Loving Sermon on Depression

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Hey everybody, I'm Pastor Jeff Durbin with Apologia Church. I wanna thank you all so much for watching the content right here on Apologia Studios channel.

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What you're about to watch is a sermon, a message from Apologia Church's worship service. And again, I wanna thank you all so much for watching, for liking, for commenting, for sharing the sermon itself.

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So thank you again so much for watching these and sharing them. God bless you. If you would open your Bibles to Romans, book of Romans, New Testament record called by many the gospel according to St.

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Paul. I think that's a great description. Romans chapter 12, Romans chapter 12.

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It's a verse I'm sure many of you are all familiar with and I think that there could be no better place to land in terms of talking about depression and the renewed mind than Romans chapter 12.

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This is a foundation. And I wanna encourage you right now as you come to the text today, this is very, very critical.

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This is probably the most important thing to lay down as we start talking about this. It's very important that as you hear a text today, as we talk about the word of God today, as we talk about things that are related to God, what he's like, the world, how he manages it, how he wields his sovereignty, us, our condition before God, who we are in Jesus.

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As you hear verses that you're familiar with, as you hear truths today that you know deep down in your

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Christian soul that you do not become mellow -headed as you hear them today, that you don't let this be a moment where you hear a verse you're familiar with or you hear a truth that you know is the truth and you sort of get cavalier about it.

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I already know that. The truth is, no, we don't. Not intimately, not fully, not in terms of transformation being changed by it.

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So many things I think we believe as Christians, we acknowledge them. If you gave us a test and you wrote it down, we would check all the right boxes, have all the right theological answers, but you meet us at 2 .30

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or 3 .00 a .m. on our pillow and it's as though we do not believe those things, we do not know those things.

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We have no intimate connection with them at all. I think if we're honest with ourselves, we can think about the moments, some who have struggled through this, where you've had suicidal thoughts, dark thoughts, depressed thoughts, or maybe you've had moments where at 5 .00

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p .m. where you were sitting with a group of believers fellowshipping and you were pouring forth all the glories and all the treasures that are in Jesus and you were ministering to others, pouring forth sound speech,

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God's Word, and then at 2 .00 a .m. you were in your closet cutting yourself, or at 2 .00

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a .m. you were thinking of how you didn't wanna be here anymore. You didn't wanna live this life anymore. So I wanna just encourage you to be thinking about the fact that we are not done yet.

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We're a work in progress. God promises us, he says, he that began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

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He will finish what he started, which means that where we are now today is not the place we will be in Christ five years from now, 10 years from now, or 10 ,000 years from now.

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God's not through with us, which means I don't care where you are in your walk with Jesus, how much you've done for Jesus, how many ministries you've been involved in, how much you've laid your life down, how many sermons and lectures you've listened to, how much of the

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Bible you've read, how many times you've read it. God is not done with you. And there are simple areas of commitments and truth as Christians that we, no matter how mature we are in the faith, need to be worked on, to be worked over.

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And so I wanna encourage you to humble yourself now as we go through these texts and to think about where you and I need to repent.

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And you'll get what I mean by that in a moment. So Romans chapter 12, verse one.

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Hear now the words of the living and the true God. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

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Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

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Thus far as the reading of God's holy word, let's pray. Father, I pray that as we begin to face this subject of pain, being downcast, being depressed,

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Lord, all the issues related to this, Lord, anxiousness, loneliness, worry, guilt, shame, everything.

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I pray that, Lord, you'd meet us here as a body. Lord, we all humble ourselves before you now, confessing that,

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Lord, we need you and we need correction. We need renewal. Lord, I can't,

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Lord, discern what's going on in the hearts and minds of every person that you've called me to shepherd right now, but you know.

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And so I do wanna pray, Father, that you would, Lord, speak today, that you would,

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Lord, open our eyes to our condition, that you would touch the places that need to be touched, that you'd expose sin and pride, unfaithfulness, worry where it exists.

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And, Lord, today you'd heal and you'd begin that process of a life of healing here.

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Lord, I can't do what only you can do. And so I pray, God, today by your spirit that Christ would be magnified, that I would be minimized, that you would cause people to completely forget me and the aspect of me in this, and that you would,

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Lord, glorify Jesus and heal by your spirit and word and for your glory.

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Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. And so, Lord, please build this house today in Jesus' name, amen.

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So California church shocked after pastor commits suicide. California church is grieving after their pastor committed suicide over the weekend.

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Lead pastor, Andrew Stoke Lane, I hope I get that right, died in the hospital

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Saturday after trying to taking his own life on Friday. The pastor left behind three young children and his wife.

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And this is one of the messages his wife wrote. Last night, the love of my life, the father of my children and the pastor of our incredible church took his last breath and went to be with Jesus.

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It's a powerful story, I think, because, of course, it's a lead pastor of a church. And the incredible thing is

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I didn't know this man and I hadn't heard of him, but I looked him up as soon as I saw this article and I went to the

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YouTube channel and it was really powerful because the series that they were currently in was all related to the issues of like depression and the

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Christian mind and healing and those sorts of things. He was in the midst of a series related to the very things that he was struggling with.

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And then he took his own life and left behind a wife and three small children. It's that in itself is shocking and it testifies that we could, as Christians, be talking a good game as Christians, that we could know all the right things to say, we could speak

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Christianese, but we have not been changed ourselves. We haven't let these truths actually set in and change our own hearts and our own minds.

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We're all a work in progress. Pastors are all works in progress. We all need to be transformed and changed.

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And this isn't the first time this has happened. Recently, fairly recently, there was another example across the other side of the country on the

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East Coast where a pastor committed suicide for the same sorts of reasons, depression, anxiety, these sorts of things.

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Another pastor taking his life because of these issues. This isn't the first. I would imagine it won't be the last situation.

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So how do you handle these sorts of things? Well, I wanna say that we have a couple of different approaches that we can take.

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We really do. I mean, there's no shortage, no end of books on this subject. If we go to the bookstore right now, there are whole shelves with just multiple authors over multiple disciplines talking about the issue of depression, fear, anxiety, suicide, all those issues.

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And the compelling thing is that there's not one answer. There's a host of different answers.

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So you've got people who write books that talk about things like five steps out of depression, seven steps out of depression, 12 steps to battle depression.

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I want the book that says one. Why do I want the seven or 12? Like, give me the one. And they're all, generally speaking, very pragmatic things.

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I worked in a hospital full -time for four years in the process of planting

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Apologia Church. I was the head chaplain of this hospital. And I can tell you that there is no end to the discussions on how do you actually battle anxiety, loneliness, fear, guilt, and shame.

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And I used to sit sometimes when I had a free moment in the rooms where they were having their group therapy sessions.

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They'd bring in professionals. They'd have the psychiatrists and psychologists come in, all the therapists and doctors, and they'd be telling people, here is the way to heal from anxiety.

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Because, of course, being in a drug rehab, people don't just take drugs in a vacuum. They're self -medicating.

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They're medicating, at least initially, for something. So they struggle with loneliness. And so what do they do?

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They use drugs and alcohol to sort of fill that void, or they feel guilt and shame. So they go to the functional savior of alcohol or to heroin to free them from that guilt and shame.

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So there's a number of reasons people end up in a drug rehab, right? There's all these needs as image -bearers of God that we can only have satisfied in God, so we go somewhere else for it, which is what

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Romans says, right? Romans 1 says that our hearts are constantly building these idols, right? They're constantly worshiping the creature rather than the creator.

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And that expression might look different for certain people, but it's the same central problem, is that we're idolaters at heart, and we're in a fallen world.

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We're rebels against the king. And so as image -bearers of God that are made to be an eternal fellowship and communion with this

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God, if our relationship is broken, if we're separated from God, it's not as though those needs as image -bearers of God disappear or dissipate.

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They don't go away simply because you choose not to worship God. You're not gonna cease worshiping something because you're not worshiping the true

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God. And so I'm in this hospital and these rooms are the therapy sessions. They would be dealing with the issues that lead people to addiction.

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So they talk about anxiety. They talk about worry. They talk about fear. They'd have seminars on how to battle loneliness without going to the bottle or to the pills.

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And I used to sit in these just to listen and take notes as to what they were saying. And you would hear people talking about, well, if you're lonely, here's what you wanna do if you're lonely.

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I want you to go out and join a singles club, a singles group, take a trip, take a vacation, or go see a movie.

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If you're really lonely on a Friday night, instead of hitting the bottle, go to a movie, right?

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Or instead of hitting the bottle, go online and involve yourself in a chat group, get relationships that way, get some friends, join a group somewhere, go to your

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AA group and make some friends and have community. That's how you heal from loneliness. Or if they're dealing with say anger, people get really angry and so what they do is they're full of rage and anger and turmoil, and so they wanna go and get peace.

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So where do they go to get peace? Not to God, they go to the bottle to get peace, a pseudo peace, a functional

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God, a functional savior. Or they go to the heroin and they shoot up the heroin to get peace, to get away from all this anxiety and this worry, it's just a switching of God for something else.

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And so they'd say, here's how you deal with that anger and that rage. Instead of being angry and going and using or hitting a person,

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I want you to go and punch your pillow for 10 minutes. It's really what they said. Just go and have an

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MMA session with your pillow for like 10 or 15 minutes. Or they would say things like this. Instead of going to hit the bottle when you're angry or the pills or the needle when you're angry,

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I want you to go and take a cold shower, right? So it's all this pragmatic, like here's how you're gonna solve this problem.

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And I wanna say that also leads into other issues that we try to handle this in a very worldly way.

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Now please, as I say this, I wanna say this very, very carefully and I want you to please be very careful, brothers and sisters, to hear me rightly on this.

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The world oftentimes says there's a real deep struggle here that's impacting this person even physically.

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Their blood pressure is escalating. You can see the chemical stuff going on in their brains.

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So this is clearly a physical problem. So how do you handle this physical problem? Well, this person is anxious constantly.

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They're worried constantly. So here's how the world says to solve the problem. Give them a pill. Give them a pill.

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And so what we have right now today is we have what is near epidemic level, a problem of the prescription or prescribing of benzodiazepines.

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And these are the sorts of things you see in commercials where they say if you're dealing with anxiety and worry or if you have a social anxiety, take this magic pill and this magic pill will give you the ability to speak in a social setting or if you're anxious all the time and you're constantly fearful, take this pill and this pill will relax you.

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This pill will calm you down. Now I'm gonna say first and foremost that we should approach this as Christians holistically and biblically with a

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Christian worldview that says this, human beings are not merely matter. They're not just material.

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They have a spiritual component to them as well. As Christians, we don't believe that all that exists is the material, the physical realm.

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So the human being in front of me right now has more going on than chemicals firing in their brains.

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There's a spiritual essence or component to each of us. There is spirit and there is body.

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So you have to manage both those things and sometimes the answer to a catastrophe when a woman is driving in her vehicle and she gets hit going through an intersection and her little boy goes flying out the front of the windshield, dead on the streets, sometimes the answer in that moment is a pill.

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When she is so distraught and so out of control that she needs some sort of medication to balance her for a moment, there's no sin in that.

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There's no error in that. That's called a gift from God in that moment, truly.

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But I wanna say the way to heal that pain that she's gonna feel long -term is not long -term prescribing of medication because that pill will not heal what hurts her the most.

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It will not heal her heart. It will not shape her worldview. And what the world often does today is they say, okay,

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I see a physical person in front of me right now and they have chemical problems. So here's how you solve the problem.

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Prescribe a medication that they can take long -term that's gonna help balance out these chemicals so that they'll be able to handle life in a way that is right and good given the pills, never really mentioning many times that by giving you this bottle of pills that you'll be taking some of the most addictive medication that is known today.

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They before you even know it, in three to six months, you are chemically dependent upon medication that listen, has the same chemical effect on your body as alcohol.

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So you say, why is this pill helping me so much? Why is it relaxing me and calming me? Why? Well, it's doing the same thing chemically to your body, to your brain that alcohol does.

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Now again, I'm not saying as a Christian that we're saying the medical things have no weight or bearing in this discussion.

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They oftentimes do, but not long -term. Listen, you cannot satisfy or heal a spiritual problem with a physical pill.

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It cannot be done. Ultimately, we need to be digging down at the very bottom and saying this, how does

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God intend to transform and renew me at the bottom of my being to bring real peace, real healing, and real life?

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I can tell you that the answer is not long -term medication and pills. Those have their place, but they cannot do what

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God does in His word, through His Spirit, because of His Son. And so,

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I remember being in the hospital and seeing all these instances of answers, and here's how you solve the problem of anxiety and worry.

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Here's how you handle the problem of loneliness and guilt and shame and despair. And the answer is always something that is a term of pragmatism, right?

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Punch the pillow, take the shower, join the club, make the friend. But it doesn't really meet us, does it?

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Does it, be honest? In those moments where it's three o 'clock in the morning and you wake up and your mind is consumed with pain, your mind is consumed with guilt and shame, how many of you guys have woken up?

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Just out of the blue, you've woken up, and all of a sudden, your old life, all of your guilt and your shame, your past sins start to flood through your mind.

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You start thinking about all the things that you've done and all the falling short and all the sin. These have flooded across your mind.

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You lay there on your pillow in despair. How many of you have had that happen to you? Or you lay your head down on your pillow and you try to go to sleep and your mind is just running with anxiousness and worry and fear about tomorrow and fear about how to pay this bill or take care of this thing, or are my children healthy, am

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I healthy? And you're just consumed by fear. I think we have to all confess that's a normal part of Christian experience.

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And I'm gonna say this, back to what Baxter said today in our soul food quotes. It is not right for Christians to approach a believer who's struggling with depression and anxiety and all these different things and to say, just get over it.

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Or to minimize it and say, it's not real pain. Because I'm gonna say at the front of this message today, just this, listen, it is real pain.

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It's real pain. If you felt depressed or lonely or anxious or fear or any of these things, it's real pain.

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So first embrace that. Yes, it's real, I acknowledge it. Don't minimize it, don't try to whitewash it, it's real pain.

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But if you and I embrace that pain as Christians and we begin to soak in our anxiety and all of our worry and we begin to embrace all of our guilt and shame from our past, all of our old sins, then what we are in fact doing is living pridefully and denying everything that God says is true about us.

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That's the truth. So on the one hand, you don't wanna simply deny the pain, you have to embrace it and say, that's real,

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I wanna feel that, I wanna embrace it. But you don't want that to remain something that you embrace and fully say it's true.

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We have to as Christians say this first and foremost, I'm wrong and God is right. You see the beginning, this is the beginning, first and foremost, lay it down.

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First path to freedom from depression and all these things is this, you must be in Christ.

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This conversation is meaningless if you don't know Jesus. It is utterly undeniably meaningless if you don't have

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Christ. As a matter of fact, when I sit down with people as a pastor, when I was in the hospital, I would have at least eight appointments a day in front of me with people who didn't know

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Jesus, some of them did, most of them didn't, and I would let them know at the outset, I don't have a lot of help for you if you don't know my

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God. If you don't know Jesus, if you don't know his promises, if you don't know his word, there is ultimately nothing

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I have to offer you. You don't wanna listen to 10 steps of success from Jeff Durbin because I don't have it all together.

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I'm not the Messiah, I'm not the Savior, he's the Savior. You don't need my answers, you need his.

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So the first thing I would do when I sat down with people is say this, this is the most important thing. Do you know him?

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Do you know Jesus? And I don't mean about Jesus, I mean do you know him intimately? Have you turned from your sins to Christ?

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Have you received his righteousness, his life, his forgiveness, his gifts and blessings?

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Are you in Jesus, raised up with him, your old self crucified with Jesus and now seated with him in the heavenly places in Jesus?

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I would preach the gospel to them. Preach the gospel to them. So the first thing

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I wanna say is this, there is ultimately no freedom from anxiety and worry, no freedom from guilt and shame, no freedom from loneliness, no freedom from depression outside of Jesus Christ.

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There isn't. It doesn't exist. It does not exist.

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It is only in Jesus. So that's the bottom. If you don't know the Lord of glory, then you need to know the one, the

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God who became a man and lived righteously, blamelessly, sinlessly, who died on a cross and rose again from the dead and calls you to come to him for life.

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That's the start. Repent and believe the gospel. Okay, are we there now? That's the first thing.

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The second thing is to recognize this at the outset, humility. You're wrong.

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I'll say it again. You're wrong about God. You're wrong about his world and you're wrong about yourself.

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If you live in such a way as you embrace this depression and this darkness and this fear and this anxiousness and this worry and this guilt and shame, you are wrong.

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And if you walk into this discussion in terms of I want healing and you're argumentative with God, your healing stalls.

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It goes nowhere. We have to walk into this discussion before the throne of God on our knees with our eyes up confessing that we need to be corrected and changed, challenged.

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Are you willing to be challenged? That's the question. Because oftentimes we can't heal from our past, our guilt and our shame, our anxiousness, our worry, our fearfulness.

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We can't heal from it because we walk into this entire discussion first and foremost with a commitment to what we say is the truth and not him.

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So the question is, who are you gonna listen to? Whose voice? So let's lay that down at the bottom.

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Every day you and I as believers have one of three voices to listen to. And many of you guys have been here since the very beginning.

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You know that I've said this often, but again, like I said at the start of this message today, do not become mellow headed and do not hear something that you're familiar with and say

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I already know that, I want you to embrace it and think about it in terms of depression, loneliness, fear, all these things.

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You have three voices to listen to every single day as a Christian. One, you can listen to you.

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Who talks to you more than you? Who are you convinced by more than anybody else?

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You, right? We don't like to confess to it, but I want you to think about it. You talk to yourself.

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All of us do. You're having constant conversation in your mind in terms of that's right, this is wrong, this is true, that's not.

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That's how we live. You have an inner monologue, an inner voice. And you can choose to listen to yourself.

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And here's the problem. You and I are notoriously unreliable.

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Amen? If you can't say amen to that, that's the problem of your depression is that you're prideful.

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You think you're right. And the answer is you're wrong. Let God be true and every man a liar, the

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Bible says. God is true, his word is true. His voice is the foundation of all truth.

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And so we have to walk into this saying, one voice I can listen to is me and my inner monologue. And I want to ask you this.

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Are you prepared to say today, right now, that you're wrong? That you are wrong and be humble about that.

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That you get it wrong. You perceive things wrong. That you're not right all the time.

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Second voice you can listen to, according to scripture, you can listen to a voice of a spiritual attack.

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Now, I'm gonna be very careful with this one. It's so important in terms of how we live today with a lot of propaganda and how it's done.

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I'm gonna say this, very important for us not to look for Satan behind every bush. We love to blame the devil for things.

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Let me just say, the devil is not omnipresent. He's not present everywhere. He's a fallen angel.

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He doesn't exist everywhere at all times. He's not Jesus' rival. He's not like Jesus at all.

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He is a fallen, disarmed, disrobed enemy of God at the cross.

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But he's still alive. He's still active. And there are other spiritual enemies and attacks.

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You can listen to the voice of a spiritual attack. You can listen to the voice of, quote, the devil, the

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Satan. But here's what Jesus, when the Bible says about Satan, that he is the father of lies.

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The father of lies. Not just a liar from the beginning, as the Bible says, but the father of lies.

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How do you like them apples? Three voices to listen to. One, me, I'm fallen.

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I am fallible. I am not God. I am notoriously unreliable. So listening to myself, not so much.

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Not a great idea. The second voice is the voice of a spiritual attack, the voice of the devil.

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You can listen to him. He's the father of lies. He's been a liar since the beginning. You can listen to him.

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Not reliable. Third voice you can listen to. The voice of God. The voice of God.

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The Bible says this about God. It says, God cannot lie. He says,

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I am the Lord. I do not change. God is not like you and I.

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God is not a creature. God is not bound the way that we are. God is not finite. God is not fallible.

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God is without error. He is the embodiment of truth. The Bible says about Jesus, I am the way and the what?

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Truth and the life. No man comes to the father but by me. Jesus says about being sanctified.

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He says, father, sanctify them in your truth. And then he defines it.

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Your word is truth. If you want to know what is true, if you want to rest somewhere that is unmovable and unchanging, you and I have to determine this.

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I'm wrong. The devil's a liar. God is the truth. One of three voices to listen to.

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And remember that as believers, that you have this constant conflict in sanctification. It's a war over words.

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And it's either my voice, the devil's voice, or God's voice. Who's gonna win that battle?

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And I think, watch, let's check ourselves now. Let's do this. When I ask a room full of believers who love

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Jesus and know Jesus, and when I ask a room of believers the question, who should we listen to, ourselves, the devil, or God?

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What's the autonomic Christian response? Immediately, because you know the right answer to give as a

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Christian, right? Like if you ever phase out in church and you lose your place, and the pastor asks a question, he goes, what do you think, guys?

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Everyone, right answer, everyone goes, Jesus, right? You're generally in the right field, right?

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You know that in church. If I say Jesus, I'm hitting something right, right? Because we know the autonomic response, and that's the response where you know if you're hit a certain way, you have an autonomic response to respond a certain way.

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Someone flicks your eye, your first response is to close your eye, throw your hands to your face. Autonomic response, ask the

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Christian, whose voice, mine, Satan's, or God's? Every Christian goes, God, and here's the problem.

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It's not true in our daily experience. It isn't true, because in our daily experience, when you have that moment where you just get this flood of feelings and emotions, this experience hits you, and you start telling yourself things.

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God is far away, this is never gonna get handled. I'm in total collapse right now. I'm never gonna get out of this.

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I should be afraid for tomorrow. I'm not gonna be able to feed my kids. I'm not gonna be able to pay my rent, and fear just consumes you.

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Who are you listening to in that moment? Who are you listening to? Yourself?

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If it's a spiritual attack, it's not from God, but you're not listening to the one that says this.

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Fear not. Do not be anxious or dismayed. I am with you.

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You're not listening to the one that says about his covenant with us, that you're in my hands, and nothing could snatch you from my hands.

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You're not listening to the one that says this. Do not be anxious about tomorrow.

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Now watch this. When we struggle in that moment, say, of anxiousness and worry, and that brings us to a place of depression and fearfulness,

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I want you to see that you are having a debate with the king of the universe. You are arguing in the presence of a holy and sovereign

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God over what he says is true about the world. You're saying, I should be fearful.

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I should worry about tomorrow. This is never gonna get done. This is all gonna collapse. The world's gonna come crashing down on me.

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I'm alone in this. I have nothing in this. You are in the very presence of God who says that he sings over you, who says that he will provide for all of your needs according to his riches in Jesus Christ, the

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God who says that he'll never lose you or forsake you, the one that tells you, do not be anxious, and then he gives you reasons.

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Well, I love this about God. I gotta just say this. I know I'm going off just a bit here. I gotta say this. I love this about God is that he doesn't need to give us a reason ever about anything.

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All God has to do is speak, and a universe leaps into existence. All God has to do is speak, and a man forms from the dust in the earth.

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All God has to do is speak, and a woman comes out of the side of a man. All God has to do is speak, and there are crazy animals like giraffes and baboons and weird ants and crazy things that grow out in the middle of the desert that oddly

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Matthew Hunter wants to eat. All of it. All of that. This is the

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God that we're talking about, and he never has to give us any reason. All he has to do is say this, and it's the truth and it's done, and there's no argumentation.

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But I love Jesus in Matthew 6 .35 when he deals with the problem of anxiousness, which brings people down into depression and sadness.

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Jesus says, do not be anxious, and then he goes on to have an amazing little argument with us.

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And what is that? He says, and I love it, that the very hairs on your head are numbered, all of them.

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I know each of them. That a sparrow doesn't fall dead in the forest apart from your

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Father's knowledge of it. The Father in heaven who says about our lives, he says this, which of you, through your worry, can add a single hour to your life?

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Who can do it? And everybody says, none of us, by our worry, can do that one thing,

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Jesus. I can't add an hour to my life for my worry. And Jesus would say, and why is that?

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Why can't you? Because we would all say the autonomic response as Christians. That's because you're sovereign.

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Because you're sovereign over the hours of my life, the extent of my days. Every day of my life was written in your book before there was even one of them.

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And God would say, yes, that's why you can't add the hour to your life through your worry. If you can't do that single thing, then you stop worrying.

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And don't you love it? Do not be anxious. Is not Jesus giving you a suggestion or me a suggestion.

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Do not be anxious. Is Jesus giving a what? That's a command. That's like in the list of commandments.

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Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not commit adultery. Do not be anxious.

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Do you have it there in your mind? Do you have anxiousness and worry in the list of commandments?

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Or did you think, mom, that it was just a suggestion of Jesus? Just Jesus' tip for success in life.

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How about you try not worrying? This is the sovereign God of the universe entering down into his own creation.

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Now walking in the dirt with his people, his little creatures. And he's saying this. I'm God. Do not be anxious.

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Because what? You're of more value than the lilies in the field.

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You are of more value than the sparrows that fall from the trees. Therefore do not be anxious.

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Why? Because God is sovereign. Do you see how theology matters? And do you see how, watch, a pill cannot do what

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Jesus did 2 ,000 years ago. You can't give somebody a pill to remove anxiousness and worry of the future.

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You cannot give them a pill that will take that spiritual need out of them. A pill cannot rule the universe.

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A pill cannot sovereignly wield the details of all of life and people's decisions in every single molecule.

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A pill cannot sovereignly wield all those things to guide the universe along to the murder of Jesus as it turns out to the redemption of the world.

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Only the sovereign God can do that. But here's the debate. Ready? Me, the devil, or God?

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There are voices that are conflicting right now. One says, I control everything. I'm the sovereign of the universe.

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I do according to my will and the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. And no one can stay my hand and say, what have you done?

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You've got God's voice. God's voice saying that, and now you have all the conflicting words and voices.

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So who will you rest on? Who will you believe? Let me just say at the start, I said this has to do with the gospel first.

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Am I saved? Do I know Jesus? Do I have peace with God? Am I forgiven of my sins? And the second is this.

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Am I humbled right now? Humbled enough to admit this, I'm wrong, I'm wrong,

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I'm wrong. And the third thing is this, pride, pride.

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Pride, pride in those moments of despair where I have the audacity, the audacity to walk into God's throne room and to debate him.

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You see, there was another man in history named Job who after a lot of conflict and a lot of difficulty, a lot of calamity, a lot of trial and temptation and a lot of very bad friends who gave some very, very bad advice.

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He got to the tail end of this trial which was sovereignly wielded by God. None of it happened, clearly, none of it happened apart from the sovereign will of God.

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Satan wanted to test him and he could only do it with God's permission and he could only go so far.

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And after this trial and losing everything that he loved, everything that mattered and after all the bad advice,

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Job finally gets to a place where he actually wants to have an argument with God. He wants to have a hearing with God.

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All right, I wanna ask him some questions. And it's amazing the condescension,

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God condescends and he actually opens up and he speaks to Job and he says essentially this, okay, well,

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I'll let you ask your questions but I just have a couple first, okay?

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And so God begins to get into Job's heart and mind and ask these grand questions that humbled

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Job. I have a question, where were you when

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I created all of this? Where were you when I did that? And who controls all of this?

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Like who controls the rain falling from the sky and hitting the earth? Who has storehouses in the heavens for these things?

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Who prepares all these things? Who is it, Job? I wanna know whose control is that in and at the end of that discussion, that argument that Job wants to have with God, this is the result of every human being that wants to debate

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God. He puts his hand over his mouth and he says this, I have spoken too soon.

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He says, I can't contend with the Almighty. So if you wanna have an interview and debate with God, I'll leave you to it, but I promise you, you will lose badly.

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It's been tried before. So as we think about our pride in these moments of stress and guilt and shame and sadness and loneliness and worry, as that overwhelms us, you're gonna have the temptation,

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I'm gonna have the temptation to have a debate with God. He says he's sovereign. He says he controls everything.

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He says Romans 8 .28 that all things work together for what?

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Good, to those who what? Love God, those who are the called according to his what?

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Purpose, those are his words. You're gonna have moments in your life where you wanna debate that subject.

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Your marriage is falling apart. Your relationship with your kids is falling apart. Your job is falling apart.

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Your relationships around you in the body are falling apart. Sin has entered the camp. Something has happened in your and my first response on a creaturely level is this couldn't possibly be in God's hands or according to his plan.

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And you're gonna wanna have an interview with God. And you're gonna end up at the end of that interview with God covering your mouth and saying,

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I've spoken too soon, I can't contend with the Almighty because the question is gonna be, is it your voice, Satan's voice or God's voice?

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Who's telling the truth? Now I brought you to Romans chapter 12 at the beginning and this goes to our being renewed in our minds.

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The renewal of your minds. I'm just gonna read to you one more time. I want you to think about it. You don't have to go there, just listen to it for a second.

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I appeal to you therefore, therefore, brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

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Presenting myself to God as a living sacrifice. My whole life is yours.

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My mind is yours. My mouth is yours. My heart is yours. My hands are yours.

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My feet are yours. All of me is yours. Paul says this, that's worship.

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That's worship. Your mind, your mouth, your hands, your heart, your feet, your body, living sacrifice.

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You lay it down before the altar of God every moment of your life. And Paul says, that's your spiritual worship.

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And then he says this. Do not be conformed to this world, but be, and here's the word, transformed by the renewal of your minds.

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My mind has to be renewed. Because watch, here's the thing. If we're honest with ourselves as Christians, and we're not prideful, and we don't try to put on an air of piety, and I've got it all together, and I know all that I'm doing, and I know

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God better than everyone here, and I can answer all these questions. If we're honest with ourselves, we have to say that we have patterns of sin, patterns of sin that we have held onto or practiced for our entire lives, or patterns of sin we've recently gotten into.

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So for example, if you weren't raised in the Christian church, and you weren't raised under the hearing of the gospel and the word of God, let's say you came to Christ at 21 years old.

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Well, that's 21 years of sin and rebellion against your creator. 21 years of practiced sin.

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21 years of dealing with anxiety and worry and guilt and fear and shame outside of Jesus.

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So it's 21 years of idolatry, false saviors, false pursuits of joy, 21 years now of a mind that's set one direction.

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And all of a sudden, you meet Jesus, your heart is transformed, God now dwells within you, and it's not magic or osmosis, that all of a sudden now you have the complete and total mind of Christ.

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That as I come to Jesus now, I'm the most disciplined, pious Christian ever. Why? Because I'm saved, brother.

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Is that true? Say your experience as a Christian, that you came to Jesus and all of a sudden, every affection was right.

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All of a sudden, all your self -control, all your discipline, you are reading the Bible six hours a day, right?

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Listening to only worship music, right? How did it happen? It was a process of sanctification.

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Transformation occurs step -by -step where God begins to expose sin in our lives, and he's so gentle.

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He always goes after this one, and then this one. Okay, you go, great, I'm sanctified. Those are now past and beyond me.

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And God goes, uh -uh. And then there's this one that you've been hiding. And then there's this one and this one.

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And God all of a sudden has us grieving 15 years into our walk with Jesus, grieving over sins that we never even noticed before.

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You ever see that as a Christian? When you're early on, you're like, it's these big ticket items. Like as soon as God handles those,

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I am a sanctified believer, right? What arrogance, because as soon as God handles those, all of a sudden you're like,

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I'm a mess. I am an awful father. I sin against my kids and my wife. I'm so selfish and so prideful.

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And you're like, where did all this come from? It was always there, baby, always.

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But God is gracious and kind and loving. And we have patterns of sin practiced.

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You know that you and I have told ourselves things about the world and God, ourselves, our whole lives.

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And now we're new creatures in Jesus. We're raised up with Jesus. Now filled with the spirit of God now.

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Now given the power to live lives that glorify God. Now a hatred for sin. That's our present reality with the old man.

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The old life, the old practices, the old habits. We have to be humble to say that we're wrong and we have to repent of pride in terms of when we hit something that is an area of sadness, anxiousness, worry, fear, guilt, shame.

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Recognize that you and I have an autonomic response to those instances where we go right back to the patterns of sin.

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And we have to recognize, no, in these moments, I need to be corrected, have my mind renewed, changed.

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In the way that I think about this. In the way that I approach the world. Which means that now you need to be able to have the words of the living

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God washing over your minds and your life, renewing you and letting

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God's word be the central point that shuts down your arguments. Who wins in the monologue, the internal monologue between you and God?

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Is it God? Take for example, just a couple of things.

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The issue of loneliness. The issue of loneliness. This is what's really powerful. I think this is so compelling.

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Loneliness makes no sense apart from the

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Christian worldview. But I want you to see this. This is what's critical. Is that loneliness is a result of sin in the world, which

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I think we can all acknowledge. Yeah, okay, I understand loneliness is a result of sin in the world. But I want you to consider this. The Bible says that God has existed from all eternity as the triune

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God. Amen? Watch. John chapter one, verse one. It says, and I'm gonna do it in Greek so you can get it down and memorize it because it's powerful.

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It says, in archein hologos, kai hologos ein proston theon, kai theos ein hologos.

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And it means this. In the beginning was the word. In archein hologos means this. As far back as you want to go, forever and ever and ever and ever ago, without a reference point to stopping, forever ago,

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Jesus was already there. And then it says he was proston theon, which means in the

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Greek, toward the father. The expression is there face to face with the father, in intimate relationship with the father.

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It's obviously very powerful language that expresses intimacy, which means this.

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Jesus always existed forever ago in intimate, perfect relationship and fellowship with the father, which means this, watch.

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There was never loneliness in God. Never. Never loneliness in God.

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Because God is triune. God is a community, father, son, Holy Spirit, one perfect God.

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And the critical thing to get here is this, is loneliness was never a part of God. Loneliness is a result of a fallen world.

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But here's where it gets even deeper. Watch this in terms of how the word of God washes over my mind and renews me.

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Not only is loneliness not something that's ever existed in God, but it only entered the world because of sin, because God created us to be an intimate fellowship and joyful, delighting relationship with him forever.

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And God, believe it or not, created us to be an intimate fellowship with one another.

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But that fellowship with one another comes after fellowship with God. So in other words, in God's design, there is no loneliness in God and there's no intended loneliness between us and God.

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God's call is come to me for life. Come to me, I'll be your father. Come to me, I'll free you from your sins.

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And so God's design is freedom from loneliness and intimacy and fellowship forever with him.

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So where's this loneliness come from? It can only come, watch. If I don't know the living God, my sins are separated from me from God.

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But if that's not the case, if I know God intimately and I'm saved, then watch, there is no loneliness ever.

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You might say, but I feel it. Right, because you're a liar, because you lie about God.

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In your moments where you say, I'm lonely and I feel like God is far off, you're telling tales out of the schoolyard about God.

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Not true, because what does God say about his relationship to you? What's he say? Give me some, come on now.

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Give me something about God and his promises now. Come on, tell me, give me a verse, raise your hand. Give me a verse about God's promise to you and I about his presence in our lives.

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He'll never leave you or forsake you. I'll uphold you with my righteous right hand.

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Come on, Christians. His steadfast love endures forever. It does not end, yes.

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Very good, come on, give me some more. Greg, say it loud. That's right, good, okay, more, yes.

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I'm with you always. Come on, guys, do battle now. Loneliness creeps in, God's far off.

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He's the absentee landlord. Turn to me, I'll be there, yes. Lord is my shepherd,

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I shall not want. See, see, here's the truth about God. He has word about what he says about our relationship to him and how he'll never leave us or betray us or forsake us.

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What do you think is true? In the moment where you feel loneliness, where you feel like God is far off, that he's not there and not listening and you've embraced all of that sadness and depression and now you're sulking in in your bedroom at two o 'clock in the morning and you're feeling the weight of it, what do you think is a reality?

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Do you think that God has finally found a way to lie or that you're wrong?

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You're wrong. God will never leave you. He'll never forsake you. You're in his hand. I love what

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Jesus says in John chapter 10. It's powerful. He says, I know my sheep and they know me.

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They hear my voice, I give them eternal life. And he says, they're in my hand. And he says, nothing can snatch them from my hand.

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And then Jesus does it again. He says, they're in my father's hand and nothing can snatch them from my father's hand.

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Here is Jesus giving us this two -fisted grip, father and son, holding us together in his grip, his loving grip saying,

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I will never lose you. I will never forsake you. He says this, I've come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of him who sent me.

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And this is the will of him who has sent me that all that he has given to me, watch, ready? Listen to it and stop arguing.

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I should lose nothing, none. So here's the voice of God telling me something about his character and his love for me and his provision for me.

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And here's my experience where I am just believing every lie that I'm telling myself that I've trained myself to believe or I'm believing every spiritual attack.

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So the question is, who will you believe in that moment of loneliness? Do you believe that God now has abandoned his holy character or do you believe that you're wrong?

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Next, how about anxiousness and worry? Let's do it together now. Anxiousness and worry, you lose your job, you're laid off, your bank account goes to nothing.

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There's struggle and difficulty in relationships. You're fearful about tomorrow, how you'll eat, what you'll wear.

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All of that hits you, watch, and it's real. It's real because they're real needs.

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You can't be dismissive and simply say foolishly, I won't address it,

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I won't face it and live in like la -la land, not pretending these are real issues, but we can also approach it sinfully, right?

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And embrace fear and worry and do what Jesus says not to. So brothers and sisters, let's do it.

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Three voices, mine, Satan's, God's. Who will you listen to? Give me God's voice. Give me some verses.

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Anxiousness and worry, yes. And I'll give you rest.

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All things work together for good for those who love God and are watch. I love this part. The called according to his what?

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Purpose. He has purpose in every single thing. And we are called and we love

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God. I saw another hand up over here, yes. That's right.

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Yes, more. Come on. Cast your burdens and cares upon him for he cares for you.

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Tim, powerful.

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And in those moments, right, of fearfulness and worry and everything that comes in, we know a text like that as Christians, we know the right response, the box to check, but we don't actually embrace the truth of that.

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And God says, then the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds. And we go, well, but not for me because God's abandoned me for real.

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What else? Give me more. Worry, anxiety, fear, yes. Yes. Worry about nothing.

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Pray about, yes. Yes. Anybody else?

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Yes. Jesus has overcome the world.

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Yes. All right, watch this.

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This is a powerful thing. Watch. I said in the beginning, don't get mellow -headed. Don't get cavalier. Don't be prideful in terms of going.

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I already know that. Really? Really? I guarantee you the pastor that took his own life, preached sermons to his church where he told them these things about God, where he told them about God's character and his faithfulness, where he talked to them and ministered to them about how to handle these things and to believe

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God over themselves. I believe that pastor would have done that. Any faithful pastor would.

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And yet he took his own life because all of us can have that Christian response where we say, I know the Bible says that.

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I know it's true, but do you know it intimately? Have you been changed by it? Are you transformed and renewed?

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Because you know what has to take place for many of us is in certain areas that lead to our depression and our being downcast and all these different things.

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What oftentimes needs to happen for a period of time is you need to pull your car over for 20 or 30 minutes and to turn your car off, safe location, please.

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And you need to sit there and you need to wrestle with your own thoughts and your own inner monologue, where you use the word of God against your own voice and your own feelings and your own experiences.

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Where you do battle and you have the word of God pounds your mind and heart into submission to his word.

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Where you get before God and you be humble to admit that you're wrong and two, you admit your pride.

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And then in this moment, it feels better. It feels right to actually think that I'm right. That God's far off, that he's no longer faithful, that he had nothing to do with this.

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This week, we had this, I'm bringing it up again, we had this young Mormon on the show.

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And if you watch the end of the show, if you watch the end of the show, the last few minutes, he couldn't get out of a challenge that he was in, so he just changed the subject completely to the issue of predestination.

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And I'll bet that he thought, oh, I've got him now. But I tell you, when he brought it up,

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I thought, oh, I've got you now. Because here's what's critical. He was bringing up all these evil things that happened in the world, the

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Holocaust and this and that, all this emotional, polemical stuff going on just to draw on people's heartstrings and emotions.

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And what he ultimately said is that all the evil in the world, all the bad in the world, all the sin and rebellion in the world, he said

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God has nothing to do with that. He had no part in it. He has nothing ultimately to do with that.

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And I said, ultimately, that's not a God worthy to be worshiped. That's an impotent God and not my

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God. Because the God of the Bible is so sovereign over every single detail of the universe, nothing happens in this world apart from his purpose and his hand.

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Which means, watch, everybody is culpable for their sin because what they're doing, they want to do.

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God isn't putting a gun to anybody and saying to them, you be evil when they don't want to be. There are moments in this fallen, wretched world where God unleashes his hand and he allows people to sin, but he only allows them to sin for his own glory and purpose.

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And you might say, how in the world does that work out? I'll point you to one instance and I can show you many.

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And that's the cross of Jesus. Here is the most innocent person who's ever lived with no sin, no guilt, no shame.

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As a matter of fact, the magistrate of that day on record in history washed his hands of the murder of Jesus and said this as an official record from a magistrate.

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He said this, I find no fault in him. He is not guilty.

01:00:03

And they said, murder him anyways. And he died a bloody, gory, graphic death on a tree.

01:00:11

And here's what God says in his word about it. He says this, in this city, gathered against your holy servant,

01:00:17

Jesus, Pontius Pilate, Herod, the Gentiles, the peoples of Israel to do what?

01:00:23

Here it is, listen closely. To do whatever your hand predestined to occur.

01:00:29

The murder of Jesus, predestined by God, God not thwarted by sinful, rebellious, hostile image bearers of God.

01:00:38

God accomplishing all his purposes in the most brutal and graphic murder in history.

01:00:45

The murder of the son of God on a tree. And it was all for God's perfect purpose.

01:00:51

So as a believer, I know when I face any trouble in the world, anything that happens in the world,

01:00:57

I have the sovereign God who controls every detail. And I can say in everything that happens in my life, this is according to the purpose and plan of him, watch, who is just, who will always do right.

01:01:15

This is our God, listen, in your moments of anxiousness and worry, this is our God. Our God is in the heavens.

01:01:23

He does whatever he pleases. Let me say it to you again. Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases.

01:01:32

Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things which have not been done saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure, which means that the death in your family, as much as God weeps at the tomb of Lazarus, God was sovereign over that and God was sovereign over the death in your family.

01:02:00

It didn't take him by surprise. He's sovereign over that. And he loves you in the midst of that.

01:02:06

It means that your job, losing that, that was God's perfect plan and control.

01:02:13

You might not see it now, but you will know. You will be able to talk to the sovereign

01:02:19

God who wielded all of history to do it in that way. How many of you guys have ever had a situation where you were panicked and you were fearful and you were worried and it consumed you and you lost sleep over some financial thing or some work thing and you just panicked and you had a week of fear or whatever and all of a sudden you get to the end of that trial and you look back and think, how foolish was

01:02:43

I to fear and worry over all of this because my God had this in store and I don't want anything else but this.

01:02:53

I mean, as a matter of fact, there's an instance just right here. I can only just speak from my own experience just in this moment. There was very dramatic and painful things that happened to get this church born.

01:03:07

Very. We were part of a church context at the time where the church had fallen apart, bad leadership, difficult situation.

01:03:16

There was confusion all around. Why would God let any of this happen? Why was

01:03:21

God bringing us to this point? Why? So many times you ask, why would this happen?

01:03:27

How, if I was controlling things, I wouldn't have done it this way. I was supposed to move across the country to South Carolina to be at a large church out there, to be the pastor out there.

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And all of a sudden I ended up in Arizona without a job, without any money, with a family to care for.

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Pastor Luke and I are going, I don't know what God's doing. He's doing something. We're digging behind our couch to find coins to get food for our families, just trusting

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God. He's up to something. And I could say this, in those moments of fear and worry that flashed in those moments where you had to put those to death,

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I wish that I could talk to myself in those moments and say this, hey, don't you even for a second, not even for a minute, don't even let it cross your mind to question

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God's goodness and faithfulness in His perfect plan in this moment. Because I'll tell you right now, I don't want anything else.

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I don't want anything else. And I couldn't have dreamt of a more amazing, redemptive plan than God had for this church.

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So we look at the situation, how could things fall apart? How can this brokenness enter our circumstances?

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How could God do something with this awful scenario? And all of a sudden you look 10 years later and you look at thousands of children alive because of being freed from the abortion industry.

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You look at all the people, of thousands of people come to Christ around the world. You look at the lives changed here, the families that now actually exist in this church because of this church.

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These babies running around the church, they wouldn't exist if God hadn't let that thing fall apart.

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So I say this, let it all fall apart and go into the hands of God who sovereignly controls everything to work it together for His glory and my good.

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Who wins the debate every day? You, Satan or God? Another one, let's just try this one.

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How about guilt and shame? So depression being downcast, falling into embracing it all, just letting it seep in and feel it and feel it and you just say, this is true, this is real.

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It all comes in now and guilt and shame starts now pouring into your life. How are you gonna combat the guilt and shame?

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Give me the words of God. Your monologue says this, I am guilty, I'm disgusting, I'm a wretch,

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I'm awful. Give me the truth. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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So when you're on your pillow, thank you for that brother. When you're on your pillow and that thought of your old path and your old life and your sin and your thoughts blasts you on the pillow, what are you gonna fight with?

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You're gonna just try to, you're gonna try to muscle your way out of the spiritual attack? You're gonna try to fight?

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Let me just say this, watch. Jesus is God in the flesh, amen? Yes, we still together, yes?

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This is still an Orthodox Christian church, good, okay. Jesus is God in the flesh. When He goes into the wilderness to go through the temptation, the trial, the testing of Jesus, does

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Jesus physically wrestle the devil? No, no external pressure.

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As a matter of fact, God puts Jesus into a place, the Father puts Jesus in a place where He is exasperated,

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He's tired, there's no food, He's exhausted. He has no physical energy to fight or to employ any steps to success.

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All Jesus does to fight the devil is nothing physical. What's He do? Tell me.

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He quotes what? The word of God. He quotes the word of God. If Jesus, who is

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God in the flesh, doesn't wrestle the devil to win, why are you? Why are you?

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Why are you trying to win this with physical exertion? Why are you just, why are you trying to push through this?

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Why are you trying to win this battle physically or just with your mind? When Jesus has given us the pattern, this is how divine love and the perfect image of God defeats the voice of the devil.

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He uses the word of God. So in that moment of guilt and shame, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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But I really feel guilty. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But I really did those things.

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Are you allowed as a

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Christian to walk away from guilt and shame? Yes or no? Yes? Yes.

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Why? Not because you're being dismissive, saying I'm guilty and don't care. You're saying

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I am guilty. I ought to be ashamed, but I know the one who took my guilt and shame and it was finished at the cross.

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How about in those moments where you feel guilt and shame, you remember three powerful words.

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It is what? Finished. One of two voices is true in that moment where I let guilt and shame now consume me.

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One of two voices in that moment where I'm having the monologue, me or God, who do you think is right?

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Give me more guilt and shame. Yes. Isaiah 118. Though your sins are as small.

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Amen. More, let's go. Yes. Amen. More, I'll go to this side.

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Yes, Rob. Okay. Guilt and shame, guilt and shame.

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Come on, let's go. Who comes in, Matthew? Okay, guilt and shame.

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Amen. Blake. Far as the

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East is from the West is as far as you separate our transgressions from us. Yes. Trust in the

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Lord, lean on in your own understanding. One more. That's right, it's not up to us.

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So here's that moment of guilt and shame. The old life, the old man comes up and I go to Romans chapter four where God says this.

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He counts us righteous apart from works. And he says that God says, he'll forgive us our sins and he will remember them never more.

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Never again. He will never remember our sins again. So again, in that moment of guilt and shame,

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I have to rest in the word of God which leads me to final word here. Hang on, the final word is this.

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How does this have to begin in my life? How does this transformation take place? I wanna say that it has to take place at the bottom.

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I told you this starts with, number one, do you know Jesus? Number two, is there humility to recognize that you're wrong?

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And number three, are you willing to repent of pride in those moments where life is coming at you, depression is setting in?

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Are you willing to repent of your pride in the fact that you think you're right?

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Your interpretation of the circumstances is true. You're embracing this fear and this anxiousness and this worry and this sadness and all of these things, a loneliness.

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You, your interpretation is right. Are you willing to repent? Next, this means a life of worship, a life of worship.

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How many of you guys have that? Let me just say, let's just get real personal for a second. This is like where we get down to the bottom, get to the mat on this.

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How many of you guys in these moments of deep struggle have actually let go of all these thoughts and you've walked into your closet to get on your face before God to do a whole lot of repenting over not trusting him?

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How many of you guys have gotten on your face before the words of God in those moments where you're consumed with loneliness or guilt or shame or anxiety and fear and you've just buried your face in the word of God and you've meditated and you've prayed those saying,

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God, I believe this about you. God, I believe that. Lord, expose me as a liar.

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Take away all my anxious thoughts. I believe you right now. I've just done a bunch of repenting.

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How many of you guys have struggled with depression and loneliness, anxiety, fear? How many of you guys have note cards in your pockets or your purses with verses on them with the words of God that contradict you and your feelings and your emotions?

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You carry it around with you, memorizing those words so that as you're attacked or your monologue is going on, you're believing

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God's voice over your voice. How many of you guys have done that? How many of you guys have pulled your car over to just sit there between you and God to worship

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God for like 25 minutes just to get your heart and your mind right before God, to get yourself adjusted, to have your mind renewed and sanctified?

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You see, watch, here's what, this is so critical. Oh, this is critical. Do not as a

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Christian assume that because you're saved, because you're indwelled by the Spirit of God, that means all you must do is just think it and you're healed.

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All you must do is just believe those concepts. No, this is sanctification, transformation, which means that there's gonna be moments of great breakage where your heart and your mind need to be snapped and changed, where you have to go to war with the old self, the old life, the old pattern of thinking.

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You need to put it before the throne of God and be corrected and changed. You need to have your heart wrenched and squeezed and torn to let go of your old life, your old patterns of thought to be changed.

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New man and old man. I'll give you a text, ready? Because we're finishing up here. Colossians chapter three, just go read it.

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Colossians chapter three. Paul says this, watch. He says, you're seated with Christ, you're raised up with him, your life is hidden with Christ and God.

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And he says this, watch. Because that's true of you, therefore, put to death. He names some sins.

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Put to death these sins, kill them, kill them. Watch. Oftentimes, I think as Christians, we say, okay, yeah, mortification of sin, put to death, lust, drunkenness, put to death, pornography, put to death, adultery.

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Like we try to think of the big ticket items, right? Put to death those obvious sins, kill them, put to them death.

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When guys go, pornography, okay, I got covenant eyes on my phone, I got covenant eyes on my computer,

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I got covenant eyes, that's how I'll kill that, I'll get accountability, and we're working on it. Have you and I considered that you have to also put to death the sin of pride before God in terms of your descriptions of the world are true, not

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God's in this moment. I should be lonely, I should feel fear, I should be anxious, I should feel my guilt and my shame.

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Put it to death. You're wrong, God's never unfaithful to you.

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You're wrong, God will never betray you or abandon you or leave you. You're wrong,

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God will never hold your sins against you ever again. You're wrong, God will never lose you, but you're not gonna win that fight, brothers and sisters.

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Through sheer exertion of energy and power and just trying to put it behind you, you have to face it head on.

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When you feel consumed with guilt and shame, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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I'm in Christ Jesus, I trust him, I know him, I have his righteousness, he counts me righteous, he'll never count my sins against me.

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And I walk away, watch, not just putting that behind me, but delighting in God.

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That moment of confession now turns into a moment of worship and delight.

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And that is the process of the renewal of the mind. Your mind isn't renewed and your heart isn't renewed by you.

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You need to have it washed by the word of God. Have yourself, your mind, your heart washed.

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Memorize scripture, memorize scripture. Memorize scripture, memorize scripture.

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People often say, Pastor Jeff, you know, sometimes when you're preaching, you're just quoting scripture left and right.

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And I wanna just say to you, the only reason I can do that, I am doing that, is by God's grace and these heavy moments in my life where I've had to fight very hard battles.

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I used to be the most anxious person you can imagine. I mean, fearful, very fearful.

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I remember screaming at God. I've told the story a number of times, screaming at God on the 60 on the way to Higley, yelling at God because how angry

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I was at God for not taking care of my family's needs and how fearful I was of the future.

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I was literally yelling at God. People driving by must have thought I was nuts. This is before Bluetooth, so it was like, what in the heck is he doing?

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But that was my life and it was transformation. It was God working on my heart and my mind. And I'm gonna tell you that I can't tell you how many times that I've taken words from God, put those down on paper, put them in my pocket or my wallet and just gone back to it and back to it and back to it, stopped at a stoplight, read it, or quote it, quote it, quote it, quote it, drive down the road, redeem the hour drive.

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Redeem the hour drive. Just memorize scripture. Just quote it and read it and quote it and read it. Be careful not to, right?

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Like be in a safe place. But watch this, this doesn't come magically. It's not like, oh, this person's mind over there, they just know how to memorize scripture, they're good at it.

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No, it takes work and effort and time. I can't tell you how many times and hours

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I've put into memorizing scripture where I've tried to memorize it and I completely forget, I go back to it, it's frustrating, keep going and going and going until it sets root into my soul.

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Watch, this is my final word. You know this verse, it says this. Thy word have

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I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you, right?

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Your words are treasured up in my heart. The word there in Psalm 119 has to do with what they used to do to put money away or valuables.

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They used to bury it in their houses, like under their beds. They would take treasure and bury it because there were no banks in a nice place under their bed maybe and it was so they can go back to it later to draw from it.

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So God says this, treasure his word up in your heart so that later on you can draw from it.

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If you don't have his words in your heart, you have nothing to fight with. So fight with his word.

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How many voices? Three, whose? You, who?

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Satan or God? Three voices, who are you gonna believe? That's where the war begins.

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Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would bless the word that went out today. Lord, again, Father, I don't want this to be anything to do with my tips to success or anything related to me.

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God, I want, Lord, your word to prevail here and I want you to heal, Father, please.

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In this room right now, Lord, I know there are people struggling with anxiety, fear over the future. I know,

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Father, there are people in this room struggling with depression. I know, Father, there are people struggling with guilt, shame, anxiousness, fear of the future.

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So Father, I pray that you touch them now, humble them, give them the grace to repent of pride, and Lord, give them,

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Lord, feet that are set firmly on your word. Please heal us, Father, and let us be light to the world as you do.