F4F | Rick Warren Timing is Everything

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the

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Faith here on YouTube. If you've ever been told that, you know, the Bible teaches the importance of timing, timing, and that, you know, you can have an entire sermon series on the importance of timing things in your life or your business and stuff like that, yeah, go ahead and hit the subscribe button down below.

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You've been deceived. And those of you in Southern California attending Saddleback Church are one of her satellites around the globe, then you know exactly what sermon we're going to be looking at today.

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Yeah, that's right. We're heading over to Saddleback. And the recent sermon titled, Learn How Timing is

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Everything with Rick Warren. And I think this should be renamed to Learn How Twisting the

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Bible is Everything Regarding Rick Warren. And I think you'll get a better idea of what's going on here.

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But let's get to it. And here we go. Just sit down, assume the crash position.

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Don't forget to subscribe, ring the bell. I'm trying to chew up some time here because I really don't want to hit that play button.

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But let's just endeavor to persevere, shall we? Here we go. Now, if you take out your message notes, today,

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I want to finish a message that I started at Christmas, actually on the importance of cooperating with God's timing in your life.

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Okay. See, I'm immediately scratching my head. What? At Christmas, you preached a sermon.

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I got to find this thing, but not today. About cooperating with God's timing for your life.

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If I had to guess off the top of my head, how much you want to bet that that sermon was based on a twisting of the announcement that Mary the

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Virgin would give birth to Christ? Just saying, it's probably what went down. We continue.

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We're starting this new series on foundation of a life well -lived, and I want to start with talking about the timing in your life.

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Remember at Christmas, I said that every great accomplishment involves the element of timing. There are a lot of football playoffs on now these days, and a successful catch in a football game requires incredible timing between a quarterback and the receiver.

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You know, off the top of my head, I just can't think of all those important timing passages in the

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Bible, where if you want to live a life well -lived, you're going to have to learn the importance of timing.

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Yeah, okay. If they don't have the timing spot on, there's just no reception. There's no touchdown.

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The same is true in business success. Right, it's the same is true with my truck.

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When the timing belt is off, bad things are happening in my combustion engine.

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So timing, you know, it's everything, you know? An investment, or whether it's a new project or a new plan, good timing in the market, good timing in knowing when to hire, when to expand.

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How is this a biblical teaching? I'm sure he'll get to it, but if you're thinking, oh yeah,

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Rick Warren, he's a solid Bible teacher. He correctly teaches God's word.

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You know, he's conservative and stuff. He might be politically conservative, but he is theologically as liberal as they get.

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Timing is everything in business success. Same thing in music. If you're a singer, if you're a musician, you must know how to keep time.

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If you can't keep time, please get off the stage. Right, she's one, and two, and three.

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Yeah, that's why I'm not a musician. Because timing is everything. Now, when

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I wrote the book Purpose Driven Church many, many years ago, the first chapter of that book in Purpose Driven Church is called

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Surfing Spiritual Waves. Cowabunga, dude. You gotta surf some spiritual waves.

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In that chapter, I compare leadership to surfing. And the parallel is this.

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Surfers don't try to create waves. No surfer goes out and goes, let's go make some waves today.

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Surfers can't create waves. Only God can create waves. Surfers wait for the waves that God creates.

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And for 39 years, we've done that here at Saddleback Church. The Bible calls it walking in the spirit.

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Boy, you just tried to sneak that one in there, but I was quick.

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I was really quick on the stop button there. Walking in the spirit, huh? Yeah. See, surfing spiritual waves that God makes, that's called walking.

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No, it's not. You just made that up. Try to make waves.

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What we do is look around and say, what is God doing in the world? And then we say, there's a wave coming, and we want to jump on that and go with that.

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Yeah. Back in the day, I did an expose of how the purpose -driven movement does these hostile takeovers of local churches.

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And as part of this, we covered this particular teaching here of Rick Warren, but it was in the mouth of a different guy, a guy who worked with Transitions, Inc.

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Let's see if I can dig that up and put it in the description for this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith. We'll see if we can find that. This is all based upon a weird twisting of Henry Blackaby's teaching.

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Henry Blackaby took a passage from John 5, totally ripped it out of context, where Jesus basically says,

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I can only do what I see my Father in heaven doing. And so Blackaby said, we've got to do that same thing.

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We should only be doing what we see God is doing. And then Rick kind of extrapolates that twisting of Scripture that Blackaby had and turned it into a principle within the purpose -driven church that, here's the basic idea.

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As a leader in a church, you should never come to God with your plans.

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No, no, no, no, no, no. God's not going to listen to your plans. Your plans are, you know, they're doo -doo.

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God's not interested in your plans. What you need to learn how to do is, you know, walk in the

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Spirit. And walking in the Spirit requires you to look around, scan the horizon, see what

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God is doing, and then you join Him. And so Dan Sutherland was the guy of Church Transitions, Inc.,

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who was the one teaching this, and oh my goodness. So I'll put a link to it in the description, you know, to the expose we did on Dan Sutherland's Church Transitions, Inc.,

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and it's just absolutely mind -boggling. The Bible doesn't teach this at all.

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You know, go find what God's doing in the world and then join Him. And, you know, what was funny is that Dan Sutherland, in the

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Church Transitions, Inc. seminar, was, you know, citing Yonggi Cho of Korea as an example of what

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God was doing in the world. And so we needed to join in, and Sutherland was really, really emphatic about this idea.

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Don't come to God with your plans. You know, God's going to basically say no to that. See, I'm doing this over here.

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Come join me is His thing. And the Bible nowhere teaches this doctrine. So as pious as this sounds, this is straight -up mysticism nonsense, and it's not based on anything taught in Scripture, for real.

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It has to do with timing. When you're a surfer, you spend a lot of your time actually just waiting. And you see a wave come in and go, no, we're not going to catch that one, no, we're not going to catch that one, we're not going to catch that one.

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And then you go, here comes a big wave, and you get ready, and about the right time, you have to have the exact timing to start paddling, and paddling faster and faster, and then you catch that wave, you ride that wave, and then you need to know how to get off the wave without wiping out.

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Surfing looks easy, but it's actually quite complicated. Yeah, notice he began with the analogy, which, by the way, is backwards.

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It's okay to use illustrations in a sermon. Totally, totally legitimate way of teaching.

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The issue here is that sermon illustrations are supposed to be used to help you understand what a biblical text is saying, and what a biblical text means.

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So what Rick Warren is doing here is starting with the sermon illustration, and then drawing his conclusion, and then going to take his conclusion that he drew from his illustration, and then impose that on the biblical text.

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Yeah, that's about as backwards as you can get. I mean, that's like putting the caboose in front of the engine and expecting the caboose to pull your train.

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See, it doesn't work that way. You see, surfers, they don't go out there, and they don't make the waves.

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No, no, no, surfers never do that. Surfers, they sit out there and they wait.

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They're very patient people. They're in their wetsuits, and they're talking to each other, and they say things like, dude.

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And then one says to the other, dude. And then they see a wave, and they go, dude.

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Yeah, and so as soon as everyone says, dude, then they all get ready, and they get on the wave, and they ride it.

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And of course, people get mad, especially when you jump on a wave, and you cut somebody else off.

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But anyway, that's how surfing works, right? But see, again, that's an illustration from modern -day life, and now he's creating a doctrine from that that we've got to ride the wave.

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It's the same way. We've got to see what God's doing. He's going to create waves, and then we've got to ride them. No text teaches this.

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It requires a lot of balance. It requires a lot of skill. Yeah, and timing. Now, the same is true in life, that you have to have a certain kind of skill to understand timing in your life.

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Timing on every detail of your life. Now, look at this verse at the top of your outline.

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The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 8, verse 6, there is a right time, and there is a right way to do everything, but we know so little.

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Everybody? Yeah, so one of the things that Rick Warren does, if you've read

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The Purpose -Driven Life, again, I apologize if you have. You were deceived when you did read it. But if you noted, he engages in this very interesting technique, and so here's how the technique works.

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He begins with his illustration, draws his doctrine from that, and then goes and hunts and finds a biblical text to support the doctrine that he found in his illustration, and the illustration was given without a biblical text.

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And then the funny thing is that when he can't find, let's say he doesn't work from the

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ESV. He doesn't work from the King James. He doesn't work from the New King James, or the New Century Edition, or the

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NASB. No, what he does is he finds the translation that best fits his doctrine that he's teaching, and so as he preaches, he preaches from all of them out of context, and then he changes.

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So right now, the Today's English Version. There is a right time and a right way to do everything, but we know so little.

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How much do you like to bet that when I open up Ecclesiastes chapter 8 and apply the three rules for sound biblical exegesis, which are context, context, and context, that this isn't teaching that we need to learn how to apply timing in our life in the way that he's describing.

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I wouldn't bet against me on this, but I'm just saying. So Ecclesiastes chapter 8. Let's head over there, shall we?

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Ecclesiastes chapter 8. We'll start at verse 1. See if we can note what's going on, and I'm going to stay in one translation, the

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ESV, and here's what it says. Now, who is like the wise? Solomon writes.

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Who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man's wisdom makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.

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I say keep the king's command because of God's oath to him. Be not hasty to go from his presence.

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Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases. For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him,

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What are you doing? Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way.

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For there is a time and a way for everything, although man's trouble lies heavy on him.

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For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be?

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No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death.

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There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it.

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All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun.

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When man had power over man to his hurt. Yeah, you see what

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Solomon was doing right there? And see in that section right there in Ecclesiastes? Yeah, this was his observation of what was done under the sun regarding when man had power over another man for his harm.

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Yeah. So Rick Warren here has just decided

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I'm gonna hunt and pack, and he searches long and hard and wide. Ah, the Today's English version.

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I can make it look like it's teaching this idea about the importance of timing. You know, how timing is everything.

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But yeah, that's not what Ecclesiastes 8, 6 is teaching. Agree with that verse?

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There's a right time and a right way to do everything, but we know so little. What this verse is saying is that we can get it wrong.

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We can do the right thing in the wrong timing. We can have the right timing and do it in the wrong way.

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It takes skill. Clearly, you don't have any when it comes to rightly handling

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God's Word. The skill of life of knowing how to time, to follow

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God's timing, to follow the Spirit is a skill that can be learned. Yeah, note again, this text has nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with learning

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God's timing of the Spirit and things like that. It's not what Ecclesiastes was talking about.

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So, Rick is over there basically rolling his own theology and smoking it.

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And the paper, the zigzag paper around his whatever he's smoking is the

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Bible text itself. Just wrap that thing up. Yeah, baby.

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So, yeah, this is really weird here. Of course, keep in mind certain things are legal in California that are not legal in other parts of the

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United States. The good thing, skills can be learned. Now, there is a rhythm.

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There's a rhythm to life. There is a rhythm to love. Actually, there's a rhythm to leadership.

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What? I've got rhythm. Anyway, you know. Wise people know how to cooperate with that rhythm of when to speed up, when to slow down.

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So, how do I tap into these rhythms, you know? When to go fast, when to go slow.

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Spiritually, as I said, it's called walking in the Spirit. Can you show me that from the

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Bible, please? And the more you grow as a follower of Christ, the more you're going to understand and get better at walking in the

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Spirit, which involves... Sorry. So you need to learn how to be wise and be in sync with the rhythms of life and love and leadership and stuff.

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But that's going to take you to learn... You need to go on a spirit walk. Right. Uh -huh.

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Following God's timing. You learn to sense when to go fast and when to go slow.

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I learn to sense when to go fast, when to go slow.

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Do I reach out with my feelings, tap into the force, you know?

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Let go, Luke. Is that what you're saying? Now, you know, we're facing a brand -new year here, and I thought one of the first skills you need to learn in a foundation for a life well -lived is knowing how to cooperate with God's timing.

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Know when to speed up, know when to slow down. Of course, the Bible has a lot to say about it. Did you...

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Yeah, no. No. Yeah, this is...

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There's no way to recover this teaching. He's off the reservation. It's just another travesty is the best way

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I could put it. So if you found this helpful... And by the way, this is like par for Rick Warren's course.

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I hate to say that, but that's absolutely the case. I've been critiquing his teaching for well over a decade now, and I have yet to hear him rightly handle a single biblical text.

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But if you found this helpful, please share it with others. All the information on how to share is down below.

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By becoming a crew member, supporting us on Patreon, and other things like that. So until next time, may

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God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and His vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.