Wade, Pastor Wade is a fellow elder, we're super pleased with him.

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And he's a good one, he's a good pastor. There's a lot of shepherds out there and he's a good one.

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And we're super, super pleased to see his performance, listening to his sermons, his preaching, his ability to handle conflict.

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You guys have a blessed guy. And we as his fellow elders, again, are praising

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God for him. It's a bittersweet thing because we miss him a lot. His family is like crazy. I've worked for churches and sometimes churches like hold on to their best, right?

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And it's a little bit selfish and you know, there's only so many good people to go around. But we truly have sent the best of the best when it comes to Pastor Wade and his wife and the

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Songcrans and the Marshals. We miss you guys deeply. You guys kind of left a hole that cannot be filled.

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And so we just wanna thank you guys for all the work, not only the leadership, but everybody else putting into this church.

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It takes a village. You know, the church is not four walls, it's you guys. And so it's amazing just to see how much you guys have done.

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The baby's being saved and we're excited. Guys, we've got a really good thing going here.

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And so that's why we wanna come here as, you know, fellow elders with your elder and keep this thing going, right?

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Do everything that we can to pour into you and to ensure that we as a church are doing what we need to do collectively because we link arms to expand and further the kingdom.

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It's not built upon like a personality or a celebrity person or whatever. It's all of us together with all of our unique giftings, employing those, and that's how we move forward.

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And that's how we continue to reach the lost and grow. And that's all that we wanna see. So like Pastor Luke said, kind of focusing on the men.

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That's what we're doing now. And this of course is gonna be a blessing to the women in here, but it's really a challenge to the men.

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I know as a man, I don't really, I don't get challenged by men who just kind of femininely, you know, kind of, you should do this.

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You know, I really get challenged by a strong male. And I've had them in my life, and Pastor Jeff and Pastor Luke and all these guys that kind of look me in the face and say, this is the way things are, really challenged me.

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That's what challenges me, to kind of be the man that God's called me to be. So for the rest of the time,

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I wanna talk about challenging men to become powerful assets in their lives and the life of this church.

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And just as a reminder, I think you all know the importance of men. But sometimes we, you know, we live in a nation that wants to, you know, put that under water.

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I mean, look at the example of a man. I mean, the tight jeans, the beta males, the effeminacy.

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I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. That's how you destroy any nation. And you can track it back all throughout history, is when you destroy the man, you destroy the nation.

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And you've heard it, we've heard it from Pastor Jeff, so goes the church, so goes the nation, so goes the culture.

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But so goes the family, so goes the church. So goes the man, so goes the family.

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So men have to be the focal point of everything because they're called the lead.

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We are the root of the problem, and we are the solution to the problem.

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If the culture, like Bonson said, is the report card of the church, I think you'd be a little bit more precise, not that I can add anything to him.

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But I think the quality of the men in any given culture is really the report card of the church, is are we being salt and light into the culture?

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Are we, as God's men, who are so few, are we being this light and salt?

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Are we showing what the world, starting with our family, what it looks like to be a godly man?

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This is what we really need to focus on. It's not easy, and that's the first thing that we wanna kinda come to terms with, especially in our

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American culture, everything is so centered around comfort. It's so centered around the pursuit of self -pleasure.

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And that's something that we have to break out of if we're ever gonna realize what God has designed us to be.

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As men, it is not easy. It's to be this God -glorifying, duty -fulfilling man, it's pedal to the metal effort from the time that you wake up to the time that you go to bed, and you get one day of rest.

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But that's what we're called to be. Why not, why do it? Why subject ourselves to so much pain and hard work day in and day out?

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I think we gotta also understand that the health of the family unit and the church is really contingent upon the health status of the men.

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Really, the health and competency of the men is contingent upon whether or not they are accomplishing

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God's given duties to them. So why do this? God's commanded us to do it. This is what godly manhood looks like.

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But the health of your family and the health of Apologia, Utah is based upon or contingent upon the men here doing what you have been commanded to do.

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Oh, and the women, too. This is not to minimize at all the role of the women, just kind of focusing on men right now.

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So if we don't attend to our duties, if we're lax in them, then the health meter goes down and we become increasingly inefficient and non -competent in what

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God has called us to do. I think you all could say that you want the mission of Apologia, Utah and the mission in general to go forward.

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And again, just to repeat myself, if you answer yes, if you really see

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God in this, which we all see it, and you really wanna see this thing continue to flourish, then you're really gonna own your responsibilities in yourself.

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The world would never admit it, but the world absolutely craves men who accomplish their

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God -given duties. And they would never admit it, right? Because if it's just a godless world, where does value, where does duty come from?

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Where is anything moral? Of course, I don't wanna get into that too much, but we crave, it's like this, you know,

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Romans 8, 19 says that the creation groans for the revealing of the sons of men. There's so much to that, but it's the creation has been subjected to futility and sin.

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And it's really the role of the man to reverse the curse in a sense, not as like Jesus has done.

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Of course, Jesus was the ultimate man, the son of man. And he and his redemptive work reverses that curse, but it's like the revealing of the sons of God.

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And we in a partial form do what Christ has done in defeating the works of the enemy, right?

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Going to battle against abortion, going to battle against fatherlessness, going to battle against ourself.

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And it's in that role, the son of man or the sons of God fulfilling their God -giving duties is really the hope of the nation.

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We went and saw Top Gun 2 yesterday. Did you guys see that? It's good. Who liked

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Top Gun 1? There's only a couple. I just watched it last night.

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It was good. Go see both movies, the volleyball scenes and just try to enjoy them in Top Gun.

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But you know what's so funny? We go to these movies, right? Especially like strong male hero type of plots.

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I mean, think about how many movies down through the ages, Rambo and all the Schwarzenegger movies. It's like it's the same basic plot.

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It's like there's a man, the bad guys are hurting the people and the good guy goes and does sacrificial things to save the people and he hurts the bad guy.

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And we all just kind of leave from the movie theater like satisfied. I mean, Jeff and I are sitting next to each other with our palms sweating over this movie, but we've seen this type of movie over and over and over.

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And then after the movie, we're like satisfied. And what really is the basic concept? It's just a guy doing his duty, like sacrificially, right?

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And there's a lot of father, son, like themes in there that are so kind of vacant out of Hollywood today.

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You gotta go see it. But we desire for a man to kind of sacrifice his life for the better good.

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And that's all I'm saying. What about the guy in Texas who, did you guys hear about that?

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He got the call from his wife and he was getting a haircut. His wife said, hey, there's an active shooter. This guy gets up and I guess the haircut, it's a bad neighborhood so that the haircut guy's got a shotgun, chucks a shotgun at him and he runs to the school to save his wife and kids.

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And I don't know if he actually killed the shooter. I've been looking around for it. I don't think he did that, but I think he went there to do his best.

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And he was actually getting kids out of the school. What is this? It's just a dude protecting his wife and daughter.

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It's just a guy fulfilling the duties that he's given us. And when that really happens, and that's kind of like a out of the ordinary type of way, but it's something that we desire to see.

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It's something that we just absolutely need. The hope of the world, the hope of a corrupt and self -destructive world is duty accomplishing men.

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But if you think about it, a duty accomplishing man is really a redundant description of a man.

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So just to ask you, what do you think, what are some good, if you wanted to shout out words, defining words for what a man needs to be, what defines a man, what do you think?

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Courage. What else? Chivalry. Ankle? Faithful.

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Faithful, integrity, that's good. Strength. Yeah, those are all good.

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But I think those are all tied into really a biblical explanation of a man. Really, what

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John MacArthur talks about, manhood all whittled down. He says, manhood is defined as having fortitude.

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Like when you whittle it all down, all through the verses, and then you know that guy looks at everything that has to do with any given topic.

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But really, it's having fortitude. The word means to acquitting yourself of courage. It's being courageous.

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A biblical man will be defined by his courage. Courage really is the essence of what it means to be

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God's man. But sometimes we think of courage as jumping up from here, getting a flat top with a shotgun in your hand.

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That's not necessarily courage, right? That is courageous. But courage is just simply, again, it's just doing what

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God has called you to do. What is courage biblically?

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Simple faithfulness and obedience to God's commands. It's very different from how the world defines courage.

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Because again, back to the movie thing, we can think of the courageous man, the ideal man is a guy who jumps into a room with 50 guys with machine guns and just unloads on them, and that's supposed to be the courageous man.

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But the courageous man really is the guy that gets up, puts on his pants, goes to work, and does what he needs to do day in and day out with all of his heart.

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You want to become, as men, and we want to become, as men, and this is what Pastor Luke has been talking about with the help from our

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SEAL buddies, you want to become as powerful as an individual as you can possibly be, without any limitations that you set upon yourself.

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We have to transcend our self -defined and self -constructed limitations so that you can be a powerful asset in the life of your spiritual community here.

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Because you're gonna either be, and this is just the way it works, you will be a liability, or you're gonna be an asset.

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Why not choose, like today, from this point forward, I'm gonna be an asset, I'm gonna be as powerful as I can be,

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I'm going to reign over myself, I'm gonna control myself, and I'm gonna move forward with Christ and with this community.

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So I want to talk about, I don't know how much time I have left, I want to talk about personal duties that God's called you to do, and then duties within the life of the church that God's called you to do.

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So just to shout out some words, what do you think your duties are as a man? What was that?

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Protector? Lead? Leadership? Be responsible.

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What else? Provider. Anyone else?

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What'd he say? Yeah, to serve, that's good.

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But really, the essence of manhood is really accepting responsibility. Like your son said, that was good, buddy.

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That's all of it down and whittled down, really the definition of a man is somebody who accepts responsibility. But we as men, personally, have three roles that we have to fulfill.

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There's really no cop out. It's the three Ps, right? And Dusty got two of them. Provider, protector, and the priest of our home.

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So the provider is working hard to pay the bills for my family all the time. Sometimes guys get hurt, sometimes it's not necessarily, or it's a different situation where they can't provide, we get that.

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But our role is to be that provider. The protector, I'm protecting my family and others from harm.

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And the priest, I'm teaching my family the word and exemplifying the application of that in my life, right?

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I'm providing for them, protecting them, and being the priest. So lately, with the help of the

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SEALs, and you just meet these guys, and they're on another level. They are, the way that they think, the way that they operate, the way that they go about their daily lives, and they get you thinking a lot about your life.

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And so this is kind of like, along with what Pastor Luke is saying, the overflow of it. But the scripture says this, excuse me.

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Proverbs 15, 24. The path of life leads upward for the wise or the righteous.

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Philippians 3, 14 says, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

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Ecclesiastes 9, 10 says, whatever your hands find to do, do with your might. Colossians 3, 23 says, whatever you do, work heartily as for the

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Lord and not for men. So you kind of bring these verses to bear upon the life of a righteous man, the life of the

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Christian man. And it's talking about this life of ascending, this upward march.

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It's like being, I don't know, there's beautiful hills around here. I might go on a hike tomorrow morning. But if you've ever just been on a really steep hillside hiking up, you immediately want to be off the hillside.

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Because you're like, dang, this is hard. You feel the burn in your legs and your lungs. But you know you're accomplishing something, right?

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And that's kind of like what the scriptures are talking about. Always be climbing. You're not gonna like it.

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It's gonna be tough. But you're in the climb. It's always gonna be difficult. You're goal driven.

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And you're becoming stronger and stronger. And so you as a man, you're gonna choose whether you're gonna ascend in life, whether you're gonna plateau in life, or whether you're gonna descend or regress or digress.

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But according to God and his commands to you, you really don't have the option. Your life is not your own. You've been bought with a price.

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And so you are commanded to always be advancing and excelling. Now let's take that kind of an understanding of God's path for us, and let's bring it into our duties.

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If I'm going to be the provider, I'm always going to be advancing and excelling in my ability to provide.

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And the scriptures talk about this. It says, hey, work hard with your own hands and have enough to give to those around you.

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It's not putting a limit on the amount of money you earn. And unfortunately, Christians like to demonize money, demonize other things.

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And we call that which is good, evil, and that which is evil, good. And it's not a good thing. Money is a very good thing.

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It's the love of money that's the root of all evil. It's the idolatry of the money. That's the problem. But we live in a time when inflation is skyrocketing.

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My wife told me, she's like, babe, this rice cost 12 bucks a bag. When was that?

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Six months ago, and now it's 30 bucks a bag. So we are living expenses as men are going up.

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What does that mean for us? Are we going to suck our thumb in the corner and just whine about the government and Biden? Is that really going to solve the problem here?

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No, it's we need to put the pedal to the metal and just work harder than we've worked before to provide.

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So what does that look like? Maybe it's for you. It's start a business, start, get another job, stay up late, get up early, save your money.

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Once you save 10 ,000, save 20 ,000. Once you say, you see what I mean? It's an increasing advancement in your ability to be a provider.

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Save your money, invest your money, be that provider, but don't put a cap on your capabilities because God really doesn't want you to.

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Always be advancing your ability to provide. What about a protector? Always be advancing your ability to protect your family.

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What does that mean? It means take care of your body. Watch what you eat. Stop eating at Wendy's, which fast food these days has just, it's like eating straight out of a dumpster if you think about it.

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No more Wendy's, no more Arby's, dumpster food too. You know, watch what you're eating. Watch what you're pushing into your body.

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You know, get on a meal plan, lose weight, go to the gym, jog, run. This all correlates with being a protector for your family, right?

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Becoming more and more proficient in self -defense. Start a martial arts class, go to jujitsu.

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The ones that wanna harm your family, you have to be able to defend your family if you're going hand -to -hand.

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What about proficiency with a handgun? Because dudes aren't coming after you with a pitchfork, right, they're coming after you with a gun.

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And we have to be able to be proficient in the weapons that will be used against us and our family.

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You might have convictions there, and I totally respect that, but what does that mean? It's, again, I'm going to the gym,

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I'm working out, I'm getting into self -defense, I'm becoming increasingly more and more capable as a protector of my family.

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I'm dry -firing, I'm knowing how to use a gun, I'm going to the range, I'm getting people to help me out with that.

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And lastly, as priests, and we, Christian men can sometimes overly focus on one aspect, and I'm guilty of that too, but I'm really good when it comes to Bible study and listening to Paul Washer sermons and listening to Pastor Wade sermons, which are great, by the way, love them.

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Really, I'm at Bible study, I'm in my Bible, but the protector and the provider parts are kind of not given so much attention.

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So we wanna look at these roles and give them equal focus, work to that end. Hey, I'm not the standard,

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I fall short in so much of this, but what does it mean to be advancing as the priest?

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Again, I'm studying the Scriptures with my kids, it's family worship, I'm in the Bible, I'm listening,

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I'm growing in my capability to handle the Word of God, to preach the Gospel, to evangelize.

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So it's constantly focusing on being that priest. Is this, again, is it an easy life?

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No, it's difficult, but do we wanna live the easy life?

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Do we wanna look back on our lives and the legacy that we leave to our loved ones and our sons, saying, oh, dad, you know what?

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He just chilled, you know, he spent his life watching, what's that?

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Judge, Judge Judy. Just watched Judge Judy all life and ate bonbons. Is that the legacy we want?

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We got one shot on this earth, and then we're off to the heavenly realm, right? We're off into eternity, but I wanna spend my life in extreme difficulty, in extreme self -challenge, because that will level me up in the areas that I truly, as a man, wanna be leveled up in.

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All the pain, all the sweat, the running, you know, the investing, the saving, the eating right, and the pain of that, all of that is leading to you leveling up as a man, and that's what we need to do.

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Okay, so I wanna talk, that was kind of like personal duties. I also wanna talk about, quickly, sorry if I'm taking too long, duties in the church, duties in the church.

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So number one, be a receiver and a giver in the church.

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So as I kind of alluded to before, we have a very consumer -minded mentality within the church, and that's just kind of go, and I receive a spiritual fix, and I appreciate that, and I put some money in the offering play, which, of course, we appreciate, but then

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I don't really invest myself into the community. I'm a receiver, but not necessarily a giver.

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So we wanna give of our, we wanna be these strong men, personally, so that we can give of our gifting to the church, we can give of our finances to the church, because the scriptures say we're our treasure is there, so will our heart be.

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But again, it's being that giver, and not just a receiver. Number two, and I'm gonna,

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I don't think I've ever shared this before, strive to be a low -maintenance sheep. Strive to be a good sheep in the fold.

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Now, I wanna qualify this for a second, because our lives, as Apology Elders, are focused primarily on our flock, as they should be.

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We love our sheep, and we're called to care for them, and that's all we do, day in and day out. We spend hours upon hours, all of our time, all of our effort, caring for the flock, and that's what we wanna do.

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So, when I'm talking about being a low -maintenance sheep, I coined this term, don't be a needy bucket.

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Just kidding. Pastor Luke did. Oh, you didn't?

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Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you did. Totally crashed and bombed on that joke. So, you know what

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I mean? We want you, as a sheep, we wanna care for your soul.

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But with any flock, there's gonna be low -maintenance people and high -maintenance people, and that's just the way that it goes.

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And sometimes, there's seasons of your life when you need the help of your shepherds more than you do another season.

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I totally understand that. But there's also a role that we can assume, as men, to where we want people to fix our problems all the time.

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And so, we meet with you and we give you the tools that you need. We can't fix problems as shepherds.

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We just disseminate and share with you what God's message says and those principles, and you employ those principles to, quote -unquote, fix your life or get out of addiction, whatever it means.

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But what I'm talking about in the essence of manhood is we wanna be able to employ biblical principles to run our lives, to govern our lives, to govern our families, not only always leaning on somebody to fix my problems.

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So, strive to be a low -maintenance sheep. Strive to be somebody who does his, plays his role and really just implements the strategies and the principles that your pastor shares with you.

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Don't let secondary matters become primary ones. You see what I mean? We can have exciting things that we run after.

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We can wanna just share with the world what it means to be physically fit as a

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Christian. Then we can allow our secondary issues, maybe our pet peeves, or not pet peeves, our hobby, hobby horses as Christians, we can allow those things to eclipse the main and plain things, the overall mission of the church.

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We don't wanna do that. Well, what does that look like? I want everybody to kind of come around me and get ahold of what

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I'm doing, and we can pull away from the greater mission that God has called us to do. So, don't let secondary issues or secondary desires or excitements or pursuits, don't let them erase what we're called to primarily do here at Apology of Utah.

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Don't strive for stature. Strive to be a servant, right? We're not here for a position.

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One of the most freeing things that you can ever realize is that the heavenlies are not gonna be worshiping around your throne, right?

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They're not gonna be singing praises to you in heaven. It's gonna be worship around the throne according to the work of the

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Son. That's what we see in Revelation. That's such a freeing thing for me, is we tend to take ourselves so seriously, and we claw, and we do what we do just so we can advance ourselves, when

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Jesus really exemplifies that the way up is the way down. It's to be a servant.

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What does he say? The greatest among you is your servant. His disciples are like vying for a seat next to him, and he's like, the greatest among you is a little child.

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So in, as we move forward, become that servant. Don't strive for status or stature.

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And lastly, support and pray for your leaders because they're doing that for you. We wanna come alongside of them.

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Again, we don't put leaders on pedestals. We don't worship at the feet of our leaders. None of that. We're just as pastors.

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We're just men like you are, full of our difficulties and our struggles.

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But what you wanna do is support them, especially church planning leaders, the deacons and, of course, the elder and his wife here because planning a church is one of the hardest things you can ever do.

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Wade was fully headed of hair this time last year. It's tough, it's tough.

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I mean, it is a day and night grind all the time, and he needs your prayers, and he just needs you to be that type of sheep that comes alongside of the shepherd and lifts his arm up and helps him.

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So that's all I got. But as men, and I wanna focus on this just lastly, don't let excuses and self -constructed limitations keep you from being the man that God has called you to do.

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Who's the one that holds you back? It's really yourself. I was talking to Jeff about this just yesterday.

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We as men are so much more capable and powerful than we can ever imagine.

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It's so funny, you think about 100 years ago, and we idolized men who were just skyscrapers and using really low technologically advanced tools.

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We idolized, like, oh, these guys are so strong. What separates us from those type of men? Ourselves. It's the way that we see ourselves.

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It's all the excuses that we create, and they become hurdles to level up in the areas that God has wanted us to.

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So don't do that. Your spiritual fitness and your physical fitness here, your accomplishing your duties as men is absolutely paramount to the life and the future of this church, right?

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Yeah, so let's just get duty, or get busy and accomplish our duties.