Equipping Eve Episode 10: Christ-less Checklists and Holiness (Part 1)
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It seems at times that some women’s Bible study resources are nothing more than checklists of the do’s and don’ts to being the perfect, biblical wife and mother. But, what good is a ‘biblical’ checklist if it is devoid of Christ? Also: what does it look like to grow in grace and holiness?
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- Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?
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- Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies, but beyond Sunday morning, are
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- Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed
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- Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,
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- No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.
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- My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio, and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.
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- Well, hello, ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve, the show that seeks to equip you with fruits of truth from God's Word so that we can stand strong and firmly upon that Word in an age of growing deception.
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- When we know the truth, we can recognize the error, and we can call it out if necessary. I am your host,
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- Erin Benzinger, and I'm so thankful you're listening today. We're still kind of new in the life of the show, but at the same time,
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- I thought it would be a good idea to revisit why
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- Equipping Eve exists and why there is a need for a ministry such as Equipping Eve and others like it in the realm of quote -unquote women's ministries.
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- You know, ladies, let's face it. For some reason, we seem to think that we need or we want a study or a ministry to be directed solely at us, just us ladies, just us women, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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- I think we run into some danger when that's all we seek out. You know, we go to church on Sunday, and then all of our extra instruction comes directly from these quote -unquote women's ministries.
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- I think we run into dangerous territory there because so many women's ministries, women's resources, books, studies, teachers, are not biblically sound, you know.
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- And I say that not as just a blanket accusation. We can look at the teachings of so many of these ministries and compare them to Scripture, even the
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- Scripture they claim to be teaching, and see there's a problem.
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- There is a trend among many popular women Bible teachers to take the
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- Scriptures and twist it back onto you so that the Bible is all about you, and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy because you think, hey,
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- God's Word is all about me. This is great. This is great because I think
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- I'm great, and God must think I'm great because He put me all through the Bible. Well, that's just not the way it is.
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- And so that is one reason why we thought, why I was feeling a burden for the need in women's ministries, and why
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- Pastor Eben Droth there over at No Compromise Radio apparently was feeling the same thing when he asked me to do this many, many months ago now.
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- It seems many, many months ago, but I suppose it wasn't that long ago. And so that's one reason why we started Equipping Eve.
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- But there's something else that I see in women's ministries, women's studies, women's resources that even may be biblical.
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- They may be trustworthy, but they still seem to pigeonhole women, and they still seem to err in one particular area.
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- And I guess the best way to say that is I feel like I am seeing a lot of checklist -type resources, a lot of do's and don'ts.
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- You know, here is how you can be a great wife. Here is how you can be a great mother. And go down this list and do this and do this and don't do that, and that's it.
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- And you walk away from reading the book or article or completing the study or hearing the teaching, and you think, well,
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- I can't do that. How am I supposed to do that? I fail at that every day. That's going to lead to some pretty depressing women, pretty depressed women,
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- I suppose I should say, because when we have this unattainable checklist, what are we supposed to do?
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- We cannot attain perfection. We cannot be the Proverbs 31 woman.
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- How many Bible studies do we need on Proverbs 31? It's a great text, and it is what we strive for, especially if we are wives and mothers.
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- It's definitely a precedent and a model, and that is right and good. But when we are told continuously that this is what you have to be and this is what you have to do and do this and don't do this and do this and don't do this so that you can be that person, we're going to run around in circles because we can't do it on our own.
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- And I see a lot of checklists coming out of women's resources that are devoid of Christ.
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- Because the bottom line is, ladies, you can write down all the checklists you want.
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- You can't do it on your own. I can't do it on my own. And we need to be reminded that we will fail.
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- We will fail, and it's okay. Not in the sense that, well, you're going to sin anyway, so just go ahead and do it.
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- No, no, no, no, no. We strive for holiness. We strive for righteousness. We strive to be like Christ. But we're not going to do it perfectly, this side of heaven.
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- And we will not do it in our own strength. We can only do it through Christ, through the empowerment and the enablement of the
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- Holy Spirit who lives inside of us. And I am seeing resources directed at women that give the checklist and don't give us
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- Christ. So, ladies, don't forget
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- Christ when you're going down your checklist of, am I the perfect Proverbs 31 woman, or am
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- I the contentious, nagging, dripping faucet wife? How many women's studies need to take us back to those verses over and over again?
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- And so that's one thing that I walk away from when I see these types of teachings.
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- And another thing I think is, does the Bible only speak about marriage and parenting for women?
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- Because that is often the impression that you can get from some of these resources available to women, that it is, you just need to focus, ladies, on being a wife and being a mother.
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- That's it. That's all the Bible has to say to you. Ladies, I am here to tell you that you are responsible for knowing and understanding the whole counsel of God from Genesis to Revelation, not just the passages that speak about being a wife and a mother.
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- And I know some of you listening know that I am not a wife and I am not a mother. And so you think, okay, well, this is why you're talking this way.
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- No, because you wives and you mothers need to know the whole counsel of God.
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- And I think if you're a Christian, I hope you desire to know the whole counsel of God. And so oftentimes
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- I think women are short -changed in these resources that are geared toward us, because we feel like that is all that we are supposed to know.
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- That's all that we're responsible for. That's all we need to know. And let's leave the rest to the men. No, ladies, you can and should know doctrine more than just marriage and parenting.
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- Yes, we have been given a certain role in the body of Christ that is wonderful and good and amazing.
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- And the call for many, many women is to be a wife and a mother. But you cannot, you cannot become a spiritually mature
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- Christian. And you cannot raise your children or speak into the lives of other women, younger women, the way
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- Titus 2 speaks. You cannot do that if you are not instructed in the entirety of Scripture, in the entirety of the word of God.
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- And I dare say that even goes beyond what you're hearing on Sunday morning. Do you be doing your own study of the word of God?
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- You know, if you want to reach out to trusted commentaries, listen to sermons from trusted teachers, you know, that's something we try to do here is give you the names of men whose sermons and teachings you can trust and you can go to, to hear them expound and teach on the word of God so that you can learn more.
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- You need to be doing your own reading of the word so that you can see what
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- God has to say to you for all aspects of your life. That is how you can raise and train your children in godliness.
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- You know, Timothy's mother and grandmother didn't just teach him about being a wife and mother. Obviously, they instructed him in the whole counsel of God.
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- We are servants of one God, the same God who our husbands serve, who our brothers serve, fathers, you know, men in the church, we are servants of that same
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- God. And though we have a unique role within the body of Christ, that does not mean that we do not need to know all that God has to say to us.
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- And he will use us for his kingdom beyond even just those marriage and parenting roles.
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- And so I don't want you to feel like that is all you are called to know and understand, and that's all you're worthy of knowing and understanding.
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- God's word is so rich and so deep, and we could drink from its truths forever and never exhaust it.
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- So don't limit yourself with what you're studying in the word of God.
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- I would encourage you to, you know, maybe pick a doctrine that you want to understand more and gather some good resources on that doctrine and study.
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- Study it for a few months and learn that doctrine. I think you will be so, so blessed by something like that.
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- Ladies, to serve our King well, we need to know his word. We need to know the theology and the doctrine that just permeates that word.
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- We need to know how to study that word. We need to not be afraid to study more than just whatever the evangelical publishing world is telling us is relevant to us as women.
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- And so that's another reason why Equipping Eve is here. That's another goal that we strive for here, and we strive to do it in a way that honors
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- Christ. So I hope that we're accomplishing that, that I am accomplishing that, and that is not in my own power.
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- Ladies, trust me. All of us, you know, we can only attain any of these things that we strive for by seeking the strength and the guidance and the wisdom of Christ.
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- And we're so thankful that he's given us his spirit, aren't we? So that we can grow in godliness to look more and more like the
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- Savior who purchased us with his blood. And that kind of leads into the topic that I thought we would discuss today.
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- You know, I was thinking about what I just said to you, and I thought, well, what would be a relevant doctrine that we could discuss?
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- Something that would be intensely practical. We're ladies, we like to be practical, although all of scripture and everything it has to teach, of course, is very, very practical.
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- But something that goes beyond that, something that will challenge us, something that is necessary and vital for our lives as Christians.
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- Well, a lot of doctrines, a lot of thoughts, a lot of teachings ran through my mind, but I thought, let's talk about holiness.
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- Let's talk about sanctification. There seems to be some thought these days that is seemingly bordering on antinomianism, that idea that I kind of alluded to earlier, you know, well, let us continue in sin, that grace may abound, you know, may it never be, to quote the words of the
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- Apostle Paul. But there does seem to be this kind of attitude that if I just sit back and I just rest in my justification before the
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- Lord, that's how I will be sanctified. It's this very passive idea, and it's a confusion of justification and sanctification.
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- And there are men who have spoken on this topic far, far better than I could ever begin to.
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- And so I would direct you to some of those resources. Let's see,
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- I will actually put up a link to some sermons that have, and some articles that have been shared by Pastor Jerry Ragg.
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- I think he's down in Florida, Grace Emanuel Bible Church, I think is what it's called.
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- I'm kind of going off the top of my head, so I apologize if I've misspoken there.
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- But Jerry Ragg, Pastor Ragg has done some really wonderful teachings on this idea, and we won't even begin to plumb the depths of this topic the way that he has.
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- But you know, there is this, this kind of thought, this borderline antinomian thought that's starting to permeate the evangelical world, at least from my view.
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- And if we follow that train of thought, and we begin to pursue it, we're going to run into some dangerous territory and some bad teaching that will cause us to perhaps run the risk of ignoring the calls in Scripture for us to pursue lives of holiness and righteousness.
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- Ladies, rest assured that if you have been saved by Christ, your justification is settled.
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- You have been declared righteous before God. That is settled. Nothing you can do can change that.
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- Christ's work, his perfect life, living a life that we cannot live in perfect obedience to the law of God, what we are called to do, but we cannot do,
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- Christ did. Christ went to the cross and died as the perfect atoning sacrifice.
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- He bore the punishment that we deserve. It is finished. Christ, he did not say it has begun.
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- He did not say I did what I can do now. The rest is up to you. No, it is finished.
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- If you've been saved, your justification before the Lord is settled. I don't want any confusion there.
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- But what about your sanctification? What about our sanctification? I want to lump myself in there too, because believe it or not,
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- I am not perfect. I know it's tough to believe. I'm not. Our sanctification, ladies, will not be complete until we are with the
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- Lord in glory. We know that. We cannot be perfect here on earth in spite of what a few people who call themselves
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- Christians may claim. But that means that while we are here on earth, while we are serving the
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- Lord, while he is good to give us another day and another breath, we ought to be busy striving for holiness, pursuing righteousness.
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- And we do this, ladies, to the glory of God. We don't do this so that we can be better people.
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- I mean, that's an outcome that, you know, we are growing in Christlikeness. But our motivation for all of this is the glory of God, because he is glorified as his people are sanctified.
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- The ultimate end was the Westminster Confession of Faith saying, you know, the chief end of man is to glorify
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- God and enjoy him forever. So let us strive for that. Let us strive to glorify our
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- Lord and to pursue holiness and righteousness. Proverbs 15, 9 says, the way of the wicked is an abomination to the
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- Lord, but he loves one who pursues righteousness. Righteousness. Colossians 3, verse 1 says, therefore, if you have been raised with up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
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- Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God.
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- When Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. And we see, we see activity here in these verses.
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- You know, God loves the one who pursues righteousness. Proverbs says, Paul says to keep seeking the things above.
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- That's, that's something we are doing. You know, he says, set your minds on things above, not on things that are on the earth.
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- Romans 8, 29 talks about how we are to be, how we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
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- Matthew 6, 33, one of my favorite verses, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
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- Romans 12 talks about how we are to present our bodies, a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God.
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- This is our spiritual service of worship. We're not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
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- We are to actively seek and pursue righteousness, ladies. But as I've said already on the show, we do this not by our own power, but by the power of the indwelling
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- Holy Spirit. It is his presence that gives us holy desires in the first place.
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- You know, I think of the Gospel of John here, and in John 14, 16,
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- Jesus is telling the disciples, I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever.
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- That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you.
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- You know, and right before that, Christ said to his disciples, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
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- And then he goes right into, you know, often our Bibles want to break up these verses with little subtitles, and those are great.
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- They help and everything, but they're not inspired. So John 14, 15, Christ says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
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- I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. The spirit of truth.
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- Keep my commandments. I will give you a helper. We do this by the power of the indwelling
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- Holy Spirit. In John 15, Christ teaches about being the vine and that we are the branches.
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- And again, he's talking to his disciples directly. And this extends to us even today, those of us who have been saved and who are following Christ.
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- And he says, I am the true vine. My father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.
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- You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you.
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- As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.
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- I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit.
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- For apart from me, you can do nothing. Verse six, if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned.
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- If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. My father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
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- Again, we pursue righteousness, we strive for holiness, for the glory of God, and we can only do that in Christ.
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- Apart from me, you can do nothing, says our Lord Jesus Christ.
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- So when I was thinking about this topic of holiness and started reflecting on some of these scriptures that we've already talked about,
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- I thought of one of my favorite resources, and it seemed one of the most natural books to go to on this topic,
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- J .C. Ryle, and I don't recall if I've recommended him here before on Equipping Eve. I think
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- I have. If I haven't, J .C. Ryle, his resources are really wonderful. He wrote a book called
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- Holiness, and so I pulled that off of my shelf and started flipping through it and turned to the chapter where he speaks about growing in grace.
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- And it's kind of this same idea of growing in holiness, striving for righteousness. And so, as I said, it seemed a natural resource to go to.
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- And he reiterates here in his book what I just mentioned about how our justification is settled, and we have to make sure that we are differentiating between our justification and our sanctification.
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- And J .C. Ryle says, when I speak of growth in grace, I do not for a moment mean that a believer's interest in Christ can grow.
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- I do not mean that he can grow in safety, acceptance with God, or security. I do not mean that he can ever be more justified, more pardoned, more forgiven, more at peace with God than he is at the first moment that he believes.
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- I hold firmly that the justification of a believer is a finished, perfect, and complete work, and that the weakest saint, though he may not know and feel it, is as completely justified as the strongest.
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- I hold firmly that our election, calling, and standing in Christ admit of no degrees, increase, or diminution.
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- If anyone dreams that by growth in grace, I mean growth in justification, he is utterly wide of the mark and utterly mistaken about the whole point
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- I am considering. And so I really appreciate the emphasis that J .C.
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- Ryle gives on that. Just, again, saying, you know, we are already justified. We are declared righteous. That is settled.
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- There is another matter that is our growing in grace that we are actively participating in, yet are empowered by the indwelling
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- Holy Spirit. So J .C. Ryle goes on and says, when
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- I speak of growth in grace, I mean increase in the degree, size, strength, vigor, and power of the graces which the
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- Holy Spirit plants in a believer's heart. I speak of a man growing in grace, or when
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- I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this, that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual -mindedness more marked.
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- And he bases his argument for this on Scripture.
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- And, you know, of course, that is what we take everything back to here at Equipping Eve.
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- We always go back to Scripture. So J .C. Ryle, in his book, he talks about three points about our growing in grace, and that is the reality of the growth in grace.
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- I mean, some people would say you can just have
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- Jesus as Savior, but not have him as Lord. I mean, I know I'm not the only one here who has heard someone say, yeah, well, you know,
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- I believed in Jesus. I got converted when I was five, but it wasn't until I was 25 that I accepted him as Lord.
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- So I accepted him as Savior, but it was 20 years later that I accepted him as Lord.
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- No, no, no, no, no. Jesus is Lord. You don't get to choose when he becomes
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- Lord. If you did not, quote unquote, accept him as Lord, which is really horrible language, but we'll just roll with it for the sake of time.
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- If you hadn't accepted him as Lord, quote unquote, using that horrible phrase, then you just weren't saved.
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- You know, you don't get stages of salvation. Like, oh, you know, I was good. I had my fire insurance, but now
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- I'm going to, you know, actually look like a Christian. No, no, no, that's not how it works. There is a reality that men and women who have been saved will grow in grace.
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- They will grow in holiness. They will bear fruit, as Christ talked about in John 15. So there is that reality.
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- And then J .C. Ryle also goes on to talk about the marks of growing in grace and the means of growing in grace.
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- And so I thought we would talk about those, and I know we're running short on time, so this may run into two shows.
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- It probably will. But let's talk just for a little bit about the reality of growing in grace.
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- As I said, we cannot have Jesus as Savior and not have him as Lord. It's ridiculous.
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- So when someone says that to you, that, hey, I had accepted
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- Jesus as Savior, but didn't just accept him as Lord until last year, that person wasn't saved until they, quote, unquote, accepted him as Lord, if they even understand the implications of that.
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- The thing is, ladies, Christ expects us to grow. Christ expects us to bear fruit.
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- And we ought to be able to look back and reflect on our Christian life and see ourselves one year ago, two years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and see how
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- Christ has grown us and see things that we used to do that we no longer do, things that we didn't used to understand that we now understand.
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- Courage in Christ, maybe, that we didn't used to have that we now have, whether that's in sharing the gospel or whatever, and we can see that growth.
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- And again, we're still not perfect. We see our sin more intensely day by day, and that is by God's grace so that we can actively be working to mortify those sins and, again, grow in Christlikeness.
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- So how do we know that Christ expects us to grow? Again, we saw it in John 15. That's a very clear passage from Christ himself that we are to bear fruit.
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- And if we are abiding in him, we will bear fruit. And if we don't, the branches that don't bear fruit will be pruned, will be cut off.
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- Let's look at some other verses. 1 Thessalonians 3 says, verse 11, 1
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- Thessalonians 3, 11 and following, Now may our God and Father himself and Jesus our Lord direct our way to you.
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- And may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for all people, just as we also do for you, so that he may establish your hearts without blame and holiness before our
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- God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. So again, we see that the
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- Lord causes us to increase and abound in love for one another. And again, love for one another is one of the marks of a
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- Christian. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 1, Paul writes,
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- Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you receive from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please
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- God, just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more. For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the
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- Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God. Listen, ladies, 1 Thessalonians 4, 3,
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- For this is the will of God, your sanctification. He goes on and lists some examples of what your sanctification might be, especially in light of his audience here in Thessalonica.
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- This is the will of God, your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel and sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like the
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- Gentiles who do not know God, and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter, because the
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- Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. Verse 7,
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- For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. So he who rejects this is not rejecting man, but the
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- God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. 2 Thessalonians 1, 3,
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- We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows even greater.
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- We're seeing these examples of growing in grace, and a lot of it is growing in love for one another.
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- That is, again, a mark of a true Christian. And we see that we are actively growing and increasing in this mark of grace.
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- Colossians chapter 1, verse 9. Actually, we'll go to, yeah, verse 9.
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- Colossians 1, verse 9. For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
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- So that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the
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- Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. And so what do we see in these verses, ladies?
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- We see Paul is saying that, you know, he's praying for the Colossians, the people at the
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- Church of Colossae, that they will be filled with the knowledge of God's will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that they will walk in a manner worthy of the
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- Lord to please him, to please God in all respects, bear fruit and increase in the knowledge of God.
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- So we see even what we went back to, what we were talking about at the beginning of the show, that we need to know the whole counsel of God.
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- That is how we grow in spiritual wisdom and understanding and knowledge of the Lord. That is how we know our God. And if we are limiting our study of the word to just marriage and parenting, we cannot know our
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- God because he is more than that. He has given us more than that to understand. And so what
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- Paul is saying here, you know, applies to what we were just saying. And so he's praying that we can be filled with the knowledge of his will.
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- How do we know God's will? By knowing his word. And that allows us to walk in a manner worthy of the
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- Lord who has saved us, who has purchased us. Ephesians 4 verse 15 says,
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- Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
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- Again, we are to grow up in all aspects of him. So we see this growing in grace.
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- And I have a lot more verses here, but in the interest of time, maybe we'll come back to them later. And if you have been a
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- Christian for any period of time, ladies, then you know this to be your experience. This growth in grace, you grow in love toward one another, you grow in the knowledge of the
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- Lord, and you increasingly walk in a manner worthy of the gospel that has saved you.
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- J .C. Rowell talks about growth in grace being the best evidence of our spiritual health and prosperity.
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- And he also talks about it being one of the ways that we can be content in our religion.
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- And about that, he says, God has wisely linked together our comfort and our increase in holiness.
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- He has graciously made it our interest to press on and aim high in our Christianity. There's a vast difference between the amount of sensible enjoyment that one believer has in his religion compared to another.
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- But you may be sure that ordinarily, the man who feels the most joy and peace in believing and has the clearest witness of the
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- Spirit in his heart is the man who grows. And I think we even see, ladies, as we're convicted of sin, it grieves us, our sin grieves us.
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- But I don't know about you, but it also brings me a settled peace and assurance because I know that when
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- I am convicted of my sin, when I see my sin and I'm grieved by it, because I know not just that it is a sin against myself or other men and women, but it is a sin against God.
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- The fact that I have been graciously granted the ability to recognize that assures me that I am
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- Christ's and that He is growing me and that He is pointing out my sin to me so that I can work to overcome that sin again by His power, by His grace, by His Holy Spirit.
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- Ladies, we are accountable to grow in grace. We are to mature in our
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- Christian walk day by day. And I think we will end the show here, and we're going to come back to this topic,
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- I think, in the next show. But I just want to end with this thought that J .C. Ryle gives, that growth in grace pleases
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- God. Ladies, this is the ultimate, as we've already said. We strive for holiness and righteousness.
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- We pursue His kingdom and His righteousness for the glory of God, not for anything that benefits us, because ultimately the glory of God is for our good.
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- And J .C. Ryle says, the scripture speaks of walking so as to please God. The scripture says there are sacrifices with which
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- God is well -pleased. The husband man loves to see the plants on which he has bestowed labor flourishing and bearing fruit.
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- It cannot but disappoint and grieve him to see them stunted and standing still. Now, what does our
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- Lord Himself say? I am the true vine, and my Father is the husband man. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples,
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- John 15. The Lord takes pleasure, says J .C. Ryle, in all His people, but especially in those who grow.
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- And ladies, I dare say, if you are not growing in Christ, you need to examine yourself to see whether you be in the faith, because a
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- Christian who is abiding in Christ, who is abiding in the vine, will bear fruit.
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- So I encourage you to do a little fruit examination. All of us,
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- I speak to myself, this is something we should be doing daily and praying that God would continue to grow us in grace and holiness and righteousness so that we may be conformed to the image of His Son, so that one day when we do take that step from earth into glory, into that next eternal life, it will be a very short step because He has been so gracious and good to grow us and sanctify us.
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- It's a painful process, ladies, but don't we love it? Don't we love knowing that we are
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- His and that He is shaping us and molding us? What a blessing. What an amazing, good, gracious, merciful, holy, holy, holy
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- God we serve. Ladies, thanks so much for listening. We are gonna come back to this topic until that time.
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- I hope that you will get in your Bibles, get on your knees and get equipped. Thanks for listening.