Q&A Day 2

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Maybe a short Q &A, unless they're just off the top of their heads. Oh, well, you just, you'll just read them out loud.

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All right. It looks like all of our questions are about covenant children and, uh, no, baptisms.

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I don't know what, what you said there. So let's hand them out. It's like my presbytery exam all over again.

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Oh, it was a joke. I hope it was. I wasn't joking, it really was like my presbytery exam all over again.

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All right. Mark 1, 9 through 12 states that Jesus was suddenly compelled into the wilderness.

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Is there any reason why it was a desert? Is it because Satan is an evil spirit?

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Is an evil spirit -like creature? But is there any significance in the waterless land that Jesus was compelled by the spirit to go to?

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I'll take this one. Well, I would, I think that leads a bit into what we call biblical theology with developing an idea over the broader scope of the

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Bible. And so starting first and foremost with Genesis 2, that the first Adam was tempted in a lush garden.

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The first Adam failed in a lush garden, but Christ the second Adam was tempted in a desert, in a dry place, a place where the flesh was deprived.

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And yet was victorious over that temptation and continued to honor God in that moment.

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And in compound with that, I would think places like Jeremiah 17,

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Cursed is the man who trusteth in man, who maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the

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Lord. He shall be like a heath in the desert. He shall dwell in the parched places, uninhabited and desolate.

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But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is, and he shall be like a tree planted by the river's water.

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That might be a little bit of Psalm 1, but... But I would look at the idea of Christ being tempted in the wilderness and being drawn to a desolate place as being a full circle picture of the second

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Adam, of Christ as succeeding where Adam failed. And the parallels that are with him succeeding in the dry place while as the first Adam failed in a lush paradise, essentially.

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All of his needs and even wants were sustained there, and yet it wasn't enough to keep him from stumbling.

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So in Leviticus 16, it's kind of a lengthy portion of Scripture, but Christ came to fulfill the law, right?

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So it's important that everything Christ does be in accordance with that fulfillment. Yahweh spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron when they came near the presence of Yahweh and died.

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And Yahweh said to Moses, tell your brother Aaron and those not to enter at any time into the holy place and the veil before the mercy seat, which is on the ark, so that they'll not die.

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For I'll appear in a cloud over the mercy seat. Aaron shall enter the holy place with this, and with the bull from the herd for a sin offering, and a ram for a burn offering.

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And he shall put on the holy linen tunic, and the linen undergarments, and attired with the linen turban.

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Then he shall bathe in his body and water and put them on. He shall take the congregation of the sons of Israel, two male goats, one for a sin offering, and one ram for a burn offering.

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Then Aaron shall bring near the bull for the sin offering, which is for himself, and he may make atonement for himself and for his household.

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And he shall take two goats and present them before Yahweh at the doorway of the tent meeting.

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And Aaron shall cast lots on the two goats, one for Yahweh and the other for a scapegoat. Pardon me while I flip the page.

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Then Aaron shall bring near the goat on which the lot of Yahweh fell, and that shall be for a sin offering.

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But the goat on which the lot for the scapegoat fell shall be presented alive for Yahweh to make atonement for upon it and sent out into the wilderness as a scapegoat.

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And this would immediately have fallen Jesus' baptism. Testing. There we go.

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I wasn't going to say anything because I was just grabbing the mic because I thought Big John had to say something and he was just joking around.

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So now Keith is putting me on the spot, so I guess I have to say something. I would say by knowing what the essentials of the faith are while still holding our convictions.

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So I would say even the men up here where I could say we might be in the same denomination, we're going to have differences.

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But we're still together because we agree who God is. We agree what the gospel is.

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We agree what the mission of the church is. And so that's really what unites us together.

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Now, should babies be baptized? Yes. Okay, well, that's the conversation we're going to have back there.

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But it's going to be a conversation among brothers because we recognize that we are brothers and we recognize the essentials of the faith.

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It's funny. I've reached out to some of these men already, so they know about this. But I'm primarily a podcaster.

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I'm not a pastor. In fact, you guys got to see my first sermon, so I'm still shaking a little bit after that.

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But I appreciate your support and your feedback. Glory to God. But as a podcaster, one of the things that I want to do is

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I want to make it clear what I believe and why I believe it, but I want to make even more clear what makes a

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Christian a Christian. And I want to show others that we're not always going to agree on everything, and that's okay.

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When we get to glory, the Lord will correct us. And until then, we can lock arms and focus on what's most important.

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The glory of God, loving one another, and reaching the lost.

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So, you want to say something? I think you said it.

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All right. You said, was that the last question? No, I got a three -parter. Oh, okay.

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I'll go ahead and read the three parts. One is, what does it mean to grieve the

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Holy Spirit, and how do we take care? Or two, when we grieve the

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Holy Spirit, if He doesn't leave us, does He stop being effective? And finally, how do we restore that relationship that we have?

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You can answer the last one. Yeah, yeah. I'll take a shot at it. Can you ask the first question again?

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I just want to make sure I'm getting to the heart of the question. This is interesting, because when we study the doctrine of the

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Holy Spirit, we recognize there are three specific things that are related to the

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Spirit that are unique. One is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

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We know there's a passage that says, where Jesus talks about blasphemy in the Spirit. And then there's the passage that you're referencing, which is grieving the

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Spirit. And then there's also one that talks about quenching the Spirit. Yeah, that's first Thessalonians.

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Yeah, and so historically, theologically, these terms have been defined within certain boundaries.

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Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit would not be something that we believe a believer could do, because this is something that's unique to that situation.

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But when it comes to the subject of grieving and quenching the

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Spirit, those two things would be things that only a believer could do, because the believer is the only one who has the

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Spirit. And I'm only relating this to the unique nature in which these phrases come.

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We're never told not to quench Jesus. We're never told not to grieve the Father.

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I guess we are, in a sense. But the term is specifically for the Spirit who lives within us.

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And there is an abode of the Spirit. The promise of the

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New Testament, I'm going to talk about this tomorrow in my sermon, the promise of the new covenant is the abiding presence of the

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Holy Spirit who lives within us for the purpose of empowering us for the work of ministry.

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That is the very role of the Spirit in our heart right now. He lives within us, empowering us to serve, to glorify

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Christ, and to point to Him. So when we are engaged in things that are opposed to that mission, the mission of pointing to Christ, the mission of building up the body, the mission of doing those things that the

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Spirit has indwelled us for, then we are opposing the very action or desire, if you will, of the one who lives within us.

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And so I think the question of how do we do it, we do it through the active disobedience to the

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Spirit of God. And what I'm going to, again, preview the sermon tomorrow, 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, all

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Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching, reproof, and correction, training righteousness that the man of God may be competent and complete for every good work.

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We first and foremost grieve the Spirit when we disobey God's Word because He is the author of God's Word.

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And therefore, if we are not submitted to the Word of God, we are first and foremost in opposition to the

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Spirit who lives within us, who is calling us to follow that Word. So that's a simple answer of what grieving is.

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I mean, obviously, you could say sin, you know, like sin, that's easy. But that's more of a fleshed -out answer.

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Does that make sense? Is that good? I want to add something to it. I like that.

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So it's called the Truth and Love Network, right? Ephesians 4 is where that comes from.

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And we'll see that unity in the Spirit is the first, I don't know, 17 verses, 16 verses of that.

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But that portion of Scripture where it says, is at the end of Ephesians 4, right?

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And we see how the body of Christ working in unity with one another, one

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Spirit, one mission, one baptism, one faith, right? And then you get to,

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I don't know, 23, be renewed in your spirit and your mind, and put on the new man, which is the likeness of God, and being created in righteousness and the holy and true.

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Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speaking to one another with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

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Be angry and do not sin, and don't let the sun go down in your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.

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He who steals must steal no more, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he'll have something to share with those who are in need.

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Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only a word which is good for building up what is needed, so that it will give grace to those near it, and do not grieve the

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Holy Spirit. So it would appear that the opposition to spirit, unity in the spirit, would grieve the

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Spirit of God. If we're to use this text as what is unifying, and what is pleasing to God, is the first part of Ephesians chapter 4, then

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I believe it stands to reason that the contrast of that would in fact grieve him.

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I want to kind of combine that question with the first question. So how do we keep from grieving the

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Holy Spirit? Well, obey God's word, act like a believer. How do we come together amongst different denominations without compromise?

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Act like a believer, not a Baptist. Act like a believer, not a

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Presbyterian. Act like a believer, not a Pentecostal or Church of God. Those things are secondary.

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Believer is first. And so yielding to the Spirit is going to look different than even maybe how we've been doing it in church for years.

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We've kept ourselves separated. But if I'm going to act like a believer and yield to the Holy Spirit, I'm going to get in the foxhole with somebody who may be a

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Presbyterian, may be a Church of God. Because my obedience and kingdom efforts are more important than my secondary differences.

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It's like my brother said a few minutes ago, if they're primary orthodox differences, yeah, we got issues.

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But if they're secondary, we can talk about them on our lunch break. But in the trenches, we can work together.

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And on that subject, just giving a tiny bit of clarity behind the curtain as to what's been going on with the laborers behind the scenes since the last

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Laborers Conference, is we've seen an increase in the intentionality of that.

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We all know where we go to church. We know what's going on in each of our churches to the point that we are praying for each other to congregations.

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We know the aches and pains of every single one of these men here in their local bodies.

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We know how we can be praying for them on the regular for that. And we still debate, apparently.

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And it's intentional. It's got to be intentional. You've got to do the hard work.

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I mean, we and these men labor in their local churches. They labor for their members.

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But then they also choose to labor with folks outside their congregation that are different than them.

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And then we are hopefully going to be working on statements.

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How can a Baptist and a Presbyterian come together? How can we come together with Church of God?

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How can a cessationist and a continuationist come together? I think we would do well to work on statements of unity rather than division.

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So those are things that we're probably going to be working on in the future. That's an interesting question.

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When you consider some sections of the Old Testament, like you have King Saul, that it says that the

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Lord left him in his sin. And that does not go well for Saul. But then part of the promise with the

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Holy Spirit that we see laid out in the New Testament is this idea of sealing. And so we don't necessarily have this picture that the

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Holy Spirit up and leaves. I'm not persuaded as much as at least. But what

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I would say is that in the case of things like quenching the Spirit or grieving the Spirit, there is a lack of awareness of how the

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Spirit is at work. You guys remember that book, Experiencing God, many years ago? Oftentimes that was a wake -up call for a lot of churches as the ordinary ways that God was already at work in their communities, they just weren't listening.

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And I think that's probably closer to what we're getting at with the effects of grieving the Holy Spirit is not being on the same wavelength, if that makes sense.

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Those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. And I think that one of the ways that the

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Lord disciplines his people is by giving them a sense of conviction over their sin in such a way that at times we might feel like the

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Lord has abandoned us. Now, it's important to distinguish between what we feel and what's factual.

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Because we can feel like God has abandoned us. In Psalm 54,

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David says, after he's committed this grievous sin, where he was with Bathsheba and you know everything that happened there, one of the things that he says is, take not your

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Holy Spirit from me. It can feel, as a

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Christian, extremely... We can feel extremely weighed down when we sin.

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And so, the Holy Spirit never truly leaves the

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Christian. But sometimes it might feel that way because he's giving us the conviction over a particular sin or even something we're not doing, that we should be doing.

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And so, no, the Holy Spirit never truly leaves a believer.

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But sometimes the Lord is going to use our circumstances to discipline us.

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So, I don't know if that answers the question or not. But I guess the answer would be, no, he doesn't leave us.

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It could feel that way sometimes. And it's important, when that happens, to run to him and ask for forgiveness so that we can be, in a sense, restored to him and have full communion with him once again.

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Because the Lord is always with us, but he is not pleased when we sin.

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An additional thought, if you don't mind. I don't want to belabor it too much. I know we've been on this question for a while. This came to my mind because I talked to the men in our church about this at times.

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And this may seem like a departure, but like any good hound dog, I'll make my way back.

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In 1 Peter 3, it says, If you want to know what that means, ask

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Dan afterwards. He'll tell you all about it. No, I'm just saying, don't ask me. Go ask one of these other guys.

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No, this is the point.

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And the point I make to guys when I'm talking to them is, do you realize how you treat your wife actually affects your relationship with God?

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That's literally what the verse says. It says, Be Christ to her.

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That actually does affect your fellowship with God. It says your prayers will be hindered by this.

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So the point I want to make is, and this may seem like an old Southern Baptist cliché, nothing can change my relationship with God, but my fellowship with God can be affected.

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And my fellowship with God does change. And maybe you guys don't agree with that phraseology.

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That's kind of an old way of saying it. But my relationship with God is based in the blood of Christ, and it cannot be changed because that is something that is sealed by the

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Spirit. Somebody said that earlier, mentioned the sealing of the Spirit. But my fellowship with God is, in one sense, able to be affected by my willingness or unwillingness to be obedient.

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My unwillingness, and I use the wife as an example. If I'm unwilling to love my wife, if I'm unwilling to do those things, it can affect my prayer life.

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It can affect this, what the very verse says. And other things can happen if I am seeking, in whatever area, to be disobedient.

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So it goes back to the issue of grieving the Spirit. Obedience matters. And, yeah, say that again?

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Yeah, absolutely, yeah, obedience is a matter of sacrifice. Very good. So that's just a thought, right? We do have to consider that our relationship won't change, but there may be a reason why we feel far away from God.

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In the old saying, I'm just full of clichés today, but if you feel far from God, who moved, right?

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That's the question. All right, I'm out of clichés. All right, then.

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Come on, Florida boy. I just want to say, the guy whose first language is not

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English understood that better than Kiefoski. Unity in the

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Holy Spirit. There was interpretation. So everybody here now is a continuation.

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My job is done. Let's roll. We're going to talk about that afterwards. Do we have any last -minute questions?